University of Washington
A subalpine meadow on Mount Rainier in the summer.
Credit: Elli Theobald
Spring is coming, and with it comes the promise of warmer weather, longer days and renewed life.
For residents of the Pacific Northwest, one of the most idyllic scenes of this renewed life is the wildflowers that light up Mount Rainier’s subalpine meadows once the winter snowpack finally melts. These floral ecosystems, which typically arrive in summer, are an iconic feature of Mount Rainier, and a major draw for the more than 1 million tourists, hikers and nature-lovers who visit the national park each spring and summer.
But without cuts to our carbon emissions, by the end of this century, scientists expect that snow in the subalpine meadows will melt months earlier due to climate change. New research led by the University of Washington shows that, under those conditions, many visitors would miss the flowers altogether.
The research team made this discovery using crowd-sourced photos of Mount Rainier’s subalpine meadows taken from 2009 to 2015 and uploaded to the photo-sharing site Flickr. As they report in a paper published Dec. 9 in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 2015 was an unusually warm, dry year when snow melted and disappeared from the meadows about two months earlier than usual. As a result, wildflower season was shorter and arrived earlier. But Flickr photos showed that visits by people to Mount Rainier in 2015 peaked later than the flowers, after the height of wildflower season.
“We know from park surveys that the wildflowers are a major reason people visit Mt. Rainier National Park,” said lead author Ian Breckheimer, a researcher at Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory and Harvard University who conducted this study as a UW doctoral student in biology. “They’re an iconic resource, drawing people from around the world.”
The team, led by UW biology professor and senior author Janneke Hille Ris Lambers, downloaded and analyzed more than 17,000 photos on Flickr taken in the subalpine region of Mount Rainier National Park from 2009 to 2015. The team used publicly accessible images that contained embedded GPS data, which allowed the team to know where in the park the photos were taken. They scored the images for the presence or absence of blooms from 10 species of wildflowers common to the subalpine meadows.
“These are a very nontraditional source of data, but they proved to be very informative,” said Hille Ris Lambers. “It allowed us to see when the flowers were blooming at a lot of different locations around the park.”
The team combined the data on wildflower blooms from the photos with snowmelt data — taken from 190 sensors placed across Mount Rainier — as well as park visitor data to model the wildflower seasons and peak visitor times from 2009 to 2015. They discovered that the earlier the snowmelt, the higher the “mismatch” between peak wildflower season and peak visitor times.
According to their model, for every 10 days of earlier snowmelt compared to today’s average, peak bloom in the subalpine meadows comes 7.1 days earlier and the total bloom season shortened by 0.36 days. People come earlier, too: Peak visits occurred about 5.5 days earlier. But that doesn’t keep pace with the flowers. In 2015, when snow melt was about two months earlier, the researchers discovered a 35% decrease in match between peak wildflower season and peak visits to the park compared to a late-melt year like 2011.
The study is among the first to examine the relationships in timing between people and a changing ecosystem, which raises questions for management of parks and preserves — and how to communicate with the public. The team only measured “mismatch” between wildflowers and visitors after the fact. With additional research, scientists may be able to predict outlying years early, alerting the public to visit sooner than normal to view the meadows.
This isn’t just about missed connections between wildflowers and people. Conditions in 2015 were an outlier by today’s standards; by the end of this century, scientist predict that 2015-style early snowmelts could be a regular occurrence. Beyond changes in peak bloom times, Hille Ris Lambers’ group has shown that in 2015 species bloomed in a different order, creating “reassembled” communities with unknown consequences. The meadows also are facing other stressors as the climate warms.
“These subalpine ecosystems are in real trouble,” said Breckheimer. “For example, climate change is allowing trees to encroach into the meadows at Mount Rainier and other sites across the West, and the meadows are not moving uphill as fast as the trees.”
It’s critical to retain public support for these precious natural resources, Breckheimer added.
