PARENT SESSION
Oral Session 5: Disturbance Ecology I: Scaling, Wind, and Ice.
Presiding: D McKenzie
Monday, August 2, 8:00 AM to 11:30 AM, Meeting Room B 113.
Rapid regional ecosystem reset: A first look at impacts of global change type drought.
Cobb, Neil*,1, Breshears, David2, Rich, Paul 2, Price, Kevin 3, Floyd-Hanna, Lisa 4, Romme, William 5, Belnap, Jayne 6, Anderson, Jesse 1, Balice, Randy2, Allen, Craig7, 1 Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ, USA2 University of California-Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, USA3 University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA4 Prescott College, Prescott, AZ, USA5 Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA6 United States Geological Survey, Moab, UT, USA7 U.S. Geological Survey, Los Alamos, NM
ABSTRACT- The intensity of drought is expected to increase with climate change, producing regional-scale impacts on ecosystems through plant mortality. Here we document how a drought beginning in the late 1990s produced synchronous tree mortality in more than 12,000 km2 of pinyon-juniper woodlands in the southwestern USA. Our results, based on unprecedented multi-scale observations, highlight how drought can reset ecosystems at regional scales. Because this drought exhibits characteristics consistent with global-change predicted drought, in which increased temperature amplifies the effect of reduced precipitation, the regional-scale mortality documented here may provide a first look at expected impacts of climate change.
Key words: global climate change, plant mortality, drought, pinyon-juniper