A new study published in Ecological Applications by Amanda Kissel and Maureen Ryan of CSP, and collaborators Wendy Palen (Simon Fraser University) and Michael Adams (USGS) demonstrates that for a species of frog endemic to the Pacific Northwest, climate change could result in a 50% increase in the probability of extinction by the 2080s.
They aimed to assess how the warmer and drier temperatures as a result of climate change affect the survival of two distinct parts of the frog’s life cycle; in the shallow ponds where they develop as tadpoles, and in the surrounding terrestrial environment where they live as adults. The species has been tracked in Olympic National Park’s Sol Duc watershed for approximately 15 years, when Palen began tagging hundreds of frogs with microchips to monitor survival. More recently Kissel and Ryan continued the work by monitoring more than 50 ponds used by the frogs for breeding. They found that currently, up to a quarter of the tadpoles are stranded and die each year. However, using projections from hydrologists from the universities of Washington and Notre Dame, they predict that nearly 40% of the tadpoles could be lost as a result of pond drying by the 2080s. The results also revealed that thinner snowpacks and warmer summer temperatures reduced adult survival. Most importantly, when the trends are added together, they predict that the Cascades frog will have a 62% chance of extinction risk by the 2080s. The study supports an emerging picture of climate change in the Pacific Northwest, where precipitation will fall more often as rain rather than snow as a result of warmer temperatures, leading to longer, drier summers with compounding negative effects for many wildlife species.
[Read The Paper]