Open AccessThe impact of climate change in the American cordillera
Author(s) -
Diaz Henry F.,
Villalba Ricardo,
Greenwood Gregory,
Bradley Raymond S.
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
eos, transactions american geophysical union
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.316
H-Index - 86
eISSN - 2324-9250
pISSN - 0096-3941
DOI - 10.1029/2006eo320007
Subject(s) - snowpack , precipitation , climate change , physical geography , ecosystem , elevation (ballistics) , streamflow , geography , climatology , geology , ecology , snow , drainage basin , geomorphology , oceanography , geometry , mathematics , cartography , meteorology , biology
The mountain regions comprising the western American Cordillera (from Alaska to southern Argentina and Chile) are especially vulnerable to changes in climate and to the ensuing changes in snowpack, streamflow, ecosystem functioning, and a host of other impacts on human and nonhuman systems. The effect of elevation on temperature and precipitation induces a compression of the typical meridional climatic gradients, causing changes in life zones—geographic regions or areas defined by their characteristic life forms, e.g., alpine, sub‐alpine, coniferous forests, and so forth—over relatively short distances. In mountain regions, relatively small perturbations in global processes can operate through the system to produce large local changes. Because mountains provide life‐sustaining water for people living there as well as in adjacent lowland regions, climatic and other environmental changes in the American Cordillera will have a large impact on the future well‐being of an area far larger than the mountain region itself.