Oregon is warming, and snow is waning. The clear, clean water that supplies many of Oregon’s cities and farms originates high in the Cascades. Stored on snowy peaks, the water feeds rivers and aquifers that supply some of the state’s most populous regions.
To influence policy, research on climate change must incorporate many disciplines and bridge the divide between the natural and social sciences.
Breaking through these barriers is the intent behind a pilot project in Idaho’s Big Wood River Basin, where a diverse group of local stakeholders has been meeting regularly with OSU climate and social scientists to talk about and plan for climate-driven changes in water quality and availability.
In the near future, scientists expect that climate will change and our forests will adapt.
We are slowly beginning to understand the anatomy of global climate and how it changes, its geographic fingerprint and its tempo. Ice cores paint a complex and sometimes surprising picture, one that generations of scientists will spend decades trying to fully understand.
About a million years ago in South Africa, a cave dweller used fire on purpose, and some charred bones at the site suggest it may have been for cooking.