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76–532 PDF 2012

S. HRG. 112–592 

IMPACTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON THE 

INTERMOUNTAIN WEST 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON 

ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES 

UNITED STATES SENATE 

ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

TO

EXAMINE THE CURRENT AND FUTURE IMPACTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE 

ON THE INTERMOUNTAIN WEST, FOCUSING ON DROUGHT, WILDFIRE 

FREQUENCY AND SEVERITY, AND ECOSYSTEMS 

SANATE FE, NM, AUGUST 17, 2012 

( 

Printed for the use of the 

Committee on Energy and Natural Resources 
(II) 

COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES 

JEFF BINGAMAN, New Mexico, Chairman 

RON WYDEN, Oregon 

TIM JOHNSON, South Dakota 

MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana 

MARIA CANTWELL, Washington 

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont 

DEBBIE STABENOW, Michigan 

MARK UDALL, Colorado 

JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire 

AL FRANKEN, Minnesota 

JOE MANCHIN, III, West Virginia 

CHRISTOPHER A. COONS, Delaware 

LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska 

JOHN BARRASSO, Wyoming 

JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho 

MIKE LEE, Utah 

RAND PAUL, Kentucky 

DANIEL COATS, Indiana 

ROB PORTMAN, Ohio 

JOHN HOEVEN, North Dakota 

DEAN HELLER, Nevada 

BOB CORKER, Tennessee 

ROBERT M. SIMON, Staff Director 

SAM E. FOWLER, Chief Counsel 

MCKIE CAMPBELL, Republican Staff Director 

KAREN K. BILLUPS, Republican Chief Counsel 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

STATEMENTS 

Page 

Allen, Craig D., U.S. Geological Survey, Department of the Interior ................. 12 

Bingaman, Hon. Jeff, U.S. Senator From New Mexico ........................................ 1 

Dasheno, Hon. Walter, Governor, Santa Clara Pueblo, Espanola, NM .............. 3 

deBuys, William, Writer and Historian, Chamisal, NM ...................................... 34 

Fort, Denise D., Professor of Law, University of New Mexico School of Law, 

and Director, Utton Transboundary Resources Center ..................................... 47 

McDowell, Nathan, Staff Scientist and Director, Los Alamos Environmental 

Research Park, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM ............... 19 

Redmond, Kelly T., Regional Climatologist/Deputy Director, Western Regional 

Climate Center, Desert Research Institute, Reno, NV ..................................... 25 

(1) 

IMPACTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON THE 

INTERMOUNTAIN WEST 

FRIDAY, AUGUST 17, 2012 

U.S. SENATE, 

COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES, 

Santa Fe, New Mexico. 

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m. at Santa Fe 

Community College, 6401 Richards Avenue, Room 216 Lecture 

Hall, West Wing of the Main Building, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Hon. 

Jeff Bingaman, chairman, presiding. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JEFF BINGAMAN, U.S. 

SENATOR FROM NEW MEXICO 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you all for coming. This is a hearing of 

the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, a field hearing. We had a similar hearing 2 days ago up in Colorado Springs 

that Senator Mark Udall, who is a member of our Energy Committee, presided at. It was on a related issue, pretty similar, but 

not quite as broad as today’s hearing. 

Let me just clarify for folks so there’s no confusion. We’re going 

to try to operate this like a hearing of the committee. We’ll hear 

from the witnesses and then I’m going to ask some questions of 

them and then we’ll probably adjourn the hearing at that point. 

If any of the folks in the audience have issues they would like 

to raise with the various of our panelists I’m sure they’ll be here 

for a few minutes and you can do that at that time. But this is not 

a Town Hall meeting as such. So I didn’t want to give anyone the 

false impression that it is. 

So the purpose of the hearing, the focus of it, is to talk about the 

impacts of climate change on the Intermountain West. During the 

early part of this year the fire season involved intense wildfires 

here in New Mexico and Colorado, across the Western United 

States. Many of those wildfires are continuing, of course, in the 

Northeast or Northwest part of the country in Washington and Oregon today threatening population centers, destroying hundreds of 

homes. I think we lost 250 some odd homes, 253, I believe is the 

right number down in Ruidoso in Lincoln County. There are a 

great many homes lost up near Colorado Springs. 

Wildfires have always been part of life in this region. But this 

year’s fires have been exceptional in their intensity. The work of 

the Nation’s top scientists tells us that some of the conditions contributing to the severity of this year’s fire season, including 

drought, accompanied by above average temperatures, are now 
2 

more commonly—are common because of human induced climate 

change. 

The National Research Council has examined historical wildfire 

data as part of its America’s Climate Choices report. They found 

that quote, ‘‘Over the past 30 years large and long duration forest 

fires in the American West have increased fourfold. The length of 

the fire season has expanded by two and a half months. The size 

of wildfires has increased several fold.’’ The study further attributed the increase of wildfire activity to climate change stating that 

climate change has likely contributed to a significant increase in 

big forest fires in the West. 

They did a separate report, the same National Research Council, 

in 2011 and projected an increase in median annual area burn in 

parts of New Mexico and in the Sierras of over 300 percent for a 

global increase in temperature of just one degree Celsius. That 

level of warming is all but certain to be reached and exceeded in 

coming years. 

The intent of this hearing is to receive testimony that puts these 

recent fires into a greater historical context to unravel the factors 

that contributed to their severity and to understand how climate 

change has and is expected to continue to change the landscape 

and ecosystems of the Intermountain West. 

This hearing will focus primarily on the broad impacts of climate 

change including increased wildfires, widespread damage to ecosystems and the potential for greater drought conditions. 

Of course management practices are also an important consideration. As I indicated that we had a hearing 2 days ago in Colorado 

Springs that focused primarily on that, chaired by Senator Mark 

Udall. The audio from that hearing and the written testimony from 

that hearing are available on the Senate Energy Committee 

website which is at energy.senate.gov. Let me just say for any of 

you that are interested in this, we are live streaming the audio 

from this hearing today on that same website. In the future that 

the audio from today’s website and the testimony from today’s 

hearing and the testimony from today’s hearing will be on the 

website as well. 

Climate change is not just an issue that will affect future generations. The impacts are being felt today in different ways all around 

the country and around the world. Here in New Mexico we’re dealing with increased temperatures, drought and more intense fires, 

but citizens in places like Louisiana and Florida are dealing with 

the impacts of rising sea levels. It’s clear that communities across 

the country are paying very real costs for climate change right now. 

I hope that the discussion today will help to restart a national 

conversation about climate change. Although talk of climate change 

has become highly politicized, it’s critical that we reduce greenhouse gas emissions here and abroad. There’s a good articlein today’s Santa Fe New Mexican—which many of you I’m sure saw— 

talking about how CO2 emissions in the United States have fallen. 

It says coal and energy use are still growing rapidly in other countries, particularly China. 

CO2 levels globally are rising, not falling. Moreover, changes in 

the marketplace and gloom in the economy and falling coal prices, 

a rise in natural gas prices can stall or even reverse the shift which 
3 

has occurred here toward less use of coal and toward more use of 

natural gas which resulted in the main factor, resulting in lower 

greenhouse gas emissions here. 

In the Senate I work to advance policies to reduce greenhouse 

gases about 20 clean energy sources and greater efficiency. Most 

recently I introduced the Clean Energy Standards Act of 2012. 

Kevin Rennert, who is sitting here right beside me and who did the 

preparations for this hearing, is the main author of that legislation. 

He put it together. I very much appreciate his work on that. 

But this Clean Energy Standard Act would transition the way 

that the country generates electricity to a variety of clean, low carbon sources. While election year politics will keep this legislation 

from being enacted in this Congress. I hope it will, the legislation, 

will serve as a foundation for passing legislation perhaps in the 

next Congress. 

Climate change is a tremendously pressing issue that we can’t 

afford to continue ignoring. We need to work to address it. 

We’ve got 5 very distinguished witnesses here today. Let me introduce them briefly. Then we’ll hear from them. That’s the main 

purpose of the hearing is to give them a chance to explain what 

their findings are and what their views are on this issue. 

First is Governor Walter Dasheno, who is a long time friend of 

mine and leader in the Native American community in our state 

and Governor of Santa Clara Pueblo. His Pueblo has been directly 

affected by these fires. He can talk about some of those effects and 

his views as to what needs to be done. 

Dr. Craig Allen, who is a Research Ecologist with the Geological 

Survey, U.S. Geological Survey, in Los Alamos. Thank you for 

being here. 

Dr. Nate McDowell, who is a Staff Scientist with Earth and Environmental Sciences Division at Los Alamos National Laboratory. 

Thank you for being here. 

Dr. Kelly T. Redmond, who is Regional Climatologist and Deputy 

Director of the Western Regional Climate Center in Reno, Nevada. 

Thank you for being here. 

Dr Bill DeBuys, who is a writer and historian currently living in 

Chamisal and has a recent book out on this very serious issue and 

the effects of climate change on the Southwest. 

So we’re very anxious to hear from all of the witnesses. Why 

don’t each of you take whatever time you need to explain your 

point of view? Your entire written testimony will be included in the 

record hearing. But please tell us the main points we need to understand. After everyone has testified then I’ll have a few questions 

to ask. 

Governor, why don’t you start? 

STATEMENT OF HON. WALTER DASHENO, GOVERNOR, SANTA 

CLARA PUEBLO, ESPANOLA, NM 

Mr. DASHENO. Good morning, Senator. I brought with me 5 disks 

so we can decide when we’ll finally finish my new dike. 

The CHAIRMAN. OK. 

Mr. DASHENO. No, I’m just kidding, Senator. 

I, first of all would like to express my appreciation to you, in particular, for the opportunity to present our testimony today. For I’m 
4 

going to illustrate to you basically, to start with this, to show you 

a few photographs that we have taken in Valles Caldera at the 

Santa Clara Canyon. I know right now the Canyon is closed. So it’s 

going to be closed for some time because of the impact in flooding 

that was occurring just in the early part of July. So with that I ask 

Janelle to show the posters. 

The first poster shows the, what used to be the second pond in 

the left hand corner where all of the siltation from the runoff has 

gathered in all of the 4 ponds and 3 other ponds that we have. So 

today, those ponds are no longer functional. They serve as basically 

just a catch pool area, so we’re going to have to go quite deep to 

remove all the siltation. 

The next picture shows our former Governor Michael Chavarria. 

He sat on the boulder that shows that the first flooding that occurred of July of last year. The initial runoff of the flooding was 

at about 5 feet high. The picture to the left, in the bottom corner, 

shows you how much the road has been cut by the flooding that 

has occurred. 

Initially the creek that you see in the bottom shows how deep it 

was. So it’s gone up almost about 20 feet high based on the siltation and the debris that has come down. 

The bottom shows a piece of equipment that was buried in the 

flooding that occurred where 4 persons that were working got 

caught in the flooding. Four of them got caught in the water so 

they had to pull themselves out. Today that shows the illustration 

of the dangers of what flooding could occur. It’s still very dangerous 

and that might be a monument some say sometime down the road. 

The CHAIRMAN. Now this is flooding that occurred as a result 

from the Los Conchas fire? 

Mr. DASHENO. That’s correct, Senator. 

The CHAIRMAN. OK. 

Mr. DASHENO. The next photographs on the next side shows you 

the amount of work that’s occurring, at least, before the flooding 

that happened on July 8th. The initial poster that you saw showed 

it on the east side. This is on the west side so that Thomas Berry 

has built up shows you that it really does amazing damage. 

The top photograph shows you the vehicles that are coming into 

to bring in some of the debris and some of the siltation that has 

occurred across the 4 ponds. So we’re re-laying all of that back into 

the roads again as part of the restoration effort based on the finding that has been provided to us by BAER and by FEMA. 

The top two photographs show you what Santa Clara Canyon 

used to look like. Beautiful area. Pristine. One of the best fishing 

areas in northern New Mexico. Then the drainage that we developed based on what we were going to do. 

The first photograph shows the Four Pond. The second photograph shows the pond as it was draining because we were going 

to reintroduce the Rio Grande Cutthroat back into the area again. 

Today the bottom shows what it looks like today. No longer in the 

water. No longer any vegetation. It’s all been refilled with siltation. 

This is what has occurred because of the Los Conchas fire. The 

trees are all dead at this point. Both sides of the mountain range 

have been destroyed, have been devastated. This is very little vegetation at the culvery were coming down. 
5 

The bottom photograph shows you the restriction which is misleading because although it’s beautiful on the ground on the bottom 

side it is just been devastated. So it’s sad that this is a look at the 

creek. 

Again, this is what the first pond used to look like and then the 

second pond. 

During the course of the fire we had as many as 7 helicopters 

that would come in to pick up water. After one took off another one 

would stand in line. After that they’d come in and drop off the 

water here and there. So that the illustration that shows here is 

no longer there at this point. 

This is some of the damage that has occurred. We’ve gone into 

look at the area. The top left corner shows you some forklifts being 

looked at by some of the people that will be doing some major reforestation and regeneration of some of the area. 

While we’re here I just want to mention that what the gentlemen 

is referring to and showing is that when the water came down at 

that particular location, it was about 6 or 7 feet high when the 

water came down. Before Governor Chavarria illustrated the issue 

by indicating that he was working with the authority of known individuals that were a hot shot team that was from Ohio State. He 

asked them to leave at that point because it was starting to rain. 

What happened was as they were leaving there was 4 deer that 

jumped. As part of that the first deer that came in did a flip and 

they were wondering what happened. Anyway, the individuals 

thought that the person that was driving the vehicle had not 

stopped they would have been crushed by the blow of that truck 

in that area. So that’s what he was showing what could have occurred. 

The next photograph shows Congressman Luja ́n coming in to do 

an assessment of the area that we did with him and yourself and 

Governor Martinez as well, been up there along with Senator Udall 

and have done that. 

The bottom photograph shows you the damage that has occurred. 

What used to be a grange area and the Golden Pond, that’s basically been destroyed. This photograph was taken around May of 

this past year, now that is no longer there. It’s basically been eaten 

up on both sides of and devastated the canyon. 

The Avanyu on the weekend of the Pika market the flooding that 

occurred, we had 2,000 CFS that came down from the photograph 

that happened in the Santa Clara Canyon. Just to illustrate to you, 

although it’s a 2,000 CFS, the bottom picture shows you what the 

impact would be if it was at 20,000 CFS. 

As you might recall, Senator, on the afternoon of August 21 there 

were two scours. One scour that was on Santa Clara Canyonsite 

and the other scour that was on the Bandelier slide area. If that 

collapsed like that had been reversed this is what would have been 

destroyed, Senator. Lives would have been lost. Phones would have 

been lost, but fortunately that didn’t occur. What occurred was 

what happened up on top. 

Although 4 persons were in the area and almost drowned, fortunately no lives were lost. But as a precaution Biscayne has been 

closed and was closed last year by the authorization of the Tribal 
6 

Council so that we no longer—excuse me, are able to get in to do 

that. 

So that what I’m hoping to illustrate by this photographs is that 

the work that’s being done on the bottom will show you at the 

2,000 CFS. If the 20,000 CFS would ever occur this is what the impact is going to be. We’ve done some major work to do some improvement to prevent that from occurring. Today as I speak the 

VOR is putting in some pylons so that we’ll be able to protect the 

home areas on both the west side and the south side of the village. 

This is the effort that went into by the committee and the volunteers last year. We’ve had hundreds of volunteers from Los Alamo, 

from Santa Fe. It’s been NOAA, people that were associated with 

the laboratory, people that were associated with the State of New 

Mexico, the general public and other individuals that assisted in 

making sure that we were able to do the work because of the affected flooding that we’re looking at. So that we had those individuals that did all of the work. 

We don’t know how nature is going to react. So again, the bottom 

photograph just illustrates to you what the impact would be with 

the flooding. The area today could be impacted again, if we were 

to have more flooding. We anticipate, Senator, that that’s going to 

continue to occur at least for the next 5 years. 

These are some of the efforts that are being made, along with 

yourself, Senator, Senator Udall, Congressman Luja ́n and Governor 

Martinez, like you all have had a chance to visit Biscayne, to show 

you, for us to show you, what needs to be done. So we want to 

thank all of you, particularly the New Mexico Congressional delegation. They’re going to do a letter that wants to release the funds 

from FEMA. I understand it takes a little while to get FEMA to 

release funds, but fortunately with your assistance, we were able 

to turn it around a lot quicker. 

However, the issue still remains that the State still has to release some fund extensions. As you know, you probably have read 

the newspapers these last couple of weeks. We received another billion dollars to do some work. Then we received another $5 million. 

But that bill has been held up in the State of New Mexico and we 

can’t do any work. 

So we asked Congressman Luja ́n on his visit a few days ago. If 

we could ask you, again, to have the state, if they could please do 

that to get this project going. 

I’ll show you 2 photographs that we’ve taken. 

One is to build a greenhouse so that we can replant and promulgate our own Douglass fir trees, our pine and other area plants of 

this case that we need to grow because of the acclimation of the 

area it requires that we have to do that. So we’re using that to assist our efforts to do that. 

The bottom portion of the photograph shows you 3 generations. 

There’s actually a grandma standing up but she’s not in the photograph, of 4 generations of people, that are going to start this effort 

to regenerate and reforest the area again. Some of the trees that 

were burned were as old as two and 3 hundred years old. 

So the tree that we plant today is going to take us at least 300 

years to be marketable. The trees that were burned this past year 

have been a total loss. We planted 1.5 million trees from the Cerro 
7 

Grande fire. We’ve logged approximately 50 to 60 percent of those 

trees, just to illustrate to what the impact has been with these photographs. 

I’ll now go to my presentation. 

The CHAIRMAN. OK. 

Mr. DASHENO. Thank you, Senator and Chairman Bingaman for 

this opportunity to testify on the critically important issue of climate change and its impact on our region in general and on the 

Santa Clara Pueblo in particular. My name is Walter Dasheno. I 

am the Governor of Santa Clara Pueblo, as well as the Chairman 

of the Eight Northern Indian Pueblos Council. 

Senator, our Pueblo is involved in a multigenerational effort to 

restore our forest and our watershed after the devastating Los 

Conchas wildfire. Although mercifully no lives were lost and no 

homes in Santa Clara were burned, we still saw our traditional and 

treasured homeland and spiritual sanctuary, the Santa Clara Canyon, practically destroyed. This includes our land of origin, the 

P’opii Khanu and numerous cultural and traditional sites. In addition the loss of the forest was devastating to our wildlife and wildlife habitat, recreational resources and to the purity of our water 

which we use for irrigation and many traditional purposes. 

Because the Santa Clara Canyon has been stripped of its vegetation, the Pueblo is at a tremendous risk of and need has already 

expressed severe flood events. The channel through the Santa 

Clara Pueblo does not have the capacity to carry large post-fire 

flows. Hundreds of residential structures including several public 

structures are at risk from flood and debris flows if no action is 

taken immediately. We live under the daily threat of the destruction of much of the Pueblo and the possible loss of life. 

FEMA has just allocated significant funding to help us restore 

the water control structures in the Canyon and do other important 

work. We continue to work with other Federal agencies such as the 

Bureau of Indian Affairs, Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Forest 

Service, Bureau of Reclamation and other agencies in the complex 

effort to put in place flood mitigation measures and a forest restoration program. We are grateful for the support of these agencies, 

although continued funding is needed to achieve success. As I said, 

it’s not really to be measured based on what we do but what we 

can accomplish in getting off those tasks. 

We are also very grateful to you, Senator Bingaman, for your active support. I would ask that in addition to supported Federal 

agency action that you also support S. 2283, which would allow 

tribal government to directly request a Presidential disaster declaration. This would be in fulfillment of the trust responsibility and 

expedite disaster recovery assistance. 

For the purposes of this hearing there are two key questions. 

First, to what extent did climate change contribute to this disaster? 

Second, to what extent will climate change impact our recovery 

efforts for the next 50 to 100 years? 

In regard to the first question, I believe that climate change was 

a significant factor contributing to the disaster. At the time of the 

fire, it was reported that the living trees in the Canyon had lower 

moisture content than the wood you would typically buy in a lum-
8 

ber yard. This is a result of drought conditions in the Southwest 

that the scientific community continues to associate with climate 

change. 

In addition, higher temperatures in general create more conducive conditions for wildfires. 

Climate change was not the only reason this fire was so devastating. The forest was unhealthy with excessive undergrowth and 

too great a tree density, making conditions ripe for an intense fire 

that will kill the mature trees. As a result of managing the impact 

of climate change we must manage the conditions in our forest. 

As for the second question, based on our preliminary research, 

we are very concerned that continued rapid climate change will 

have a significant and highly adverse effect on our efforts to regenerate the forest and restore the Canyon ecosystem. Warming alone 

could lead to a decline in suitable habitat with indigenous species 

of the Canyon. Moreover, if we continue to experience more frequent and more severe wildfires, we could reach a tipping point at 

which the trees may no longer regenerate. 

The Los Conchas fire re-burned an area where we had planted 

a million trees in an effort to recover from an earlier wildfire. Theoretically, with the change in climate other plants and animal species adapted to the new climate will move in. However, we do not 

know how long that will take nor whether any such species actually exist or what the forest would look like after such species establish itself. The answers to these questions will determine the 

health of the Santa Clara Canyon and because of the Canyon’s central importance to our culture, the health, well being and identity 

of the Santa Clara people. 

Senator, it will take generations of our land to recover from the 

devastation of the Los Conchas fire. Because of climate change it 

is not clear what the future will look like. But this is our only 

homeland. It is a place we have been entrusted with since time immemorial. 

We ask that the Federal Government support the funding necessary to understand the implications of climate change as well as 

to implement the necessary forest management and forest recovery 

fire and restoration. 

Senator, I just want to say that in due course of what is going 

to occur to our people in the next generation to come, we are going 

to be in this long haul. The generations coming after us and those 

that will come after us for several generations to follow, they will 

be the recovery effort until someday in the future someone will say 

those men and women that were there at the time of the fire, made 

the best decision and the right decision. Today we can see our forests. Today we can drink the water. Today we can practice our culture. Today we can fish. Today we can hunt. Today we can see a 

healthy forest and a good, strong ecosystem that will benefit all the 

rest of the region and generations to come. 

So with that, Senator, I thank you very much. God bless you. I 

know that you’re going to be retiring sometime very, very soon in 

the future. With that we wish you well. 

You have done well for all of us. You’ve illustrated being a champion for us, but not too many we can make peace with, thankfully 
9 

the future of New Mexico and we wish you the best. Please live 

healthy, live well and prosper, my friend. Good luck. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Dasheno follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. WALTER DASHENO, GOVERNOR, SANTA CLARA

PUEBLO, ESPANOLA, NM 

INTRODUCTION

Thank you, Chairman Bingaman and members of the Committee, for this opportunity to testify on the critically important issue of climate change and its impact 

on our region in general, and on the Santa Clara Pueblo in particular. My name 

is Walter Dasheno. I am the Governor of the Santa Clara Pueblo, as well as the 

Chairman of the Eight Northern Indian Pueblos Council. 

As you are aware, the Santa Clara Pueblo has embarked on a multi-generational 

effort to restore our forests and our watershed after the devastating Las Conchas 

wildfire. For the purposes of this hearing, there are two key questions. First, to 

what extent did climate change contribute to this disaster? And second, to what extent will climate change impact our recovery efforts over the next 50-100 years? 

With regard to the first question, I believe that climate change was one of several 

significant factors contributing to the disaster. At the time of the fire, it was reported that the living trees in the canyon had lower moisture content than the wood 

you would typically buy at a lumber yard. This is a result of drought conditions in 

the Southwest that the scientific community continues to associate with climate 

change. In addition, higher temperatures in general create more conducive conditions for wildfires. I must note, however, that climate change was not the only reason this fire was so devastating. The forest had become unhealthy, with excessive 

undergrowth and too great a tree density, making conditions ripe for an intense fire 

that would kill the mature trees. As a part of managing the impact of climate 

change, we must manage the conditions in our forests. 

As for the second question, based on our preliminary research, we are very concerned that continued rapid climate change will have a significant and highly adverse effect on our efforts to regenerate the forest and restore the Canyon ecosystem. Warming alone is likely to lead to a decline in suitable habitat for the indigenous tree species of the Canyon. Moreover, if we continue to experience more frequent and more severe wildfires we could reach a tipping point at which the trees 

may no longer regenerate. The Las Conchas Fire reburned an area where we had 

planted a million trees in an effort to recover from an earlier wildfire. Theoretically, 

with the change in climate other plant and animal species adapted to the new climate would move in. 

However, we do not know how long that will take, nor whether any such species 

actually exist, or what the forest would look like after such species establish themselves. The answers to these questions will determine the health of the Santa Clara 

Canyon and, because of the Canyon’s central importance to our culture, the health, 

well-being and identity of the Santa Clara people. 

BACKGROUND ON THE LAS CONCHAS WILDFIRE

In the summer of 2011, the Santa Clara Pueblo was devastated by the Las 

Conchas Fire, at the time the largest wildfire in New Mexico history (although that 

unfortunate record has already been eclipsed by the Whitewater-Baldy Complex 

Fire. Although mercifully no lives were lost and no homes at Santa Clara were 

burned, we still saw our traditional and treasured homeland and spiritual sanctuary, the Santa Clara Canyon, practically destroyed. We estimate that more than 

16,000 acres of our forest lands burned in this fire and, together with the lands that 

we lost in the Oso Complex Fire of 1998 and the Cerro Grande Fire of 2000, 80% 

of our forests and a huge part of our heritage has been destroyed. In addition, the 

fire burned thousands of acres of our traditional lands that are outside our current 

reservation and that continue to hold cultural sites and resources of great importance to us. This area encompasses our lands of origin, the P’opii Khanu—the headwaters of our Santa Clara Creek, and numerous cultural and traditional sites. In 

addition, the loss of the forest is devastating to wildlife and wildlife habitat, recreational resources, and to the purity of our water—which we use for irrigation and 

many traditional purposes. (See attached illustration of fire impact on Santa Clara 

watershed.)* Throughout this tragedy, the Santa Clara people have shown grit and 

determination to persevere and to begin the long road to recovery so that while my 

generation may never see the canyon in its glory again, that will not be said of the 

next generation. 
10 

* Illustrations have been retained in committee files. 

Because the Santa Clara Canyon has been stripped of its vegetation, the Pueblo 

is at tremendous risk of flooding. Over 50% of the Santa Clara Pueblo watershed 

burned during the Las Conchas fire. Because of the high severity of the burn, there 

has been a dramatic reduction in the infiltration rates in the burned area—the soil 

is now what is termed by soil scientists ‘‘hydrophobic.’’ This has resulted in a fourto eight-fold increase in runoff and sediment/debris flow into the Santa Clara Creek, 

posing a severe threat to the lives and safety of the people of Santa Clara Pueblo 

and increasing the potential for widespread property damage. The channel through 

Santa Clara Pueblo no longer has the conveyance capacity necessary to safely pass 

large post-fire flows. Hundreds of residential structures including several public 

structures are at risk from flood and debris flows if no action is taken immediately. 

(See attached illustrations of the potential flood risk zone to Santa Clara for a tenyear event.)* 

A mere 1 inch rain event over 8 hours, or what hydrologist refer to as an average 

monsoon season storm, on August 21, 2011 led to intense flooding and the emergency evacuation of Santa Clara and US Army Corps of Engineer personnel. This 

rain event resulted in a Presidential Disaster Declaration. As the Department of the 

Interior, Interagency Burned Area Emergency Response (‘‘BAER’’) Team noted the 

intense flames from the fire burned trees and vegetation off the steep slopes of the 

canyon and heated the soils causing severe damage to the natural resources of the 

area and placing the downstream tribal members of the Santa Clara Pueblo at risk 

to extreme flooding. The post-fire watershed effects were rife for massive landslides 

and debris flows which occurred on August 21, 2011. The August 21, 2011 event 

produced massive debris (including boulders) and severe mud flows to the canyon 

bottom. The Canyon reservoirs were overwhelmed (over topped) by this average 

rainfall event following the fire and are now full of sediment. Flood protection emergency measures put in place after the Las Conchas fire were inches away from being 

compromised. It is important to note that this storm was an isolated thunderstorm 

over a small portion of the Santa Clara watershed (one drainage) and not over the 

entire watershed (what hydrologist refers to as a general storm). Another similar 

event occurred this past July, destroying much of the recovery work we had undertaken over the prior year. If the rain event of August 21, 2011 had occurred over 

the entire post fire Santa Clara Pueblo watershed, the Santa Clara Pueblo itself 

would have been devastated. 

I live in fear of the destruction of my Pueblo and the possibility of loss of life. 

This has motivated my efforts, and that of the whole Santa Clara government, to 

secure the funding needed to put in place adequate flood control measures. In just 

the last few weeks, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has allocated very significant funding to help us restore the water control structures in the 

Canyon and do other important work. We continue to work with other Federal agencies, such as the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Forest 

Service, Natural Resources Conservation Service and others in the complex effort 

to put in place flood mitigation measures and a forest restoration program. We have 

been very grateful for the support of these agencies, although continued funding is 

needed to achieve success. 

However, we are only at the beginning of the flood mitigation and forest recovery 

effort. The fire has raised numerous, interrelated, short and long-term concerns for 

Santa Clara and other surrounding communities, almost all of which are further 

complicated by climate change. First, during the summer monsoon season, we have 

faced every afternoon the threat of a thunderstorm that would send torrents of 

water and debris down the Santa Clara Canyon and Creek, creating a huge risk of 

dam failure and catastrophic flooding for our homes, public buildings and irrigation 

system. Second, we must address the environmental impacts of this fire. This includes the physical health impacts from the huge quantities of smoke, as well as 

the devastating emotional impact to our community of such a great loss. It also includes water quality impacts as tons of ash, debris and other materials flow into 

the Santa Clara Creek affecting fisheries, wildlife consumption, agriculture and cultural uses, and safety issues within our Santa Clara Canyon due to the destabilized 

landscape resulting in falling boulders and dead and down trees. This runoff flows 

into the Rio Grande, affecting water quality for communities like Santa Fe that are 

downstream or that use the Rio Grande. Third, we are still assessing how to recover 

from the loss of an unprecedented amount of cultural resources and sites, from damage to sacred places, to the loss of animal and plant species that have been integral 

to Santa Clara cultural and spiritual practices for generations. Fourth, Santa Clara 

has suffered extended financial impact, including not only the direct efforts to address the fire, but also from the temporary closure of Puye Cliff Dwellings, the re-
11 

duction in arts and crafts sales, and the decline in tourists and visitors to our hotel. 

Fifth, we still need fire suppression resources to protect the remaining 20% of our 

forests. Finally, we must address the long term restoration of the forests. This is 

a project that we anticipate will take many decades, but one to which we have already set our minds. 

THE EFFECT OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON FOREST REGENERATION AND RECOVERY

We are still struggling with the post-fire consequences of the Las Conchas wildfire 

and have only just begun the infinitely more complex process of addressing the regeneration of the forest in the Canyon. However, we have looked at research into 

the effect of climate change on forest regeneration, including a study of the Greater 

Yellowstone Ecosystem undertaken by academics at the University of California— 

Merced (see http://www.ucmerced.edu/news/study-climate-change-increase-yellowstone-wildfires-dramatically). 

The predictions of that study look a lot like both our immediate past and our likely future. For example, it predicted that the expected rising temperatures caused 

by climate change could increase the frequency of large wildfires in Yellowstone to 

an unprecedented level. While not quite on an annual basis, we have experienced 

the harmful effects of four major wildfires in the last 15 years, none of which were 

started on the Pueblo. While fire can be a natural and important part of the maintenance of a healthy forest system, fires of this intensity and frequency are very 

harmful. We still have sacred lands, just off our reservation which have not burned, 

but remain under threat. 

These fires will likely create a major shift in the nature of the Santa Clara Canyon’s ecosystem. We are not exactly sure what that shift might look like. In the 

study of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, the authors predicted ‘‘fewer dense forests and more open woodland, grass and shrub vegetation, with forests becoming 

younger, the mix of tree species changing and some forests failing to regenerate 

after repeated fires. This would affect the region’s wildlife, hydrology, carbon storage 

and aesthetics.’’ 

Of course, as the fires create a fundamental change in the Canyon’s ecosystem, 

the affect of climate change and the nature of future fires will be changed, making 

both predictions and natural resource management even more difficult. 

There is a risk that warming alone is likely to lead to a decline in suitable habitat 

for the indigenous tree species of the Canyon and the projected increase in frequency and severity of wildfires could accelerate that process to a tipping point at 

which the trees may no longer regenerate. Theoretically, with the change in climate 

other species adapted to the new climate would move in. However, we do not know 

how long that will take, nor whether any such species actually exist, or what the 

forest would look like after such hypothetical species establish themselves. In the 

end, there is great uncertainty regarding how the Canyon’s ecosystem will be transformed. Predictions depend on which climate model is chosen, for example, and how 

accurate that model ultimately proves to be. 

MITIGATING THE RISK OF CATASTROPHIC WILDFIRES

Santa Clara has a large forestry department, numbering some 40 personnel. This 

department is widely regarded as outstanding. Santa Clara fire crews and equipment were assigned and on the front lines fighting the Las Conchas Fire. We have 

a dedicated commitment to the maintenance and restoration of healthy forests on, 

around and adjacent to the Pueblo. In the management of our own resources, we 

have worked to ensure against the threat of forest fire. And yet, in the last decade 

we have faced four forest fires that have threatened our forests—the Oso, Cerro 

Grande, South Fork and Las Conchas fires—and none of them originated on our 

lands. Although fate and climate change play their part, we have suffered horrible 

consequences largely due to the failure of others to properly guard in some fashion 

against causing a fire. 

For the last several years, Santa Clara has been actively working with the U.S. 

Forest Service, the BIA and others in an effort to establish a forest management 

plan and program that would have prevented this catastrophe. This effort has involved numerous meetings in New Mexico and several trips to Washington. In particular, Santa Clara was working on establishing a partnership under the Tribal 

Forest Protection Act with the Forest Service to begin a long-term project to address 

the health of the Forest Service lands around the Pueblo. We were also seeking to 

assure that if the Valles Caldera, which is adjacent to the reservation, was transferred to the National Park Service, that any agreements we had reached would be 

honored in the transfer and new agreements could be put in place with the new administrators. 
12 

We know that these efforts would have eventually succeeded given enough time, 

but we ran out of time. We saw in the Las Conchas Fire that where the Santa Clara 

had completed work on fuel breaks the fires was stopped. In an area where the 

Santa Clara Pueblo has had 80% of its forested land base burn since the Cerro 

Grande fire, every sliver of green timber makes a difference to stabilizing soil. Nonetheless, in the ten years since the Cerro Grande fire, Santa Clara has planted nearly 1.5 million trees, most of which were burned in the Las Conchas fire, destroying 

the Pueblo’s great labor of restoration of the past decade. Despite our full awareness 

of the threat, and our efforts to enter into partnerships and seek funding to address 

the threat, we ran out of time. Nevertheless, we still hope these partnerships will 

enable Santa Clara to play a significant role in the restoration and rehabilitation 

of the Forest Service lands around our current reservation. We also look to put together a forest management law that will protect our forests and which we think 

should influence the management of the forests around us, which have posed such 

a threat to our lands. 

PROVIDING FOR TRIBES TO SEEK A FEDERAL DISASTER DECLARATION

Because only a state governor can set the process into motion for a Federal disaster declaration, we would ask this Committee to address why tribal governments, 

who have a direct government-to-government relationship with the United States, 

must go through state governors to request Federal disaster relief. Such relief clearly falls within the Federal trust obligation and has the potential to expedite disaster 

recovery assistance. We would therefore urge this Committee to support legislation 

that allows a tribe to directly request this relief when it is needed. In particular, 

I would draw your attention to S. 2283, which would provide this authority. 

FEDERAL RESOURCES FOR BOTH SHORT-AND LONG-TERM PLANNING AND RECOVERY

EFFORTS

The health of our community, and that of many other communities from the InterMountain West, will turn on developing a greater understanding of the affect of climate change, as well as ways to both mitigate its consequences and engage in effective restoration where those consequences, such as the Las Conchas Wildfire, have 

already occurred with devastating effects. 

CONCLUSION

Never again in our lifetime will we see our traditional and treasured homeland 

and spiritual sanctuary, the Santa Clara Canyon, as we have known it. It will take 

generations for our community and lands to recover from the devastation of this fire 

and, because of climate change, it is not clear what that future will look like. But 

this is our only homeland; it is the place we have been entrusted with since time 

immemorial. While we intend to devote the resources we can to the healing of our 

land and the protection of our community we do not have the resources to do it 

alone. We turn in this hour of need to our Federal trustee and ask for your sustained assistance in addressing this calamity and assuring the remediation of our 

sacred homeland with a long-term perspective on how this can be done during a period of what now appears to be almost inevitable rapid climate change. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Governor. We all express 

our sadness about all the damage that’s been done there in Santa 

Clara Pueblo. Again, you were very generous in giving me a tour 

of it last year which I appreciated. 

We’ll continue to work to try to have the Federal Government be 

responsive to the problem. 

Dr. Allen, why don’t you go right ahead and give us your views 

on the whole set of issues that we’re talking about this morning. 

STATEMENT OF CRAIG D. ALLEN, U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY, 

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR 

Mr. ALLEN. Thank you. 

Thank you and good morning, Chairman Bingaman. 

I’m pleased to be here today to discuss an important set of issues 

facing the Intermountain West, the emerging impacts of climate 

change on drought, forest stress, wildfire and ecosystem change. 
13 

My name is Craig Allen. I am a Research Ecologist with the Fort 

Collins Science Center of the U.S. Geological Survey. I’m also the 

Station Leader of the Jemez Mountains Field Station based at Bandolier National Monument here in Northern New Mexico where 

I’ve been doing field work since 1982. 

My research is focused on the ecology and environmental history 

of the Southwestern United States working with many colleagues 

on intensive local studies that also address regional and global 

level issues. My testimony today presents information from a variety of sources in the scientific literature with details as provided 

in the written testimony. My focus will be on the Southwest, particularly including observations from my home landscape in the 

Jemez Mountains, just left of here on the other side of the Rio 

Grande. 

I hope to leave you with two main messages. 

First, there’s a high level of scientific confidence that, as a result 

of drought impacts, coupled with warmer temperatures, forests in 

the Southwest are at an increasing risk of severe wildfire and tree 

mortality. 

Second, currently observed trends are indicative of the early 

stages of ecosystem re-organization in response to climate stress 

and land management practices. 

The Southwest U.S. is one of the best places in the world to determine the close linkages between climate, vegetation and fire 

using multiple lines of strong evidence that extend back thousands 

of years. Historic observation of charcoal records and tree ring 

studies and fire scars all show that climate has long synchronized 

by our activity across the Southwest with more fire in dry, warm 

years and dry, warm temperatures. Prior to the 1900s frequent, 

low severity surface fires dominated in the Ponderosa pine and 

drier mixed conifer which are so extensive in the Southwest. High 

severity crown fires also occurred historically in smaller portions of 

the Southwest, notably in high elevations in the spruce fir forest. 

