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Ecosystem services are benefits to humans from the natural environment. These benefits that humans derive from ecosystems are the tangible connection between society and the natural environment. Some of these benefits are timber harvesting, rangeland grazing, municipal water use, carbon sequestration, and pollinators—all discussed in this chapter. The typology developed by the 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (box 13.1) defines four broad categories of ecosystem services that help to organize our understanding of the relationship between natural resources and human benefits. Although...

Adapting to climate change, or adjusting to current or future climate and its effects (Noble et al. 2014), is critical to minimizing the risks associated with climate change impacts. Adaptation actions can vary from passive (e.g., a "wait and see" approach), to relatively simple (e.g., increasing harvest rotation age), to complex (e.g., managing forest structure and processes across large landscapes for a future range of conditions) (Spittlehouse and Stewart 2003). Many adaptation actions are complementary to other land management goals and actions, and most land managers already have the...

The Intermountain Adaptation Partnership (IAP) provided significant contributions to assist climate change response in national forests and national parks of the region. The effort synthesized the best available scientific information to assess climate change vulnerability, develop adaptation options, and catalyze a collaboration of land management agencies and stakeholders seeking to address climate change. The vulnerability assessment and corresponding adaptation options provided information to support national forests and national parks in implementing respective agency climate change...

Biological invasions are a major threat to biological diversity, agriculture, and human health. To predict and prevent new invasions, it is crucial to develop a better understanding of the drivers of the invasion process. The analysis of 4,533 border interception events revealed that at least 51 different alien ant species were intercepted at US ports over a period of 70 years (1914–1984), and 45 alien species were intercepted entering New Zealand over a period of 68 years (1955–2013). Most of the interceptions did not originate from species’ native ranges but instead came from invaded...

The Intermountain Adaptation Partnership (IAP) region is characterized by extreme temperatures and precipitation; it is home to some of the driest, hottest, and coldest locations in the conterminous United States. The region has numerous mountain ranges, high-elevation basins and valleys, and low-elevation mesas and canyons. Climate is influenced by this diverse and complex terrain. The IAP region is bounded on the eastern side by the Rocky Mountains and on the western side by the Sierra Nevada. For this region, moisture comes predominantly from the Pacific Ocean, and consequently much of...

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...