Climate Specialists Warn Forest Service Staff On Potential For Wholesale Ecosystem Shift - D. Post

[hatrack]

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) -- Climate-change specialists are visiting Forest Service offices in the agency's Northern Region to educate employees about shifting climatic conditions and their ramifications.

"We're almost on the cusp of an ecosystem shift," Faith Ann Heinsch, a University of Montana professor of climatology, said at a recent session in Billings. "If we don't increase our summer precipitation and our winter precipitation falls as rain, we'll be looking at some interesting changes. Water issues will be the big fight in the West again."

Faced with that kind of outlook, the Forest Service is looking at how best to manage its vast and varied natural resources, while reducing the agency's environmental footprint.

EDIT

In the past 50 years, the average temperature in March has climbed 6.18 degrees in Billings and 7.7 degrees in Bozeman. Also over the past 50 years, total average snowfall in Billings has decreased 10.7 inches. "Something is different now from what has happened in the past," Heinsch said. "We're definitely outside the range of what we've seen in the last 1,000 years." The data, based on information gathered by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, point to a shrinking and thinning ice cap, a warmer ocean and weather changes that will mean drier dry areas and wetter wet regions.

EDIT

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/MT_CLIMATE_CHANGE_WYOL-?SITE=CODEN&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. Looks like they might have to change the name of the agency

to the Desert Service. :(

[OKIsItJustMe]

2. "We'll be looking at some interesting changes."

This is the sort of sentence you never want to hear from a climatologist.

[autorank]

3. k*r Mission Accomplished

"It is obvious we'll have larger fires on the landscape," Keane said. "The only thing that will stop them in drought years is other burned areas."

Maybe it's' like the Twilight Zone "To Serve Man." They're softening us.