American Pika
American Pika
Researchers at NOROCK are using many methods to understand how and why these changes are happening, information vital to resource managers to help plan for ways to conserve these resources into the future. Efforts are focused on the American pika, a small plant-eater that resembles a hamster and lives typically in high-elevation rocky slopes across many mountain ranges in the American West. By using this climate-sensitive species as a model, scientists hope to unravel how climate may affect these and other mountaindwelling wildlife and their habitats.
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Alpine Wildlife and Snowpack Dynamics in the North Cascades
Mountain ecosystems are expected to change with continued reductions in annual snowpack that have been observed worldwide over the past half-century. Recent snow droughts in North America have been attributed to unusually warm temperatures that cause winter precipitation to fall as rain, rather than snow. Many species of alpine wildlife depend on snowpack for insulation from extreme cold and for...
Adaptive Capacity: the linchpin for understanding and addressing species vulnerability to climate-change impacts
When prioritizing natural resource management activities, managers need to understand how plant and animal species differ in terms of their vulnerability to variation in environmental conditions caused by climate change. Species vulnerability to climate change is controlled by (1) exposure to changing environmental conditions, (2) sensitivity to direct and indirect effects of those changing...
Extinction dynamics and microrefugia of the American pika as climate changes.
Accurate projections of climate change and associated impacts on wildlife are now essential to conservation planning, but predictive models of range shifts for many species are often coarse, ignore extinction dynamics, and overestimate suitable habitat. Recent studies suggest the American pika (Ochotona princeps) is vulnerable to increasing heat stress in the Great Basin yet appears more resilient...
Design, Analysis, Monitoring, and Conservation of Ecological Dynamics at Broad Scales
There is increasing recognition that the spatial context in which any ecological process or phenomenon occurs has great bearing on the outcome of that process. Since 1994, we have been working on numerous field investigations and conceptual developments to inform how ecological resources can be managed and conserved across jurisdictional boundaries and broad spatial extents. Because such spatially...
Species and Ecosystem Responses to Global Change
We work with a diverse collection of researchers, resource managers, and conservation practitioners to address the “how” and “why” questions that underlie species-and ecosystem-level responses to long-term weather patterns. Although it is more challenging, this level of more-mechanistic understanding is critical for informing climate-adaptation actions and strategies. We use a diversity of study...