Evidence that local land use practices influence regional climate, vegetation, and stream flow patterns in adjacent natural areas
-
-
Authors: T. J. Stohlgren, T. N. Chase, R. A. Pielke, T. G. F. Kittel, and J. S. Baron
Date: 1998
Journal: Global Change Biology
Volume: 4
Number:
Pages: 495-504
Summary of Methods: Stohlgren et al. presented evidence that land use practices, in the plains of Colorado, influence regional climate and vegetation in adjacent natural areas of the Rocky Mountains in predictable ways. The results of the mesoscale climate model simulations were consistent with coarser resolution RAMS simulations for the coterminous United States, that indicated that land use change caused July temperatures to decrease in the vicinity of the southern Rocky Mountains and increase in the eastern central Great Plains. Those coarser-resolution simulations also showed July precipitation to increase over the mountains of Colorado and decrease over the eastern Colorado plains under current landscapes compared to natural vegetation cover. The authors corroborate the RAMS simulations with three independent sets of data: (1) climate records from 16 weather stations, (2) the distribution of seedlings of five dominant conifer species in Rocky Mountain National Park, which suggested that cooler, wetter conditions occurred over roughly the same time period; and (3) increased stream flow during the summer months in four river basins, which also indicates cooler summer temperatures and lower transpiration at landscape scales. Combined, the mesoscale atmospheric/land-surface model, short-term trends in regional temperatures, forest distribution changes, and hydrology data indicate that the effects of land use practices on regional climate may overshadow larger-scale temperature changes commonly associated with observed increases in CO2 and other greenhouse gases.
Article Summary / Main Points: None
Vegetation Types:
MLRA Ecoregions:
Agrovoc Control Words: Riparian zones Rangelands Wildlife
Article Review Type: Refereed
Article Type: Experimental Research
Keywords: cooling effect, forest distribution change, hydrologic change, land use/land cover change, long-term stream flow trends, long-term temperature change, mesoscale climate modelling
Annotation: Grazing intensity is not specified. No herbivore is listed. The model looked at the effects of grazing.
-
Get article
Cite article with DOI
-