Meadow plants in subalpine areas are better adapted than trees to long winters, deep snows, and a short growing season. At this elevation, slow-growing trees don’t shade out the meadow flowers. Flowers grow most abundantly on south- and west-facing slopes, like at Paradise and Sunrise.

Due to the long winters, subalpine meadow plants have about six weeks to grow, flower, pollinate, and disperse their seeds. Unique adaptations of color, patterns, and fragrances help flowers compete for the attentions of hoverflies, hummingbirds, and other pollinators. Other adaptive strategies equip plants to survive—and even to grow—under the deepest winter snowdrifts.

NPS Photo of a glacier lilies.

Glacier lilies (Erythronium grandiflorum) begin growing under many feet of snow. In spring the plant burns starch to generate heat to melt a hole, then grows up through the hole.

Others like magenta paintbrush (Castilleja parviflora) have hairy stems and flowers to retain warmth and moisture and can grow and bloom quickly as soon as it’s free of snow. The magenta paintbrush pictured in this photo grew and flowered in just a week as soon as the snow melted away from the edge of the plowed road.

NPS Photos of magenta paintbrush along the Sunrise Road, 7/6/22.

Subalpine wildflowers survive on a thin margin and are easily damaged when trampled. Help them survive by always staying on trails!

NPS/T. Stoker Photo of an elk grazing in a subalpine meadow on Mount Rainier.

Monitoring Elk

Mount Rainier National Park is home to several large elk herds. Elk are monitored by the North Coast and Cascades Inventory & Monitoring Network (NCCN), which also monitors elk in Olympic National Park and Lewis & Clark National Historic Park. Elk can have a large impact on ecosystems and are an important species to monitor to understand ecological change.

Monitoring includes trends in the estimated abundance, spatial distribution, bull:cow ratio and cow:calf ratio of elk present in selected subalpine areas during late summer. The surveys are conducted from helicopter between August 15th and September 15th each year. In Mount Rainier National Park, surveys were conducted in two areas that correspond with primary summer ranges used by the North Rainier Herd, which winters outside the park to the North, and the South Rainier Herd, which winters outside the park primarily to the South. From 2008-2017, 13 surveys of North Rainer study area and 15 of South Rainier study were conducted, finding an average of 359 elk present in North Rainier and 477 elk in South Rainier. Summer surveys at Mount Rainier are jointly supported by NPS, Muckleshoot Indian Tribe, Puyallup Tribe of Indians, and Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Learn more about elk monitoring. Statistics are from Jenkins, K.J. and Others, 2021, “Elk monitoring in Mount Rainier and Olympic national parks: 2008-2017 synthesis report”.

Mount Rainier National Park has been monitoring northern spotted owls (Strix occidentalis caurina) annually since 1997. After habitat loss, the spotted owl was listed as Endangered in Washington state in 1988 and listed as federally threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 1990. Currently, there are 36 historic territories that are monitored at Mount Rainier National Park. Northern spotted owl monitoring enables biologists and park managers to get accurate annual population estimates of adult and juvenile spotted owls in the park. This helps inform conservation measures to help preserve the species within park boundaries and can contribute to the overall understanding of spotted owl population dynamics.

You can help! If you see an owl in the park, please report it to a ranger or submit a wildlife observation report at https://arcg.is/rLOiy. Spotted owls look very similar to barred owls, so accurate descriptions of feather patterns, especially from the front of the bird is best, and including a picture helps park biologists verify sightings and monitor populations more effectively.

Learn more about spotted owl monitoring.

Mountain lakes are unique ecosystems whose physical, chemical, and biological properties can vary year to year depending on spring snowpack and ice cover. Mount Rainier, Olympic, and North Cascade National Parks contain over 1,200 mountain lakes and ponds at elevations over 3,200 feet (1000 m). Between 2007 and 2018, scientists monitored conditions in mountain lakes in both above average snow years (2011-2012) and in historical minimum snow years (2015). During years with less snow, lakes become ice-free earlier and have warmer summer water temperatures, giving rise to other ecosystem changes linked to temperature such as lower dissolved oxygen, higher total dissolved nitrogen, higher chlorophyll, and higher abundance of cladoceran zooplankton. Conversely, in years with higher snowpack and a shorter ice-free season, lakes were colder and clearer with more dilute ions as well as lower algal biomass and zooplankton abundance. By looking at a variety of snowpack values, scientists are able to address questions about how climate effects mountain lakes and foretell future conditions in Mount Rainier and other Pacific Northwest parks.

Learn more about this research in “Summer ecosystem structure in mountain lakes linked to interannual variability of lake ice, snowpack, and landscape attributes” published in Limnology and Oceanography, available online at https://aslopubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/lno.12188.

Additional reports about Mount Rainier National Park water quality available at https://go.nps.gov/1tprha.

NPS Photo of arrowleaf groundsel, a common subalpine wildflower, and a hoverfly pollinator at Sunrise.

