Forecasts of 21st Century Snowpack and Implications for Snowmobile and Snowcoach Use in Yellowstone National Park.

ABSTRACT: Climate models project a general decline in western US snowpack throughout the 21st century, but long-term, spatially fine-grained, management-relevant projections of snowpack are not available for Yellowstone National Park. We focus on the implications that future snow declines may have for oversnow vehicle (snowmobile and snowcoach) use because oversnow tourism is critical to the local economy and has been a contentious issue in the park for more than 30 years. Using temperature-indexed snow melt and accumulation equations with temperature and precipitation data from downscaled global climate models, we forecast the number of days that will be suitable for oversnow travel on each Yellowstone road segment during the mid- and late-21st century. The west entrance road was forecast to be the

SUBMITTER: Tercek M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4965024 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature