Our Liviiifi Kcsdiiiccs — Interiar West 



.ill 



Rocky Mounlain 

 National Park visitation 



Fig. 2. Trends in Rocky Mountam National Park visitors, 

 agricultural impacts, moose invasion, elk population, for- 

 est recovery, air pollution. Estes Park population, and 

 global change in carbon dioxide. 



challenged by fire suppression. nonintJigenous 

 species' invasions, weather modificalion (i.e., 

 cloud seeding), and global climate change 

 (Stohlgren et al. 1993)." 



Just as a species-by-species approach to con- 

 servation biology is prohibitively expensive, a 

 complex of ecosystem threats cannot be 

 addressed one by one. Our interdisciplinary 

 approach in the Colorado Rockies is based on 

 developing pailnerships. consolidating and eval- 

 uating the status and trends in existing data, and 

 developing a biogeographical, long-term, multi- 

 ple spatial-scale monitoring program that fills 

 infomiation gaps and provides a scientific basis 

 for sound ecosystem management. Preliminary 

 results from the National Biological Service 

 global climate change research program show 

 significant interactions of climate, hydrological, 

 and vegetation systems. 



Mesoscale (I- to 100-km grids) climate 

 modeling in the Front Range of the Colorado 

 Rockies demonstrated that changes in land 

 cover (e.g.. wild prairie to irrigated agricultural 

 land) can lead to significant and perhaps unex- 

 pected changes in mesoscale climate. Computer 

 modeling results indicate that the severity of 

 summer thunderstorms in Rocky Mountain 

 National Park is influenced by spatial patterns 

 in albedo (see glossary) and surface roughness 

 of farmlands several kilometers away (Pielke et 

 al. 1993). 



Quantifying trends in mountain hydrology 

 and vegetation change caused by global climate 

 change and assessing the effects of nearby cloud 

 seeding require the development of new predic- 

 tive models (Baron et al. 1994). Hydrological 



Agricultural impacts 



90 



70 



50 



60 65 70 75 80 85 90 91 92 

 Year 



Moose invasion 



30 



^ 



80 82 



92 



Forest recovery 



> en 



3,000 



2,500 



2,000 



1,500 



1,000 



00 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 

 Year (1900-85) 



Estes Park population ^H 



■ 



50 60 70 80 90 



Year 



irrigated 

 cropland 



Elk population 



30 40 50 60 70 

 Year 



Air pollution 



90 92 



Year 

 Global change (global data) 



1800 



1900 

 Year 



2000 



models are proving effective at estimating 

 stream discharge and regional water supply. 



In our long-term forest plots, we found the 

 old-growth spruce and fir forests of the central 

 Rocky Mountains range in biomass from 