The blooming of Mount Rainier's gorgeous wildflower meadows is linked to the amount of snow on the ground. While this year the mountain had some late spring snow, pushing peak bloom into mid-August, last year the meadows melted out very early due to a heat wave. Changes in melt timing can affect how well young plants survive. Earlier snow melt can result in less soil moisture later in the season, making plants vulnerable to prolonged drought. Not all pollinators are tied to snowmelt but are active later in the summer. They may be too late to pollinate the blooms of their preferred flowers if the flowers bloom earlier in the season. This could mean that some wildflower species miss out on the chance to reproduce. Each meadow species responds differently, and wildflower season may end up stretching out, moving toward a time in which the 20-species-blooming-at-once-in-Paradise pictures are no longer possible.

NPS photo of numerous wildflowers blooming together in a subalpine meadow around Tipsoo Lake.

The University of Washington MeadoWatch program is a long-term citizen science program to track wildflower phenology in Mount Rainier’s meadows. Volunteers hike two routes, one near Reflection Lakes and the other in Glacier Basin, and note the species of wildflowers and their lifecycle stage, from budding to blooming to seeding, at certain points along the trail. The observations are repeated multiple times each summer and over multiple years to build a long-term data set used to understand the impacts of climate change in Mount Rainier National Park. To learn more and participate visit www.meadowatch.org.

NPS Photo of a MeadoWatch surveyor noting wildflower species at a location along a trail.

3D map of Mount Rainier and previous glacial extents, currently being edited to represent the September 2021 glacier extent. The 3D surface was constructed using flight data and is an additional new tool for the re-delineation of glacial masses in the Park. Mount Rainier NP Geology and Imminent Threats/T. Kenyon Photo

Mapping Mount Rainier

In fall of 2021, the Mount Rainier National Park Geology Division collaborated with the Alaska Regional Office to implement Structure-from-Motion photogrammetry across the full extent of Mount Rainier within the park boundary. This application was the largest yet performed by the NPS both in terms of physical area, and volume of data collected, yielding over 22,000 photos collected via fixed-wing aircraft and a combined 5TB of raw/processed data. As a result, Mount Rainier National Park now has the first park-wide geospatial update it’s received in 16 years, giving park scientists access to current aerial imagery and Digital-Surface-Models at better resolutions than were previously available.

Partenavia P68 Observer fixed-wing aircraft furnished by Owyhee Air on contract for the aerial data collection. NPS AKRO/C. Hults Photo

Time-stamped photo showing the location of collected ground control. These marks were tracked with millimeter-grade GNSS equipment and used to verify the accuracy of the models after the data was processed. NPS AKRO/D.Hansen Photo

Flight plans for the anticipated collection days. Figure details fly-over routes which would be used to collect data over the high alpine, the SW, SE, and Northern Park boundaries. These plans were developed by the Mount Rainier NP Geology and Alaska Region Geology divisions alongside the Mount Rainier National Park Aviation group. NPS AKRO/C. Hults Photo

After a long season of planning, contracting, flights, and field surveys, park scientists are finally able to put this data to use! The new data has provided the park with photos at 25-36 centimeters ground resolution, and elevation models at roughly 50 centimeter. While this data was primarily designed to support re-mapping of park glaciers, multiple resource groups in the park have already started using these data for everything from landform characterization to ground cover classification and mapping of social trails, just to get started. This collection will continue to support resource projects for years to come and will also be used for major infrastructure and facilities planning. At a basic level this data is the first to create a park-wide geospatial record that spans both space and time and is an exciting step forward from the perspective of research, monitoring, and preservation of natural systems. The park will also be making this data publicly available in the future.

Mount Rainier National Park is collaborating with partners to understand temperatures within glacially-fed streams. Data collected through stream temperature monitoring shows that waters within Mount Rainier National Park are significantly colder than reaches further downstream, underscoring the important role glacial headwaters play in providing viable cold water habitat. Bull trout, an especially sensitive species, are among those that depend on colder temperatures. These fish, federally listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), require cold stream temperature habitats like those found at Mount Rainier to spawn and to rear newly hatched fish. As glaciers rapidly decline in a changing climate, rivers on Mount Rainier may see higher water temperatures. Understanding how cold water zones might be affected by rapidly melting glaciers will be an important tool in efforts to conserve biodiverse glacial ecosystems and threatened aquatic species.

Read more about this work in the “Mount Rainier: A Cold Water Refuge” science brief.

Dragonfly Mercury Project

Mercury often enters parks as air pollution from distant, human-caused sources, like coal-burning power plants. Dragonfly larvae are excellent indicators of mercury risk because they can live for years underwater eating insects and even small fish. Once it is deposited, mercury can build up inside the larvae and give scientists insight into the health of the waters in which they live. The Dragonfly Mercury Project (DMP) is a national program that brings together citizen engagement and education with scientific efforts to survey water sources to understand mercury (Hg) risk in protected areas. 2020 was the seventh year that Mount Rainier National Park (MORA) participated in the DMP! In 2020, two Mount Rainier National Park sites were classified as “low risk” and one site as “moderate risk” for Hg impairment. Across all parks, 24% of sites sampled in 2020 were classified as “low risk” and 51% were classified as “moderate risk”.

Find more 2020 Dragonfly Mercury Project Results.