Western Mountain Initiative

The impetus for integration among Western Mountain Initiative (WMI) projects stems from the need to understand how the unique features of mountain systems will determine regional ecosystem responses to climatic change, as well as to identify how large mountain systems influence each other. 

Projects in the Western Mountain Initiative:

1998-2003

• Climate Change and Thresholds of Ecosystem Change: Invasibility of Tundra in the Northern Rocky Mountains - Dr. Dan Fagre
  
  
• Climatic Variability, Ecosystem Dynamics, and Disturbance in Mountain Protected Areas: Assessing the Vulnerability of Natural Resources - Dr. David Peterson
  
  
• Global Change Impacts in the Colorado Rockies Biogeographical Area: Phase II - Dr. Tom Stohlgren
  
  
• Sierra Nevada Forest Dynamics: Pattern, Pace and Mechanisms of Change - Dr. Nate Stephenson

    
Common Goals, Objectives and Scientific Issues:
              
Shared research themes:

Table 1.  Scientific themes covered by WMI  programs (shaded areas indicate scientific themes included in each research program). (From the WMI Web site.)

Shared Objectives:

1. Identify common objectives and scientific themes.
       
2. Collaborate to develop general principles for understanding and managing mountain ecosystems based on commonalties among program findings.
      
3. Share information and projects in the WMI network by developing an information clearinghouse for Western mountain ecosystems, integrating databases for large-scale assessments, and validating and applying ecosystem models across mountain ecoregions.

	Featured USGS Publication The Western Mountain Initiative (WMI) of the US Geological Survey (USGS) studies global change in the mountains of the American West. This MRI Newsletter describes the functioning and the specialties of this Initiative, which we advance as an excellent example of scientific collaboration. MRI talked with two of WMI’s principal investigators: Jill Baron, a USGS scientist and Senior Research Ecologist with the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory at Colorado State University, and Dave Peterson, Senior Scientist with the USDA Forest Service at the Pacific Northwest Research Station in Seattle. For the second part of the article they joined us in a discussion about the key leverage points in developing adaptation strategies to deal with global change in mountains.  Access the Newsletter > Related USGS Resources Sierra Nevada Global Change Research Program (WERC) Climate Change Research at Northern Rocky Mountain Research Center (NOROCK)