New Homes on the Range: Species Shift Across Yosemite

Repeating a century-old survey, ecologists find that global warming is forcing mammals in the national park up and, potentially, out By David Biello Pioneering ecologist Joseph Grinnell in 1914 began a seven year survey of the animals living in Yosemite National Park in California. Even then, human impacts such as the transformation of the Central Valley into an agricultural oasis were changing the landscape and the animals who lived there. Nearly a century later, one cause for the transformation of California wildlife has come to overshadow all others: global warming. Now scientists have found that a rise of 6.7 degrees Fahrenheit (3.7 degrees Celsius) in average nighttime low temperatures (since 1920 when Grinnell concluded his research) is causing mammals in Yosemite to get a move on. Evolutionary biologist Craig Moritz,... [read full story]