MTNCLIM WORKING GROUP ANNOUNCEMENTS, 3/8/05
CIRMOUNT WORKING GROUPS
Six task-oriented Working Groups convened during the MTNCLIM 2005 Conference. These
Groups are intended to be action-oriented, product-driven participation groups. Working Groups
are intended to have continuity beyond MTNCLIM 2005. CIRMOUNT will assist in coordinating
opportunities for individual Working Group meetings to convene prior to the next full MTNCLIM
conference. Working Group leaders solicit input and collaborations from participants with the
intent of achieving concrete and ongoing progress toward CIRMOUNT goals. Working Groups are
open to anyone interested. Contact the leaders for further information.
The Working Groups identified at present, and their leaders, are listed below, and individual
descriptions follow. New Working Groups are welcome. For coordination and assistance in
forming a new group, please contact Connie Millar, cmillar@fs.fed.us.
Current CIRMOUNT Working Groups:
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Mountain-Based Hydrologic Observatories and Observations for the 21st Century,
Roger Bales, University of California, Merced, CA, & Mike Dettinger, USGS, La Jolla, CA
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North American GLORIA (Global Observation Research Initiative in Alpine Environments)
Connie Millar, USFS-PSW Research Station., Albany, CA, & Dan Fagre, USGS, Biological
Resources Division W Glacier, MT
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Paleoclimatology & Water Resources Management: Time for an Integrated Paleo-Resource?
Connie Woodhouse, NOAA, Boulder, CO, & Franco Biondi, University of Nevada, Reno, NV
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CIRMOUNT, MRI and Mountain Climate Research Worldwide
Greg Greenwood, Mountain Research Initiative, Berne, Switzerland
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Installing Climate Observation Networks
Kelly Redmond, Desert Research Institute, Reno, NV & Mark Losleben, Mountain Research
Station, University of Colorado, Nederland, CO
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Mountain Ecosystem Responses to Climate in the North American West and CIRMOUNT Goals
Jeremy Littell, University of Washington, Seattle, WA & Jeff Hicke, Colorado State University,
Ft. Collins, CO
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MOUNTAIN-BASED HYDROLOGIC OBSERVATORIES
AND OBSERVATIONS FOR THE 21ST CENTURY
Point of Departure for MTNCLIM 2005 Working Group Discussion
Roger Bales (rbales@ucmerced.edu) and Mike Dettinger (mddettin@usgs.gov)
Like so many aspects of western-mountain climate science, the hydrology and hydroclimatology of
western mountains have not been monitored as intensively or extensively as will be necessary to
meet the challenges that climate variations, climate change, and a host of other environmental
stresses will bring in the 21st Century. With current funding limitations, every opportunity to
capture funding to improve high-altitude hydrologic observations and networks must be seized;
even within the funding opportunities that become available, a large measure of innovation and
craftiness will be required to stretch resources to provide as much observation as possible.
Later this year, the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc., an
NSF supported consortium, will select two initial hydrologic observatories (HOs) for long-term
funding for monitoring infrastructure and studies of surface-water, ground-water, and hydroclimatic
variables and processes to provide focuses for hydrologic advancements in this century.
Nationwide, a couple dozen local design teams (LDTs) have been preparing proposals to compete
for this funding. Several of the teams are focusing on western settings and most of those teams
necessarily will have to provide coherent and innovative plans for monitoring and interpretation in
western mountain settings.
During MTNCLIM, you are invited to join a working group led, for now, by leaders of several of
the LDTs for proposed HOs in western mountains, to discuss, contribute to, and perhaps even
affiliate with the approaches that they will be proposing to CUAHSI later this year. Team leaders
from the Sierra Nevada HO, the Pacific Northwest HO, the Flathead Basin HO, and other teams will
attend and will be looking for opportunities to increase the flow of ideas and opportunities for
innovative hydrologic observations in mountain settings both within the CUAHSI framework and
more generally. We hope that this working group will provide concrete opportunities for the HO
teams to increase the odds that CUAHSI will fund long-term observations in at least one of our
mountain settings, that MTNCLIM participants will be able to take advantage of these team-based
efforts for participation or leveraging, and that this current proposal opportunity will provide a
kickoff point for continuing efforts by the CIRMOUNT/MTNCLIM community to develop
stratgeies to meet hydrologic monitoring needs in the western-mountain region.
