Climate change and ecosystem composition across large landscapes

Abstract

Context Climate change alters the vegetation composition and functioning of ecosystems. Measuring the magnitude, direction, and rate of changes in vegetation composition induced by climate remains a serious and unmet challenge. Such information is required for a predictive capability of how individual ecosystem will respond to future climates. Objectives Our objectives were to identify the relationships between 20 climate variables and 39 ecosystems across the southwestern USA. We sought to understand the magnitude of relationships between variation in vegetation composition and bioclimatic variables as well as the amount of ecosystem area expected to be affected by future climate changes.Methods Bioclimatic variables best explaining the plant species composition of each ecosystem were identified. The strength of relationships between beta turnover and bioclimate gradients was calculated, the spatial concordance of ecosystem and bioclimate configurations was shown, and the area of suitable climate remaining within the boundaries of contemporary ecosystems under future climate projections was measured.

Light Intensity Modulates the Efficiency of Virus Seed Transmission through Modifications of Plant Tolerance

“…Accelerating rates of climate change are predicted to have an enormous impact on the relationships between organisms [5], including those established by causal agents of plant infectious diseases [7]. In this context, understanding how environmental conditions affect parasite transmission is key to understand the emergence of plant disease epidemics, as the ability to spread to new susceptible hosts is a major determinant of parasite fitness [37,47].…”

“…This global warming has been predicted to reduce cloud coverage, increasing light intensity [3], and promoting drought events [1]. Since these climatic factors influence most (if not all) biological processes, climate change is expected to have a huge impact in the reproductive success of living organisms and in the relationships that they establish e.g., [4,5]. Plant–virus interactions are not an exception [6,7], and therefore investigating the effect of climatic conditions in plant and viral fitness components is central to understand their outcome [7].…”

Historical and event‐based bioclimatic suitability predicts regional forest vulnerability to compound effects of severe drought and bark beetle infestation

“…SDMs are regularly used to interpret species' distribution patterns in relation to environmental variables, particularly climate (Elith & Leathwick, 2009;Franklin, 2010), and they have been applied in studies on turnover of vegetation composition across landscape (Jennings & Harris, 2017), regional patterns of growth (van der Maaten et al, 2017), community-level responses to experimental drought (Bilton, Metz, & Tielb€ orger, 2016), or projections of tree response to climate change (Cheaib et al, 2012). SDMs (also known as bioclimatic niche models, correlative ecological niche models, or envelope models) consider the species' occurrence in sites across its distribution range as well as the climatic conditions of that range although other nonclimatic environmental variables can also be considered.…”

“…SDMs (also known as bioclimatic niche models, correlative ecological niche models, or envelope models) consider the species' occurrence in sites across its distribution range as well as the climatic conditions of that range although other nonclimatic environmental variables can also be considered. SDMs are regularly used to interpret species' distribution patterns in relation to environmental variables, particularly climate (Elith & Leathwick, 2009;Franklin, 2010), and they have been applied in studies on turnover of vegetation composition across landscape (Jennings & Harris, 2017), regional patterns of growth (van der Maaten et al, 2017), community-level responses to experimental drought (Bilton, Metz, & Tielb€ orger, 2016), or projections of tree response to climate change (Cheaib et al, 2012). However, the use of SDMs requires caution since they do not address an explicit analysis of the functional mechanisms involved in the species distribution patterns, particularly ecophysiological performance, and dispersal and biotic interactions (Ara ujo & Luoto, 2007;Elith & Leathwick, 2009;Guisan & Thuiller, 2005).…”

High-resolution and bias-corrected CMIP5 projections for climate change impact assessments

“…The www.nature.com/scientificdata www.nature.com/scientificdata/ tree provides moisture to a wide variety of mammals, birds and insects, and its conservation is critical to maintaining the local ecosystem in the future. Jennings and Harris 74 used DC data to identify specific climate and vegetation parameters for anticipating how, where and when ecosystem vegetation may transform with climate change across the southwestern USA. CCAFS-Climate portal data were used in conjunction with a weather generator to map environmental suitability for the Zika virus, showing that over 2.17 billion people in the tropics and sub-tropics live in areas suitable for the virus and its vector 75 .…”