watervulnerability

White River National Forest Watershed Vulnerability Assessment, Rocky Mountain Region (R2)
Figure 9. Climate change vulnerability rating for the Infrastructure/Roads resource value. Red shading depicts
subwatersheds with the highest vulnerability. Road-stream crossings are shown as blue dots.
As expected, the lower elevation subwatersheds are those that display the highest vulnerability to a
changing climate. These are the watersheds with lower precipitation, more area in the rain-snow transition
zone, and an absence of glaciated terrain. Because of the low elevation, these subwatersheds also tend to
have a large private-land component and the highest number of irrigation diversions.
Note that even as the resource value changes, there is not a huge variability in the mapped outcome. The
natural and anthropogenic factors do not radically change, which supports the notion of minimizing the
number of resource values considered. In this case, two resource values areas could have sufficed: One
that captures effects from decreasing low flows (droughts) and one that captures increasing high flows
(floods).
APPLICATION
Focus on Anthropogenic Influences
As a whole, management activities on National Forests don’t create a lot of greenhouse gasses. So instead
of focusing on the causes of climate change, our concern might center on increasing the resiliency of our
landscapes to minimize their negative response to climate change. Looking back at the analysis process
used, our role in increasing resiliency is ultimately very narrow, because much of a subwatershed’s
126 Assessing the Vulnerability of Watersheds to Climate Change