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NORTH AMERICAN GLORIA PROJECT
(GLOBAL OBSERVATION RESEARCH INITIATIVE IN ALPINE ENVIRONMENTS)
GLORIA International: http://www.gloria.ac.at/res/gloria_home/
Point of Departure for MTNCLIM 2005 Working Group Discussion
Connie Millar (cmillar@fs.fed.us) and Dan Fagre (dan_fagre@usgs.gov)
High mountain ecosystems are sensitive to climate variability and prone to be early indicators of
effects that will ripple through distant ecosystems. The Global Observation Research Initiative in
Alpine Environments (GLORIA) is an international research project, headquartered in Vienna,
whose goal is to assess long-term impacts of climate change on vegetation in alpine environments
worldwide. Standardized protocols direct selection of each node in the network, called a target
region, which consists of a set of four geographically proximal mountain summits at elevations
extending from treeline up to the nival zone. GLORIA’s multi-summit approach capitalizes on the
comparability afforded by highly standardized monitoring protocols and the fact that alpine
environments are similar and widely distributed worldwide. GLORIA specifies a rigorous mapping
and sampling design for data collection, site documentation, and data archiving, with remeasurement intervals of five years.
Whereas over 30 target regions have been installed in six continents through the international
program, prior to 2004 none was completed in North America. In cooperation with the Consortium
for Integrated Climate Research in Western Mountains (CIRMOUNT), three GLORIA target
regions were completed by September 2004, one in the Sierra Nevada, California, one in the White
Mountains, California, and one in Glacier National Park, Montana. As the goals of GLORIA and
CIRMOUNT overlap, CIRMOUNT is making a primary effort to motivate installation of new target
regions and development of a dense network of GLORIA sites in western North America.
CIRMOUNT will move toward this goal by identifying high-priority areas in western North
America to fill the network; contacting and assisting potential leaders of new target regions;
assisting in site selection; botanical expertise, equipment sharing; protocol clarification; budget
estimation; archiving; data analysis; and coordinating integrated analysis among regions. A set of
webpages on the forthcoming CIRMOUNT website will provide useful information for those
anticipating and completing GLORIA installations. Fundraising may be leveraged with
CIRMOUNT’s collaboration. As more sites are installed and early baseline data compiled,
CIRMOUNT would sponsor focal workshops for comparing and integrating results and conclusions
about effects of elevation and climate on alpine flora. CIRMOUNT will also encourage extended
research opportunities at each region under the GLORIA “Master Station” approach.
With the MTNCLIM working group, we hope to spread the word about the North American
GLORIA project, provide information on how to get started, identify new collaborators, and
promote new installations in summer 2005. We anticipate participation at MTNCLIM 2005 by
several scientists who have proposed new target regions this year.
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PALEOCLIMATOLOGY AND WATER RESOURCES MANAGEMENT:
TIME FOR AN INTEGRATED PALEO RESOURCE?
Point of Departure for MTNCLIM 2005 Working Group Discussion
Connie Woodhouse (Connie.Woodhouse@noaa.gov) and Franco Biondi (fbiondi@unr.edu)
The rivers of the western U.S. provide water resources vitally important to economic and social
interests throughout the region. Water managers must balance the competing demands and
changing needs of expanding populations, and agricultural and natural ecosystems within the
constraints of a variable and limited water supply, interstate and international compacts, and the
uncertain impacts of global variability and change. Many operational water management
procedures and decision processes have traditionally consider only instrumental period
hydroclimatic variability with design specifications based on the 20th century range of
hydroclimatic extremes. This approach presumes that the range of flow in the 20th century
adequately represents the full range of variability. However, dendrochronological reconstructions
of annual runoff Upper Colorado River basin, for example, have demonstrated that the instrumental
record for this region does not represent the full range of natural variability.
