National Park Service, Greater Yellowstone Inventory and Monitory Network, 2327 University Way, Suite 2, Bozeman, MT 59715, United States of America.
U.S. Geological Survey, Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center, 2327 University Way, Suite 2, Bozeman, MT 59715, United States of America.
Sci Total Environ. 2019 May 20;666:1188-1197. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.02.296. Epub 2019 Feb 21.
In Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks wetlands offer critical habitat and play a key role in supporting biological diversity. The shallow depths and small size of many palustrine wetlands in these protected areas and elsewhere make them vulnerable to changes in climate compared with larger and deeper aquatic habitats. Here, we use a simple water balance model to generate estimates of biophysical drivers of wetland change. We then examine the relationship between wetland inundation status and four principal drivers (i.e., temperature, precipitation, evapotranspiration, and runoff) spanning varying meteorological conditions over an 8-year time series from Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks. We found that models containing snowmelt runoff outperformed models with other meteorological drivers and determined that a higher percentage of surveyed wetlands were dry in years characterized by lower runoff. Our work further shows that wetland drying was widespread across both parks, but sub-regional variations were best described at the hydrologic subbasin-level. Documenting the varying responses of wetlands to meteorological drivers is a necessary first step to identifying which subbasins are most sensitive to recent climatic change and contemplating how future change may alter the distribution of wetlands and their dependent taxa.
在大提顿国家公园和黄石国家公园，湿地提供了关键的栖息地，并在支持生物多样性方面发挥了关键作用。与更大、更深的水生栖息地相比，这些受保护地区和其他地区许多沼地湿地的浅水深和小尺寸使它们更容易受到气候变化的影响。在这里，我们使用简单的水量平衡模型来生成湿地变化的生物物理驱动因素的估计值。然后，我们研究了湿地淹没状态与四个主要驱动因素（即温度、降水、蒸散和径流量）之间的关系，这些驱动因素跨越了大提顿和黄石国家公园 8 年时间序列中不同气象条件的变化。我们发现，包含融雪径流量的模型比其他气象驱动因素的模型表现更好，并且确定在径流量较低的年份，更多的调查湿地处于干燥状态。我们的工作进一步表明，湿地干涸现象在两个公园都很普遍，但在水文子流域层面上可以更好地描述次区域变化。记录湿地对气象驱动因素的不同反应是确定哪些子流域对最近的气候变化最敏感以及思考未来变化如何改变湿地及其依赖类群的分布的必要的第一步。
