Impacts of Climate Change on Mountain Protected Areas: Implications for Management

Peine, John; Martinka, Clifford

ABSTRACT: The threat of global climate change has captured the imagination and concern of people around the world. The issue has brought international attention to the repercussions of the man's activities on the global environment. There is growing consensus among the scientific community that global warming is inevitable. Although timing and severity of such climate change is being debated, considerable basic scientific information is needed in order to understand global climatic processes, particularly the influence of oceans on climate. Current models are not sufficiently precise to predict regional climatic change, let alone account for the influence of topographic features such as mountain ranges. Many scientists predict changes in mountain rain shadow effects, storm frequency and intensity, and periodicity in temperature regimes. There may be increased fire frequency and invasion by insects and other deleterious pests and pathogens. Biological response to climate change in mountainous regions can be expected to first be detected in alpine and sub alpine ecosystems; first and second order streams; rare species populations utilising narrowly defined habitats; ecotones between ecosystems distributed along elevational gradients; and slope/aspect dynamics dictating temperature and moisture regimes. Unfortunately, climatic thresholds influencing species distribution are rarely known, so the dynamics of future changes are not easily predicted or quantified. The effects of climate change on indigenous people utilising mountain protected areas can be estimated by comparing vulnerable natural resources with resource utilisation patterns of local people. Land managers of mountain protected areas can take several steps now to prepare for what could be a cataclysmic change to their natural and cultural resources within the next 50 to 100 years. The first step is to conduct sensitivity analyses of vulnerable cultural and natural resources, utilising a panel of experts with the best available first hand knowledge of the area. A second step is to evaluate the distribution and patchiness of protected areas surrounding natural areas....