Climate change has animals heading for hills

[villager]

Climate change has animals heading for hills

Many small California mammals have shifted ranges to higher elevations


By Jeanna Bryner
Staff Writer
Updated: 8:45 a.m. PT Dec 14, 2006

SAN FRANCISCO - Chipmunks, mice and squirrels are heading for the hills, perhaps chased to higher elevations by a changing climate, scientists report. Since the early 1900s, many small mammals in California have shifted their ranges dramatically, mostly to higher elevations.

Scientists compared modern notes with past museum director Joseph Grinnell, who investigated the diversity of mammals, reptiles, amphibians and birds along what he called the Yosemite Transect. With this information, scientists retraced this work, and documented with traps and photos the small mammals in this area that spans portions of the San Joaquin Valley, the Sierra Nevada, including parts of Yosemite National Park.
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They incorporated the information into computer simulations of climate to see how the animals' ranges changed with climate changes. "We can perhaps use this model to look into the future as long as the climate models are accurate," Chris Conroy of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology said here this week at the annual fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

The pint-size pika, related to the rabbit, shifted its range to higher elevations. Known for its need for cold weather and snowfall, the pika is also on the move across western North America, according to past studies.

A few other furry mammals migrating:

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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16205780/from/ET/

[CountAllVotes]

1. they might be heading for the hills for another reason

like a flood is in the air.

You should read some California Indian history - some of the old stories as they call them. There are tales of all of the animals running to the tops of mountains to escape a horrific flood.

Could it be?

:dem:

[villager]

2. that would be a more "sudden" kind of migration, que no?

I think these "population trends" have been of the more gradual-yet-steady variety...

[CountAllVotes]

3. I don't know, I wasn't living at the time of the Great Flood

It was said to be ~500 years ago - before white eyes showed up.

:shrug:

[villager]

4. which Great Flood? The one written about in Noah, and other

contemporaneous "legendary" accounts would've been a bit longer than 500 years ago... :shrug: