Counting marmots…
This is one of 3 scenarios the Downside Companion Set explores. It is an AI-generated planning artifact, not a forecast or an RMBL institutional commitment. The contingencies it depends on are named in its plausibility-caveats and (where applicable) upside or downside conditions sections. See the browse page for the full set, including the alternative scenarios.
This is a downside scenario. It assumes climate change advances faster than central-case modeling assumed. By the mid-2030s, low-elevation snowpack in the basin collapses in three of five years instead of one in five. Subalpine fir dies back across slopes that had been stable. Some marmot colonies shift up-drainage; others fail. Phenology stacks fragment in ways the long records had no analog for. Fire seasons compromise summer fieldwork two years out of three. The campaign closes at the campaign floor, with operating conditions degraded by faster-than-modeled climate change. It reorients accordingly: the marmot study and the meadow phenology series are extended through the discontinuity, instruments are rebuilt at higher elevations where analog systems have shifted, and fire-resilient field operations become a core institutional concern. The scenario asks donors and the institution to back the records of transformation — to document what was becoming what — rather than preserve a steady-state that no longer exists.
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Climate change advances faster than central-case modeling assumed. By the mid-2030s, snowpack at lower elevations in the basin has collapsed in three of five years rather than every fifth year as modeled in the late 2020s. Subalpine fir dies back across slopes that had been stable. Some marmot colonies move up-drainage to where they have not been recorded; others fail demographically. Phenology stacks no longer compress — they fragment into asynchronies the long records had no analog for. Fire seasons compromise summer fieldwork two years out of three. The very systems the basin records have tracked stop existing as they were. The campaign reorients accordingly: the records are extended through the discontinuity, infrastructure is rebuilt at higher elevations where analog systems have shifted, and the basin's scientific identity becomes documentation of transformation rather than continuity. The bet is that the records of change, captured at high resolution through an accelerated decade, become more scientifically valuable than the records of stability would have been.
Depends on: (1) climate change advances along a higher-end trajectory — snowpack collapse arrives roughly a decade earlier than central modeling assumed, fire frequency increases faster, phenological coupling breaks more widely; (2) campaign comes in at the realistic floor — federal funding remains tight, donor appetite is mixed, but neither collapses; the constraint is in the basin itself, not the budget; (3) leadership and guest- scientist community respond to discontinuity by extending rather than abandoning the records — the loudest internal tension, because the temptation to declare the records ended and pivot to new work is real; (4) some study species are partly extirpated locally; the scenario does not assume basinwide species loss but does assume real losses; (5) public attitudes do not collapse — acute climate events maintain attention, but not sustained policy reform.
This scenario assumes that climate change advances faster than the modeling of the late 2020s expected. By the early 2030s, basin scientists begin to recognize that several thresholds are being crossed at once. Low-elevation snowpack, modeled to collapse in one of every five winters, collapses in three of five. Subalpine fir dies back across slopes that field crews had considered stable. Marmot colonies on the lower edges of their range fail demographically; some move up-drainage to ground where they have not been recorded. The phenology stacks that the meadow series tracked through the 2010s — orderly cascades of bloom and emergence — fragment into asynchronies the long records had no analog for. Fire seasons compromise summer fieldwork in roughly two of every three years by the mid-2030s, with smoke shutting down access even in years when the basin itself does not burn.
The campaign opens in this context. Donors who care about basin science see, as the scientists do, that the systems being studied are no longer the systems the records were designed to track. The campaign closes at the campaign floor, with operating conditions degraded by faster-than-modeled climate change. The institution does not collapse. It reorients. It chooses to document the transformation at the resolution only a place with sixty- and seventy-year records can provide. It rebuilds some infrastructure at higher elevations, hardens summer operations against fire, and protects the long records as they pass through the discontinuity. What it does not do is pretend the basin of 2026 is still the basin being studied.
The early campaign years run before the full pattern is obvious. The 2027 and 2029 winters produce snowpack near the low end of recent ranges, but within historical variability. The 2030 fire season closes access to several research sites for parts of July and August. Researchers note the disruption but most assume normal years will return. The campaign opens with priorities set against a central-case climate that already feels generous. RMBL leadership and the board commit early to protecting the marmot study and the meadow phenology series, regardless of how operating conditions evolve. The data team begins quietly building elevation-banded versions of standard geospatial products in anticipation that range shifts will need to be mapped at finer resolution. RMBL365 hosts an expanded shoulder-season program as guest scientists begin compressing field work into May and September windows around the fire season. By 2030, the campaign has raised enough to lock in the long-record protections; the rest of the deliverables are paced carefully against an uncertain operating environment.
Three of the five winters between 2031 and 2035 produce snowpack collapses at lower elevations. Subalpine fir dieback becomes visible from the road into Gothic. In 2033, the marmot study records its first complete failure of a colony that had been monitored continuously since the 1970s; another colony, three hundred meters higher, shows up in the records for the first time. The meadow phenology series begins logging events that arrive in orders the protocol's data structures do not cleanly handle. Researchers and the data team revise codebooks to capture the fragmentation rather than smooth it out. The campaign uses this phase to deploy higher-elevation sensor capacity and to fund the observer-succession arrangements that keep the long records intact as their subject systems move. The fire seasons of 2032 and 2034 are bad enough that RMBL convenes a working group on field-season operations; the resulting investments — air filtration, smoke-aware scheduling, evacuation contingency through RMBL365 — are funded out of the campaign's secondary priorities. Several research lines tied to lower-elevation snowmelt experiments are paused; their PIs and RMBL leadership decide together which can transition to new sites and which are retired.
By the late 2030s, the basin's scientific identity has shifted. RMBL is no longer primarily a place where long-term records describe a stable mountain system; it is a place where long-term records describe what a mountain system looks like as it transforms. The marmot study passes its 75-year mark in 2038, now spanning colonies at elevations the original protocol did not anticipate; published work from the period draws explicit contrasts between the demographic patterns of the 1970s–2000s and those emerging after 2030. The meadow phenology series, approaching its 65th year, becomes a reference dataset internationally for how phenological stacks fragment under accelerated warming. The data team's elevation-banded products are used by researchers across the western mountains. The campaign closes near its floor. Several deliverables that looked plausible in 2027 were narrowed or dropped along the way. What was protected, was protected. RMBL ends the period smaller in scope than the central-case scenarios imagined, but with the records intact and a new kind of scientific work — documentation of transformation at sustained resolution — at its center.
For scientists working on the long records and on post-snowpack ecology, this period is demanding but unusually consequential. The marmot study extends through colony shifts and partial failures, generating data that no other long mammal record in North America will hold. The meadow phenology series logs the fragmentation of phenological stacks as it happens, with the late-2030s data becoming a reference internationally for asynchrony research. Researchers willing to work at higher elevations, in compressed field seasons, and with the smoke and access constraints fire imposes, find RMBL a place where transformation can be observed at resolution unavailable elsewhere. Researchers whose work depended on stable lower-elevation systems face harder choices — some transition to new sites, some hand off lines to peers, some retire projects. The basin is a smaller place for some kinds of work and a more important place for others.
RMBL through this period is constrained, focused, and clear-eyed about what it is doing. The staff is roughly its current size, with modest growth in the data team and no growth in administrative or partnership functions. Summer field operations are reorganized around fire risk; shoulder-season work expands through RMBL365 in Crested Butte. The institutional identity shifts: RMBL is no longer mainly a host to a stable program of long-term ecological observation in a stable mountain system, but a host to long records of a mountain system transforming. The mood is sober and purposeful rather than triumphant. The institution carries the records through the discontinuity. It does fewer things than the central-case scenarios imagined. The things it does, it does because they could not be done anywhere else.
Your contribution joins an effort to keep the basin's long records observing as the basin itself transforms. The marmot study and the meadow phenology series — among the longest continuous records of their kind in North American mountain systems — pass through a period when the systems they track stop being what they were. A contribution is part of the conditions that let those records continue: protocols that adapt, data systems that hold the discontinuity legibly, instruments that move with the species, field operations that work around fire and smoke. It is also part of accepting that a basin science responsive to faster-than-expected climate change must do fewer things, more carefully, than a basin science under steady conditions could. What donors are part of building is a record of transformation at a resolution only this place can produce.
This scenario assumes climate change advances meaningfully faster than the central-case modeling of the late 2020s expected — specifically, that low-elevation snowpack collapses become routine by the mid-2030s rather than late-2040s, and that fire seasons compromise summer fieldwork in two of three years rather than one in three. This is a downside-tail climate assumption. Central-case climate trajectories would produce a less acute version of this scenario; if climate actually evolves at central-case pace, the campaign's choices look premature and the higher-elevation investments may be made before the systems have fully shifted. The scenario also assumes that the long records can in fact be extended through the discontinuity — that observer-succession arrangements hold, that protocols can adapt without losing comparability to the historical data, and that the species the records track are still present in the basin in some form. If marmot populations collapse basin-wide rather than shift up-drainage, the marmot study ends rather than transforms. The scenario assumes RMBL's institutional independence and operating model survive the period intact; federal contraction is assumed at central-case pace, not at the sharper rate the institutional-stress dominant scenarios assume. The characteristic failure mode of this scenario's bet is timing: if the campaign reorients toward transformation documentation before the transformation is clearly underway, the institution looks alarmist; if it reorients too late, the early years of the shift are missed. A structural blind spot: the scenario does not seriously model what happens if RMBL's small technical staff cannot in fact handle the increased data and operational complexity that transformation documentation imposes, particularly under the fire-disrupted operating conditions assumed. Staff burnout, succession of key technical roles, and the cumulative wear of working under degraded conditions are real risks the scenario gestures at but does not resolve.
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Speculative. Lower resolution than the primary horizon.
Looking past 2040, this scenario points toward a basin science whose value depends on the records continuing through whatever comes next. If the climate trajectory of the 2030s persists into the 2040s, the marmot study and the meadow phenology series become some of the only multi-decadal records of how mountain systems traverse the threshold from one regime to another. Their scientific use shifts further from documentation of pattern to reference for what mountain transformation looks like at sustained resolution. RMBL itself, if the institution carries through the campaign period intact, is positioned to be a place where the science of the post-snowpack mountain matures. The institution at the 2040s is smaller in scope than the 2020s imagined it might be, but it holds something — the records of how the basin became what it was becoming — that almost no other place will hold. The further future is hazier; the bet of this scenario is that this kind of record matters more, not less, as the conditions that produced steady-state mountain ecology recede further into history.
In 2040, RMBL matters because it documented a basin transformation that few field stations were positioned to document at this resolution. The marmot study extended through colony shifts and partial failures; the meadow phenology series tracked fragmenting phenology stacks; the snowmelt-driven plant work captured the years the snowpack regime broke. The basin's science shifted register: from baseline to transformation, from steady-state to dynamics, from describing what is to documenting what was becoming what. The institution adapted with it — not easily, with several research lines reshaped or paused — but durably. What RMBL still offers is what it offered before: the rare ability to study mountain change at sustained resolution. What it now offers is different from what it offered in 2026, because the basin is different.