More recently Southwest forest and fire patterns also have responded to changes in human behaviors. Active fire suppression 

over the past century has caused formally open forests across the 

Southwest to become relatively dense for fuel structures that now 

have the support of widely spreading, relatively explosive forest 

fires. 

In Figure 1, the first figure up here, I’ll be referring to now. With 

the onset of drier and warmer conditions since 1990 the Southwest 

has seen major increases in forest disturbances. For example, between 1984 and 2008, 18 percent of the forests in this region were 

affected by significant tree mortality from combinations of drought 

stress, bark beetles, which are shown in the orangish pattern and 

from wildfire, which are the red areas. This does not take into account the record wildfires which has affected the Southwest in 

2011 and 2012. These are from data from 2000. 

The scale of these forest disturbances certainly is unprecedented 

in the Southwest since the start of record keeping began around 

1900. 

Increasingly extensive, high severity fires and drought induced 

tree mortality also have emerged elsewhere across the West and in 

many other parts of the world. 
14 

May I have the second slide, please? 

For example, the first global imaging of drought and key induced 

tree mortality, recently documented many examples of forest die off 

in all major forest types worldwide from tropical rainforests in the 

Amazon to the spruce forests in Canada and the all forest types in 

between. 

Also, experimental results clearly show that tree mortality is 

sensitive to warmer temperatures. 

Dr. Park Williams, a colleague at Los Alamos National Laboratory, is leading new research that actually was accepted just today. 

He just got the news this morning that this article, that this research, the first article, has been accepted into the Journal of Inter 

Climate Change. Demonstrating that warming temperatures could 

drive more stress in the Southwest to unprecedented levels by the 

2040s which likely would render large areas of current forest climatically unsuitable for the present dominant tree species. 

Could you go to the third figure, please? 

In addition, studying these recent observations document the 

risks of post fire conversions from forest to non-forest ecosystems 

in the Southwest. These conversions can be caused by large, high 

severity fire patches where essentially all 3 seed sources are killed 

across thousands of acres. This can allow in some cases, shrubs to 

achieve dominance before trees can re-establish. 

The photograph you’re looking at here is taken from the south 

end of the day one run of the Los Conchas fire last summer. 

There’s not—there’s essentially not a live tree in the entire field of 

view. The level of EPIN, I’ve seen a lot of fires, but I’ve never seen 

anything quite like that part of the world of this afterwards. In fact 

we don’t know what will come next in these giant sites. 

We can go to the last slide. 

The CHAIRMAN. Let me just ask. This was taken at the time of 

the fire a year ago. Can you tell anything, so far, as to whether or 

not trees are going to come back? 

Mr. ALLEN. I was out there a week ago, Senator. I could have— 

if we had had more opportunity for photographs actually, I could 

have taken a repeat photo. That tree has toppled actually, the dead 

tree there. I could have shown you a repeat. 

There is still essentially almost nothing. There may be one or 2 

percent vegetation covering on that side. The only thing that’s coming back so far, substantively, are a few grassy plants and some 

of the shrubs that are starting to re-sprout. 

But in terms of tree seed sources the issue is that these trees require seed trees to survive. There are none close to this location so 

it will be a while, which is actually the point then of this next picture. Thank you. 

Which does show two photographs of a site, oh about 8 miles 

from the first site which was also burned in the Los Conchas fire. 

It was actually burned in two fires, the first fire in 1996, the Dome 

fire and about a third of the area. It had been a dense pine forest 

prior to the Dome fire in 1996. About 30 percent of that area had 

come back as dense shrub covering. 

This is a photograph taken just a week after the Los Conchas 

fire, the top photograph, a week after the Los Conchas fire came 

through. The shrubs have been burned down to the ground. You 
15 

can’t even tell they were there. They cooked the Ponderosa Pine 

trees that had survived the first fire. So all of those trees you can 

see there are dead. 

The photograph below taken from the same location just a couple 

of weeks ago, so 1 year post fire, shows all that green are the 

shrubs re-sprouting. You can see what we essentially have is a 

shrub field now. The shrubs go as far as we can see. The trees, including the seed sources for the future have been eliminated almost 

entirely from an area of many thousands of acres there by this 

combination of the two fires. 

All of these recent trends are evidence that we may already be 

reaching tipping points of forest ecosystem change, changes which 

are new to the historical era. Despite these recent trends and 

emerging risks there are a variety of forest management approaches available to buy time for our forests. For example through 

combinations of mechanical tree harvesting and managed fire 

treatments to reduce forest stand densities and hazardous fuel 

loadings. It also reduces the amount of water stress among the 

trees if there’s fewer trees competing for our increasing limited 

water. 

In summary, forests as we know them today in the Southwest 

are at risk from amplified tree mortality and high-severity fire due 

to increasing drought and heat stress. The recent increases in regional forest drought stress, the greater extent and severity of forest disturbances and the lack of post-disturbance tree regeneration 

on some sites, all suggest that if modeled climate projections of a 

warmer and drier Southwest come to pass we can expect to see regional forest ecosystems change beyond the observed patterns of 

the last few centuries. Nonetheless, forest management practices 

can improve forest resistance and resilience to climate stressors 

and associated disturbances. 

Thank you again for the opportunity—— 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Mr. ALLEN. To testify here today. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Allen follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF CRAIG D. ALLEN, U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY, DEPARTMENT

OF THE INTERIOR

Good morning Chairman Bingaman. I am pleased to be here today to discuss an 

important set of issues facing the intermountain West—the emerging impacts of climate change on drought, forest stress, wildfire, and ecosystem change. 

My name is Dr. Craig D. Allen. I am a research ecologist with the Fort Collins 

Science Center of the U.S. Geological Survey. I am also the Station Leader of the 

Jemez Mountains Field Station based at Bandelier National Monument here in 

northern New Mexico, where I have conducted ecological fieldwork continuously 

since 1982. My research largely has focused on the ecology and environmental history of Southwestern landscapes, working with networks of colleagues on intensive 

local landscape studies that scale up to address regional and global-level issues. My 

testimony today will present information from a variety of sources in the scientific 

literature, with a focus on the Southwest, and particularly including observations 

from my home landscape of the Jemez Mountains. 

The messages I hope to leave with you are these: There is a high level of scientific 

confidence that, as a result of drought impacts coupled with warmer temperatures, 

forests in the Southwest are at increasing risk of severe wildfire and tree mortality. 

Currently observed trends are indicative of early-stage ecosystem reorganization in 

response to climate stress and land management practices. 

Recent climate trends of warming and drying conditions have corresponded to 

major increases in the extent and severity of forest die-off in the Southwest. The 
16 

* Figures 1–4 have been retained in committee files. 

close linkages among patterns of climate, tree growth and mortality, and fire are 

particularly well-documented in the scientific literature for this region, using multiple lines of strong evidence that extend back many thousands of years. This evidence includes information unlocked from the tree-rings of ancient wood that 

records past patterns of precipitation, temperature, stream flow, tree growth, and 

fire; plant pollen, other plant remains, and charcoal deposited in layers of sediment 

at the bottoms of lakes and bogs; and plant macrofossils and pollen preserved in 

the middens, or waste heaps, of ancient packrat nests. 

Given that substantially warmer temperatures and greater drought stress are 

projected for the Southwest in coming years (Seager and Vecchi 2010; Gutzler and 

Robbins 2010), we should expect even greater increases in mortality of droughtstressed trees, high severity fire (Williams et al. 2010), and ultimately conversion 

of current forests into different ecosystems, ranging from grasslands and shrublands 

to new forests dominated by different tree species (Williams and Jackson 2007; 

Jackson et al. 2009). Increasingly frequent and severe droughts and fires favor plant 

life-forms that can survive above-ground stem dieback and fire damage by resprouting from below-ground tissues. Many grass and shrub species can do this. 

After high severity fires, successful regeneration of the main tree species in the 

Southwest primarily depends upon the local survival of enough mother trees to 

serve as seed sources. 

There are several studies and recent observations that document the risks of postfire type conversions from forest to non-forest ecosystems (Barton 2002, Savage and 

Mast 2005; Goforth and Minnich 2008). These conversions can be caused by the ever 

larger, high-severity fire patches where essentially all tree seed sources are killed 

across tens of thousands of acres, as observed in some recent fires (Fig. 1).* This 

greatly limits the rate of recolonization by some of the most common tree species 

such as pin ̃ on pine, ponderosa pine, and Douglas-fir, allowing dense grasslands or 

shrublands of resprouting species to achieve dominance before trees can re-establish. It is also beginning to be observed that once large areas of resprouting shrubs, 

like Gambel oak, become mixed in and around surviving post-fire conifer tree populations, a hot reburn through the shrubs can then kill nearly all of those adult survivors. Tree seed sources are thereby eliminated in sequential fashion (Fig. 2). The 

growing extent and severity of recent forest disturbances in this region, and the lack 

of tree regeneration on some sites after disturbances, are evidence that we already 

may be reaching tipping points of forest ecosystem change, changes which are new 

to the historical era. 

Similar patterns of recent climate-amplified tree mortality and fire activity also 

are occurring more broadly in western North America, as well as in many other portions of the world. For example, a group of 20 co-authors from around the world 

recently conducted the first global overview of drought and heat-induced tree mortality (Allen et al. 2010), which documented many examples of extensive forest dieoff in all major forest types worldwide, from tropical rainforests in the Amazon to 

African savannas and Mediterranean pine forests to boreal forests in Canada and 

Alaska (Fig. 3). But while we observe that all major forest types worldwide are vulnerable to high levels of tree mortality during periods of drought and heat stress, 

we cannot yet determine if forest die-off is increasing overall at a global scale due 

to the absence of long-term baseline information on global forest health conditions, 

and the continued absence of a globally coordinated observation system (Allen et al. 

2010). A recent experiment on pin ̃ on pine, however, showed unequivocally and 

unsurprisingly that when warmer temperatures accompany drought, trees die much 

faster (Adams et al. 2009). This is to say, there is not only observational evidence 

that tree mortality is on the rise, but also experimental results showing that mortality is temperature sensitive. As climate continues to warm we can expect more 

tree die-off events like those we have recently observed. Changes in climate and 

human land uses also are driving increasingly severe fire activity in many regions 

around the world (Bowman et al. 2009 & 2011, Pechony and Schindell 2010, O’connor et al. 2011). 

Every plant species has a particular range of climatic conditions in which it can 

grow, so as local climates, and associated disturbances like fire and beetle outbreaks, shift beyond the tolerance limits of the currently dominant species, today’s 

dominant plants will die, thereby opening space for new species that can tolerate 

the altered climate conditions. There is, however, a major gap in scientific information about precisely how much drought and heat stress various tree species can tolerate before dying. In other words, scientists do not yet know how to ‘‘kill’’ trees in 

models with the accuracy necessary to project how much change in climate conditions they can tolerate before widespread mortality occurs (McDowell et al. 2008 & 
17 

2011, Allen et al. 2010). Our understanding of climate change risks to forests in this 

region is enhanced by cutting-edge experimental research on the physiological effects of drought and heat stress on trees which is being conducted locally by Dr. 

Nate McDowell of Los Alamos National Laboratory. Dr. Park Williams, another colleague also at Los Alamos National Laboratory, is leading new research that demonstrates the risks that warming temperatures could drive forest drought stress in 

the Southwest to unprecedented levels by the 2040’s, which likely would render 

large areas of current forest climatically unsuitable for their present dominant tree 

species. Park’s work also shows strong correlations between forest drought stress 

and area affected annually by high-severity fires and bark beetle infestations in this 

region, consistent with known climate-disturbance linkages in western North America (Westerling et al. 2006, Raffa et al. 2008, Littell et al. 2009, Bentz et al. 2010, 

Hicke et al. 2012). 

Given projections of substantial further warming and increased drought stress for 

the Southwest in the coming decades (e.g., Seager and Vechhi 2010), the recent 

ramp-up in the extent and severity of climate-related forest disturbances (Breshears 

et al. 2005, Westerling et al. 2006, Raffa et al. 2008, Allen et al. 2010, Williams et 

al. 2010) may indicate that forests in this region are now approaching tipping points 

such that we are beginning to see substantial reorganization of ecosystem patterns 

and processes into new configurations (Williams and Jackson 2007, U.S. Climate 

Change Science Program 2009, Jackson et al. 2009, Barnosky et al. 2012). 

If the climate projections of rapid warming for the Southwest are correct, then by 

the middle of the twenty-first century our Southwestern forests as we know them 

today will experience significant vegetation mortality and can be expected to reorganize with new dominant species (Littell et al. 2009, Bentz et al. 2010, Williams et 

al. 2010). 

LONG-TERM PERSPECTIVE

The Southwest United States has an abundance of paleo-ecological records that 

make this one of the best places in the world to determine past patterns of climate, 

vegetation, and fire, using multiple lines of evidence. For example, scientists here 

in New Mexico have used information locked in the tree-rings of ancient wood to 

precisely reconstruct past patterns of precipitation, temperature, stream flow, 

drought stress, and tree growth and death going back as much as 2000 years 

(Swetnam et al. 1999 & 2011, Swetnam and Betancourt 1998, Allen et al. 1998 & 

2008, Brown and Wu 2005, Fule et al. 2012, Falk et al. 2011, Margolis et al. 2011, 

Roos and Swetnam 2012, Touchan et al. 2010, Woodhouse et al. 2010). Even older 

evidence can go back many thousands of years in the form of plant pollen, other 

plant remains, and charcoal deposited in layers of sediment at the bottoms of lakes 

and bogs (e.g., Weng and Jackson 1999, Anderson et al. 2008a). These sediment 

records reveal how today’s high mountain tree species like spruce and fir were growing at much lower elevations during the colder climate of the last ice age, before 

moving upslope as the world’s climate moved into the current warmer interglacial 

period about 11,000 years ago (Anderson et al. 2008a,b). Similarly, plant 

macrofossils preserved in the middens of ancient packrat nests directly show how 

much, and how fast, the ranges of plant species have expanded and contracted geographically, moving north and south, and locally upslope and downslope, in response 

to climate variations (Betancourt et al. 1990). These pollen and macrofossil records 

also show that past vegetation communities often consisted of combinations of plant 

species unknown today (Betancourt et al. 1990, Weng and Jackson 1999, Anderson 

et al. 2008a). For example, midden and pollen evidence of ponderosa pine is almost 

non-existent in the Southwest during the last ice age, but with the early post-glacial 

warming and the associated development of our summer monsoon climate after 

about 10,000 years ago this pine expanded across the region to eventually become 

a dominant forest species (Betancourt et al. 1990, Allen et al. 1998, Weng and Jackson 1999). 

During this same time period, the abundance of charcoal deposited in lakes and 

bogs increased markedly across the region (Anderson et al. 2008a,b, Allen et al. 

2008), reflecting increased frequency and extent of fire activity on Southwestern 

landscapes, which likely also favored the expansion of fire-dependant species, like 

ponderosa pine (Weng and Jackson 1999). Charcoal records over the past 1,000 

years in the West and Southwest generally show the modulating effects of climate 

on fire activity, with modest increases in charcoal concentrations during the Medieval Warm Period, and also some significant decline during the Little Ice Age. Both 

charcoal and tree-ring fire scar records from ancient giant sequoia groves in the Sierra Nevada of California (Swetnam et al. 2009) and from across the West (Marlon 

et al. 2009 & 2012, Power et al. 2012) show similar patterns. Overall, the world’s 
18 

greatest concentration of tree-ring studies of tens of thousands of precisely dated 

fire scars from hundreds of forest sites across the Southwest reconstruct high-resolution spatial and temporal patterns of fire extending back about 500 years, showing 

high levels of frequent and widespread fire activity that were closely tied to climate 

patterns (Swetnam et al 1999 & 2011, Falk et al. 2011). 

These pre-1900 fire-climate relationships are consistent with those that we see 

today (Swetnam and Betancourt 1998, Swetnam et al. 1999), with much higher levels of fire activity in warm dry years. For about two-thirds of the fire scars we can 

even date the season that the fire scar formed, allowing us to demonstrate that most 

pre-1900 fire spread occurred in the dry spring and early summer period, just as 

today, before the July onset of summer rains. Tree-ring reconstructions demonstrate 

that frequent, low-severity surface fires dominated the pre-1900 fire activity in the 

widespread ponderosa pine and drier mixed-conifer forests that predominate in 

much of the Southwest (Swetnam et al. 2009). Climate synchronized fire activity 

across the region, with large portions of most Southwestern mountain ranges burning in some extreme fire years (1748, for example, is the biggest fire year known 

in the Southwest [Swetnam et al. 1999]). 

It is important to note that there is a great diversity of forest and fire patterns 

across the Southwest. For example, high-severity stand-replacing fires also occurred 

in the less extensive wetter mixed-conifer and high-elevation spruce-fir forests in 

the region (e.g., Margolis et al. 2011), although not as much research has been done 

on such fire regimes in the Southwest. Tree-ring studies also show that major climate relationships with tree establishment, growth, and death have been rather 

consistent for the past 1,000 and more years. That is to say, forest trees in the 

Southwest grow better and reproduce in pulses during wetter periods, whereas during periods of extended warm drought trees experience high levels of drought stress 

and mortality (Swetnam and Betancourt 1998, Allen and Breshears 1998, Swetnam 

et al. 1999, Brown and Wu 2005, Falk et al. 2011). Finally, the charcoal sediment 

records show relatively high levels of fire activity in the Southwest for most of the 

past 9,000 years. Charcoal sediment records for the last century, however, show an 

anomalous deficit of fire activity across both the Southwest (Anderson et al. 2008a, 

Allen et al. 2008) and West as a whole (Marlon et al. 2012, Power et al. 2012). Similarly, the abundant tree-ring reconstructions of Southwest fire histories clearly demonstrate that previously frequent and widespread surface fire activity ceased across 

the region between 1880 and 1900. This reduced fire activity occurred because of 

man-made rather than climatic reasons. 

LAND MANAGEMENT PRACTICES

Over approximately the past 150 years regional forest landscapes and fire regimes 

have responded both to changes in human land use and land management and to 

patterns of climate variability. The prehistoric pattern of widespread, high-frequency surface fire regimes across the Southwest initially collapsed in the late 

1800’s, because with the entry of railroads to this region there was a buildup of 

herds of domestic livestock that interrupted the former continuity of the grassy surface fuels by widespread overgrazing, trampling, and trailing (Swetnam et al. 1999). 

The suppression of surface fires by overgrazing then morphed into active fire suppression and exclusion efforts by land management agencies in the early 1900’s, 

which has continued with ever-increasing effort and expenditure to the present 

(Pyne 1982). 

With the circa-1900 change in surface fire regimes in many Southwestern forests, 

the multitude of young trees that established were thinned out by frequent surface 

fires which had favored relatively open, grassy forest conditions. As a result, woody 

plant establishment exploded into the 1900s, particularly during several favorable 

wet climate windows for tree regeneration and growth. Twentieth century fire suppression resulted in a general pattern of forest and woodland expansion into grasslands and meadows, along with increases in the densities of many (although not all) 

Southwestern forests and woodlands. For example, in some common forest types, 

like various types of ponderosa pine and dry mixed-conifer forest, tree densities commonly increased ten-fold or more, often from less than 100 trees per acre to over 

1,000 trees per acre. 

