One unique approach that the researchers took was evaluating the vapor pressure deficit. In other words, how are humans causing the Four Corners region to become hotter and drier and what impacts does that have on the vegetation? They set out to answer a two-part question: “How has human-induced climate change affected air temperatures and atmospheric evaporative demand in the greater Four Corners region of the Southwest and what have the corresponding impacts been to vegetative productivity?” Williams said she and the other researchers wanted to understand that process in part because of the climate similarities to other regions of the world, including parts of the Horn of Africa where the Climate Hazards Center at UCSB is working to understand the impacts of drought and it’s relationship to food security. But with climate change droughts are hotter, droughts are more intense, and these higher temperatures are really exacerbating droughts and impacting vegetation.” You have vegetation that’s so well adapted to pretty dry conditions and can deal with droughts. “And the southwestern US is really this beautiful, interesting, dramatic landscape. “We’re really interested in understanding better how rising temperatures contribute to, exacerbate and play with the natural variability leading to drought,” she said. “As a kid, I would go to the Southwest quite a bit and really fell in love with the desert landscape,” she said.īut that wasn’t the only reason Williams chose to look into how climate change could be impacting the vegetation in the greater Four Corners region. She has a personal connection to the Southwest, as her grandparents once lived in Arizona.

At the time, she was a doctoral student at the University of California Santa Barbara. This is because increasing air temperatures and increasing levels of evaporative demand-or more water being soaked up into the atmosphere-stresses the grasses and shrubs that livestock and many other herbivores rely upon.Įmily Williams, who is now a postdoctoral scholar at the Sierra Nevada Research Institute at the University of California Merced, was the lead author of the study. A new study examines the impacts of climate change on drought and vegetation in the Four Corners region.īy changing the climate, humans have doubled the magnitude of drought’s impact on the availability of vegetation for herbivores, including livestock, to eat in the greater Four Corners region, according to a study published this summer in the journal Earth’s Future.

Abq journal warmer weather