New model shows impact of climate change on rangelands

U.S. rangelands; click the image to enlarge it. (Wikipedia map)

"Rangelands are the dominant land type across the planet and millions of people rely on the natural goods and services and food security the lands provide. A recently released model, G-Range, allows scientists and policymakers to understand how changes in climate will potentially impact rangelands by running global simulations in a single process, rather than repeating hundreds or thousands of processes," Rob Novak reports for Colorado State University's public-relations office.

CSU researcher Rich Conant, who co-authored the study introducing G-Range, said it fills a critical gap in the current toolbox: "There are already a whole host of models for agricultural and forested systems, but grazing lands often fall between those things . . . G-Range is an important step to assess environmental issues in those systems that so many people are dependent on."
 
G-Range is based on an existing model called Century, which was also developed at CSU's Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory. It will soon be available to anyone who wants to use it as an open-source system.