In the absence of frequent surface fires, such increases in forest density also were 

accompanied by huge increases in surface fuel loads and the widespread development of understory thickets of small, suppressed trees. These ‘‘ladder fuels,’’ as they 

are known, allow surface fires to easily spread upward into tree canopies. Thus with 

active fire suppression over the past century the former fire-maintained mosaic of 

open forests across diverse Southwest landscapes became a uniform blanket of dense 

forests with fuel structures that could support the initiation and spread of explosive 
19 

high-severity canopy fires. Generally wet conditions in the Southwest from 1978 

through 1995 fostered rapid tree growth and further forest ‘‘woodification,’’ but the 

wet conditions also helped keep wildfires in check. Thus by the mid-1990s many 

southwestern forests likely were near their maximum possible densities and levels 

of biomass accumulation at both landscape and stand scales. 

The last 20 years have seen more severe fires and drought-induced tree mortality, 

with associated bark beetle outbreaks, in Southwestern forests and woodlands, with 

18% of Southwestern forests affected by significant tree mortality from combinations 

of drought stress, bark beetles, and high-severity wildfire between 1984 and 2008 

(Fig.4, Williams et al. 2010). (And this does not take into account the record wildfire 

years in 2011 and 2012.) The scale of these forest disturbances certainly is unprecedented in this region since historic record keeping began around 1900, almost certainly is unprecedented since the megadrought of late 1500’s (Swetnam and Betancourt 1998), and in the case of high severity fire patches in southwestern ponderosa 

pine forests quite possibly is unprecedented since before modern climate, vegetation, 

and fire regime patterns established 6,000 years ago. Similar patterns of increasingly extensive high-severity fires and drought-induced tree mortality also have 

emerged elsewhere across the intermountain West (Westerling et al. 2006, Raffa et 

al. 2008). 

Despite these recent disturbance trends and emerging risks for forests in the 

Southwest, there are a variety of forest management approaches available to buy 

time for our forests through increasing their resistance and resilience to growing climate stress to restore and maintain historically sustainable patterns of forest structural conditions, species compositions, landscape-scale patterns of fire hazard, and 

ecological processes (Sisk et al. 2006, Fule ́ 2008, Finney et al. 2005 & 2007, Ager 

et al. 2010, Stephens et al. 2012). For example, by using combinations of mechanical 

tree harvesting and managed fire treatments to reduce forest stand densities and 

hazardous fuel loadings, foresters can reduce excessive between-tree competition for 

water and other resources, thereby concurrently reducing overall forest drought 

stress and risk of high-severity fires, and at the same time restore historical forest 

ecological conditions that we know were sustainable for at least many centuries 

prior to 1900 (Swetnam et al. 1999, Allen et al. 2002, Fule ́ 2008, Stephens et al. 

2012). 

In summary, forests as we know them today in the Southwest are at risk from 

amplified tree mortality and high-severity fire due to increasing drought and heat 

stress. The recent increases in regional forest drought stress, the greater extent and 

severity of forest disturbance, and the lack of post-disturbance tree regeneration on 

some sites all suggest that if modeled climate projections of a warmer and drier 

Southwest come to pass we can expect to see regional forest ecosystems change beyond the observed patterns of the last few centuries. Nevertheless, forest management practices can improve forest resistance and resilience to climate stressors and 

associated disturbances. 

Thank you again for the opportunity to testify here today. I would be happy to 

answer any questions you may have. 

The CHAIRMAN. No, thank you very much for your testimony. I 

appreciate it very much. 

Next is Dr. Nate McDowell with Los Alamos National Laboratory. Thank you for being here. 

STATEMENT OF NATHAN MCDOWELL, STAFF SCIENTIST AND 

DIRECTOR, LOS ALAMOS ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH 

PARK, LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY, LOS ALAMOS, 

NM 

Mr. MCDOWELL. Thank you, Chairman Bingaman. 

You can put the first slide up if you wish. 

I’m honored to speak to you today regarding current and future 

impacts of climate change on the Intermountain West. I am Nate 

McDowell, staff scientist at the Earth and Environmental Sciences 

Division at Los Alamos National Laboratory. My team at Los Alamos is the global leader in the study of how vegetation dies in relation to drought. We also have a strong research focus on how vegetation mortality feeds back to influence the earth’s climate. 
20 

Our research is aided by the massive amounts of mortality our 

local forests have experienced in the last decades. In other words 

we live in dead forests. That photo, for example, is near where we 

live in Los Alamos. 

I will focus the majority of my testimony on forest mortality associated with drought and insects. I will leave the discussion of fire 

to Dr. Craig Allen and the other invited speakers. Although, I’d be 

happy to comment on that later. 

Insect mediating mortality during and after drought kills approximately twice as many trees as fire does in the Intermountain 

West. 

Put the next slide up, please. 

The CHAIRMAN. Could you make that statement again? 

Mr. MCDOWELL. Based on two studies, insect mediating mortality during or after drought kills approximately twice as much 

surface area as fire. 

The CHAIRMAN. OK. 

Mr. MCDOWELL. In the Intermountain West. 

As Dr. Allen highlighted there is strong scientific evidence for 

rising rates of vegetation mortality during and after drought. Mortality is accelerating and will almost certainly continue to accelerate in the upcoming decades. The negative effect of atmospheric 

warming appears to outweigh the benefits of higher atmospheric 

CO2. 

We are now experiencing what is commonly labeled a climate 

change type drought. Warmer temperatures raise evaporative demand, or how dry the air is, driving greater movement of water 

through forests to the atmosphere. Thus for every inch of precipitation a larger fraction of that water is extracted by the warmer 

moisture out of the air leaving less to the forests. 

Water loss from plants occurs through tiny holes in the leaves 

called stomata. If the water loss is too great then the plants desiccate, dry out and die, similar to people without water. 

Photosynthesis also occurs through the stomata. So if a plant 

closes the stomata to avoid drying out, which is the common response, that means they can’t eat, similar to a person without food. 

The combination of these stressors results in much increased vulnerability of forests to insect attack. 

Since most forest plants shut their stomata and stop 

photosynthizing during drought rising atmospheric CO2 has little 

benefit. In other words it’s like if you have a million dollars in your 

bank account but your ATM doesn’t work. It’s not actually useful 

to the plant. 

In addition warming accelerates the productivity of pathogen and 

insect communities in much of the Intermountain West. Therefore, 

what we have is compounding impacts on the forest due to the 

stress and promotes greater rates of forest mortality that has occurred in recorded history. 

Throughout the earth’s history vegetation mortality has occurred 

during periods of rapid temperature and moisture shifts. However 

the warming we experienced in the past century is at least twice 

as fast as any in at least the past millennium. It is forecasted by 

the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change to accelerate far 
21 

more in the next upcoming century than it has on record in the 

past. 

The confidence in these predictions is high. These predictions 

suggest that the average climate in the year 2050 will be hotter 

and drier than that of the mega droughts of the 1200s and 1500s 

that caused the mass migration of ancestral pueblo into the widespread forest mortality throughout the Southwestern USA. Thus 

even if precipitation remains unchanged in the future the increasing evaporative demand due to warming will cause the forest to experience future drought conditions that are nearly guaranteed to 

cause widespread mortality. 

Forest mortality induces a strong, positive feedback on climate 

warming due to the transfer of carbon stored in the forest to the 

atmosphere. 

If you could show the next slide, please. 

I’ll just highlight if you thought that was a lot of mortality in the 

USA take a look at British Columbia here. 

Photosynthesis by forests store approximately 33 percent of global anthropogenic CO2 emissions annually and the forests themselves contain approximately 55 percent of all carbon stored on 

land globally. Dead forests in contrast have greatly reduced rates 

of photosynthesis and hence cannot remove carbon from the atmosphere. Because dead trees decompose, they release large amounts 

of carbon back to the atmosphere. 

For example, British Columbia’s carbon loss, shown in the slide 

above, from a drought and insect attack in the early 2000s was 

equivalent to—I believe—5 years of Canada’s transportation sectors, CO2 emissions. Therefore it influenced their national carbon 

policies. 

Similarly the loss of forests in Western North America due to 

non-fire mortality alone is projected to equal 6 years of the United 

States fossil fuel emissions. 

In Northern New Mexico the loss of forest carbon over the last 

decade was approximately equivalent to 25 percent of New Mexico’s 

fossil fuel emissions. Thus continued forest mortality from both fire 

and drought constitutes a positive forcing on climate warming by 

injecting more CO2 into the atmosphere. This is commonly referred 

to as the potential to dew point. 

More evidence suggests that no forest is immune to drought induced mortality. We observed both a long elevation gradients in 

our local mountains in New Mexico as well as up the spine of the 

Rockies from Mexico to Canada that all forests appear to be dying 

at approximately similar rates and spatial magnitudes. It just happens first in the dry areas. But it still happens in the wetter areas. 

This is very concerning because there’s far more carbon stored in 

these wetter, cooler forests. Thus, the mortality of these forests 

with high carbon stores causes a much greater release of CO2 to 

the atmosphere. Drought and insect mortality along with wildfire 

induced mortality are the common drivers and common possible solutions. 

Dr. Allen has addressed those briefly. I’d be happy to address 

those more during the time for question and answer period. 

In conclusion there are strong scientific certainty that future 

droughts will promote the loss of forests in the Western United 
22 

* Figures 1–7 have been retained in committee files. 

States. This will occur through both increased severity of drought 

stress upon forests and subsequent insect and pathogen attack and 

through wildfire. Without significant changes in the global energy 

portfolio and increased investment into sustainable forest management, the loss of forests in the Western United States is unavoidable. 

Thank you for the opportunity to appear before the committee. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. McDowell follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF NATHAN MCDOWELL, STAFF SCIENTIST AND DIRECTOR, LOS

ALAMOS ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH PARK, LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY, 

LOS ALAMOS, NM 

INTRODUCTION

Good morning Chairman Bingaman, Ranking Member Murkowski, and members 

of the committee. I am honored to speak to you today regarding current and future 

impacts of climate change on the intermountain west. I am Nate McDowell, staff 

scientist within the Earth and Environmental Sciences Division at Los Alamos National Laboratory, and director of the Los Alamos National Environmental Research 

Park. My team has published approximately 20 papers on vegetation mortality in 

relation to climate change. We are the global leaders in the study of how vegetation 

dies in relation to drought, both currently and in the future (Figure 1).* We also 

have a strong research focus on how vegetation mortality feeds back to accelerate 

warming of the earth. Our research is aided by the massive mortality our local forests have experienced in the last decade (Figure 2). Bark beetle-associated mortality 

during and after drought kills approximately double the amount of forests as fire 

in the intermountain west (J. Hicke unpublished results, Williams et al. in revision). 

With the exception of management implications, I will leave the discussion of 

drought and fire in this hearing to Dr. Craig Allen and the other invited speakers. 

The focus of my testimony today will be on the impacts of climate change on vegetation mortality and the associated carbon and climate consequences of vegetation 

death. 

My main message today is that there is strong scientific evidence for 1) rising 

rates of vegetation mortality during drought at the global scale and within the intermountain west, 2) forest mortality will continue to accelerate, despite 

CO2fertilization, and 3) the consequences of forest loss to drought-associated mortality include but are not limited to a strong positive feedback on climate warming 

due to the transfer of carbon stored in forests to the atmosphere. There are multiple 

research and mitigation options that should be pursued in the very near future if 

we are to stem the tide of forest mortality and associated carbon release to the atmosphere. 

Vegetation mortality is rising in northern New Mexico, throughout the intermountain west, and globally (Figure 2-3, Raffa et al. 2008, van Mantgem et al. 2009, 

Allen et al. 2010, Peng et al. 2011, Hicke et al. 2012, Williams et al. in revision). 

The bulk of the evidence suggests this rise is a result of climate warming and in 

some ecosystems, forest management. It is most strongly correlated with rising air 

temperature (van Mantgem et al. 2009, Allen et al. 2010, Peng et al. 2011). There 

is a wide range of evidence to explain why rising temperature has, and will continue, to accelerate mortality of vegetation. 

Forest mortality will continue to accelerate. Everyone can understand the general 

idea that drought kills plants because of a lack of water. The details of the process 

of drought-induced mortality are relevant to expand upon within this testimony, 

however, because combining the current climate forecasts with the mechanisms by 

which climate causes plant stress paints an ominous picture for the future of forests 

in the intermountain west. 

Large-scale vegetation mortality events have occurred throughout the history of 

the earth. These events were typically associated with rapid changes in climate, in 

particular, rapid increases in temperature or decreases in moisture (McElwain and 

Punyasena 2007, McDowell et al. 2011). The term ‘‘rapid’’ is important in this context, because the change in climate we are currently experiencing is more rapid 

than any in the geologic record. 
23 

The rise in temperature from 1900 to 2000AD was approximately twice that of 

any other century going back to 750AD, and the forecasted temperature growth will 

four-to ten-fold more rapid by 2100 AD ( IPCC AR4). 

Warmer air holds more moisture, thus increasing temperature raises evaporative 

demand (Figure 4) and drives greater movement of water from forests to the air; 

this is called evapotranspiration. Evapotranspiration exacerbates the impact of 

droughts because for every inch of precipitation, a larger fraction of that water in 

the soil and plants is extracted by the moisture-hungry air, thus causing current 

droughts to induce greater stress upon plants than past droughts have caused 

(McDowell et al. 2008). This has been referred to as climate-change-type drought 

(Breshears et al. 2005). 

The primary determinant of plant survival in the intermountain west is the supply and demand of water because in this region the supply is low relative to the 

demand. Plants move water to their leaves through a process similar to the movement of water in a straw: tension is placed upon the top of the straw by the dry 

air, thus pulling the water upwards from the soil and through the plants. Insufficient soil water or a large pull on the top of the straw can cause cavitation, or the 

formation of air bubbles in the straw. This blocks further water flow and if un-repaired, results in further decreases in water flow, a process we call hydraulic failure 

(Figure 5, McDowell et al. 2008, 2011). Plants avoid this problem through closure 

of their stomata, or the tiny pores on their leaves that allow release of water and 

uptake of CO2 into the leaf (i.e. photosynthesis), and thus they reduce the risk of 

hydraulic failure. However, stomatal closure means that no photosynthesis occurs. 

During this period of minimal photosynthesis they must rely on stored carbohydrates, akin to the fat stores of mammals, to stay alive and defend themselves 

against pathogens such as bark beetles. If drought is prolonged, this can result in 

carbon starvation, or the loss of carbohydrate stores, so that life cannot be maintained and defense against attack agents, such as beetles, may fail (Figure 5, 

McDowell et al. 2008, 2011). There is strong evidence that both hydraulic failure 

and carbon starvation are occurring throughout the intermountain west during the 

prolonged drought that has extended from 1996 through 2012. 

Increasing temperature has three additional impacts on vegetation survival. First, 

temperature is exponentially related to the loss of carbon through metabolism, so 

temperature rises can drive elevated loss of the carbohydrate stores needed to support life and fight off biotic agents such as bark beetles (Amthor 1994, Atkin et al. 

2007, McDowell 2011). Second, biotic agents such as bark beetles grow faster and 

achieve more generations per year with rising temperature. Thus attacks on trees 

by bark beetles increase with rising temperature both due to increasing tree stress 

and increasing beetle population size (Raffa et al. 2008). The net effect is that rising 

temperature increases the risk of vegetation mortality. Third, as described by Dr. 

Craig Allen, rising atmospheric demand due to temperature increase the rate of 

spread of fire. 

Forest mortality will continue to accelerate because evaporative moisture demand 

by the year 2100 will have increased approximately 34% from the 1950-2000 due 

to rising temperature (Figure 6a,b, Williams et al. in revision, CMIP3). This is extremely likely to force widespread vegetation mortality throughout western USA 

even if precipitation remains fairly steady (Figure 6c, d, Williams et al. in revision) 

with a simulated carbon loss by 2100 equal to six years of the United States fossil 

fuel emissions (Figure 7, Jiang et al. in review). There is very strong evidence that 

we are already witnessing the consequences of increased evaporative demand on 

widespread bark beetle outbreaks and forest fires since the late 1990s (Williams et 

al. 2010, in revision). Future projections suggest that the average climate in Southwestern USA will be a stronger drought than any of the last 1000 years, including 

the mega-droughts of the 1200’s and 1500’s that caused the mass-migration of ancestral Puebloans and the widespread forest mortality throughout Southwestern 

USA (Figure 6). Thus, even if precipitation were to remain unchanged, the increasing evaporative demand due to rising temperature will cause the forests to experience future drought conditions that are nearly guaranteed to cause widespread mortality. In other words, increasing forest mortality over the next century is almost 

certainly going to occur in some regions of the world, including the intermountain 

west. 

Recent forest growth in response to CO2 fertilization does not provide significant 

benefit to vegetation survival during severe drought (Franks et al. in revision). This 

is because the elevated CO2 only benefits plants whose stomata are open to allow 

photosynthesis to occur; both low precipitation and high evaporative demand force 

stomatal closure, thus preventing photosynthesis. This has been shown in numerous 

observations and experiments (reviewed in Franks et al. in revision). Therefore, rising CO2 does not prevent mortality during drought. 
24 

Mortality from both fire and bark beetle/drought has numerous consequences on 

ecosystems including a strong feedback by which forest death leads to accelerated 

climate warming. Live forests store approximately 33% of anthropogenic CO2 emissions annually and contain approximately 55% of carbon stored in terrestrial ecosystems (Bonan 2008). The loss of these forests to mortality and replacement vegetation with lower carbon storage such as shrubs (as described in Dr. Allen’s testimony) reduces the ecosystems ability to extract CO2 from the atmosphere, and furthermore, the mortality results in the release of large amounts of CO2 from the decomposition of dead trees (Harmon et al. 1990, Hicke et al. 2012). For example, British Columbia’s carbon loss from drought/insect attack in the early 2000’s was equivalent to six years of Canada’s transportation sector CO2 emissions and influenced 

national carbon policy (Kurz et al. 2008a, b). Similarly, the loss of forests in Western 

North America due to non-fire mortality alone is projected to equal six years of 

United States fossil fuel emissions (Figure 7, Jiang et al. in revision). In northern 

New Mexico, the loss of forest carbon in northern New Mexico over the last decade 

was equivalent to 25% of New Mexico’s fossil fuel emissions. Thus, the continued 

growth of forest mortality from both fire and drought will drive a positive forcing 

on climate warming. The impacts of mortality on climate warming via CO2 release 

are mirrored with similar impacts on hydrology and energy budgets, not to mention 

aesthetics, timber production, tourism and other ecosystem services provided by forests (Adams et al. 2010). 

Many people, scientists included, have assumed that primarily forests in drier 

systems, such as lower elevations or lower latitudes, are vulnerable to climatechange-type drought. We now know this assumption is incorrect. Recent work in my 

lab has observed two key results across elevation gradients within New Mexico’s 

Jemez and Sangre de Cristo Mountains and up the spine of the Rockies from Mexico 

to Canada. In both studies, the more arid low elevation or low latitude forests die 

first, but wetter forests at higher elevations and latitudes followed suit a few years 

later with mortality of equal spatial magnitude. Perhaps more importantly, these 

wetter forests store far more carbon than more arid forests, thus the loss of the wetter forests causes a much greater release of CO2 to the atmosphere (Jiang et al. in 

revision). Thus, no forest appears safe from rising temperature and more intense 

droughts, and thus we can expect widespread mortality and significant feedbacks 

to accelerate future climate warming. 

