Climate Change in Mountain Ecosystems (CCME)
Science Center Objects
Climate change is widely acknowledged to be having a profound effect on the biosphere with many and diverse impacts on global resources. Mountain ecosystems in the western U.S. and the Northern Rockies in particular are highly sensitive to climate change. In fact, the higher elevations of the Northern Rockies have experienced three times the global average temperature increase over the past century. These same ecosystems provide up to 85% of the water humans depend on as well as a host of other ecosystem services such as snow-based recreation, timber, unique flora and fauna, and critical habitat for rare and endangered species such as bull trout and grizzly bear. Climate change poses special problems for mountain protected areas, such as national parks and wilderness areas, because most of the land area within their boundaries is at higher elevations. The Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center has been monitoring, conducting research, and modeling ecosystem responses to climatic variability since 1991, first at Glacier National Park but eventually throughout the western U.S. and worldwide in collaboration with other scientists.
Glacier Research: As Glacier National Park’s namesake glaciers recede, CCME staff are monitoring many of the park’s glaciers to determine the causes of change, assess their ecological and hydrological effects, and predict future changes and effects. Intensive research to determine the mass balance of Sperry Glacier will determine whether small cirque glaciers like Sperry can serve as reliable indicators of current climate variability. Analysis of aerial photography, repeat photography, and glacier margin surveys document the rapid retreat of these mid-latitude glaciers as increasing temperatures influence mountain ecosystems world wide.
Snow and Avalanche Research: Since 1991, CCME staff have conducted snow surveys throughout Glacier National Park. These data have contributed to regional climate change and hydrologic models. Snowpack characteristics have also been evaluated in relation to avalanche forecasting and plowing of GNP’s Going to the Sun Road efforts. Studies of natural snow avalanches reveal connections with large-scale climate and wildfire patterns as well as the influence on the creation of characteristic habitat vulnerable to climate change.
Landscape Change Photography: Repeat photography is being used by the CCME program to document landscape change. Glaciers have been the primary focus of this park-wide survey and this collection of repeat photographs, available for download on the CCME website, have been used to illustrate the effects of climate change in venues across the globe. These powerful images, with their inherent ease of interpretation, have become icons of climate change. Researchers will continue to expand the collection of repeat photographs of glaciers as well as panoramic photos from fire lookouts in an effort to document landscape change in this period of dramatic climate warming.
Alpine Climatology of Glacier National Park: Glacier National Park is a topographically diverse region, making localized effects of elevation, aspect, and cold air drainage several of many important factors that necessitate a diversity of long-term climate monitoring sites. Additionally, many studies have shown more rapid warming at higher elevations across the Intermountain West, but with relatively few high-elevation stations available in the region it’s difficult to estimate the magnitude of these changes along with the suite of potential impacts on montane to alpine ecosystems. Here we use our network of valley to high-elevation meteorological stations that are arrayed across Glacier National Park (Fig 1), and have been in operation since 1993, to identify trends and variability in biophysically important hydroclimatic metrics. We also take a closer look at potential surface feedback processes associated with the presence or absence of snowpack, and specifically the timing of its meltout. Change and variability in metrics such as temperature, wind, net solar radiation, snow depth/cover, and relative humidity are assessed at daily to decadal scales and will be integrated into ongoing projects monitoring changes in alpine vegetation, snowpack, and glacier mass balance. These data are essential for ongoing ecological monitoring and modeling projects, addressing wildlife habitat and disease related issues, and informing current and potential future resource management practices.
Western Mountain Initiative: Understanding and predicting the responses of climate variability and change at a regional scale is the objective of the six research programs collaborating on the Western Mountain Initiative (WMI). CCME research pertaining to glacier recession, analysis of snowpack trends, and paleo-reconstructions of regional snowpack, help define thresholds, sensitivities, and resilience of western mountain ecosystems to climate variability as part of WMI.
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Date published: April 11, 2016Repeat Photography Teacher Trunk
This trunk was made possible from a grant from NASA’s Global Precipitation Measurement Mission. It is designed to get students thinking about measuring precipitation - snow and ice, as well as rain- not just to do it, but why we would want to do it.
Contacts: Lisa McKeonAttribution: Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center (NOROCK)
Local topography increasingly influences the mass balance of a retreating cirque glacier
Local topographically driven processes – such as wind drifting, avalanching, and shading – are known to alter the relationship between the mass balance of small cirque glaciers and regional climate. Yet partitioning such local effects from regional climate influence has proven difficult, creating uncertainty in the climate representativeness of...
Florentine, Caitlyn; Harper, Joel T.; Fagre, Daniel B.; Moore, Johnnie; Peitzsch, Erich H. Glaciological measurements and mass balances from Sperry Glacier, Montana, USA, years 2005–2015
Glacier mass balance measurements help to provide an understanding of the behavior of glaciers and their response to local and regional climate. In 2005 the United States Geological Survey established a surface mass balance monitoring program on Sperry Glacier, Montana, USA. This project is the first quantitative study of mass changes of a glacier...
Clark, Adam; Fagre, Daniel B.; Peitzsch, Erich H.; Reardon, Blase A.; Harper, Joel T. Using structure from motion photogrammetry to examine glide snow avalanches
Structure from Motion (SfM), a photogrammetric technique, has been used extensively and successfully in many fields including geosciences over the past few years to create 3D models and high resolution digital elevation models (DEMs) from aerial or oblique photographs. SfM has recently been used in a limited capacity in snow avalanche research and...
Peitzsch, Erich H.; Hendrikx, Jordy; Fagre, Daniel B. Floristic similarity, diversity and endemism as indicators of refugia characteristics and needs in the West
The floras of mountain ranges, and their similarity, beta diversity and endemism, are indicative of processes of community assembly; they are also the initial conditions for coming disassembly and reassembly in response to climate change. As such, these characteristics can inform thinking on refugia. The published floras or approximations for 42...
Malanson, George P.; Zimmerman, Dale L.; Fagre, Daniel B. Spatial contexts for temporal variability in alpine vegetation under ongoing climate change
A framework to monitor mountain summit vegetation (The Global Observation Research Initiative in Alpine Environments, GLORIA) was initiated in 1997. GLORIA results should be taken within a regional context of the spatial variability of alpine tundra. Changes observed at GLORIA sites in Glacier National Park, Montana, USA are quantified within the...
Fagre, Daniel B.; George P. Malanson Examining spring wet slab and glide avalanche occurrence along the Going-to-the-Sun Road corridor, Glacier National Park, Montana, USA
Wet slab and glide snow avalanches are dangerous and yet can be particularly difficult to predict. Wet slab and glide avalanches are presumably triggered by free water moving through the snowpack and the subsequent interaction with layer or ground interfaces, and typically occur in the spring during warming and subsequent melt periods. In Glacier...
Peitzsch, Erich H.; Hendrikx, Jordy; Fagre, Daniel B.; Reardon, Blase Contexts for change in alpine tundra
Because alpine tundra is responding to climate change, a need exists to understand the meaning of observed changes. To provide context for such interpretation, the relevance of niche and neutral theories of biogeography and the continuum and classification approaches to biogeographic description are assessed. Two extensive studies of alpine tundra...
Malanson, George P.; Rose, Jonathan P.; Schroeder, P. Jason; Fagre, Daniel B. The unusual nature of recent snowpack declines in the North American cordillera
In western North America, snowpack has declined in recent decades, and further losses are projected through the 21st century. Here, we evaluate the uniqueness of recent declines using snowpackreconstructions from 66 tree-ring chronologies in key runoff-...
Pederson, Gregory T.; Gray, Stephen T.; Woodhouse, C.A.; Betancourt, Julio L.; Fagre, Daniel B.; Littell, Jeremy S.; Watson, Emma; Luckman, B.H.; Graumlich, Lisa J. Climate change links fate of glaciers and an endemic alpine invertebrate
Climate warming in the mid- to high-latitudes and high-elevation mountainous regions is occurring more rapidly than anywhere else on Earth, causing extensive loss of glaciers and snowpack. However, little is known about the effects of climate change on alpine stream biota, especially invertebrates. Here, we show a strong linkage between regional...
Muhlfeld, Clint C.; Giersch, J. Joseph; Hauer, F. Richard; Pederson, Gregory T.; Luikart, Gordon; Peterson, Douglas P.; Downs, Christopher C.; Fagre, Daniel B. Climatic controls on the snowmelt hydrology of the northern Rocky Mountains
The northern Rocky Mountains (NRMs) are a critical headwaters region with the majority of water resources originating from mountain snowpack. Observations showing declines in western U.S. snowpack have implications for water resources and biophysical processes in high-mountain environments. This study investigates oceanic and atmospheric controls...
Pederson, G.T.; Gray, S.T.; Ault, T.; Marsh, W.; Fagre, D.B.; Bunn, A.G.; Woodhouse, C.A.; Graumlich, L.J. Mountain treelines: A roadmap for research orientation
For over 100 years, mountain treelines have been the subject of varied research endeavors and remain a strong area of investigation. The purpose of this paper is to examine aspects of the epistemology of mountain treeline research-that is, to investigate how knowledge on treelines has been acquired and the changes in knowledge acquisition over...
Malanson, George P.; Resler, Lynn M.; Bader, Maaike Y.; Holtmeier, Fredrich-Karl; Butler, David R.; Weiss, Daniel J.; Daniels, Lori D.; Fagre, Daniel B. Avalanche ecology and large magnitude avalanche events: Glacier National Park, Montana, USA
Large magnitude snow avalanches play an important role ecologically in terms of wildlife habitat, vegetation diversity, and sediment transport within a watershed. Ecological effects from these infrequent avalanches can last for decades. Understanding the frequency of such large magnitude avalanches is also critical to avalanche forecasting for the...
Fagre, Daniel B.; Peitzsch, Erich H.-
Date published: January 1, 2019A comprehensive inventory of perennial snow and ice in Glacier National Park in 2005
These polygon features represent a comprehensive inventory of perennial snow and ice on the landscape in Glacier National Park (GNP) in 2005. This dataset does not include the 2005 extent of the named glaciers in GNP, which have been previously published. Of the perennial snow and ice features delineated here, 1.68 km2 (15.08%) of the total area exhibits characteristics indicative of active...
Attribution: Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center (NOROCK) -
Date published: January 1, 2018
A comprehensive inventory of maximum glacial extent in Glacier National Park during the peak of the Little Ice Age
These polygon features represent the maximum extent of glaciers in Glacier National Park and two glaciers on U.S. Forest Service’s Flathead National Forest land during the peak of the Little Ice Age (mid-nineteenth century). Glacial margins are based on moraine deposits that result from active glaciation, and do not depict perennial snow and ice. The criteria used for determining...
Attribution: Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center (NOROCK)
Climate Connections: Questions from Glacier National Park, MT (episode 4)
America has questions about climate change, and the USGS has real answers. In this episode of Climate Connections, USGS scientists answer questions gathered from the beautiful Glacier National Park in Montana. Questions include:
- When I come back in ten years, what will I see in Glacier National Park?
- How is climate change impacting the
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Date published: May 10, 2017Glaciers Rapidly Shrinking and Disappearing: 50 Years of Glacier Change in Montana
The warming climate has dramatically reduced the size of 39 glaciers in Montana since 1966, some by as much as 85 percent, according to data released by the U.S. Geological Survey and Portland State University.
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Date published: April 7, 2016Linking Climate Change Science and Art
What began as an effort to document and analyze the retreat of glaciers in Glacier National Park, has become a collection of striking photographs displayed on museum walls.