Idaho State University: Global Warming
Global warming's effect on western treelines focus of ISU research - 02/12/08
Idaho State University assistant professor Matt Germino, PhD, will be trying to determine how global warming is influencing the lower and upper boundaries of forests across a broad swath of the western United States.
"Our climate is warming; that is no longer ambiguous," Germino says. "Now we have to determine how we're going to deal with it and try to predict how natural resources will change. ISU is leading an effort to understand how the changing climate will influence the distribution of forest at lower and higher elevations. This can have large implications."
Germino has received a three-year, $335,000 research grant from the Department of Energy's National Institute for Climate Change Research Competitive Grant Program. His study is titled "Climatic and biotic co-limitation of conifer establishment at treelines: addressing uncertainty in bio-climatic mode forecasts of forest change."
Germino, the lead principal investigator for the grant, is conducting his study with colleagues Drs. Jeremy Littell, PhD, and Nathan Mantua, PhD, at the University of Washington and Dr. Lisa Graumlich, PhD, at the University of Arizona. They will be studying nine mountain sites from the Front Range in Colorado and Wyoming to the rain-shadow mountains of Washington.
The mountain ranges to be studied include the Zirkel Mountains in northeast Colorado, the Medicine Bow Range in southeast Wyoming, Wind River Range in central Wyoming, Beartooth Mountains in northwest Wyoming and southern Montana, the Teton Range in southeast Idaho and Wyoming, Centennial Mountains in southeast Idaho and Montana, the Wallowa/Eagle Cap Range in northeast Oregon, Goat Rock Mountains in south-central Washington and the North Cascade Mountains in north central Washington.
