Climate change could present an array of benefits as well as challenges to the RMGB region. Possible climate-changes could reduce stresses on this region's water resources, agriculture, and ranching. Climate changes could have mixed effects on outdoor recreation. But climate changes are likely to very fundamentally alter natural ecosystems. An intensification of extreme events -- especially forest and range fires, drought, and floods -- are likely to accompany changes in climate, thus altering a region much-loved by tourists, newcomers, and long-term residents.

Although we should be careful when extrapolating results from climate models, especially because they still exhibit a wide range of estimates at the regional scale, these tools are valuable in generating reasonable projections of climate change and related impacts. As such, the projections presented in this paper can be used to consider strategies that might be needed to better insulate this region from the adverse consequences of climate change.