Recommendations: drought and insect mortality, along with wildfire induced mortality, have common drivers and common possible solutions. Rising rates of both of 

these forms of mortality are due in part to the declining moisture content of the 

forest that results from rising air temperature. The most effective, but most difficult 

solution is to curb the release of anthropogenic CO2 to the atmosphere. The exclusion of fire since the arrival of livestock and the Smoky the Bear policy has caused 

the forests to become far denser than the historical average, allowing far more fuel 

to build up in the forests and thus promoting more fires and greater competition 

for scarce water. Sustainable forestry that lowers the fuel load and promotes more 

old-growth characteristics is the only management option I can see that will mitigate the threat of continued growth of massive wildfires and insect outbreaks. Such 

thinning should emphasize removal of smaller trees to promote survival of tall trees 

that are more resistant to fire damage and to reduce competition for water and nutrients. 

In addition, I feel valuable long-term solution to this rising threat of forest loss 

due to climate change is education of society. Without knowledge of the current and 

potential future impacts, the common public can become unaware of the magnitude 

of what is occurring and will occur in the future. Lastly, we urgently need more research to understand why and where some trees die while others do not. This information is essential so that we can inform management and policy options to maximize the likelihood of forest survival, carbon storage, and the other ecosystem services our society values. 

In conclusion, there is strong scientific certainty that future droughts will promote 

the loss of forests in the Western United States. This will occur through both increased severity of drought stress upon forests and subsequent insect and pathogen 

attack, and through wildfire. Without significant changes in the global energy portfolio and increased investment into sustainable forest management, the loss of forests in the Western US is inevitable. 

Thank you for the opportunity to appear before the Committee 

Much of our work was made possible by the Laboratory Directed Research and 

Development Program, which makes it possible for the Laboratories to invest in cutting edge R&D that anticipates emerging national needs. Details of the LDRD program can be found at tri-lab.lanl.gov. 
25 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. 

Why don’t we go ahead? Obviously there are lots of questions 

that need to be asked and answered. 

But Dr. Redmond, why don’t you go ahead? 

STATEMENT OF KELLY T. REDMOND, REGIONAL CLIMATOLOGIST/DEPUTY DIRECTOR, WESTERN REGIONAL CLIMATE 

CENTER, DESERT RESEARCH INSTITUTE, RENO, NV 

Mr. REDMOND. OK. Thanks for the opportunity to speak here this 

morning. My present position is Regional Climatologist for the 

Western United States. So I cover the weather in western states 

and Alaska and Hawaii. I deal with climate issues of every sort 

ranging from the physical side to the way people use information 

about climate in those vocations. 

I didn’t bring any visuals today. I just spent a week in Montana 

at my mom’s house. I couldn’t see the forest or the mountains because of the smoke and the same way coming back to Denver and 

into Reno, couldn’t see the Sierra Nevada. I deal a lot with drought 

issues and just spent 3 days at the International Boundary and 

Water Commission down in El Paso dealing with drought issues on 

the Rio Grande and the Bravo River there. 

I decided to make 4 points in this presentation. 

First of all that aridity is going to persist and very likely to increase in the western states. 

Second, that the climate events and extremes are just as important as gradual change in the region. 

A third is that observations and monitoring are critical to response and adaptation. 

The fourth is we should not let this problem intimidate us too 

much despite what you keep hearing about it. 

So a drought to me represents an imbalance. If you think of a 

water checkbook we have a certain amount of income and a certain 

amount of outgo. When the outgo exceeds the income for long 

enough in an accumulated sense our buffers are going down and 

we start to see impacts. 

Now basically we think of drought as being defined by its impacts. We’ve seen a lot of drought in the western states over the 

last 13 years or so, since the U.S. drought monitor was instituted. 

Every year we’ve had drought of some sort. Sometimes border to 

border like in 2002 and we are in a pretty deep drought this year 

again. 

You’ve already heard the point made that we think of drought 

as being determined by precipitation but temperature and a few 

other variables like wind and humidity also play a role in 

droughtiness because they influence the demand side for water. 

Not all precipitation is equal. Cool precipitation is generally better 

than warm precipitation as a broad generality and if it warms up 

it sort of like getting less precipitation. 

Temperature in the west began to increase—I’ve looked at it over 

the last 120 years or so, began to increase around the mid 70s. It’s 

risen by about two degrees Fahrenheit in that time. In the last 10 

years or so it has kind of leveled off and it’s even dropped in the 

last 3 or 4 years. We don’t know the reason why. 
26 

The models predict that this is going to continue to rise by probably another 4 to 6 degrees Fahrenheit during this century. Nighttime temperatures have gone up more than daytime temperatures. 

We don’t know the reason for that. 

Precipitation, really, in the western states in general has exhibited no trend that I’m able to see. There is a change in the variability of precipitation in the year to year variability in about the 

mid 70s has been much more variable from year to year in the last 

30 years or so compared to the previous 30 years. The projections 

are for precipitation to increase maybe 5 to 7 percent in the next 

20 to 30 years or so along the Canadian border and to decrease by 

about 5 to 7 percent along the U.S./Mexico border. 

I can’t see the evidence yet for an increase in the northern end, 

but the decrease in the southern end it has come down over the 

past several years. But we’re coming down from a very high peak 

in the 80s and 90s which allowed the forests to grow quite a bit. 

That’s why the biomass built up, partly contributed to the fires 

that we’re seeing these days because there is more biomass there. 

So it’s a little hard to interpret what that means is drying out that 

we’ve seen in the recent years. 

You’ve heard about the fires burn. In 7 of the eleven western 

states we’ve had the biggest fires in their recorded history in the 

past 15 years or so. A couple of those states have had that record 

re-broken in this interval. So something—and right now so far I 

think we have about 6 and a half million acres that has burned so 

far this summer compared to an average of around 5 or so. So we’re 

on another big fire year obviously, as you know. 

So there’s really something very different from our last century 

of experience that’s underway right now. 

One thing about drought, I think a really, a long term research 

operational goal in the West should be to acquire a thorough understanding of all the components of the water budget on the scales 

needed to understand drought. The income terms, the outgo terms, 

the storage in the soil and the deep aquifers and even the Trans 

basin diversions as well which are all part of the water budget. If 

we don’t understand that and how each of those is affected by climate change it’s going to be harder to come up with the right policies. 

Climate extremes, we often think of fluctuations, climate fluctuations as gradual changes. But really many ecosystems and human 

systems are different by rare and memorable events. They have the 

potential to alter the ecological histories and trajectories. This is 

how climate change will be experienced and remembered. 

The climate system is an incredibly complicated system. It involves literally the climate here in Santa Fe is a result of everything happening on the surface of the earth, up in the atmosphere, 

down in the soil, all around the earth. It’s a highly connected system. Because of this it’s not fully predictable. We have to expect 

surprises in how it will shape out. 

We’re seeing more of the warming streams as temperatures going 

up, fewer of the coolant streams. But cool temperatures are not 

going to go away. They’ll just be seen less frequently. 

When it comes to precipitation, there’s a general expectation and 

an observation that in the United States heavy precipitation has 
27 

increased over most of the United States, like the wettest day of 

the year. It’s decreased a little bit less in the Pacific Northwest. It 

shows not as much trend in the Southwest. It’s been, sort of, flat, 

except for the very shortest durations of less than a day, like several hours long. 

Driving up here from Albuquerque last night I wasn’t able to go 

70. I just went about 4 with the heavy rains and there’s a lot of 

flooding and the alluvials passed along the way. That’s indicative 

of the kind of thing we expect to see more often. 

The third point I wanted to address was observations and monitoring. I deal with this a lot. We just tracked western climate for 

people, for all kinds of purposes. 

When we can’t predict everything really well that means that 

heightens the role of observations and monitoring. We have to keep 

our attention to this very much. It’s very frequently looked at. 

Observations are everybody’s second priority. The observational 

systems that we use to keep track of what’s going on that people 

use for their research are constantly under threat, especially in a 

budget environment. We need to resist the attempts to reduce 

those as much as possible. 

One of the things that we could do in the west, we have a lot 

of Federal systems that are out monitoring climate for a variety of 

purposes by the different agencies. I think we could have better coordination of those. Make them serve double and triple duty by 

having higher level coordination and ensuring that we get more 

bang for our observing buck. 

The fourth point I wanted to address is this whole issue of this 

is just such a, society speaking, this is such a giant problem. It just 

seems so large and complex people have a hard time getting their 

hands around it. It seems to me that there are many different 

parts of the solution path to it. 

But it’s a problem that we’ve gotten into bit by bit. I think part 

of our solution process has to be to sort of get out of it bit by bit. 

Human beings are the most adaptable organism the earth has ever 

seen in its history. It’s because of that that we have helped cause 

this problem to come about. But that very same adaptability and 

the cleverness and so forth that we have, I think is suitable to be 

harnessed in service of a remediation of this problem. 

This problem has, you know, because we end up talking to the 

public about this issue a lot. It has so many different facets you 

can’t even go through them all here. But, you know, the time lag 

that it takes between the gas in the atmosphere and the effects 

that we’re seeing. There’s a timelines built into the system. If we 

wait for those to occur through observation. In many cases it’s too 

late. You can think of analogs in health and so forth to that thing. 

Another thing that has sort of stuck me is this. It seems that we 

require a pretty high burden of proof before we take action on this. 

Yet we routinely make highly consequential individual choices 

based on patchy, incomplete and uncertain information. 

I use examples of like who are you going to marry? What house 

are you going to buy? What university are you going to attend? 

What job to take? Which car to purchase? What investment to 

make? Whether to run for the Senate or not? All those kinds of 

things. 
28 

You know, we don’t need perfect information to act. Yet we seem 

to act like we do. So while we’re still trying to acquire more information and I don’t think that’s the reason we should be doing anything. 

So I guess just a couple more points that I wanted to make is 

we want to have national coherence and commonality in our overall 

vision of how we address these issues. But most of the practical 

issues we run into pertaining to climate are experienced at the regional, the state and the local levels. To this end there are about 

a half dozen major Federal and state sponsored agencies. There’s 

already programs and activities underway. 

In my career I’ve kind of been part of every one of those. They 

seem really complicated and sometimes overlapping to people who 

are not familiar with them. But having watched them from the inside I don’t really think that’s the case. 

But we’re working very diligently to try to make sure that we’re 

getting the best use of the taxpayer dollar in all these different 

kind—like the Climate Science Centers, the Regional Integrated 

Science and Assessments Program of NOAA, Regional Climate 

Center Program, these landscape conservation cooperatives and so 

forth under the Department of Interior. So I think there’s some 

really good opportunities there to be working together. A lot of us 

are having the side conversations to do that. 

One other thing I might point out is that we, as with our first 

speaker here, the people have been present in the Intermountain 

West for a millennia and they acquired a really significant store of 

experiential, traditional knowledge about climate and the environment, what I call the wisdom of antiquity. Then we have the more 

recent science based approaches. I think we really need both of 

these. Neither one of them is sufficient. But when we put them together we have enough, we may have enough information on which 

to act. 

So I guess, you know, personally I’d just say I really like hard 

problems. This is one of the hardest problems I can think of. It’s 

really a worthy challenge in this regard. 

I just don’t think it’s insoluble. But we just have to look. Have 

to have the will power to do something about it. 

Thanks. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Redmond follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF KELLY T. REDMOND, REGIONAL CLIMATOLOGIST/DEPUTY

DIRECTOR, WESTERN REGIONAL CLIMATE CENTER, DESERT RESEARCH INSTITUTE, 

RENO, NV 

Chairman Bingaman, and other Members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to discuss with you today these matters pertaining to our knowledge of 

past, present and future climate in the Intermountain West. The high temperatures 

and smoke-filled skies around the West as we speak serve as testament to the relevance of these issues. 

BACKGROUND

I grew up in the West, in Southwest Montana, and aside from an excellent university education on the East Coast and in the Midwest, have spent my professional 

career in meteorology and climatology in the western United States. I love the West, 

and my current position of regional climatologist for the 11 westernmost continental 

states, Alaska, Hawaii, Pacific Islands, almost perfectly suits my interests and inclinations. I have served in this capacity since 1989, working at the Western Regional 
29 

Climate Center (WRCC) in Reno Nevada. WRCC is one of six such NOAA-administered centers in the US, and is housed at the Desert Research Institute, a component of the Nevada System of Higher Education. Prior to this time I served as state 

climatologist for Oregon for six years. My interests span all facets of climate and 

weather behavior, their physical causes and variability, how climate interacts with 

other human and natural processes, and how such information is acquired, used, 

communicated, and perceived. 

I am also very involved in numerous national and regional drought activities, and 

along with Mike Hayes at the National Drought Mitigation Center (U Nebraska) 

serve as co-chair of the NIDIS (National Integrated Drought Information System) 

Program Implementation Team. 

The clientele for our primary program (the Regional Climate Centers, RCCs) consists of all segments of the public from individuals to organizations, private enterprise from small to large, government agencies at local, state, regional and national 

levels, and educational and media sectors. We address a wide spectrum ranging 

from how and why weather and climate vary through time and across the western 

landscape, measurement and monitoring functions, rapid and efficient access to climate information, how human and natural systems respond to climate, and how 

people and organizations incorporate knowledge of climate into their decision processes at multiple scales. Though not our ongoing reason for existence, we also include climate change as a component of our efforts because it is such a major issue 

within our discipline. 

1. ARIDITY SEEMS LIKELY TO PERSIST OR INCREASE

In the arid landscapes of the West, drought is a frequent visitor that has shaped 

the cultural and biological characteristics of societies and their environment in innumerable ways. Drought has been present somewhere in the West during each of the 

13 years since the initiation of the US Drought Monitor. From instrumental and 

earlier proxy records (tree rings, lake sediments, etc) we have recently acquired a 

far better appreciation of the regional vulnerability to extended drought. The tan 

and brown landscape is a perpetual visual reminder of that circumstance that complements our knowledge from measurement and scientific inference. 

In the West, precipitation nearly always increases with elevation, and streamflow 

in most major river systems is disproportionately influenced by small areas at high 

elevations. Furthermore, a great deal of this precipitation falls as mountain snow, 

in winter, and is then metered out through the snowmelt process in spring and summer. As a broad generality—from the standpoint of streamflow, hydrology, and soil 

water recharge at shallow and deep levels—not all precipitation is equal: cool precipitation is more effective than warm precipitation. In most locations, precipitation 

is seasonally concentrated in one, sometimes two, or occasionally three portions of 

the annual cycle. Droughts with the most impact involve the loss of one or more 

of these precipitation seasons. 

Akin to a household checkbook, in every location a water budget can be formulated: ‘‘revenue’’ as precipitation, streamflow, and groundwater recharge, versus ‘‘expenses’’ from evaporation, plant transpiration, groundwater withdrawal and outflow, 

and municipal and industrial consumption. Water is also stored in various surface 

and underground reservoirs, which fluctuate up and down, and are tied to gain and 

loss processes. Interbasin transfers represent one other loss or gain. When the rate 

of loss exceeds the rate of supply for sufficiently long that water buffers are drawn 

down to unusually low levels, we call this drought. Furthermore, we seek corroboration in the form of impacts of such deficiencies on human and ecological systems. 

Following such logic, drought is essentially defined by its impacts. 

Though supply and demand for water are clearly influenced by precipitation, 

many of the above processes are affected by temperature, sometimes strongly, and 

at times in addition by wind and humidity (eg, drying of forests and other vegetation). Temperature also affects whether precipitation falls as rain or snow at a given 

altitude, the elevation at which the rain/snow transition occurs, the length of the 

snow accumulation season, and the timing and rapidity of melt. Temperature thus 

is a significant hydrologic factor and important for drought. All other things being 

equal, a warmer drought is more consequential than a cooler drought. The local or 

regional water budget can become more negative from temperature effects alone, 

with no change in total annual precipitation. 

The West has been warming for whatever reason since the middle 1970s, by about 

1 C / 2 F, so that recent droughts have been warmer than previous droughts. Projections from climate models lead to an expectation of further warming of at least another 2-3 C / 4-6 F, slightly more in summer, slightly less in winter. These same 

models indicate that such warming will likely not be steady, but rather punctuated 
30 

by interruptions lasting a year or two up to a decade or two. Temperature rises are 

superimposed on the typical up and down fluctuations that have always characterized climate, and temporary downturns are found in many of these climate models 

and are anticipated as the future unfolds. 

From 1895 to the middle 1970s, annual mean temperature in the western states 

fluctuated up and down with little net trend. Starting in the middle 1970s, temperatures have increased over the past 35 years. Since about 2000 they have remained 

approximately flat at their newly elevated levels, and the past 3-4 years have cooled 

by about half this 35-year increase in parts of the West. We do not know the reason 

for this flattening or for the recent cool period. The Southwest states have not participated as much in these recent trends, and in general have continued to warm. 

Furthermore, much of the western rise in temperature has been at night rather 

than during daytime. We really don’t know why. This does not appear to be an artifact of the observing process (for example, thermometers in urban heat islands), but 

the reason needs to be better understood. 

From north to south, the year-to-year variations in precipitation expressed in percent of average generally increase. Especially in the arid Southwest, annual precipitation is highly variable from year to year, the greatest in the US. Unless trends 

are large they will be hard to detect without observations from many years. As with 

day-to-day forecasts, precipitation is inherently more difficult to project than is temperature at longer climatic time scales. Nonetheless, there is general agreement 

among climate models that western precipitation will increase near the Canada border, and decrease near the Mexico border, by approximately 5-7 percent in the next 

20-30 years, with a zone of little change approximately at the latitude of Interstate80 across the West. These same models are indicating that winter precipitation may 

increase, whereas spring and summer precipitation decrease. This implies wetter 

winters, but a longer vegetative drying season centered on summer, which in this 

projected period receives less precipitation than now from the Mexico to the Canada 

border. Another implication is higher probability of extreme wet events in winter 

(more floods) but a longer and warmer summer dry season (more drought), a seemingly paradoxical possibility that actually does make physical sense. In addition, especially in more southerly latitudes of the U.S., winter is reliant on a few big storms 

to produce a significant fraction of the annual total. Thus, in the more southerly 

mountain ranges of the West, a reduction or occasional lack of such storms would 

lead to winter drought and subsequent low summer streamflow. 

Precipitation averaged over the 11 westernmost states shows little trend over the 

past 120 years. Starting around 1980 and continuing until today, the West entered 

a period marked by much greater year-to-year variability than the prior 30 years. 

Some of these sizable excursions from long term means have lasted 4-6 years. These 

variations test infrastructure and planning and keep water managers awake at 

night. The projected increases in annual precipitation along the Canada border do 

not appear to have begun yet. Along the Mexico border, precipitation has declined 

since the late 1990s, somewhat in line with the projections, but the entire Southwest is coming down from a lengthy maximum in moisture that included the 1980s 

and early 1990s, and it seems premature to conclude very definitively that this is 

a consequence of climate change. In many places, the vegetative growth spurt of 

that era has furnished the fuels for the large and numerous wildland fires of the 

past 15 years. 

At least some portions of the Intermountain West has been significantly affected 

by drought every year since the winter of 1995-96, which eventually led to the passage of legislation creating NIDIS. The most widespread drought during this time 

was in 2002, with exceptionally low flows on the Colorado River. Flows from the 

meager snowpack in 2012 have rivaled those in 2002. This drought has been warmer than previous droughts, a factor that has heightened its impacts. Drought has 

lowered the resistance of trees to pests, and higher temperatures have enabled pests 

to reproduce in larger numbers, and millions of acres of trees have died. 

