Rock Glaciers and Related Cold Rocky Landforms: Overlooked Climate Refugia for Mountain Biodiversity
Sponsor
NSF. Grant Number: OPP‐1906015 U.S. Forest Service
Published In
Global Change Biology
Document Type
Post-Print
Publication Date
1-6-2021
Subjects
Climatic changes -- Ecological aspects, Troposphere -- Environmental aspects, Biodiversity conservation, Mountain hydrology, Talus (Geology)
Abstract
Mountains are global biodiversity hotspots where cold environments and their associated ecological communities are predicted to be threatened by climate warming. Considerable research attention has been devoted to understanding the ecological effects of alpine glacier and snowfield recession. However, much less attention has been given to identifying climate refugia in mountain ecosystems where present-day environmental conditions will be maintained, at least in the near-term, as other habitats change. Around the world, montane communities of microbes, animals, and plants live on, adjacent to, and downstream of rock glaciers and related cold rocky landforms (CRL). These geomorphological features have been overlooked in the ecological literature despite being extremely common in mountain ranges worldwide with a propensity to support cold and stable habitats for aquatic and terrestrial biodiversity. CRLs are less responsive to atmospheric warming than alpine glaciers and snowfields due to the insulating nature and thermal inertia of their debris cover paired with their internal ventilation patterns. Thus, CRLs are likely to remain on the landscape after adjacent glaciers and snowfields have melted, thereby providing longer-term cold habitat for biodiversity living on and downstream of them. Here, we argue that CRLs will likely act as key climate refugia for terrestrial and aquatic biodiversity in mountain ecosystems, offer guidelines for incorporating CRLs into conservation practices, and identify areas for future research.
Rights
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Locate the Document
Preprint DOI: https://doi.org/10.32942/osf.io/84ydq
Peer-reviewed Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.15510
DOI
10.1111/gcb.15510
Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/34896
Citation Details
Published as: Brighenti, S., Hotaling, S., Finn, D. S., Fountain, A. G., Hayashi, M., Herbst, D., Saros, J. E., Tronstad, L. M., & Millar, C. I. (2021). Rock glaciers and related cold rocky landforms: Overlooked climate refugia for mountain biodiversity. Global Change Biology, gcb.15510. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.15510
Description
This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Global Change Biology. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Global Change Biology.