USU Researcher Edits New Book on Climate Warming
Utah State University researcher Frederic Wagner has edited a new book gathering an array of scientific evidence on climate change in Western North America during the 20th century. Climate Warming in Western North America: Evidence and Environmental Effects is scheduled for release by University of Utah Press in May 2009.
“The intent of this book is not to advocate any specific policy but to provide useful information for the people who will be making policy decisions,” says Wagner, professor emeritus in USU’s Department of Wildland Resources.
Among the audiences the book targets are Governors Huntsman and Schwarzenegger and their peers from Arizona, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington and four Canadian provinces represented in the Western Climate Initiative.
For the book, Wagner gathered more than 30 researchers as contributing authors, including two USU scientists, ecologist Mike White and mathematician Jim Powell.
Much of Wagner’s assembly of contributing authors grew out of his coordination of the Rocky Mountain-Great Basin region climate change assessment, one of 19 regional assessments mandated by Congress in the 1990s. Led by Wagner, the assessment yielded the exhaustive 2003 regional report, “Preparing for a Changing Climate: The Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change.”
“Our climate is changing at an accelerating rate,” Wagner says.
Most telling of a warming climate, he says, are the resultant impacts in Alaska, where glaciers are shrinking, permafrost is thawing, lakes are disappearing and moisture-deprived forests are becoming increasingly vulnerable to wildfire.
“Environmentally, Alaska is coming apart at the seams,” Wagner says.
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Contact: Frederic Wagner, (435) 797-2852, fred.wagner@usu.edu
Writer: Mary-Ann Muffoletto, (435) 797-3517, maryann.muffoletto@usu.edu
Writer: Mary-Ann Muffoletto, (435) 797-3517, maryann.muffoletto@usu.edu
Fred Wagner's new book, 'Climate Warming in Western North America,’ offers an array of scientific evidence on climate change during the 20th century.
Fred Wagner's new book, 'Climate Warming in Western North America,’ offers an array of scientific evidence on climate change during the 20th century.
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