The region has seen an upsurge in area burned by wildland fire over the past decade and a half. Field reports of unprecedented fire behavior in terms of energy release and intensity have been common. Of the 11 western contiguous states, 7 have 

seen the largest fire in their state’s recorded history during this short interval, and 

some of these states have broken such records only to see them re-broken in the 

last few years. As of mid-August 2012 the national area burned by wildland fires 

stands at over 6 million acres, compared with an average of about 5 million, and 

a significant portion of the fire season has yet to occur in some locations. Clearly 

something very different is happening. 

Drought is by far the most costly US hazard. Since enacted as law in 2006, the 

National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) has been very successful 

in addressing drought issues across a broad array of activities, from research to 
31 

monitoring to preparedness to public understanding. Another goal of NIDIS is to 

contribute to and benefit from the rich national conversation that now accompanies 

the production of the US Drought Monitor every week. Drought comes in many different flavors, and NIDIS has emphasized as a national theme the need for placebased and application-specific products and services. The Western Governors Association and the Western States Water Council have been strong supporters of NIDIS 

and its goals, and will be seeking re-authorization in the coming year. 

A long term goal in the western states should be a thorough understanding of all 

the major components of water budgets on spatial scales small enough to be relevant to each of the river basins in the region. These components include precipitation (and separately, snowfall), evaporation, transpiration, and soil and aquifer recharge (with special attention to mountain block recharge). In addition, tools that 

help visualize this picture for both water professionals and for the public are very 

much needed. 

2. CLIMATE EVENTS AND EXTREMES ARE AS IMPORTANT AS GRADUAL AND INCREMENTAL

CHANGE

Our first impression is that climate consists of the mean condition of the atmosphere, and surface and upper soil, averaged over a sufficiently long time. However, 

brief reflection will help us to conclude that climate may also be viewed as an 

unending sequence of a large number of small discrete events intermingled with a 

few large and sometimes extraordinary events with lasting effects. Both the human 

and the natural world respond to slow accumulations that reach trigger points, and 

to major disturbances that alter, sometimes substantially, and at times forever, an 

existing set of relationships. Examples are floods, windstorms, droughts, fires, heat 

waves, and regional frosts, which can leave their mark for decades or centuries. 

Indeed, in our local setting today, the Santa Fe Institute has been a global leader 

in the studies of complex systems, which can be approximately defined as systems 

whose overall behavior cannot be predicted or often even imagined from studies of 

the parts in isolation. Climate is such a system, because ultimately the climate of 

Santa Fe is a product of processes taking place on, above, and below the surface 

of the earth and ocean, across the entire globe. Future states of such systems can 

only be predicted to a certain degree, in a piecewise, partial, incomplete, inexact and 

intermittent manner. Nonetheless there is often enough predictability to be useful 

in helping with decisions. Our best example is day-to-day weather prediction, which 

has improved demonstrably and substantially over the past half-century. We must 

exploit all sources of predictability to the maximum degree possible, while maintaining a realistic sense of the limitations. 

Many aspects of this rich area of inquiry are gradually making their way into the 

popular lexicon: tipping points, emergence, feedback loops, cascading failures, chaos, 

sequencing, system memory, local and remote connections, stochastic behavior, nesting, nonlinear (disproportionate) response, and the like. All represent a body of 

thought that is a major departure from the ‘‘clockwork universe’’ conception of prior 

centuries about how the world around us works. 

The reason for bringing this up is that human systems, ecological systems, and 

the climate system, are exceedingly complex, and their interactions yet more complex. Disturbances such as fire, insect outbreaks, wind storms, epidemics, are at 

once both results and sources of complex interacting systems, with a large dosage 

of luck and randomness. Organisms strive to take advantage, with winners and losers, and the makeup of ecosystems and relationships among components are in a 

constant state of mutual adjustment. 

Climate—including its variations in time and space—is but one of many stressors 

on human and natural systems. Limitations are imposed by availability of water, 

energy, raw materials, arable land, needs for recreational psychological sensibilities, 

geology, topography, and other factors. However, climate is pervasive and inexorable, always exerting some kind of influence, always a factor in the environment 

and in our own lives. 

With warming, extreme heat is expected to occur more often, and extreme cold 

less often (though it will not disappear). This has consequences for individual humans, but also to ecosystems. For example, many pathogens and pests are held in 

check by temperatures exceeding cold thresholds, like frosts, or for pine beetles, extremely cold winter temperatures. Winters without such temperatures permit more 

pest generations to survive and feed upon formerly less vulnerable foliage. Drought 

or other climate sequences can also reduce the defenses of trees and other vegetation. Repeat photography has shown the effects of a single night of severe frost in 

the Grand Canyon earlier in the 20th Century have lingered into the present day. 
32 

Warm air is able to ‘‘hold’’ more water as vapor than cold air; a 5 C / 9 F rise 

in temperature allows the limit on atmospheric water content to rise by 35-40 percent. One expectation of a warmer climate is thus that the atmosphere would likely 

contain more water, which would thus be available to rain out at a higher intensity. 

Intensely heavy precipitation is caused or abetted by a variety of factors, each of 

which may become more or less prevalent, and very likely do so differently according to season, latitude, geographic and topographic setting, and so forth. Studies 

have shown that in most of the US, very wet days have increased in frequency, as 

has the water content of the atmosphere on very wet days. Such trends toward more 

very wet days are more notable in the eastern US, but not so much so in the Pacific 

Northwest, and seem to be absent in the six Southwest states, fur durations of a 

day or more. However, there does seem to be evidence that the very wettest of shorter events, of a few hours’ duration, have become wetter and more frequent in the 

Southwest in the past few decades. 

The topic of very heavy precipitation is starting to be closely scrutinized, because 

such events have enormous social and engineering costs, and all civil structures in 

the country must be built to standards set by analysis of past climate records (per 

past practice). The climate and engineering professions are struggling to develop 

methods that permit those standards to slowly evolve through time. There are 

thorny physical, statistical, observational, and social issues (the methods have to be 

accepted by the engineering community) that attend this process. This is a vital 

area of current exploration and needs to be actively supported. 

3. OBSERVATIONS AND MONITORING ARE CRITICAL TO RESPONSE AND ADAPTATION

Our knowledge of the world around us derives from two sources: observations, and 

theoretical constructs that explain the observations. Both are necessary to claim understanding. But in almost every instance, observations lead in this perpetual 

dance. 

Much of what we know about national, regional and local weather and climate 

is the result of long-term monitoring efforts made either to satisfy curiosity or to 

serve an application. Our knowledge of variations and trends in climate is based on 

long-term records, not necessarily always begun with such an application in mind. 

Climate studies place an extra requirement on measurement programs, an imperative for consistency through time. Otherwise we are unable to distinguish between 

changes in the climate and changes in the measurement process. The latter can include changes in very local environments near the thermometer or gauge, changes 

in instruments, changes in observational processes and procedures, changes in the 

way in which measurements are reported, and even changes in the way quality control is performed. 

The consensus view among climate and atmospheric specialists would be that 

there is no conceivable way actual observations are ever going to be replaced by simulation, though we continue to improve in that regard. Good quality long-term observations are indispensable, and serve as a real-world reality check on our favorite 

speculations. 

Though they are crucial, a common refrain is that ‘‘observations are everybody’s 

second priority.’’ Observing networks that meet necessary standards are under constant threat of reduction or elimination. This pressure has to be resisted, even as 

we seek methods to harness technology to improve the way we measure long-familiar quantities (temperature, precipitation, humidity, wind, solar radiation). There is 

continual need to support reference networks that generate records of essentially 

unimpeachable quality, against which other available measurements with insufficient documentation, unknown provenance, poorly known histories, and other uncertain properties, can be compared. In the middle 2000s, the Climate Reference Network (CRN) of about 120 stations was deployed nationwide for such a purpose. An 

effort to establish a Regional CRN (first 1000, later 538 stations, on a national grid) 

began in the Four-Corner states in the late 2000s, as a pilot, and many were installed. A second phase of this pilot extended to the five states of CA, NV, OR, WA, 

and ID. The western states were chosen first as a reflection of western drought 

needs identified by NIDIS. This program, intended as a many-decade national commitment, was abruptly canceled in 2011 because of budgetary emergencies. 

This leaves us with the venerable National Weather Service Cooperative Network 

(‘‘Coop’’), manual measurements by volunteers from a program that extends from 

the 19th Century, but now being revamped to allow daily electronic entry via the 

Web using a system called WeatherCoder. About 85 percent of the 7500 total stations now use this system, a major improvement for daily updates to drought monitoring and many other climate purposes. The entire Coop network will soon be completely ‘‘paperless.’’ Considering its innumerable benefits to the nation, the very 
33 

wide demand for information from this network, the century-plus period of operation, and the relatively low cost of its maintenance, this important network is a 

very efficient and valuable investment that should be supported indefinitely. 

Observations acquire value through use, and thus an important function that goes 

hand in hand with measurement is monitoring: turning observations into information, by means of synthesizing and summarizing procedures that enable us to see 

temporal and spatial patterns in the data. The Regional Climate Center (RCC) Program and the American Association of State Climatologists (AASC) have, along with 

others, been strong and consistent advocates of such applications, and have developed tools to help others manipulate raw data to create products and applications 

desired by a variety of sectors. 

One area could stand to see considerable improvement. A variety of networks 

have been deployed, particularly in western states, by federal agencies, in service 

of mission needs. With modest improvements, many of these stations and platforms 

could serve multiple overlapping needs, sometimes beyond the immediate needs of 

an agency, but of wide benefit for many other applications. From a taxpayer standpoint, the value of improved coordination and cooperation, including improved data 

sets, is an easy sell. However a number of barriers seem to deter what seems natural, many rooted in institutional and sometimes governmental cultures, with ambiguous rewards or perceived penalties for potential ‘‘mission creep’’ for going beyond narrowly defined mission boundaries to serve the common good. This seems 

like a perpetual Catch-22. This is not an argument to reduce the total number, but 

rather to make them all more useful for more purposes, such as drought monitoring. 

The complex topography of the West, and close juxtapositions of very different climates, necessitate a much higher spatial density of stations—when seen in plan 

view—than in the flatter eastern states. 

Watching and working with western data sets and their managers over many 

years has led to one main conclusion. Most of the barriers to improved networks 

and use of data from networks have little to do with aluminum and copper, and far 

more to do with people, with institutional cultures and related behavioral barriers, 

a subject squarely in the realm of social science to help sort out. 

4. WE SHOULD NOT LET THIS PROBLEM INTIMIDATE US TOO MUCH

The climate problems we are wrestling with might be thought of as death from 

a thousand cuts. Problems associated with global climate change are the result of 

innumerable individual actions around the world, some direct and others indirect, 

acting through others (eg, thousands of individuals collectively creating a need for 

a power plant). We have worked our way into this dilemma bit by bit. It may be 

that a bit-by-bit approach would provide a viable and natural way out of the dilemma. 

Humans are the most adaptable organisms that the earth has ever witnessed over 

its history. This adaptability has led us to inhabit all manner of environments, and 

to concoct ingenious methods to improve our comfort and well-being, with the consequences to climate already noted. This very same adaptability that has caused 

this problem to arise can be likewise harnessed in service of its remediation, and 

indeed is our only real hope. 

The climate problem poses many peculiar and vexing dilemmas. One of these is 

the long lag time between cause and effect. By the time we see convincing evidence 

of a particular outcome, it likely has become too late to take action, no matter how 

earnest and active the efforts. Because we have not faced this problem before, there 

is little track record to provide the certitude we seek. It seems striking that we require such a high burden of proof, and certainty, before taking action. We routinely 

make highly consequential individual choices based on patchy, incomplete and uncertain information: which one to marry, what house to buy, what university to attend, which job to take, which car to purchase, what investment to make, and others. We seem to operate by a different standard when making these choices compared with those pertinent to today’s discussion. Perhaps this is because the decision is individual rather than collective. But are we fated to forever follow this deeply rooted behavior, or can we change ourselves? 

A variety of activities are under way to address the human and physical components of current climate-related issues. Many state climate programs have been in 

existence for 50-60 years, longer in some cases, shorter in many others. The Regional Climate Center Program within NOAA has been present since 1986, emphasizing but not restricted to data, monitoring, and observations. The NOAA Regional 

Integrated Sciences and Assessments (RISA) program has four projects of 2-3 states 

each in the western continental United States. RISAs are experiments in the provision of climate services, using a ‘‘learning by doing’’ methodology, and are primarily 
34 

a research activity. NOAA recently created a system of Regional Climate Services 

Directors (RCSD) to help coordinate among various partners in the climate arena. 

The Department of Interior, which manages nearly half of the western states, has 

just stood up eight Climate Science Centers to address concerns raised within 6-8 

agencies within the Interior Department (DOI). Also under DOI, a system of 22 

Landscape Conservation Cooperatives has been established, with more emphasis on 

management issues, wherein climate plays a role but not always a dominant role. 

Some of us are working in a variety of ways with all of these efforts in order to 

bring about just the right amount of overlap, not too much and not too little, and 

to help insure that the participants themselves, and the public at large and its political representation, can see the bigger picture, how these efforts are complementary, 

and actually are coordinating and collaborating. 

People have been present in the Intermountain West for millennia, and have acquired a significant store of experiential traditional knowledge about climate and 

the environment, the wisdom of antiquity. The more recent immigrants from Europe 

and elsewhere have trained the lens of science and its systematic style of analysis 

on the same subject. Neither method of learning or knowing is inherently superior 

to the other. Both traditions bring something unique to the table, and both are ultimately needed to claim complete understanding. Eventually they will merge, arriving at the same point by different pathways. 

Our present impasse over what to do will not be resolved by simply more facts, 

about what climate could or might do. It seems that observations and related experiential processes will carry the day. 

Personally, I like hard problems. The climate change issue is certainly a worthy 

challenge in this regard, but it is not insoluble. 

Thank you very much. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very, very much. 

Our final witness today is Dr. William deBuys. Bill, go right 

ahead. 

STATEMENT OF WILLIAM DEBUYS, WRITER AND HISTORIAN, 

CHAMISAL, NM 

Mr. DEBUYS. Thank you very much, Chairman Bingaman. 

I’m grateful to have this opportunity to appear before you today. 

My name is William deBuys and I’m a writer and historian. I published 7 books on the land and people of the Southwest. 

For the past 4 and a half years I’ve made a particular study of 

climate change in the region. That resulted in a book called, A 

Great Aridness: Climate Change and the Future of the American 

Southwest. In the course of my research one scientist I spoke to 

summarized the environmental future of the region in 5 words. He 

said, ‘‘Drought, dust, and dead trees.’’ 

Certainly the current drought has caught people’s attention. 

Thousands of new high temperature records have been set. By midsummer this year a larger portion of the country was in a state of 

drought than at any time since the 1950s. More counties have been 

declared agricultural disaster areas this year than ever before. 

Of course, there have always been droughts. What’s different 

now is that our droughts are hotter. Dr. Allen, who is here with 

us today and some of his colleagues have shown that the drought 

of the early 2000s from the first 4 years of the decade was one to 

one and a half degrees Centigrade hotter than the drought of the 

1950s. Because greater heat means greater evaporation, our 

droughts have become effectively more arid than comparable 

droughts of the past placing greater heat and water stress on vegetation of all kinds from agricultural crops to forest trees. 

Even so, drought may be a misnomer. Drought is exceptional. We 

don’t say that the Sahara Desert is experiencing drought. The Sahara is dry by nature, not by exception. 
35 

A strong body of research suggests that the climate of the Southwest is moving to a new base state similar to the drought conditions of the 1950s and 1930s. Droughts and wet periods will still 

occur, but they will be superimposed on this new base state. In 

time what we currently conceive as drought will be understood as 

the new normal. 

The implications for water resources are, of course, severe. A 

widely studied—a widely cited study by a team led by Chris Milly 

of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, predicted that the Southwest will experience declines of surface 

stream flow on the order of 10 to 30 percent by mid-century. Surface stream flow is basically the yield of rivers and streams. It’s the 

water, apart from ground water, that is available for human use. 

Given that Southwestern water resources are, in many cases, already fully or even over allocated such an extreme diminution of 

supply will undermine the well-being of the region in profound 

ways. 

Predictions like those of the stream flow study are based on climate modeling which is as sophisticated as any science being conducted in the world today. Although the science of climate modeling is difficult for the average citizen to understand, the predictions that emanate from it appear to be holding up very well. 

Except in one important respect, the changes are happening faster 

than predicted and the recession of Arctic sea ice is a good example 

of this. 

Usually when we talk about climate change and increasing temperatures we’re talking about mean temperatures, as Dr. Redmond 

spoke of an increase of 4 to 6 degrees Fahrenheit during this century. These temperatures, however, are means. There is reason to 

expect that the heated, more energetic climate of the future will 

produce extreme temperatures that are proportionately even larger. 

Extremes will shape out the world even more profoundly than the 

means, triggering yet more forest fires, water shortages, crop failures and even waves of human mortality. It’s worth remembering 

that approximately 50,000 human deaths were attributed to the 

European heat wave of 2003. 

Just a brief word about dust, which we haven’t covered yet so far 

today. Higher temperatures and increased water stress will trigger 

the exposure of more soil to the air. As vegetation dies back and 

as farmlands are fallowed and as forests and woodlands are consumed by fire, we’ll see more and more dust picked up, partly by 

the increased vehemence of the winds of our more energetic future. 

With inevitably high levels of soil disturbing human activity this 

is a recipe for extreme dust storms of the kind that Phoenix has 

recently been suffering. Lacking a name for them Phoenix has borrowed the word from Arabic and now haboob has entered the regional lexicon. 

Atmospheric dust does more than make like uncomfortable for 

residents of the region. Deposited on mountain snowpack, dust lowers albedo, the reflectance of the snow and promotes the absorption 

of heat from sunlight. Significantly accelerates the melting of accumulated snow, lowering natural storage and increasing the vulnerability of downstream farms and communities to shortages. 
36 

I won’t repeat some of the information that we’ve already heard 

about forests and fires and insects. But I will underscore something 

that Dr. McDowell said. That is that it’s important to note that 

western forests account for 20 to 40 percent of all carbon sequestration in the United States. 

If is now seems likely under the assault of climate change. We 

are to lose the greater part of our forest to fire, insects and heat 

death. Our forest lands will at some point become net emitters of 

atmospheric carbon instead of storehouses, thereby intensifying 

buildup of greenhouse gases. 

Similarly because drought inhibits the ability of plants of all 

kinds to conduct photosynthesis and absorb carbon dioxide from 

the atmosphere, prolonged drought would also contribute to warming. These kinds of feedbacks, like the better known release of 

methane from thawing permafrost, have the potential to plunge us, 

ever more rapidly, into an overheated and much altered future. 

How sure can we be that these changes are the result of anthropogenic climate change and not simply the manifestations of natural variability? 

Actually, climate scientists are progressively achieving a very 

high degree of certain certainty. 

Climate science has passed a threshold. The modeling studies on 

which it long depended did not permit the attribution of climate 

change as a cause of specific events. A scientist, asked about a certain drought or a rash of forest fires, might say, if climate change 

is occurring, this is the kind of event that our models would predict. But he or she could not say climate change caused this. 

Lately this limitation has diminished. A new subset of climate investigations, termed ‘‘attribution studies,’’ is emerging, which uses 

statistical analysis to determine the probable occurrence of specific 

weather events with and without the contributing influence of climate change. The Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 

recently published a small collection of such studies, including one 

that asserted that climate change made last year’s drought and 

heat wave in Texas twenty times more likely. 

If I could get my image up on the screen. 

