From the UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
Far above the wildfires raging in Washington’s forests, a less noticeable consequence of this dry year is taking place in mountain ponds. The minimal snowpack and long summer drought that have left the Pacific Northwest lowlands parched also affect the region’s amphibians due to loss of mountain pond habitat.
According to a new paper published Sept. 2 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE, this summer’s severe conditions may be the new normal within just a few decades.
“This year is an analog for the 2070s in terms of the conditions of the ponds in response to climate,” said Se-Yeun Lee, research scientist at University of Washington’s Climate Impacts Group and one of the lead authors of the study.
Current conditions provide a preview of how that will play out.
“We’ve seen that the lack of winter snowpack and high summer temperatures have resulted in massive breeding failures and the death of some adult frogs,” said co-author Wendy Palen, an associate professor at Canada’s Simon Fraser University who has for many years studied mountain amphibians in the Pacific Northwest. “More years like 2015 do not bode well for the frogs.”
Mountain ponds are oases in the otherwise harsh alpine environment. Brilliant green patches amid the rocks and heather, the ponds are breeding grounds for Cascades frogs, toads, newts and several other salamanders, and watering holes for species ranging from shrews to mountain lions. They are also the cafeterias of the alpine for birds, snakes and mammals that feed on the invertebrates and amphibians that breed in high-altitude ponds.
The authors developed a new model that forecasts changes to four different types of these ecosystems: ephemeral, intermediate, perennial and permanent wetlands. Results showed that climate-induced reductions in snowpack, increased evaporation rates, longer summer droughts and other factors will likely lead to the loss or rapid drying of many of these small but ecologically important wetlands.
According to the study, more than half of the intermediate wetlands are projected to convert to fast-drying ephemeral wetlands by the year 2080. These most vulnerable ponds are the same ones that now provide the best habitat for frogs and salamanders.
At risk are unique species such as the Cascades frog, which is currently being evaluated for listing under the Endangered Species Act. Found only at high elevations in Washington, Oregon and California, Cascades frogs can live for more than 20 years and can survive under tens of feet of snow. During the mating season, just after ponds thaw, the males make chuckling sounds to attract females.
“They are the natural jesters of the alpine, incredibly tough but incredibly funny and charismatic,” said Maureen Ryan, the other lead author, a former UW postdoctoral researcher who is now a senior scientist with Conservation Science Partners.
The team adapted methods developed for forecasting the effects of climate change on mountain streams. Wetlands usually receive little attention since they are smaller and often out of sight. Yet despite their hidden nature, ponds and wetlands are globally important ecosystems that help store water and carbon, filter pollution, convert nutrients and provide food and habitat to a huge range of migratory and resident species. Their sheer numbers — in the tens of thousands across the Pacific Northwest mountain ranges — make them ecologically significant.
“It’s hard to truly quantify the effects of losing these ponds because they provide so many services and resources to so many species, including us,” Ryan said. “Many people have predicted that they are especially vulnerable to climate change. Our study shows that these concerns are warranted.”
Land managers can use the study’s maps to prepare for climate change. For example, Ryan and co-authors are working with North Cascades National Park, where park biologists are using the wetland projections to evaluate and update priorities for managing introduced fish and restoring natural alpine lake habitat.
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Other co-authors are professor Joshua Lawler and doctoral student Meghan Halabisky, both in the UW’s School of Environmental and Forest Sciences, and Alan Hamlet at the University of Notre Dame. All co-authors are members of a multi-institutional group studying wetlands adaptation and conservation in the face of climate change that produced a report for the Northwest Climate Science Center and a research brief for Mount Rainier National Park.
The new study was funded by the Department of the Interior’s Northwest Climate Science Center, the David H. Smith Conservation Research Fellowship Program, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Pacific Northwest Landscape Conservation Cooperative.
Vancouver, BC just experienced one of the driest Summers on record. Scary low reservoir levels, etc. Except… last week was so wet it filled the reservoirs to near normal levels and provided the Summer with an average rainfall. Gotta mess with warmist philosophy on paper.
Climate scientists – Amphibian Biologists – Climate models – What could possibly go wrong with that?
If I didn’t know better, I couldn’t swing a dead frog without hitting a black swan.
We are seeing “Doom and Gloom” papers in great abundance here. Paris, need for funding, and all that. But at base, the papers are all the same. Study something, assume GW, extrapolate to the future, find bad results, human causation. These are Formula papers. They are written to a script, just as surely as a TV show.
That means somebody is writing the script, so all that follows is nothing but propaganda.
Several days ago, one of the commenters here posted a link to a NOAA “Guidlines” document which spelled out the requirements for funding research proposals. I did not save the link, and wish I had. If anyone has it, or the OP could put it up again, that would be great.
Thanks, all.
Exactly! The ruling recipe for bad but easy-made and career-enhancing science:
“But at base, the papers are all the same. Study something, assume GW, extrapolate to the future, find bad results, human causation. These are Formula papers. They are written to a script, just as surely as a TV show.”
