mountainous environments are living
laboratories
to study environmental change
we’re up here to document whether
species are moving
upward what we’re finding
in mountainous environments is that
species from plants
to animals to insects are actually
rising in elevation
and adapting to these thermal niches
we’re trying to understand how climate
change is impacting them
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What are we doing
i’m leading a biology team to perform a
comprehensive biodiversity survey
of the kumbu valley
what we’re doing up here is trying to
understand
what species are living up in these
extreme environments
having our researchers go up higher to
survey for things like plants
rodents and insects comparing it to
historical data from
previous expeditions can give us a lot
of information
about whether we can actually define
how quickly these species are already
moving upwards
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Types of surveys
the two types of surveys we’ll be doing
are water filtration
collecting water samples doing things
like turning over rocks
looking underneath and seeing what’s
there
as a biologist i focus in on the micro
scale to really
look for my new little details
it’s great working with anton as a
partner because
he can step back and look at it from a
more holistic understanding
Climate change
background looking at the climatology of
landscapes
and so that helps us understand better
the organisms that we’re studying
in the context of the landscape
in terms of the ability to respond to
climatic changes different species have
different capacities for response
to use a local example purebred yaks can
no longer live
at the elevation of where they used to
live
my whole family has lived in these
mountains
their whole life they have seen changes
themselves and they’ve lived through
changes
before we could see yaks down to namche
but
now they are no longer able to tolerate
the warming climate here so they have to
move around
these small minute observations are
actually very much important
for any sort of scientific based
understanding
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Survey
when we come up here to do our visual
encounter surveys we’ll pick a piece of
habitat that looks
really good for our species the soil
will be well developed
will be plants we’ll turn over rocks
well that’s a bristle tank
you got him and when we find something
we’ll
collect the animal in a plastic tube so
we can photograph and measure it and
document it
he’s got these sticking up
Ecosystem
the slope is incredibly unstable rocks
constantly in motion
and there are pebbles and rocks covering
the surface but when you remove them
look underneath we’re finding that
basically soils are developed
there’s mosses there’s little tussock
grasses basically an ecosystem seems to
actually be developing under the surface
of this very unstable
rocky substrate there’s much more life
up here than meets the eye at first
glance that’s for sure
Conclusion
when we get back to the lab we’ll do
analysis combined with reaching out to
local experts like entomologists and
botanists
to be able to identify all the species
at the taxonomic level
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if there are any micromore organisms in
here they’ll be throughout the solution
what we’re trying to do is gather as
much information as possible
to really understand how can we adapt to
climate change how can
people adapt to living up here how are
species adapting
this climate change study doesn’t end
here
as scientists we want to provide the
impetus so that these studies can
continue on for years to come
so that people can have a better
understanding of what’s happening and
how to adapt as we move forward
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