Also a team led by James Hansen of NASA’s Goddard Institute 

for Space Studies at Columbia in New York goes further. According 

to their analysis, the probability that the 2011 heat wave in Texas 

or the 2010 heat wave in Russia would occur without the influence 

of climate change was less than 0.2 percent. These graphs are 

taken from a study by Dr. Hansen and his team. It would take 

some considerable time to get, kind of, tease out the meaning from 

these things in full. 

But if I can address your attention to the lower set of graphs 

which have to do with Northern Hemisphere land. What they are 

basically graphing is world temperature of the area of the planet 

experiences a certain kind of temperature during the summer 

months. Basically what this graph is showing is that cold weather 

in the summer months is disappearing from 1950 to 2010, cold 

weather is going away. 

Warm weather, anomalously or unseasonably warm weather is 

becoming more and more normal. These are 3 different degrees of 

departure from the norm. The last here is of extremely hot weather 
37 

occurring. During the base period of 1951 to 1980, that extremely 

hot weather would have occurred on less than 0.2 percent of the 

earth’s surface. Today it’s occurring on 10 percent and at times 

more than 10 percent of the earth’s surface. 

If we can go to the next slide. 

These maps depict that same information graphically or geographically. Here we see, sort of, the brown here. It’s that 2010 

heat wave in Texas and Oklahoma. Here we see the 2011 heat 

wave in Texas and Oklahoma. Here the 2010 heat wave in Russia 

and Siberia, Western Siberia and the Great Drought in Northeastern Africa. 

Basically what Hansen and his colleagues are saying. These 

manifestations are so extreme. They are so anomalous that only climate change can account for them. So they’re saying these things 

were caused by climate changes, departure from the way scientists 

have presented things in the past. 

Given all this, what should we do and what particularly should 

we do in the Southwest? 

First and foremost we must limit, act to limit the magnitude of 

the changes still ahead. This means moving to limit and reduce 

greenhouse gas emissions with the utmost urgency. To shirk this 

responsibility is to steal the atmospheric resources of future generations and to assure suffering and instability throughout the 

world. 

It’s that simple. 

Second, we must adapt to the changes that cannot be prevented. 

This means establishing and living within drought resilient water 

budgets community by community across our region. Adaptation 

will require water conservation that is both extensive and intensive. But, and this is the hard part, the water saved by conservation must be managed in a way that contributes to drought resilience and does not merely fuel continued land development and 

population growth with consequent heartening of demand, as is 

typically the case. 

In addition to crafting realistic water budgets, every inter related 

group of water users should develop enforceable shortage sharing 

agreements and where applicable, prepare for transfers of water 

from agriculture to municipalities in advance of the inevitable 

emergencies. 

Where our forests are concerned we must find ways to reverse 

the penetration of residential housing into landscapes vulnerable to 

fire. We must continue fuel reduction efforts, especially at the wild 

land urban interface and in areas of high biodiversity with redoubled energy. 

Many other actions might be recommended and these can be in 

all areas of policy and management, from agriculture to wild land, 

but none is more important than the purpose implicit in this hearing, which is to build public understanding of the seriousness of the 

challenges we face. As a society, we must first agree on the facts 

of climate change in order to achieve consensus on how to respond 

to them. These facts are to be seen all around us, if only we open 

our eyes. 
38 

No set of facts will be more determinative of the future of our 

land and society. No set of facts calls on us more emphatically for 

informed, deliberate and immediate action. 

I thank the Chairman for the opportunity to discuss these matters. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. deBuys follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF WILLIAM DEBUYS, WRITER AND HISTORIAN, CHAMISAL, NM 

Chairman Bingaman, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you to examine the current and future impacts of climate change on the Intermountain West, 

focusing on drought, wildfire frequency and severity, and ecosystems. My name is 

William deBuys. I am a historian and have published seven books dealing with the 

land and people of the Southwest. For the past four and a half years I have made 

a particular study of the effects of climate change in the region, which resulted in 

a book published by Oxford University Press last year entitled A Great Aridness: 

Climate Change and the Future of the American Southwest. 

My work on climate change focused on the Southwest, defined broadly. This hearing addresses the ‘‘Intermountain West’’ which, by any definition, overlaps the 

Southwest extensively, but the experience of some northern portions of the Intermountain West may differ from the rest of the region, if, as expected, ‘‘wet places 

get wetter and dry places drier’’ in the changed climate of the future. 

To speak specifically of the Southwest, one scientist whom I interviewed summarized its environmental future in five words: ‘‘drought, dust, and dead trees.’’ 

[DROUGHT]

Let me begin with drought. 

Certainly the current drought has caught people’s attention: thousands of new 

high temperature records have been set; by mid-summer a larger portion of the 

country was in a state of drought than at any time since the 1950s; and more counties have been declared agricultural disaster areas than ever before. 

Of course, there have always been droughts. What is different now is that our 

droughts are hotter. Drs. David Breshears, Craig Allen, and colleagues have shown 

that the drought of the early 2000s was 1° to 1.5°C hotter than the drought of the 

1950s. Because greater heat means greater evaporation, our droughts have become 

effectively more arid than comparable droughts of the past, placing greater heat and 

water stress on vegetation of all kinds, from agricultural crops to forest trees. 

Even so, ‘‘drought’’ may be a misnomer. Drought is exceptional. We don’t say that 

the Sahara Desert is experiencing drought: the Sahara is dry by nature, not by exception. A strong body of research suggests that the climate of the Southwest is 

moving to a new base state similar to the drought conditions of the 1950s and ‘30s. 

Droughts and wet periods will still occur, but they will be superimposed on this new 

base state. In time, what we currently conceive as drought will be understood as 

the new normal. 

The implications for water resources are severe. A widely cited study by a team 

led by Chris Milly of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton predicted that the Southwest will experience declines of surface streamflow on the 

order of 10-30% by mid-century. (Surface streamflow is the yield of rivers and 

streams; it is the water, apart from groundwater, that is available for human use.) 

Given that southwestern water resources are already fully or even over-allocated, 

such an extreme diminution of supply will undermine the well-being of the region 

in profound ways. 

Predictions like those of the streamflow study are based on climate modeling, 

which is as sophisticated as any science being conducted in the world today. Although the science of climate modeling is difficult for the average citizen to understand, the predictions that emanate from it appear to be holding up well, except in 

one important respect: the changes are happening faster than predicted. 

For example, in 2007 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted 

our region would warm approximately 4°C by the end of this century. We appear 

to be already about 0.8°C along that journey, almost a quarter of the way, but 

seven-eighths of the century still lie before us. Clearly, if temperatures increase at 

a linear rate, or faster, we are on track to exceed the 4°C target. 

These temperatures, however, are means. There is reason to expect that the heated, more energetic climate of the future will produce extreme temperatures that are 

proportionately even larger, and the extremes will shape our world even more profoundly than the means, triggering yet more forest fires, water shortages, crop fail-
39 

ures, and even waves of human mortality. Bear in mind that approximately 50,000 

human deaths were attributed to the European heat wave of 2003. 

[DUST]

A word about dust. Higher temperatures and increased water stress will trigger 

the exposure of more soil to the air, as vegetation dies back, farmlands are fallowed, 

and forests and woodlands are consumed by fire. Combined with the fierce winds 

of a more energetic atmosphere, and with inevitably high levels of soil-disturbing 

human activity, this is a recipe for dust storms. In recent years Phoenix has suffered periodic dust storms of unprecedented magnitude. Lacking a name for them, 

Phoenix has borrowed a word from Arabic, and now haboob has entered the regional 

lexicon. 

Atmospheric dust does more than make life uncomfortable for residents of the region. Deposited on mountain snowpack, dust lowers albedo (reflectance), promotes 

the absorption of heat from sunlight, and significantly accelerates the melting of accumulated snow, lowering natural storage and increasing the vulnerability of downstream farms and communities to shortages. 

[DEAD TREES]

The fearsome increase in the destructiveness of forest fires throughout the region 

is well known. The drought of the early 2000s bred fires that set records in Arizona, 

New Mexico, and Colorado for both size and damage. The past two years have seen 

almost all of those records broken by still larger and more destructive fires. A century of misguided management that included the suppression of all fire contributes 

prodigiously to the fire danger we face today, but climate is equally influential: we 

know that fire season is now at least two and a half months longer than it was thirty years ago and fire behavior, driven by high winds and higher temperatures, is 

becoming ever more extreme. 

A comparison of the Cerro Grande fire of 2000 and the Las Conchas fire of 2011, 

which ignited in adjacent, nearly identical areas in the Jemez Mountains, bears consideration. The Cerro Grande fire burned approximately 43,000 acres over the 

course of two weeks. Most observers thought its like would not be seen soon again, 

at least not in the same location, but last year the Las Conchas fire burned 43,000 

acres, equaling the achievement of Cerro Grande, in its first fourteen hours. Ultimately more than 150,000 acres were consumed. 

Fire is not the only threat to our forests. Insect outbreaks, like the bark beetle 

irruption of the early 2000s in Arizona and New Mexico that killed pines across an 

area twice the size of Delaware, will doubtless become more frequent, for the simple 

reason that warmer temperatures favor increased insect reproduction. 

We can also expect heat and moisture stress, alone, without the intervention of 

fire or insects, to kill large numbers of trees, as they did last year, when between 

2 and 10 percent of all the trees in Texas succumbed. 

It is important to note that western forests account for 20 to 40 percent of all carbon sequestration in the United States. If, as now seems likely under the assault 

of climate change, we are to lose the greater part of our forests to fire, insects, and 

heat death, our forest lands will at some point become net emitters of atmospheric 

carbon, instead of storehouses, thereby intensifying buildup of greenhouse gases. 

Similarly, because drought inhibits the ability of plants of all kinds to conduct photosynthesis and absorb carbon dioxide, prolonged drought will also contribute to 

warming. These kinds of feedbacks (like the better known release of methane from 

thawing permafrost) have the potential to plunge us ever more rapidly into an overheated, much altered future. 

[ATTRIBUTION STUDIES]

How sure can we be that these changes are the result of anthropogenic climate 

change and not simply manifestations of natural variability? 

Actually, we are progressively achieving a very high degree of certainty. 

Climate science has passed a threshold. The modeling studies on which it long 

depended did not permit the attribution of climate change as a cause of specific 

events. A scientist, asked about a certain drought or rash of forest fires, might say, 

‘‘If climate change is occurring, this is the kind of event our models tell us to expect,’’ but he or she could not say, ‘‘Climate change caused this.’’ 

Lately this limitation has diminished. A new sub-set of climate investigations, 

termed ‘‘attribution studies,’’ is emerging, which uses statistical analysis to determine the probable occurrence of specific weather events, with and without the contributing influence of climate change. The Bulletin of the American Meteorological 

Society recently published a small collection of such studies, including one asserting 
40 

that climate change made last year’s drought and heat wave in Texas twenty times 

more likely. 

A team led by James Hansen of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies goes 

further. According to their analysis, the probability that the 2011 heat wave in 

Texas or the 2010 heat wave in Russia would occur without the influence of climate 

change was less than 0.2 percent. One way of interpreting this figure is to say that 

neither event should have occurred more often than once in five centuries. The team 

further found that similar, highly unlikely events now cover, not 0.2 percent of 

Earth’s surface, as was the case during the reference period of 1951-1980, but approximately 10 percent. This extreme anomaly, they say, can only be explained by 

climate change. 

[ACTION RECOMMENDATIONS]

Given what we know, what should we do? 

First and foremost, we must act to limit the magnitude of the changes still ahead. 

This means moving to limit and reduce greenhouse gas emissions with the utmost 

urgency. To shirk this responsibility is to steal the atmospheric resources of future 

generations and to assure suffering and instability throughout the world. It is that 

simple. 

Second, we must adapt to the changes that cannot be prevented. This means establishing and living within drought-resilient water budgets, community by community, across the region. Presently the Lower Basin of the Colorado River, chiefly the 

states of Arizona and California, operates at an annual deficit of 18 percent. This 

is to say that the Lower Basin over-drafts its account by withdrawing from Lake 

Mead 1.2 to 1.4 million acre-feet more than its allocation of 7.5 million acre-feet. 

Such behavior is unsustainable under any circumstances. In an era of climate 

change and declining river flow, it is irrational and dangerous. 

Adaptation will require water conservation that is both extensive and intensive, 

but (this is the hard part) the water saved by conservation must be managed in a 

way that contributes to drought resilience, and does not merely fuel continued land 

development and population growth, with consequent hardening of demand, as is 

typically the case. 

In addition to crafting realistic water budgets, every interrelated group of waterusers should develop enforceable shortage-sharing agreements and, where applicable, prepare for transfers of water from agriculture to municipalities in advance of 

the inevitable emergencies. 

Where our forests are concerned, we must find ways to reverse the penetration 

of residential housing into landscapes vulnerable to fire, and we must continue fuelreduction efforts, especially at the wildland-urban interface and in areas of high biodiversity, with redoubled energy. 

Many other actions might be recommended—in all areas of policy and management from agriculture to wildlife—but none is more important than the purpose implicit in this hearing, which is to build public understanding of the seriousness of 

the challenges we face. As a society, we must first agree on the facts of climate 

change in order to achieve consensus on how to respond to them. These facts are 

to be seen all around us, if only we open our eyes. No set of facts will be more determinative of the future of our land and society, and no set of facts calls on us more 

emphatically for informed, deliberate, and immediate action. 

I thank the chairman and his committee for the opportunity to discuss these matters. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. 

Thank all of the witnesses. 

Why don’t before I ask a few questions, it occurred to me as I’ve 

listened to the testimony, let’s take a short break. Anyone who has 

to leave can do so. Then we’ll proceed and have another few minutes of hearing after the break. 

But let’s take about a 10-minute break. 

[BREAK] 

The CHAIRMAN. We’ll go for another 10 or 15 minutes here. 

Let me just ask a few questions that occurred to me as a result 

of all the excellent testimony. 

First of all, this paper, Dr. Allen, I believe you referred to the 

fact that a paper dealing with the issue of climate change has been 
41 

accepted by Nature to be published. Could you give us any more 

information about who was involved in the preparation of it and 

what the conclusions of it are? That you indicated you thought it 

was an important document. 

Mr. ALLEN. Yes, well the lead author for that is Park Williams. 

So I think, yes, right there is Park. 

The CHAIRMAN. Congratulations. 

Mr. WILLIAMS. Thank you. 

Mr. ALLEN. Actually he would be the best person that you could 

ask—— 

The CHAIRMAN. Yes. Please just give us the highlights of what 

you concluded in this paper that we’re going to see published. 

Mr. WILLIAMS. So we used tree ring records from about 13,000 

individuals throughout the Southwest from like 335 sites to develop a 1,000 year long record of tree health in the Southwestern 

U.S. These are from 3 main species of conifers in the Southwest. 

Then for the last hundred years which overlap with the observed 

climate record we were able to compare that record of tree health 

to climate variables, climate data and isolate the exact climate 

variables and seasons that really influence tree health the most. 

There is two variables. It turned out to be wintertime precipitation 

which is no surprise with the amount of snow that accumulates on 

the ground. Summertime atmospheric moisture demand which is, 

as everybody here has already said, influences areas driven by temperature and humidity and influences the rate at which the moisture is pulled out of the soil and pulled into the atmosphere. 

What was very interesting is those two variables, wintertime precipitation and summertime moisture demand in the atmosphere, 

were approximately equal in importance. So that means even if we 

continue receiving a consistent amount of precipitation during the 

wintertime in the next century, if we have temperatures increase 

therefore evaporative moisture demand in the atmosphere increasing in the next 100 years then that alone should cause substantial 

change in forest health in the next century. 

Because we can quantify the impact of wintertime precipitation 

and summertime moisture demand on forest health then we could 

use future potential scenarios of climate to forecast forest health, 

quantitatively. By doing that you find that by 2050, forest health 

is about the same as it was during the worst mega droughts in the 

last millennium. The worst mega droughts were in the late 1200s 

which influenced the ancestral Puebloans in a tragic way in the 

late 1500s, which we believe caused the amount of the forest in the 

Southwest to be reduced substantially. 

The difference between the drought that we expect to be occurring by mid-century and the 1500’s drought is that the drought 

that we expect to be occurring by mid-century should not change. 

It should not rebound. We will have warm periods and cool periods 

still. But each warm period will be warmer. Each cool period will 

be cooler. 

On average we’ll be continuing on trend toward dry conditions. 

Whereas after the 1500’s drought, it got wetter and cooler again 

and the forests were able to re-establish. So in other words—— 

The CHAIRMAN. Each warm period will be warmer, but each cool 

period would be cooler or warmer? 
42 

Mr. WILLIAMS. Yes, it will be warmer. 

The CHAIRMAN. Yes. Right. 

Mr.WILLIAMS. So the take on this is that decade by decade we’re 

getting warmer on average. It will be harder and harder for trees 

to re-establish in the places where they die due to these mega 

drought type conditions. So by the year 2100 you’ll be looking at 

a quite different landscape than what we see today. 

My analysis shows that by the 2040s, barring some huge inaccuracy in life models, we should be looking at a very different landscape that what we see today, just like the landscape we see today 

is quite different than what we saw in the 1980s. 

The CHAIRMAN. Very good. 

Congratulations on the work and getting it accepted. 

Mr. WILLIAMS. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. The education, it’s terrific. 

Let me ask about the reference to Dr. McDowell. You said that 

you made a reference to solutions. then didn’t elaborate in your testimony. 

Could you give us, I mean, obviously we should be doing what’s 

possible to reduce greenhouse gas emissions? We should be taking 

the steps necessary to adjust to the warming and the climate 

change that we can’t head off in any way. 

Are there more specific solutions that you see that we ought to 

be pursuing? 

Mr. MCDOWELL. I think that’s a great question, Chairman. At a 

local scale, a regional scale, a western North American scale, forest 

management can be employed in a sustainable manner to reduce 

the risk of fires and reduce water stress. 

As Dr. Allen pointed out, we stopped fires a little over 100 years 

ago. The ladder fuels have grown. We had these catastrophic fires. 

So, the mechanical thing of the understory trees, the smaller 

trees, leaving the big ones that are adapted to survive the small 

fires, should reduce the catastrophic wildfires. It also will help with 

bark beetle attacks which are rampant across the Northern hemisphere because they’ll have less stress. In other words, they’re not 

competing for resources with their neighbors as much. 

That’s my main suggestion. 

The CHAIRMAN. The other part of this, which I don’t know what 

to ask you folks to respond to. But regular gas emissions have been 

coming down in the U.S. here recently because of the switch to 

more use of natural gas verses use of coal in electricity generation. 

That’s what the newspaper article says. 

Then go out worldwide and most of the growth in greenhouse gas 

emissions for the coming decades is expected to occur in emerging 

countries. It’s not going to be occurring here cause we’re not adding 

generation capacity like they are. We don’t have the increased demand for energy that they do. 

It just strikes me that this is one of those issues where we could 

do what we can do here in Santa Fe County, in New Mexico, in the 

Southwest, in the Intermountain West, to try to accommodate the 

situation. But we almost have to engage the rest of the world in 

order to significantly affect greenhouse gas emissions and significantly affect the long term trends. Is that an accurate? 
43 

Maybe I should ask you, Bill, if that’s your conclusion that we 

just have to have a global solution to the problem or else it’s not 

a problem that gets solved? 

Mr. DEBUYS. Yes, Mr. Chairman, I would agree we need a global 

solution. I don’t think that we can achieve a global solution in practical terms, however, unless the United States becomes a global 

leader. Without the United States leadership on the business of 

limiting greenhouse gases, I don’t think we’ll be able to bring 

China and India along as we need to. 

