Climate Trivia: Marmots and Warming
Plants and animals that live high up in the mountains have to be able to tolerate strong winds and long durations of snow cover. Most animals, such as the yellow-bellied marmot, deal with long and cold winters by hibernating. Over the last century, the Rocky Mountain region in Colorado has warmed by between 1.5 and two degrees Fahrenheit, with most of this warming happening over the last 30 years. This warming has stimulated a decrease in the amount of time marmots spend hibernating – these animals waking up around 38 days earlier than they did in the early 1980s.
Trivia Question: How have marmots responded to this temperature rise and decrease in hibernation period?
a. They have become larger.
b. They have become smaller.
c. Their population has declined.
d. Their population has grown.
e. a and d.
The correct answer is e. Marmots now have more time to be active, eat and reproduce. As a result, today there are more marmots in the Colorado Rockies and they are bigger than they were several decades ago. Most of the population and size trends have occurred since 2000. There are now three times more marmots living in Colorado’s Upper East River Valley and juvenile marmots are now growing at a rate of 0.7 pounds per year faster than in 2000.
Please visit http://www.earthgauge.net/climate-facts-image-library#7 to download an image of a yellow-bellied marmot in Rocky Mountain National Park. The image is in the public domain.
Seasons: Spring, Summer
Sources: Martens, Chad. “Are Alpine Species Disappearing? The Effects of Climate Change on Alpine Vertebrates in the Rocky Mountains.” Mountain Research Station, University of Colorado, Boulder. Spring 2005 and Ozgul, A et al. “Coupled dynamics of body mass and population growth in response to environmental change.” Nature 466 (2010): 482-483.