Water managers in some parts of the western U.S. have started to seriously consider the information
provided by extended records of flow from tree-ring reconstructions. Reconstructions are being
used to place the recent drought into a long-term context and, in some cases, as model input to test
the robustness of water supply systems under a broader range of drought conditions than afforded
by gage records. The reconstructed streamflow records have proven to be a useful addition to the
toolkit water resource managers are using for planning and decision making.
Tree-ring based reconstructions of streamflow exist for several major watersheds in the western
U.S. (e.g., Colorado, Sacramento, Columbia). However, there are likely many watersheds of
importance to water resource managers for which reconstructions of streamflow currently do not
exist. In addition, it should be recognized that tree-ring reconstructions of streamflow for the distant
past cannot take into account factors that change streamflow measured at a certain point even when
upstream precipitation remains the same, such as stream channel profile (affected by incision,
alluvial deposition, beaver activity, etc.), vegetation cover (affected by plant species dynamics,
wildfire, landslides, etc.), land use (due to human activities, such as cattle or sheep grazing,
clearcutting, crop production, urban development, etc.), diversions and their return flow (caused by
either natural or human agents). As a community, we should start educating our audience to
understand that the advantage of having long tree-ring records can be enhanced by using a
combination of empirical and mechanistic (or model-based) approaches.
The goal of this workshop is to explore the interest and support for a integrated collaborative effort
to generate an up-to-date, spatially focused network of reconstructions to assist water resource
managers in long-term planning and scientists examining questions of hydrologic response to
climate change. The intent is not to usurp planned or current efforts, but to plan how existing and
future reconstructions, modeling results, and products could be integrated into a comprehensive
resource for water resource managers. Anyone who has an interest in this subject, either from a
scientific or water management perspective, is invited attend this working group discussion. We
will begin with a roundtable so that participants may introduce themselves and their interests, then
discuss the initiative described above.
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CIRMOUNT, MRI AND MOUNTAIN CLIMATE RESEARCH WORLDWIDE
Point of Departure for MTNCLIM 2005 Working Group Discussion
Greg Greenwood (greenwood@scnat.ch)
The rhetoric of the MRI and CIRMOUNT is largely coincident, but what are the real points of
contact and collaboration between the global MRI and the US CIRMOUNT?
The goal of this workgroup is to specify one or more concrete actions over the next year that will be
of benefit to all parties and to outline next steps.
MRI has developed a strategy for its activities for the next three years, from which emerge specific
opportunities for interaction. But it is unclear which, if any, of these activities is central to the
achievement of CIRMOUNT goals, which are focused on the American West. While individual
CIRMOUNT participants might find some of these activities personally interesting, there may be no
good reason for CIRMOUNT as an institution to participate in any of them.
What is this strategy? The vision of MRI is a world in which more resources flow into rigorous
global change research programs that inform policy and management. How to get more resources to
flow toward these ends? The first leg of the strategy is participation in the processes that produce
funds through development of proposals and lobbying of funding agencies. (Some would say that
CIRMOUNT is at precisely this same step right now.) But, however necessary, chasing money is
not in itself sufficient and besides there a lot of other people getting a lot of other money for a lot of
different programs. Organizing an integrated framework through conferences and workshops that
harnesses these myriad programs is the second leg. But of course, what hubris makes us think that
we are central to this organizing process? By informing researchers about their large community,
the third leg of the strategy, we build a community that can itself do a better job organizing its
intellectual activity.
How do these "legs" ramify into discrete activities that might be of interest to CIRMOUNT? What
follows are a few ideas related to legs one and two. Maybe someone else can figure possible
projects under the information and community building heading beyond that which MRI and
CIRMOUNT are already doing.
Funding
MRI is attempting to organize a presentation on global change in mountain regions to IGFA (the
International Group of Funding Agencies for global change research). This presentation would
likely say that :
• mountains are barely second to the Arctic in terms of expected climate change,
• such change will affect vastly more people than in the Arctic,
• Switzerland has supported global change research in mountain region as a matter of foreign,
development and scientific policy, and
• wouldn't it be great if other countries similarly increased their funding for global change
research in mountain areas.
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This argument seems to be one that CIRMOUNT is slowly framing within the context of the US
federal budget process. A presentation to IGFA would provide a means of speaking directly, though
not solely, to US NSF and other federal funding agencies about this topic.
Frameworks
The GLOCHAMORE program (MRI, UNESCO-MAB and the EU) is sponsoring an Open
Science Conference on Global Change in Mountain Regions in Perth, UK on Oct 1-5, 2005. At its
most basic level, the Conference provides an opportunity for exchange and communications. At
another level it is the concluding step in the development of a research strategy applicable to
mountain biosphere reserves. The development of a strategy may be among the next steps for
CIRMOUNT, and therefore it may be helpful for CIRMOUNT to be more involved with this
conference.
A quick view of the expressions of interest show that around 10 CIRMOUNT-oise have inquired.
No one from CIRMOUNT has expressed a desire to chair a session. Is CIRMOUNT interested in
sponsoring a session?
There is currently a lot of activity in Russia and Central Asia surrounding global change in those
regions. Central Asia is arguably very similar to the western US: might there not be some merit in
comparing notes with colleagues from Central Asia, Russia, Mongolia and China, perhaps at a
session in Perth or in a stand-alone conference? Could we envision doing something similar for the
American Cordillera, something that Henry Diaz is already working on?
Finally, I personally am very interested in two potential symposia topics:
-the current state of remote sensing in mountain environment: what can we get out of the
sensors that are already out there, and
-how does one use large transects or multiple sites (e.g., the transect from the Olympics to the
Rockies) to extract something more than the recognition that things differ from one place to
another.
The first topic is motivated largely my ignorance of how RS has progressed since about 1985, hence
it may not be great interest to anyone else. But, then again, maybe it is. The second seems very
important if we were ever to create widely dispersed mountain observatories.
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IMPLEMENTATION OF MOUNTAIN CLIMATE NETWORKS
Point of Departure for MTNCLIM 2005 Working Group Discussion
Kelly T. Redmond Western Regional Climate Center (kelly.redmond@dri.edu)
Mark Losleben Mountain Research Station (mark.losleben@colorado.edu)
This group will make the assumption that the need for mountain climate observations has already
been established. Most of the discussion will center on the following topics, although it is not
limited to them.
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Climate needs versus weather needs – striving for consistency through time
Network organization
Candidate sites
Siting and exposure issues
Degree of standardization
Individual site design
Site selection – is it pertinent to the goal? Is it “permanent” ?
Sensor issues – quality, robustness, design maximum by element
Power issues
Icing survival
Site security, administrative and physical
Communications
One-way or two-way
Reliability
Additional procedures to prevent data loss
Maintenance
This is the key issue !
Who will do this?
Degree of commitment, and motivation for participation
Periodic, on-demand, or other approach
Equipment swap-outs and upgrades
Maintaining programmatic continuity and corporate knowledge
Data flow
Centralized ingest
Centralized access
Quality control of data
Archival
Products
The data themselves
Summaries
Funding
Prototype approaches as proof of concept
Linking and leveraging are essential
Bridging to practical and operational communities
Bridging to counterpart research efforts and initiatives
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A strategy to attain the monitoring goals involves these elements:
1. All major mountain ranges should be sampled.
2. Along-axis and cross-axis sampling for major mountain chains.
3. Approximately 5-10 sites per state (1 per 28000 - 56000 km2)
4. Highest sites as high as possible within each state, but at both high relative and absolute
elevations.
