Characterizing the Source Water for Montane Meadows to Assess Resiliency under Changing Hydroclimatic Condition

Abstract:

Ecologically and hydrologically functioning montane meadows provide a variety of ecosystem services and create biological hotspots in high-elevation landscapes. They serve as wetlands that filter water, attenuate floods, sequester carbon, sustain downstream flows, and provide high productivity habitat in typically lower productivity mountain regions. Their importance to watershed quality and health is well recognized, and restoration of meadows is a high priority for resource management agencies and non-governmental organizations. Yet many meadow restoration projects have limited outcomes or fail to achieve the desired effects due to a lack of understanding the underlying hydrological and geomorphic processes inherent to meadows that contribute to their resiliency. Few studies exist on how meadows are sustained through time despite various land use impacts or how the origin of water supplying the meadow (snowmelt-dominated versus regional groundwater-dominated) may influence meadow conditions. Furthermore, as climate conditions continue to change, questions remain regarding which meadows will be most resistant to and resilient from climate warming and thus have the highest potential for successful and sustainable restoration of meadow processes. We discuss these concepts and present two methods for assessing the regional and local contributions of source water to meadows as an indicator of resiliency. On a broad scale, comparisons of satellite imagery using metrics such as normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) for regions with meadows may be useful to detect inter-annual and seasonal variations in meadow wetness and thus indicate meadow sites with larger groundwater sources that are more resilient over time. Locally, use of a hydrogeomorphic typing key that relates water source, geomorphic position, groundwater table elevation, and plant species composition may be useful to detect local groundwater sources that provide greater consistency of conditions and resiliency through time than snowmelt-dominated surface water sources. Either or both methods may be useful to resource agencies looking to prioritize limited restoration dollars for meadows with the highest potential to remain resilient over time.