… and, as in all modern TV shows, there is a clear goal of social engineering behind the script …
If my students had put something as feeble minded or as blatantly deceiving as this forward to me they would have found themselves repeating the topic next semester. Who allows this drivel to come out of Parisa university and why don’t they have. Sense of Shame?
If only The Onion would run a piece on climate change affecting the sasquatch population, that would about do it for me.
Nature beat the Onion to it:
http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090707/full/news.2009.641.html
Bigfoot study highlights habitat modelling flaws
Accurate prediction of climate change’s effects is as elusive as the fabled apeman.
John Whitfield
I used to be for the survival of the fittest. Wait . . . I still am!
Never before in human history have the verb modifier ‘could’ and the noun ‘model’ come under such huge pressure of usage as in the twenty-first century.
“At risk are …”
Everything is at risk. Why is the future always worse?
Udub is at risk for being under a glacier. Of course there is greater risk of being buried in a mud flow when, not if, Mt. Rainier erupts.
We we visiting friends of my wife who moved to Washington State shortly after Mt. St. Helens demonstrated nature’s awsumness. I went for a walk because they knew more about the nuke plant I worked than I did. They saw looking up from their back yard and asked what was so interesting. My reply was ‘Mt. Rainier and do you know you are living on mud flows from a volcano. Maybe you should not worry about the nuke plant 200 miles away.’
About frogs and toads: I grew up in the Arizona deserts at Kitt Peak.
When rains come, suddenly there are zillions of tadpoles in every puddle and pond including in rock depressions on the mountain itself. We used to collect some of these to put in our own ponds to watch them turn first into tiny frogs and toads and the grow rapidly in less than two weeks into adults who mate and deposit eggs in the ground for the next monsoon burst of rain.
THIS IS A DRY DESERT! Yet the noise of these creatures croaking and chirping during the evening is very loud and strong. Drought years: they don’t happen. The 50 year drought during the Little Ice Age, when it ended, the same desert toads and frogs reappeared as if nothing happened.
Anyone studying any amphibians in the West should know this basic information for it is true for all Western amphibians.
listen its worse than that. Any of these guys are familiar with the great Namib Desert. It doesn’t rain there, sometimes for more than a decade. When it does by golly there are all kinds of funny,charismatic, creatures crawling out of hiding and “getting it ON!”
Amphibians that evolved millions of years ago when the earth was very much warmer than today, some of these were bigger than crocodiles!
All frogs and toads living where the last Ice Age mile thick ice was for over 100,000 years including the frogs in this stilly study about them ‘vanishing’ in the future, are all recent immigrants who have moved northwards only in the last 10,000 years or less.
Next Ice Age will wipe out all these variations in frog types just like all previous Ice Age events did the same.
http://intheplaygroundofgiants.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Figure-2.4.7.jpg
Current Cascades frog habitat under ice.
The extent of alpine glaciation in the Oregon Cascades during the late Pleistocene glacial maximum (modified from Crandell, 1965).
Cascades frogs actually stand to benefit from a warmer climate, should one ever recur.
Their icy habitat doesn’t permit a long growing season, so being able to mate a little earlier would improve their chances of reaching maturity.
The Holocene Climate Optimum was about 2 degrees warmer than today. Those amphibians survived that event.
When I water my lawn, it magically grows tiny frogs. I can see why they were once thought spontaneously to generate.
Unless their species is less than 114,000 years old, it also survived the Eemian Interglacial, which was even hotter than the Holocene Optimum.
But what if mastodons trampled their environment? The destruction caused by a bellowing herd of these beasts must have been ferocious! Since they also evolved with the Ice Ages, they caused it according to the New Science we now have which reminds me of the Middle Ages when they thought rats formed out of rags thrown on the floor.
I’ve been hiking Mt. Rainier and the Cascade mountains for close to 50 years and one of my more interesting discoveries is a dead forest of huge trees (spruce i think) standing in an alpine meadow/wetland at 4,500 ft. As of 2015, there are no living trees in this valley. The dead trees are massive, with trunks that are 5-6 ft. in diameter at their base and stubby being at most 30 feet tall. This area is snow-free for -/+ probably 5 months of the year. I always wondered when was this forest alive and what were conditions like then? Now that would make a good research paper in my opinion. Yes, a dead tree next to a slab of glacially striated granite…QED? Anyone?
It hurts me when researchers get public funding to ask ridiculous questions. I’ve seen the character of the National Park Service change over the years where a good percentage of the staff actually believes that “the park” should be closed to humans. And as a UW alumni, the university has devolved into a diploma mill populated by grant hounds.
the sunrise area of mt. rainier received snow at 6600 ft.. White covered the trees, roadway and downhill cars sported 3″ of packed snow on their roofs.
iron brian
In such studies, scientists must study the scenario under dry and wet conditions and then infer the conclusions as the species are existing for thousands of years under wet and dry conditions. Otherwise such studies have no meaning and journals publishing such papers & peers approving such papers will get poor ratings.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy