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Yellowstone's Northern Range - Greater Yellowstone Science ...

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THE PREHISTORIC<br />

AND EARLY<br />

HISTORIC SETTING<br />

CLIMATE AND THE NORTHERN RANGE<br />

When discussing the northern range and its issues, the popular and<br />

scientific press have devoted most of their attention to the animals<br />

and plants that inhabit the range. But the fundamental force shaping<br />

the native plant and animal communities of the earth is climate. Because "climate is the<br />

primary deternrinant of vegetation" (Forman and Godron 1986), it is also the factor<br />

controlling herbivorous animals an ecosystem can support, and therefore what predators<br />

can thflve there as well.<br />

Ecologists sometimes describe an ecosystem as a complex set of "feedback loops"<br />

in which the various elements of the setting interact and influence one another. For<br />

example, climate may dictate what vegetation can grow in an area, but the vegetation, by<br />

shading the soil from sunlig.ht (thus creating various "microclimates" within the plant<br />

canopy), as well as by providing organic malter to the soil in the fonm of dead plant<br />

malter, "feeds back" into the cJimate-vegetation-soil system. As the soil is affected and<br />

enriched, it hosts different proportions and abundances of vegetation species. Ultimately,<br />

vegetation can even affect climate (Forman and Godron 1986); many vegetation communities,<br />

from the wildest tropical rainforest to the most carefully cultivated cornfield, may<br />

influence atmospheric conditions.<br />

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