Europe has already exercised some leadership. But I think the 

lack of participation in these issues by the United States has undermined that effort considerably. So the world still respects the 

United States a great deal. If we lead maybe we can achieve something. 

The CHAIRMAN. Dr. Redmond, do you folks attempt, in any of the 

work that you’re doing, do you try and engage other countries, particularly emerging countries in what needs to be done and monitoring efforts and all the rest of it? 

Mr. REDMOND. No, not so much. 

Actually, I decided a while back to just really concentrate on the 

Western states because there’s dozens of climate issues there. They 

need attention. Rather than spread my own attention too thin, it 

was a conscious decision to just stick with the West. 

It’s where I grew up. I really love it here. 

So, I think regarding Bill’s point and the question you just asked 

is we, as part of our leadership role in the world, would be to help 

other countries see that it’s in their self interest to limit greenhouse gases. 

I think there’s one other point that’s worth bringing up here. It’s 

not the climate issue directly, but it’s the ocean acidification issue 

which is purely a chemical thing of carbon dioxide going into the 

oceans. The oceans belong to all of us. We all need healthy oceans. 

This is totally separate from the climate change problem. But it 

has equally big consequences. They’re just as frightening to me as 

climate change is. 

We don’t have to be hung up on this issue of whether you believe 

in climate change or not for that to be an issue. It’s a separate 

issue that’s so much a concern it’s yet another driving force that’s 

maybe a leverage point to, for us, to be able to deliver this needed 

leadership without getting so hung up on these discussions we’re 

having all the time about the climate side of things. 

The CHAIRMAN. Let me ask, Dr. McDowell. Your work there at 

Los Alamos, my impression is you are the cutting edge as far as 

what’s being done to try to verify the extent of greenhouse gas 

emissions worldwide? Be in a position where we have needed information about where the problem is the worst and where the problem is and how much of it is naturally caused and how much of 

it is manmade. 

It seems to me that getting worldwide attention up will depend 

on having very good information about precisely where the problem 

is coming from and who is to blame and who is fixing it and who 

is ignoring it. Is this something that you folks are doing as part 

of your effort there at Los Alamos? 
44 

Mr. MCDOWELL. The answer is yes. The lab, as a whole is, well 

it’s an effort by many, many scientists to do exactly what you said. 

My particular role is understanding the forest carbon uptake and 

release and trying to find well how much does tree death actually 

matter. It seems like it matters a lot. But we’re still working on 

that. 

There are other people, though, that focus quite a bit on the fossil fuel emissions, for example or on land use change and deforestation, etcetera. 

But I totally agree. There’s a lot of interest in pursuing that so 

that we are prepared when and if the world takes things like carbon trading more serious than they do. 

The CHAIRMAN. It seems that all of the feedback groups, if that’s 

the right word to describe what’s happening here, all feedback 

groups lead us to a worse outcome rather than a better outcome. 

That’s what you describe the dead forests rather than the living, 

carbon dioxide rather than absorbing carbon dioxide. Bill referred 

to dust over the snow that, of course, causes melting to occur more 

quickly and thawing from permafrost and all the rest of it. It seems 

as though as the warming progresses the acceleration of the warming also progresses. 

Is that a fair conclusion? Is that a scientifically agreed upon conclusion? 

Mr. MCDOWELL. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate 

Change is the world’s authority on the question that you just asked 

which is synthesizing all of the evidence are there more positive 

feedbacks than negative? Positive meaning it gets warmer then it 

gets even warmer, like you said. 

There are negative feedbacks in their system. But the current 

consensus from the IPCC is there’s far more positive feedbacks. In 

other words, you’re right that most of the changes should accelerate warmth. 

So let’s say ice sheet melting in the Northern hemisphere in the 

Arctic. That allows the water to absorb more heat. It becomes 

warmer. So it’s a positive feedback, the same for the forests. 

So that’s the consensus. 

The CHAIRMAN. OK. 

I thought you could give us some examples of negative feedbacks 

which would encourage us. 

Mr. MCDOWELL. We have more cloud formation, for example, 

that might reflect more light off of the surface of the earth from 

the sun. That’s an example. 

The CHAIRMAN. I see. 

Mr. MCDOWELL. It gets cloudier in some areas. 

The CHAIRMAN. OK. 

It’s hard to know what else to ask. 

Let me ask about the time lags. One of the obvious problems in 

trying to find a policy solution to this kind of problem is, I think, 

Dr. Redmond, you were referring to the fact that, you know, sometimes you can’t wait to see the evidence of the problem before you 

take action or it’s too late. 

The other time lag, which is, always seem to me to be the major 

problem in getting attention to climate change or finding a solution 

to climate change is that once the greenhouse gases are in the at-
45 

mosphere they’re going to be there for multi decades or hundreds 

of years. So trying to head that off is—there is no immediate benefits that you can see from taking immediate action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions because the greenhouse gas emissions that 

have previously been put in the atmosphere are going to continue 

the trends that we’re talking about here. 

I don’t know if there’s any better way to make that case to people 

than has been made in the past. If any of you have any great insights. 

Bill, you’ve put your mind to this over the last several years and 

published a great book on the subject. How do you suggest that? 

I remember Russell Long, who was in the Senate when I was 

first elected. He told me at one point early on. He wasn’t talking 

about climate change when he said, the best or the worst mistake 

a politician can make is to solve his constituent’s problem before 

his constituent knows he has it. 

[Laughter.] 

The CHAIRMAN. That was probably good advice in the context he 

was talking about. But unfortunately this is a problem that needs 

to be solved, perhaps before a lot of people know they’ve got the 

problem. I don’t know exactly how we overcome that obstacle. 

Do you have any insights that you could give us? 

Mr. DEBUYS. I wish I had a silver bullet for this one because it’s 

a really tough one. Even if we stopped all greenhouse gas emissions 

tomorrow, the climate would still continue warming for probably 

another generation. Which is to say that if we do all the right 

things, we don’t get the payoff, really, in our lifetimes. 

That is one heck of a tough sell to sell people on. But it’s still 

what we have. 

The CHAIRMAN. Our planning horizon in Washington is usually 

2 years. 

Mr. DEBUYS. Yes. 

[Laughter.] 

The CHAIRMAN. Because that’s when we have the election. That’s 

not quite long enough, but one thing I would say about forests. I 

mean, there’s the global vacation this year in terms of greenhouse 

gases and that obviously is the point. Deforesting will continue if 

the concentration of those continue to rise. There’s that set of 

issues. 

There is the whole set of issues though, the adaptation issues. 

What can we do? You know, here we are today, many of us. We’ve 

talked a little bit about it. 

But in terms of forests, when I think about this, is forests have 

been providing—well, of the excess CO2 that humans have been 

putting into the atmosphere every year? About half of it, the planet 

has been performing a free service for us by removing about half 

of that excess every year. OK? 

About half of that half, so a quarter of the total, is being absorbed into the oceans in the way Kelly was describing. Basically 

it’s just higher concentrations in the air and more into the oceans. 

It has that side effect of acidification of the oceans. 

But the other half of the half, about a quarter of the total extra 

humans put into the atmosphere, is being absorbed by terrestrial 

ecosystems, to a large degree, forests. Forests have been providing 
46 

this important ecosystem service in terms of reducing the rate of 

greenhouse gas concentration rise in the atmosphere. So what we 

can do in the short run, one of those in the immediate run now, 

is care for our forests the best we can. Try to increase their resilience, their resistance to what seem to be growing climate stresses. 

So the kind of efforts, you know, like the Forest Restoration Programs that you’ve sponsored in the past. I mean, these are very 

helpful and important initiatives. We need to be thinking about, 

and I noticed the Governor was talking about it. I mean, they are 

very concerned in thinking about to restore forests to these landscapes and re-spore. 

Out of all the many services forest provide, but one of them is 

does feed back to the atmosphere. 

The CHAIRMAN. That’s a very good point. I think you’re right that 

trying to maintain the health of our forests is a big part of what 

we can do now. 

Dr. McDowell, let me ask you this question that Kevin prepared 

here that I had failed to earlier ask. 

You showed two maps in your testimony of forests with high levels of beetle kill in New Mexico and then in the rest of the U.S. 

My understanding is that beetles have now made their way into 

Canada into forests that previously did not have problems of beetles at any significant scale. What is going on in Canada and other 

parts of the world with relation to this beetle problem? What’s your 

expectation of the path that beetles will take now that they are in 

Canada? 

Is that something you’ve looked into? 

Mr. MCDOWELL. We can only speculate on how far they will migrate. There’s all kinds of complexities associated with entomology 

and insects. But yes, the British Columbian mortality event is, to 

our knowledge, the largest on our estimate so far. 

It’s been Lodgepole Pine, which is the same species that died all 

over Colorado in the last couple of years. It’s the same insect, the 

Mountain Pine Beetle. 

So the entire spine of the Rockies has just been really, really 

damaged. So one could expect that it is quite possible and look at 

what our experts on this have suggested. It could be possible for 

it to migrate throughout the Boreal forest and toward the eastern 

seaboard. 

I don’t know how likely that is. It requires them to change 

their—the insects to change the species of pine tree that they attack. But Jack Pine, which is very, very similar to Lodgepole Pine 

grow. They grow together in Northern BC and in the Yukon and 

then the Jack Pine goes to the Eastern seaboard. 

So if the insects can learn to use Jack Pine, then it is a very significant risk. 

The CHAIRMAN. Now is there any community action that we can 

take, as a society, to head off the spread of these beetles that hurt 

forests, in the Eastern part of the country as well as? 

Mr. MCDOWELL. Yes. That depends on if there’s a practical issue 

there. I mean, a whole, whole lot of insecticide might work. But 

that’s a huge amount of land mass. There’s all kinds of negative 

side effects of spraying insecticide across the landscape. 
47 

1 Barry Nelson and Denise Fort, Pipe Dreams, Water Supply and Pipeline Projects in the 

West, Natural Resources Defense Council, 2012. 

It may be thinning. Sustainable forestry and up in Canada would 

be important to reduce the stress. But barring some incredible 

change in the forecast of temperature rise, I don’t think it’s—that 

that seems almost insurmountable to stop that if the insects figure 

out how to use a new species of tree. 

The CHAIRMAN. OK. 

I’d like to be able to finish this hearing on a high note, but I can’t 

think how to do that. 

[Laughter.] 

The CHAIRMAN. So, let me just again thank all the witnesses and 

appreciate all of you who have interest in the subject being here 

today. We hope that people will pay attention to the information 

that’s been provided today. I hope we can get the national debate 

and discussion on climate change re-energized. 

So thank you all very much. We’ll stop the hearing with that. 

[Whereupon, at 12:02 p.m. the hearing was adjourned.] 

[The following statement was received for the record.] 

STATEMENT OF DENISE D. FORT, PROFESSOR OF LAW, UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO

SCHOOL OF LAW, AND DIRECTOR, UTTON TRANSBOUNDARY RESOURCES CENTER

Drought, climate change and its effect on forests and wildfire has been well covered by the distinguished members of the panel. I appreciate the opportunity to add 

comments about the effect of climate change on agriculture and ecosystems in the 

Inter-mountain West. I will focus on the Southwest, where the effects of climate 

change are said to be the most pronounced in the United States. 

The shift to a drier and hotter climate in the Southwest is now linked to the 

drought that we are experiencing and that is predicted for the future. I will direct 

my comments towards two aspects of water policy that are affected by climate 

change: agriculture and ecosystems. 

CLIMATE CHANGE AND AGRICULTURE IN THE INTER-MOUNTAIN WEST

The term ‘‘drought’’ is a misnomer for the change in climate that we are experiencing. In terms of water diversions for agriculture and municipal uses, water storage has provided a needed cushion for dry years. But, as reservoirs are drawn down 

and deliveries curtailed, the necessity of addressing the new reality of climate 

change cannot be avoided. Thus to use the term ‘‘drought’’ or ‘‘variability’’ is subtly 

misleading, because the salient question is how a diminished and altered supply of 

water will be managed. If the operating assumption is that there will be a return 

to ‘‘average’’ flows, for example, one makes different decisions than if one acknowledges that the average is changing. The implications of a changed climate should 

be taken into account in federal farm policy and in federal water policy. 

Federal payments for drought, loan subsidies, and direct payments affect agricultural decisions. The changed reality of climate in the Southwest calls for a reexamination of federal agricultural policy. The Conservation Reserve Program should be 

expanded, rather than cut, because it provides multiple benefits to society and farmers. For the Southwest the question is how to encourage the agricultural sector to 

utilize information about the changing climatic conditions to make good decisions. 

Federal subsidies can distort this process. 

Federal water policy also needs to respond to the changed realities of climate. The 

Bureau of Reclamation is examining the gap between ‘‘demand’’ and supply (‘‘demand’’ does not have a rigorous meaning, but rather is a compilation of all wished 

for amounts by water users) and considering alternatives to address the gap. This 

process is part of a helpful conversation about the limits imposed by the changing 

climate and a widespread conversation about how society should address this new 

reality. It would be a mistake for the Congress to attempt to meet this gap with 

expensive federally funded projects. In a recent NRDC report we argue that many 

water importation projects lessen the resilience of communities and impose high energy costs.1
48 

2For examples, see: Backlund, Peter, et. al. The Effects of Climate Change on Agriculture, 

Land Resources, Water Resources, and Biodiversity (Inter-agency review Draft) http:// 

climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap4-3/sap4-3-draft3.pdf) 3Prepared by Kari Olson, UNM School of Law (J.D. expected 2014) 

4 Comprehensive Wildlife Conservation Strategy. Chapter 5: Assessments and Strategies for 

SGCN and Key Habitats Statewide distributed Riparian Habitats (From wildlife.state.nm.us) 

pages 220- 230, at Page 223; Backlund, Peter, et. al. The Effects of Climate Change on Agriculture, Land Resources, Water Resources, and Biodiversity (Inter-agency review Draft) http:// 

climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap4-3/sap4-3-draft3.pdf at page 150; Potential Effects of Climate 

Change on New Mexico. Agency Technical Work Group. State of New Mexico. December 30, 

2005 (from www.southwestclimatechange.org) at Pg. 18, Citing: Covich et al. 2003, Chapter 8: 

Natural Ecosystems II. Aquatic Systems, in Wagner, F.. (ed.), Preparing for a Changing Climate. The Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change. Rocky Mountain/Great 

Basin Regional Climate-Change Assessment. A Report of the Variability and Change. Rocky 

Mountain/Great Basin Regional Assessment team for the U.S. Global Change Research Program. 5 Bogan, M.A. 1998. Changing landscapes of the middle Rio Grande. In: Mac, M.J., P.A. Opler, 

C.E. Puckett Haecker, and P.D. Doran (eds.). Status and trends of the nation’s biological resources: vol. 2. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Geological Survey. p. 562-563. at pg. 564 6 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, with support by the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, The National Fish, Wildlife and Plants 

Climate Adaptation Strategy, http://www.wildlifeadaptationstrategy.gov/goals.php 

There is a great deal of literature about environmental governance and how to 

address natural resources decision making.2 The decisions about how to respond to 

a changed climate should involve a wide range of interests, not be made by the traditional ‘‘iron triangle’’ of state engineers, federal agency heads, and members of 

Congress. While there is a continuing role for the federal government, we have new 

governance models that should be utilized to involve many more Americans in considering the water and land use of the next generations. Requiring beneficiaries to 

pay will go a long way towards reining in the most far etched proposals. 

Efficiency measures, water transfers and water reuse are the sorts of measures 

that will need to be used under these conditions of increased scarcity. But, without 

new initiatives, they will not address the ecological losses imposed by a changing 

climate. 

THE EFFECT OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON ECOSYSTEMS

The second point I wanted to make relates to the ecological effects of drought, and 

how we can ameliorate some of these effects. In particular, western fishes and other 

species associated with our waters are imperiled by climate change. Federal and 

state action is needed to protect the ecological values of our rivers, streams, springs, 

and other aquatic environments. Because these ecosystems and species lack the 

legal standing and economic clout of those with rights under our water laws, natural 

systems will bear the highest costs from climate change, unless we take affirmative 

steps to protect them. 

We are facing a crisis in our native fishes populations, one that is exacerbated 

by climate change. I quote from a recent memorandum prepared for the Utton Center:3

‘‘Water dependent species in particular are facing rapid declines in population due primarily to the modification of natural stream and river flows, 

the introduction of invasive species, and poor agricultural practices. Climate change will potentially exacerbate these effects shown through reduced mountain snow-packs, increased water temperatures, further decreased surface flows, and alteration of the timing of environmental cues 

many species rely on, as well as altering the climatic events such as flooding and droughts.4 Fish are the most imperiled vertebrate species in the 

Southwest with 48% of the fishes found in the region in jeopardy. Native 

plant species are imperiled as well, with about 40 species identified as imperiled in the Southwest region.’’5

The evidence of ecological loss for aquatic ecosystems led a consortium of wildlife 

agencies to propose a set of guiding principles for action.6 These goals are a useful 

framework for federal action: 

• Goal 1: Conserve habitat to support healthy fish, wildlife and plant populations 

and ecosystem functions in a changing climate. 

• Goal 2: Manage species and habitats to protect ecosystem functions and provide 

sustainable cultural, subsistence, recreational, and commercial use in a changing climate. 

• Goal 3: Enhance capacity for effective management in a changing climate. 
49 

7Davies, P E; Harris, J H; Hillman, T J; Walker, K F. 2010. The Sustainable Rivers Audit: 

assessing river ecosystem health in the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia. Marine & Freshwater 

Research 61(7): 764-777; Fisher, D.E. 2010. Murray-Darling Basin Governance: The Focus of the 

Law. Journal of Water Law 21(4): 145-155; Crase, L.; Pagan, P.; Dollery, B. 2004. Water markets as a vehicle for reforming water resource allocation in the Murray-Darling Basin of Australia. Water Resources Research 40(8); Qureshi, M.E.; Grafton, R.Q.; Kirby, M.; Hanjra, M.A. 

2011. Understanding irrigation water use efficiency at different scales for better policy reform: 

a case study of the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia. Water Policy 13(1): 1-17; 

• Goal 4: Support adaptive management in a changing climate through integrated 

observation and monitoring and improved decision support tools. 

• Goal 5: Increase knowledge and information on impacts and responses of fish, 

wildlife and plants to a changing climate. Goal 

• 6: Increase awareness and motivate action to safeguard fish, wildlife and plants 

in a changing climate. 

• Goal 7: Reduce non-climate stressors to help fish, wildlife, plants, and ecosystems adapt to a changing climate. 

We know much of what we need to do to achieve these goals. The Congress should 

incorporate these goals into the statutory missions of the federal water management 

agencies. The federal ESA has shifted agency actions in specific situations, but the 

traditional missions have far out-shadowed efforts on behalf of restoration. 

Finally, I believe that the Australian response to long term drought is a model 

that the congressional and executive branches should consider. Australia faced the 

loss of biodiversity in its major river basin, the Murray-Darling Basin. In short, it 

committed to the environmental values of the basin, providing funding from the national government to ensure adequate flows for the species that were dependent on 

the river.7 The U.S. should consider a similar investment in ecosystem health. Indeed, the billions of dollars spent by the federal government on development of 

western rivers should be balanced by expenditures for sustainability. From the agricultural interests’ perspectives, a fair price for water rights may be a better bargain 

than the future that agriculture faces in the most arid regions. 

Thank you, Senator Bingaman, for your long standing commitment to tackling climate change, and for your commitment to New Mexico’s environment. 

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