Drivers of plant diversity, community composition, functional traits and soil processes along an alpine gradient in the central Chilean Andes

Schroeder, Lucy; Robles, Valeria; Jara‐Arancio, Paola; Lapadat, Cathleen; Hobbie, Sarah E.; Arroyo-Kalin, Mary T; Cavender‐Bares, Jeannine

doi:10.1101/2023.01.13.523936

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…The increase in temperature in the studied subregions is expected to accelerate the hydrological cycle and, in combination with the projected precipitation change, can increase the frequency and severity of hydrological and climatological droughts, heat waves, and glacier mass loss acceleration (Ayala et al 2020;Dussaillant et al 2019;Pellicciotti et al 2014). The projected warming can also have severe consequences over the frequency and extension of wildfires (González et al 2018;Urrutia-Jalabert et al 2018), affect tree growth decline in remaining natural forests (Matskovsky et al 2021), change plant community composition in Andean ecosystems by modifying the tree-line frontier in Southern Patagonia (Aguirre et al 2021) and increase the advent of invasive species in a variety of ecosystems (Schroeder et al 2023).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

CMIP6 precipitation and temperature projections for Chile

Salazar,

Thatcher,

Goubanova

et al. 2023

Clim Dyn

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Precipitation and near-surface temperature from an ensemble of 36 new state‐of‐the‐art climate models under the Coupled Model Inter‐comparison Project phase 6 (CMIP6) are evaluated over Chile’s climate. The analysis is focused on four distinct climatic subregions: Northern Chile, Central Chile, Northern Patagonia, and Southern Patagonia. Over each of the subregions, first, we evaluate the performance of individual global climate models (GCMs) against a suit of precipitation and temperature observation-based gridded datasets over the historical period (1986–2014) and then we analyze the models’ projections for the end of the century (2080–2099) for four different shared socioeconomic pathways scenarios (SSP). Although the models are characterized by general wet and warm mean bias, they reproduce realistically the main spatiotemporal climatic variability over different subregions. However, none of the models is best across all subregions for both precipitation and temperature. Moreover, among the best performing models defined based on the Taylor skill score, one finds the so-called “hot models” likely exhibiting an overestimated climate sensitivity, which suggests caution in using these models for accessing future climate change in Chile. We found robust (90% of models agree in the direction of change) projected end-of-the-century reductions in mean annual precipitation for Central Chile (~ − 20 to ~ − 40%) and Northern Patagonia (~ − 10 to ~ − 30%) under scenario SSP585, but changes are strong from scenario SSP245 onwards, where precipitation is reduced by 10–20%. Northern Chile and Southern Patagonia show non-robust changes in precipitation across the models. Yet, future near-surface temperature warming presented high inter-model agreement across subregions, where the greatest increments occurred along the Andes Mountains. Northern Chile displays the strongest increment of up to ~ 6 °C in SSP585, followed by Central Chile (up to ~ 5 °C). Both Northern and Southern Patagonia show a corresponding increment by up to ~ 4 °C. We also briefly discuss about the environmental and socio-economic implications of these future changes for Chile.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

CMIP6 precipitation and temperature projections for Chile

Salazar,

Thatcher,

Goubanova

et al. 2023

Clim Dyn

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Long gradients are thus likely to enhance relationships between spectral and plant β-diversity. A few studies have explored their effects on spectral composition or diversity (White et al 2010, Schneider et al 2017, Bongalov et al 2019, Durán et al 2019, Schroeder et al 2023, but the impact of environmental gradients on the SVH has not been directly addressed yet.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring the spectral variation hypothesis for α- and β-diversity: a comparison of open vegetation and forests

Wallis,

Kothari,

Jantzen

et al. 2024

Environ. Res. Lett.

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Airborne hyperspectral imaging holds great promise for estimating plant diversity and composition, given its unprecedented combination of aerial coverage, spatial resolution, and spectral detail. Recently, there has been renewed attention toward the spectral variation hypothesis (SVH), which predicts that higher spectral variation is correlated with greater plant diversity. While several studies have highlighted methodological challenges involved with the SVH, there is little consensus about when it yields strong predictions of taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic diversity. In part, this may be because prior studies have not explicitly considered how underlying environmental gradients drive changes in spectral and species composition. In this study, we tested the SVH separately in open vegetation (i.e., grasses and shrubs) and in forests at five sites across Canada. Generalized additive models revealed that spectral diversity was a better predictor of functional α-diversity than of taxonomic or phylogenetic α-diversity in both vegetation types. Mantel tests and Procrustes analyses revealed weak to moderate associations between spectral and plant β-diversity and composition in open vegetation, and moderate associations in forests. The better fit in forests appeared to be influenced by the presence of an elevational gradient and associated species turnover (from deciduous to coniferous trees); we observed weaker relationships when examining only a subset of this gradient. We suggest that the high variability in the strength of associations between plant and spectral diversity reported to date might be affected by the presence of environmental gradients. Finally, we found that different wavelength bands contributed to spectral α-diversity in open vegetation vs. forests, suggesting different spectral features are important for different vegetation types. In conclusion, spectral diversity is a potentially powerful tool for biodiversity assessment, but it requires a context-specific approach.

show abstract

CMIP6 precipitation and temperature projections for Chile

Salazar

Thatcher

Goubanova

et al. 2023

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Precipitation and near-surface temperature and from an ensemble of 36 new state-of‐the‐art climate models under the Coupled Model Inter‐comparison Project phase 6 (CMIP6) are evaluated over Chile´s climate. The analysis is focused on four distinct climatic subregions: Northern Chile, Central Chile, Northern Patagonia, and Southern Patagonia. Over each of the subregions, first, we evaluate the performance of individual global climate models (GCMs) against a suit of precipitation and temperature observation-based gridded datasets over the historical period (1986–2014) and then we analyze the models’ projections for the end of the century (2080–2099) for four different shared socioeconomic pathways scenarios (SSP). Although the models are characterized by general wet and warm mean bias, they reproduce realistically the main spatiotemporal climatic variability over different subregions. However, none of the models is best across all subregions for both precipitation and temperature. Moreover, among the best performing models defined based on a Taylor skill score, one finds the so-called “hot models” likely exhibiting an overestimated climate sensitivity, which suggest caution in using these models for accessing the future change in Chile. We found robust (90% of models agree in the direction of change) projected end-of-the-century reductions in mean annual precipitation for Central Chile (~-20% to ~-40%) and Northern Patagonia (~-10% to ~-30%) under scenario SSP585, but changes are strong from scenario SSP245 onwards, where precipitation is reduced by 10–20%. Northern Chile and Southern Patagonia show non-robust changes across the models. Future near-surface temperature warming presented high inter-model agreement across subregions with the greatest increments occurring along the Andes Mountains. Northern Chile displays the strongest increment of up to ~ 6°C in SSP585, followed by Central Chile (up to ~ 5°C), both Northern and Southern Patagonia show a corresponding increment by up to ~ 4°C. We also briefly discuss the environmental and socio-economic implications of these future changes for Chile.

show abstract

Drivers of plant diversity, community composition, functional traits and soil processes along an alpine gradient in the central Chilean Andes

Cited by 3 publications

References 104 publications

CMIP6 precipitation and temperature projections for Chile

CMIP6 precipitation and temperature projections for Chile

Exploring the spectral variation hypothesis for α- and β-diversity: a comparison of open vegetation and forests

CMIP6 precipitation and temperature projections for Chile

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