A Strategy For Assessing Potential Future Changes In Climate Hydrology And Vegetation In The Western United States

This volume in the Long-Term Ecological Research Network Series would present the work that has been done and the understanding and database that have been developed by work on climate change done at all the LTER sites. Global climate change is a central issue facing the world, which is being worked on by a very large number of scientists across a wide range of fields. The LTER sites hold some of the best available data measuring long term impacts and changes in the environment, and the research done at these sites has not previously been made widely available to the broader climate change research community. This book should appeal reasonably widely outside the ecological community, and because it pulls together information from all 20 research sites, it should capture the interest of virtually the entire LTER research community.

Questions surrounding the issue of climate change are evolving from "Is it happening?" to "What can be done about it?" The primary obstacles to addressing it at this point are not scientific but political and economic; nonetheless a quick resolution is unlikely.Ignorance and confusion surrounding the issue -- including a lack of understanding of climate science, its implications for the environmand society, and the range of policy options available -- contributes to the political morass over dealing with climate change in which we find ourselves. Climate Change Policy addresses that situation by bringing together a wide range of new writings from leading experts that examine the many dimensions of the topics mimportant in understanding climate change and policies to combat it. Chapters consider: climate science in historical perspective analysis of uncertainties in climate science and policy the economics of climate policy North-South and intergenerational equity issues the role of business and industry in climate solutions policy mechanisms including joint implementation, emissions trading, and the so-called clean developmmechanism Regardless of the fate of the Kyoto Protocol, the issues raised in that debate will persist as new climate protection regimes emerge; this volume treats mof those topics. Tying the chapters together is a shared conclusion that climate change is a real and serious problem, and that we as a society have an obligation not merely to adapt to it but to mitigate it in whatever intelligways we can develop. Cost-effectiveness is not disdained, but neither is the imperative for valuing species threatened by rapid climate change.

This book reviews advances in understanding of the past ca. two million years of Earth history - the Quaternary Period - in the United States. It begins with sections on ice and water - as glaciers, permafrost, oceans, rivers, lakes, and aquifers. Six chapters are devoted to the high-latitude Pleistocene ice sheets, to mountain glaciations of the western United States, and to permafrost studies. Other chapters discuss ice-age lakes, caves, sea-level fluctuations, and riverine landscapes. With a chapter on landscape evolution models, the book turns to essays on geologic processes. Two chapters discuss soils and their responses to climate, and wind-blown sediments. Two more describe volcanoes and earthquakes, and the use of Quaternary geology to understand the hazards they pose. The next part of the book is on plants and animals. Five chapters consider the Quaternary history of vegetation in the United States. Other chapters treat forcing functions and vegetation response at different spatial and temporal scales, the role of fire as a catalyst of vegetation change during rapid climate shifts, and the use of tree rings in inferring age and past hydroclimatic conditions. Three chapters address vertebrate paleontology and the extinctions of large mammals at the end of the last glaciation, beetle assemblages and the inferences they permit about past conditions, and the peopling of North America. A final chapter addresses the numerical modeling of Quaternary climates, and the role paleoclimatic studies and climatic modeling has in predicting future response of the Earth's climate system to the changes we have wrought.