“There’s a real question whether — or how much — we should intervene to protect meadows, by clearing trees through active management, for example, as we keep pushing ecosystems with climate change, and those systems keep getting further out of equilibrium,” said Breckheimer. “If visitor peak and flower peaks are at different times, it might affect public support for some of these measures for how public lands are managed in the face of climate change.”
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Co-authors are Elli Theobald, a UW instructor in biology who conducted this research as a UW doctoral student; Nicoleta Cristea, a UW research scientist in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering and the eScience Institute; Anna Wilson with the Free Science Project; Jessica Lundquist, a UW professor of civil and environmental engineering; and Regina Rochefort with the National Park Service.
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PNW climate model:
https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2019/06/the-best-estimate-yet-of-impact-of.html
Except for the fact that Cliff Mass’ model simulations predict warming that is roughly 300% higher than trends measured at stations around the Pacific Northwest, it’s pretty accurate.
Check for yourself here:
https://climate.washington.edu/climate-data/trendanalysisapp/
And that data is from US Historical Climate Network (USHCN) stations, “adjusted” to counter urban heat island effects (probably poorly) not US Climate Reference Network stations, which run cooler.
It should be abundantly clear to anyone paying attention that the CMIP5 models have been shown to be unequivocally and utterly worthless at predicting temperatures. Yet climate scientists continue to use them. Strange.
@stinker
Two things….
1) Cliff showed results from the unlikely RCP 8.5 scenario, “So consider what I am about to show as the worst case—and that the actual changes will not be so extreme.”
2) “Except for the fact that Cliff Mass’ model simulations predict warming that is roughly 300% higher than trends measured at stations around the Pacific Northwest”
What starting date are you using? It makes a big difference. The 1970 -2019 trend, for example, is much higher than for the full record:
iD: 0.54 F
MT: 0.51 F
OR: 0.44 F
WA: 0.41 F
These numbers (projected linearly) give more than 2.0 C warming by 2100. With some acceleration…..?
I wonder if the authors designed the study before analyzing the data. Certainly the analysis of only 6 years worth of data cannot have data that is applicable to climate change. I hope this is not part of a doctoral study. If it is, it is absurd. But, hey, my son got his PhD in fly fishing, so anything can work if it has value.
“ by the end of this century, scientist predict that </em"
. . . most of the people that hiked in Mt. R. in 2015 will be dead.
{With many Washington Trail Association volunteers, I worked rehabilitating
the Mount Fremont Lookout Trail in 2016 — 6,400 to 7,000 feet. Great trail.
Great views. Great wildflowers.}
Oops!
I missed the “clearing trees” bit.
The Mount Rainier folks are really NOT into cutting trees.
“These subalpine ecosystems are in real trouble,” said Breckheimer. “For example, climate change is allowing trees to encroach into the meadows at Mount Rainier and other sites across the West, and the meadows are not moving uphill as fast as the trees.”
Oh No! I bet on the wrong horse, again.
….meadows are not moving uphill as fast as the trees.”
Stoopid Ents! Slow down!
Y’know, so many of the posts on WUWT seem kind of learned. I don’t think you people are sufficiently concerned with the best interests of humanity here. Climate deniers (that’s you) are dumb, dishonest and wicked. You aren’t fooling anybody with these reasoned arguments and well-written sentences. What have you been doing? Using computer aps to make your writing seem smarter than it is? Did your mom do your homework for you, because we know it wasn’t you.
I will try to explain this to you again: You are anti-Science, hostile to change, interested only in short-term profits at the expense of the well-being of future generations, and not only that but you’re not show business celebrities. So shut up.
“Y’know, so many of the posts on WUWT seem kind of learned.”
QED
You don’t want to put blind faith in scientists Ian particularly when they’re interested only in short term profits and/or they’re up to their necks in the global green industrial handout complex like so many nowadays-
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/qlds-ex-chief-scientist-admits-fraud/ar-BB114Kry
Speaking of handouts you wouldn’t happen to know where my mandatory skeptic cheque from Big Oil has got to in the mail would you?
