Colorado Voices
Facing climate change in one of Colorado’s most remote wintertime laboratories
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A look at the lives of the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory winter caretakers
Five winter caretakers and visiting researchers remain throughout the winter at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, a world-renowned laboratory that becomes completely snowed over during winter months.
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Colorado Voices is a local public television program presented by RMPBS
Colorado Voices
Facing climate change in one of Colorado’s most remote wintertime laboratories
Clip | 4m 51sVideo has Closed Captions
Five winter caretakers and visiting researchers remain throughout the winter at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, a world-renowned laboratory that becomes completely snowed over during winter months.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship[snow shoes crunching] So right now, I see a marmot, and he just came out of a hole.
This is what we do in the spring.
We go around and we wait for marmots to emerge from hibernation.
So it's always a waiting game, you know?
Did they survive?
Did they not survive?
[boots clicking] Okay!
[skis crunching] RMBL, the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory is, first and foremost, a ecological and biological research facility.
Theres quite a few scientists out here that are interested in how the ecosystems evolve through the winter season.
[marmot chirping] So the game of early season is trying to see if you can match the mark on a marmots back to a mark right here.
And that's really, really important because that will help us know, like, where they are, if they're alive, and also kind of where they fit in their social networks.
Oh, oh, oh!
Well, we've been going here every day, and this is the first day we saw that one.
So, this is why we go out every day when we can.
The marmots here have been studied since 1962, and, we know where they are.
And they live in places where they lived before.
So, and now we're starting our sixty-thrid year of study.
The opportunity to ask these long term questions and use this really remarkable data set makes this a particularly valuable study.
Turns out there's an optimal amount of time to be active.
So when we think about climate change, one way to think about climate change is that it creates mismatches.
So animals have evolved to, sort of, be in tune with seasons and seasonality.
When we skied in last year, we were skiing over cabins.
There was like six to eight feet of snow, whereas this year, we already ha kind of melt-out, and it's only a week in.
So there's been a lot of environmental variation, which is one of the things that I'm interested in.
So it's good for my research, but it is bad for the marmots in a lot of different ways.
So I'm hoping that it won't impact the research station too much.
Ken Armitage, he was a professor at the University of Kansas, and he had no intention of starting a long term project.
But he kept coming out, coming out using the marmots to ask more and more questions.
And before you know it, he had fourty-one years of data on individually marked animals which suddenly made this, a really important data set for thinking about climate change and population biology.
I was coming back in 2001 because I had a job at UCLA, and I was like, “Hey, can I come back out and do some work with the marmots?
” He was like, “You can take it over.
Ive done enough with the marmots.
It's time for someone else to move on with it.
” [Snow shoes crunching] Right now we're looking at all the different spots the marmots could be coming out.
So looking at the hibernacula, tracking the footprints and whether or not a burrows been opened.
That way, we know where the marmots might be emerging from and where they might be later on, so we keep checking those areas.
We spend a lot of time trying to look for, you know, evidence of social interactions.
When an animal goes up and greets another animal, when they forage next to each other, when they sit next to each other, when they play with each other or when they chase each other.
We can try to use these statistics to understand, well is it good to be connected with others?
Is it bad to be connected with others?
How is it good?
How is it bad?
Are there better groups and worse groups?
Strictly, all we're really study is yellow-bellied marmots in this one valley.
But, we're really asking broad questions about the adaptive value of sociality.
We're using this as a model system to understand questions about climate change, and how climate change affects hibernating animals, but animals in general as well.
The marmot project in particular is really nice in that it has like sixty-two, sixty-three years of data.
This is like the second longest free living study on free living mammals in the world.
And you don't get to say that very often when you're doing research.
So, I think that's really cool to.
[running water] Proper environmental education develops an appreciation of nature and life, but also educates people into the value of nature and more importantly, empowers them to help affect and create laws that protect nature.
As our population grows, as our consumption grows, we continue to degrade environments.
Even here, we're loving this area to death.
Twenty years ago, it was very different in the spring.
Animals we were seeing this time of year, twenty years ago, we're not seeing this time of year now.
I'm paraphrasing here, but I heard a David Attenborough quote, “People who don't grow up understanding nature, they're less likely to grow up to love it, and they're less likely to grow up to want to protect it.
” The more that we can engage with our world in a conscious way and really think about our place in it, the more we'll want to take care of it and to invest in the future.
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Colorado Voices is a local public television program presented by RMPBS