Present-Day Environments and Climate Change - Mountains and Plains: The Ecology of Wyoming Landscapes - page 41

lenge is pertinent to the Rocky Mountain region, where
so much freshwater is provided by mountain snowfall.
Most likely, there will be less ice and snow, on aver-
age, than today, and summers will be longer and drier,
because the snowpack will melt earlier in the year—a
trend that has been under way for 30 years. 32 More hay
for livestock will have to be imported if plant produc-
tion rates are down, making meat more expensive.
Municipalities and other industries will be implement-
ing water conservation programs more frequently (see
chapter 18). As Steven Gray and chamois Andersen
concluded in their prognosis for the Rocky Mountain
region, “the concern now is that climate change may
increase the impact of droughts, just as population
growth and other factors have greatly increased the vul-
nerability of the West to any type of drought.” 33
in the case of forests and rangelands, fires are likely
to be larger and more severe than before because of more
frequent extended droughts that increase flammability.
Also, the spread of bark beetle epidemics throughout
western north America during the past decade has been
to a large degree attributed to warming (see chapters 11
and 12). Most likely, such epidemics will continue as

long as the beetles have susceptible hosts of sufficient
size and number. the extent of mountain forests will be
greatly reduced, with shifts in the dominant trees. 34 A
recent report on the effects of climate change in west-
ern states concluded that big sagebrush will become less
common, and invasive plants, such as cheatgrass, knap-
weed, and leafy spurge, will become more widespread. 35
in this same report, U.S. Forest Service ecologist Megan
Friggens and her associates concluded, “By the end of
the century, 55 percent of future landscapes in the West
likely will have climates that are incompatible with the
vegetation types that now occur on those landscapes.” 36

in sum, a 2007 analysis of climate trends by paleoecolo-
gists John W. Williams and Stephen t. Jackson sug-
gested that the characteristics of the emerging climate
in the Rocky Mountain region and elsewhere are novel,
having never occurred before. 37 How will western eco-
systems change? How can municipalities, agriculture,
and industries adapt? Such questions are considered in
subsequent chapters. Understanding environments of
the present is important, but anticipating the effects of
climate change in the future now seems urgent.