Treesearch

Water is critical to life, and many of the effects of climate change on ecosystems are mediated through altered hydrology. Snow accumulation and melt are consistently cited as the most important changes to water in the western United States (Barnett et al. 2005; Service 2004), affecting when water will be available for forests, fish, and people. Changes in summer atmospheric circulation patterns may alter the ability of summer precipitation to provide a midsummer respite from seasonal drought and dampening of wildfire spread (IPCC 2013) (Chapter 8). Declining summer water contributions...

The diverse landscapes of the Intermountain Adaptation Partnership (IAP) region contain a broad range of aquatic habitats and biological communities. A number of aquatic species are regional endemics, several are threatened or endangered under the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA), and many have declined because of the introduction of nonnative aquatic species, habitat fragmentation, and human development. Environmental trends associated with human-caused climate change have been altering the habitats of these species for several decades (Barnett et al. 2008; Hamlet and Lettenmaier 2007;...

Projected rapid changes in climate will affect vegetation assemblages in the Intermountain Adaptation Partnership (IAP) region directly and indirectly. Direct effects include altered vegetation growth, mortality, and regeneration, and indirect effects include changes in disturbance regimes (Chapter 8) and interactions with altered ecosystem processes (e.g., hydrology, snow dynamics, nonnative species) (Bonan 2008; Hansen and Phillips 2015; Hansen et al. 2001, 2016; Notaro et al. 2007). Some species may have decreased abundance, whereas others may expand their range (Landhäusser et al....

Nonforest ecosystems, as they are addressed in this chapter, contain woodland, shrubland, herbaceous, wetland, or riparian vegetation types. They are estimated to occupy over 30 million acres and 50 percent of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service (USFS) Intermountain Region (table 7.1). These diverse ecosystems range in elevation from desert floors to mountain peaks above 11,000 feet and occupy a wide variety of sites, from deep and highly productive soils to very shallow nonproductive soils. Other than riparian and wetland ecosystems, nonforest vegetation types tend to occur...

This chapter describes disturbance regimes in the Intermountain Adaptation Partnership (IAP) region, and potential shifts in these regimes as a consequence of observed and projected climate change. The term "disturbance regime" describes the general temporal and spatial characteristics of a disturbance agent (e.g., insects, disease, fire, weather, human activity, invasive species) and the effects of that agent on the landscape (tables 8.1, 8.2). More specifically, a disturbance regime is the cumulative effect of multiple disturbance events over space and time (Keane 2013). The shifting...

The Intermountain Adaptation Partnership (IAP) region encompasses a high diversity of grassland, shrubland, and forest habitats across a broad range of elevational gradients, supporting high biodiversity in the interior western United States. Terrestrial species comprise a wide range of life forms, each expressing varying levels of habitat specialization and life history traits. Species exist within complex communities that have formed over time through a long process of adaptation and coevolution. Over the last century, this balance has been disrupted first by human-induced changes to...

Federal agencies and other public land management agencies in Utah, Nevada, and southern Idaho provide and manage for numerous outdoor recreation opportunities. National forests in the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service (USFS) Intermountain Region have nearly 19 million visits per year (table 10.1); adjacent National Park System units account for an additional 24 million visits per year (table 10.2). The popularity of publicly managed outdoor recreation opportunities is not surprising, given the numerous psychological, physiological, and social benefits derived from outdoor...

Echolocation allows bats to occupy diverse nocturnal niches. Bats almost always use echolocation, even when other sensory stimuli are available to guide navigation. Here, using arrays of calibrated infrared cameras and ultrasonic microphones, we demonstrate that hoary bats (Lasiurus cinereus) use previously unknown echolocation behaviours that challenge our current understanding of echolocation. We describe a novel call type (‘micro’ calls) that has three orders of magnitude less sound energy than other bat calls used in open habitats. We also document bats flying close to microphones...

Genetic networks can characterize complex genetic relationships among groups of individuals, which can be used to rank nodes most important to the overall connectivity of the system. Ranking allows scarce resources to be guided toward nodes integral to connectivity. The greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) is a species of conservation concern that breeds on spatially discrete leks that must remain connected by genetic exchange for population persistence. We genotyped 5,950 individuals from 1,200 greater sage-grouse leks distributed across the entire species’ geographic range. We...

The Intermountain Adaptation Partnership (IAP) is a science-management partnership with a wide variety of participants across the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service (USFS) Intermountain Region, which spans Nevada, Utah, southern Idaho, eastern California, and western Wyoming. This USFS region is the largest in the Nation, representing nearly 17 percent of all National Forest System lands. The partnership includes the USFS Intermountain Region and the USFS Pacific Northwest and Rocky Mountain Research Stations, National Park Service (NPS) Climate Change Response Program, U.S....