Rocky mountain high science teaching, research, and nature at field stations

Are there field sites where scientists can produce knowledge about global environments in one place? Today, field scientists often go into the mountains to study the effects of global climate change. It is on mountaintop biological islands that the devastating effects of climatic warming are often felt the earliest, since plants and animals adapted to such places usually have nowhere to go. Even when the effects are less dramatic than (local or global) species extinction, mountain environments are often considered especially sensitive to changes in the global climate.¹ The use of mountain stations for long-term climate change research reveals how particular local field sites can illuminate critical global environmental problems. Yet using mountains as places for fieldwork on global environments is far from new: the promoters of Rocky Mountain field stations promulgated such a vision in the early twentieth century.