That explains the warming then as the days are getting longer-
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/techandscience/ancient-shell-has-revealed-exactly-how-much-shorter-days-were-70-million-years-ago/ar-BB1116GV
Hold the windmills and solar panels with this new settled science breakthrough.
Climate change allows trees to encroach … Those nasty trees! Nothing but encrouching.
You couldn’t make it up.
“There’s a real question whether — or how much — we should intervene to protect meadows, by clearing trees through active management, for example, as we keep pushing ecosystems with climate change, and those systems keep getting further out of equilibrium,” said Breckheimer. “If visitor peak and flower peaks are at different times, it might affect public support for some of these measures for how public lands are managed in the face of climate change.”
They learned nothing from meddling with Yellowstone. Leave it alone for crying out loud.
No one is touching the meadows. And they are not receding. Anyone at all who has gone hiking in the park more than once knows this study is the worst kind of junk. In a normal world this garbage study would have never seen the light of day.
There are few places in the Seattle area more consistently visited by hikers than Mt Rainier, and it has been so for a century. The meadows continue to be where they are with no changes of any kind. Anyone can pick up a used copy of “50 hikes in mt Rainier” book from the early 80s, and see exactly the same things in the same places as they were described in the book almost a half century ago (with the exception of the Paradise Glacier ice caves, which collapsed in the early 90s).
This study shows everything that is wrong with AGW-related “science”
What I learned:
People are too stupid to figure out that flowers bloom when they bloom, so we should do “whatever it takes” to make sure nature learns to behave as dictated by our beliefs. Those flowers WILL bloom when expected OR ELSE.
Oh dear, when the subalpine meadows have reached the peak and are being smothered by forests from below, what shall we do then?
Wildflower blooms are variable when clocked on the human calendar — but not when clocked by Nature. Nature doesn’t care what the calendar date is, it cares when conditions are right.
Like the Cherry Blossoms in Washington D.C. — the best way to handle tourists it to post updates regularly on predicted best viewing times.
As for the tree line and meadows — lack of regular natural wildfire allows the trees to begin to overrun meadows. That’s the way it is…..
Let a few wildfire rip up those slopes and the encroaching trees will be burnt off the meadows and the flowers will come back even stronger and more beautiful than ever.
Kip, there is no encroachment by trees. The meadows are right at timberline, most vegetation is of the dwarf kind, and small stands of trees dot very large meadows, decreasing as altitude increases. The meadows are buried under dozens of feet of snow each year which typically doesn’t melt until July, and covers them again by late September, early October. The early and deep snow insulates the plants in the meadows from cold temperatures, and allows the gorgeous flower displays each year. The very short growing season keeps any tree from growing much if at all, except in more sheltered places. In other words, the way timberline vegetation is the world over.
In terms of fires, I have been at Paradise during some strong heat waves, and have seen trees burst into flames when hit by lightning. They are always allowed to burn. Everything about this “study” is junk and misleading, although flat out lies is a better description
Jack says: Snow “… covers them again by late September, early October.”
In 2016 when working on the trails out of Sunrise, we saved a re-gravel and step repair project just out of the parking lot 200 yards. We worked in the morning, could have done a bit more but snow was an issue and some folks did not have all-wheel drive. I think that was October 2nd. NPS closed the road to Sunrise at 4PM.
We worked up there from early July. (Washington Trails Association; WTA)
Why is it that biologists seem stuck on this idea that there was an “ideal” moment of all ecosystems (like 1975) that must be rigorously adhered to forever. Me personally, I’d like a return to the Pennsylvanian with 20′ dragonflies and ferns the size of trees, but hey, life moves on (wish biologists and climate “modellers” could do the same….
All they need now is a Plinian Eruption to settle the matter.