Webinar: A Mammal's Take On The Rapture Hypothesis, Jacob's Ladder, And Other Notions Of Doom, Gloom, And Predictable Uniform Change In High Elevation Ecosystems In The Sierra Nevada Range Part 1

Date Recorded

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Summary

It is often assumed that warming temperatures and altered precipitation patterns will lead to loss or alteration of habitat for many alpine mammal species, ultimately resulting in decreased range, lower abundance, and possibly extirpations.  Alpine meadows provide critical habitat for many mammal species, but meadows are considered to be particularly vulnerable to climatic shifts. The most likely mechanism for the loss or alteration of meadow habitat would be from a uniform upward shift in conifer species, with many meadows undergoing a transition to tree-dominated communities.  While it is possible, and maybe even likely, that changes in alpine mammal and meadow communities will occur, the perception of the extent, direction and magnitude of these changes has been shaped principally from a climatic perspective.  Climate sets broad limits on the biogeographic extent of animal and plant species ranges, but many other factors influence their regional and local distribution and abundance.  Here we describe the conceptual framework and analyses from a multi-scale study examining changes in the distribution and abundance of five alpine mammal species in the Sierra Nevada and White Mountains of eastern California.  We hypothesized that climate-related changes in distribution and abundance of alpine mammals will be species-specific, with some species affected primarily by physiological stress, other species by changes in habitat, and others by altered forage quantity or quality.  Our hypothesis does not imply that climatic shifts will result in more restricted ranges and lower abundance for all five species.  Rather, some species could be unaffected or even benefit from shifts in climate.  Moreover, while climate could potentially trigger changes in alpine vegetation communities, feedbacks between climate and plant-animal interactions could produce multiple pathways leading to alternative states for both wildlife and vegetation communities, effectively resulting in the mammals “managing their own habitat.” The focus of this talk is on contemporary patterns and processes, while a future talk will focus on results from modeling relationships among climate, mammal distribution and abundance, vegetation community composition and structure, and plant-animal interactions.

Resources

Transcript -- Klinger 6.11.13

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