Watershed responses to climate change at Glacier National Park: Ecosystem simulation and long-term monitoring
Comanor PL, Fagre DB, White JD, Hauer FR, Running SW. Watershed responses to climate change at Glacier National Park: Ecosystem simulation and long-term monitoring. Pages 1-24. In Northern American Benthological Society 44th Annual Meeting. Kalispell, Montana. June 4, 1996
Characteristics of Glacier National Park provide important opportunities for global change studies which emphasize ecosystem modeling and watershed monitoring. We have developed an approach which looks at how ecosystem functions will be impacted by climatic shifts within a regional ecosystem. The Lake McDonald watershed of Glacier was the focus for developing the Regional Hydro-Ecosystem Simulation System (RHESSys), a collection of integrated models which collectively provide spatially explicit, mechanistically-derived outputs of ecosystem processes, including hydrologic outflow, soil moisture, and snowpack water equivalence. RHESSys incorporated remote sensing and Geographic Informatoin Systems (GIS). Concurrently, field validation of RHESSys outputs demonstrated that reasonable estimates of snow water equivalence and streamflow are being produced. RHESSys was used to estimate a regional climatic change scenario of future temperature and precipitation which indicated that aquatic resources of the park will be severely impacted. The response of other key ecosystem components to potential climate scenarios can be projected and examined with RHESSys to provide proactive guidelines for national park management.
- Type
- Conference Proceeding Paper
- Authors
- Comanor, Peter; Fagre, Daniel; White, Joseph; Hauer, F; Running, Steven
- Units
- CRCO , GLAC
- Keywords
- Aquatic Ecosystems, Climate Change, ecological modeling, Snow and ice hydrology, Watershed monitoring, wildland hydrology