5. Free air exposures at higher sites.
6. Utilize existing measurements and networks, and extend existing records, when possible.
7. AC power to prevent ice/rime when practical.
8. Temperature, relative humidity, wind speed and direction, solar radiation as main elements,
others as feasible.
9. Hourly readings, and real-time communication whenever possible
10. Absence of local artificial influences, site stable for next 5-10 decades.
11. Current and historical measurements accessible via World Wide Web when possible.
12. Hydro measurements (precipitation, snow water content, and depth) not practical at highest
points, so have lower sites in more protected settings to permit these.
13. Maintain stable site characteristics (e.g., vegetation height) needed for measurement
homogeneity.
14. High quality, rugged, durable instrumentation with proven track records greatly desirable.
15. Site documentation history available and accessible.
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MOUNTAIN ECOSYSTEM RESPONSES TO CLIMATE IN THE
NORTH AMERICAN WEST AND CIRMOUNT GOALS
Point of Departure for MTNCLIM 2005 Working Group Discussion
Jeremy S. Littell (jlittell@u.washington.edu) and Jeff Hicke (jhicke@nrel.colostate.edu)
Mountain ecosystems (including, but not limited to, forests, woodlands, tundra, fresh water,
meadows, intermontane valleys, and their ecotones) are structured significantly by several processes
sensitive to changes in climate. Such processes include productivity, disturbance (fire, insects,
pathogens), and mortality in the short term and establishment, invasion, species redistribution and
migration in the long term. Evaluating (1) the importance of climate as a driver of these processes,
(2) the role of past climate change in modifying these structuring agents, (3) the likely future
responses given such relationships, and (4) the stationarity of the processes in question are the key
scientific approaches to useful understanding of these large-scale, mechanism-response ecosystem
drivers. Integrating past and future research under the CIRMOUNT goals grouped under headings
of observation, research, communication, and decision support for mountain/forest ecosystems
could be a central organizational theme of a new working group. The goals of this working group
might be to identify such problems (e.g., Western Mountain Initiative style), examine solutions, and
define collaborative goals for producing more widely-applicable, climate integrated ecosystem
research in the mountainous West.
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Goals/Purposes of Working Group Breakout Session:
o Define focus/identity of working group: Climate impacts to ecosystems, as opposed
to proxy approach of using ecosystems to identify climate change, climate variability
etc.
o Identify gaps in research
o Identify priorities for CIRMOUNT working group developing around key issues
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Observation: Strategies for future? multi-scale, multi-gradient observations
o What variables should we be measuring? At what spatiotemporal scales?
o How do we sample ecosystems responses to climatic drivers, feedbacks, and
thresholds along steep local and continental gradients such that integrated,
standardized research is possible over a wide array of places and times?
o Is hierarchical sampling and inference actually helpful?
o Wouldn’t scaleable units of more or less universal importance (water balance,
deficit, growing degree days) to plant communities be a better tool than rainbuckets
and thermometers, which are only estimates of how plants see climate?
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Research: Priorities for new and continuing research
o How sensitive/vulnerable are western mountain ecosystems (and how much
variability exists in that sensitivity across ecosystems, space, and time) to climate
change?
o How adaptable are said ecosystems naturally and given the more anthropogenicallyconstrained environment of the 21st century?
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o How will ecosystems respond to the interaction of climate change with other
environmental changes such as CO2 fertilization, nitrogen deposition, or land-use
changes?
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Communication: Sharing findings, prioritizing venues etc.
o Identify regional and panarchic, meso-scale relationships. Continental and local
results are already well established; communication should parallel this.
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Decision support: Involving managers, management-specific research
o Involve managers on the ground floor: redefine the relationship between the
scientific community, which sometimes (and sometimes necessarily) makes
management recommendations without fully understanding the needs of resource
managers.
o Identify more specific needs at appropriate scales for specific agencies and
conservation organizations (e.g., The Nature Conservancy), specific systems,
structures etc.