Climate change, grazing and fire suppression have altered the vast basin-and-range province between the Wasatch and the Sierra Nevada, considered one of the most threatened landscapes in North America. But “significant declines" among small mammals across the mountain range's habitat types and elevation zones are cause for renewed concern, said University of Utah biologist Rebecca Rowe, lead author of two recent studies based on modern “resurveys" of sites investigated 80 years ago by a University of California ecologist, Adrey Borell.
“A lot of people say the Great Basin is in trouble. This is another indication that the area may really be in trouble," said Rowe, a postdoctoral research fellow at the museum. “We think it's a region-wide problem. ... We don't know unless we have something we can compare it to."
Instead of focusing on just a handful of species, Rowe and her colleagues examined properties of entire animal communities, comparing overall numbers, the animals' collective biomass and energy use against what Borell recorded. Under all three measures, furry little critters are half as prevalent as they used to be, according to Eric Rickart, curator of the Utah museum's vertebrates collections.
The decline in these prey animals indicates something is amiss with the plant communities that form the ecosystem's resource base. And the effects could be rippling up the food chain, said Rickart, the co-author of the study published in the June edition of the journal Ecology. Also contributing was Rebecca Terry, a paleontologist at Stanford University. Read the full report here.
Source: by Brian Maffly, The Salt Lake Tribune.
