Last updated: November 29, 2024
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Stronger Together: Monitoring Meadow Communities in a Time of Change
AUGUST 2022
A rolled leaf here. A woody shrub, not yet fruiting. A bud about to peel open, glowing purple from within. Up in the subalpine meadows of Mount Rainier, life bursts from the tiniest corners, in some of the harshest environments. Hundreds of plant species live crowded together in a narrow band of elevation above where the trees thin out and below where the glaciers begin.
A rolled leaf here. A woody shrub, not yet fruiting. A bud about to peel open, glowing purple from within. Up in the subalpine meadows of Mount Rainier, life bursts from the tiniest corners, in some of the harshest environments. Hundreds of plant species live crowded together in a narrow band of elevation above where the trees thin out and below where the glaciers begin.
As the highest volcano and the most glaciated peak in the contiguous United States, Mount Rainier creates its own unique environment straddling the Cascade Range. From the wet rainforests of the Carbon River to the scree fields of the alpine zone, each microclimate comes with unique challenges and, consequently, uniquely adapted plant life. In the subalpine zone ranging from around 5,000 to 7,000 feet above sea level, the growing season is short, the sun is strong, and an average of eight months of the year are spent under more than two feet of snow. Those who make it here are adapted to their environments, their life cycle closely tied to the changes in temperature and time of year. The avalanche lilies bloom before the beargrass, the pasqueflower quickly goes to seed, the gentian waits its turn.
Because they have such short windows to grow, however, these small but mighty plants are in a precarious position amidst a changing climate. The careful balance of snow and sun can be a matter of life and death, as snowmelt provides water and clears space for young plants, but longer and hotter summers leave them vulnerable to drought and damage. Warming also allows trees to encroach on the meadows: lankier cousins that shade out the close-cropped meadow community. Differences in temperature patterns could also stress flowers into reproducing faster, resulting in smaller and less viable seeds. We don’t yet know exactly how shifting environmental factors will impact our meadows, but we intend to find out.
NPS Photo/Mahika Rao
Center: A PVC frame around one of our most diverse subplots.
Right: A subalpine meadow with blooming lupine (Lupinus latifolius), paintbrush (Castilleja parviflora), and bistort (Bistort bistortoides).
Left, Right: NPS Photo/Mahika Rao. Center: NPS Photo.
In our plots, we examine each leaf shape and bud size to identify species and piece together an accurate picture of what our meadows look like today. Always surprising is the sheer number of species in any plot. This year, in a subplot the size of four pieces of paper, we have seen as many as seventeen different species, from showy grass-like sedges to hiding Alaska club moss to delicate rose-like cinquefoils. And each plot is wildly different: though a few species like mountain heathers and Cascade asters show up throughout the park, others—like the endemic Mount Rainier lousewort—appear in only a couple plots and are a delight when they do. Our least diverse plots still have at least ten species, while others exceed 30. These conserved native habitats can balance a rich diversity of life in tiny spaces, where each species has a niche.
NPS Photo/Rao
And this diversity of species is not a poetic accident. Different plants have different adaptations, and many benefit from the strengths of their neighbors. Lupine, for example—nearly ubiquitous in the subalpine zone—is a nitrogen fixer, forming symbiotic relationships with a bacteria that breaks down nitrogen gas in the air into usable nitrogen absorbed through plant roots. When the leafy green lupine decomposes, nitrogen is available for all the other plants around it, filling the ashy volcanic soil with necessary nutrients. Other plants are important food sources for the animals that make up the ecosystem, as Cascade blueberries produce bushels of fruit for bears, chipmunks, and deer. People also use the land for gathering and sustenance: meadow plants such as huckleberries, growing on the ancestral homelands of the associated tribes of Mount Rainier, have been used by and continue to be significant for the Indigenous tribes in the area. The many different actors in the subalpine ecosystem, non-human and human alike, thrive in community.
As the climate changes, we are learning again and again that no species exists in a vacuum; each contributes differently to the stunning wildflower display we see at Mount Rainier every summer. The meadows would not be the same without the neon-bright paintbrushes, the silvery carpets of phlox, the nodding arctic hair grass. And of course, visitors and those at home alike are a part of the ecosystem too: the effects of climate change are already visible on the landscape. Rising temperatures and their consequences—accelerating glacial melt, wildfire, drought—will have intersecting impacts on the fragile fields. By understanding how our research areas react, we can better conserve and steward the land. For now, at the outset of our data collection with lots more to learn, we can say that from the sweeping meadows of Spray Park to the shores of Tipsoo Lake to the peaks of the Palisades, the meadow plants are tenacious, and stay strong together.
Mahika Rao was a Mosaics in Science intern working with the North Coast & Cascades Network vegetation monitoring team during the summer of 2022. Read more blog posts from her season in the southern Cascades.