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Climate Projections FAQ
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USFS guidance on use of downscaled climate data
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Literature
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Do geographic distribution, niche property and life form explain plants' vulnerability to global change?
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Author's abstract:
We modelled the future distribution in 2050 of 975 endemic plant species in southern Africa distributed among seven life forms, including new methodological insights improving the accuracy and ecological realism of predictions of global changes studies by: (i) using only endemic species as a way to capture the full realized niche of species, (ii) considering the direct impact of human pressure on landscape and biodiversity jointly with climate, and (iii) taking species' migration into account. Our analysis shows important promises for predicting the impacts of climate change in conjunction with land transformation. We have shown that the endemic flora of Southern Africa on average decreases with 41% in species richness among habitats and with 39% on species distribution range for the most optimistic scenario. We also compared the patterns of species' sensitivity with global change across life forms, using ecological and geographic characteristics of species. We demonstrate here that species and life form vulnerability to global changes can be partly explained according to species' (i) geographical distribution along climatic and biogeographic gradients, like climate anomalies, (ii) niche breadth or (iii) proximity to barrier preventing migration. Our results confirm that the sensitivity of a given species to global environmental changes depends upon its geographical distribution and ecological proprieties, and makes it possible to estimate a priori its potential sensitivity to these changes.
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Clark, J.S. et al. Climate change vulnerability of forest biodiversity: climate and competition tracking of demographic rates
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Author's Abstract Forest responses to climate change will depend on demographic impacts in the context of competition. Current models used to predict species responses, termed climate envelope models (CEMs), are controversial, because (i) calibration and prediction are based on correlations in space (CIS) between species abundance and climate, rather than responses to climate change over time (COT), and (ii) they omit competition. To determine the relative importance of COT, CIS, and competition for light, we applied a longitudinal analysis of 27 000 individual trees over 6–18 years subjected to experimental and natural variation in risk factors. Sensitivities and climate and resource tracking identify which species are vulnerable to these risk factors and in what ways. Results show that responses to COT differ from those predicted based on CIS. The most important impact is the effect of spring temperature on fecundity, rather than any input variable on growth or survival. Of secondary importance is growing season moisture. Species in the genera Pinus, Ulmus, Magnolia, and Fagus are particularly vulnerable to climate variation. However, the effect of competition on growth and mortality risk exceeds the effects of climate variation in space or time for most species. Because sensitivities to COT and competition are larger than CIS, current models miss the most important effects. By directly comparing sensitivity to climate in time and space, together with competition, the approach identifies which species are sensitive to climate change and why, including the heretofore overlooked impact on fecundity.
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Thomas Minney: The Nature Conservancy
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Thomas Minney discusses the potential of the Appalachian LCC, how this organization can address large-scale issues like climate change, and the need to achieve common conservation goals.
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Voices from the Community
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Kimberly Terrell: Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute
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Kimberly Terrell describes her work studying the biological constraints of salamanders to adjust to climate change and how the regional nature of the LCC can ensure efficiencies for conservation efforts as well as bring managers and researchers together to work towards common conservation goals.
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RFA 6 - Understanding Land Use and Climate Change in the Appalachian Landscape - Word Doc
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The APLCC intends to understand and address major environmental and human-related vulnerabilities of species as it relates to climate change stressors and develop adaptation strategies in response to climate change. This project will identify species and habitats vulnerable to climate change impacts, and describe vulnerabilities in sufficient detail to inform conservation partners who can then plan adaptive management responses, and compile a tabular, geo-referenced database for the Appalachian LCC website with a list of species/communities by taxonomic group/province identified as most vulnerable using the methodology determined to be of highest quality and best suited to the need of the Appalachians.
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Conservation in a Changing Climate - Website
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The success of future conservation efforts will depend upon our abilities to understand and predict ecosystem changes and take action to help species adjust to a changing climate.
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Responding to Climate Change on National Forests: A Guidebook for Developing Adaptation Options
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From the USDA Forest Service, comes a recently published guidebook for climate change adaptation in national forests. It provides a state-of-science summary of principles of adaptation, methods for vulnerability assessment, and tools and processes to facilitate the development of adaptation strategies and tactics. Distributed to all 176 national forest units, the guidebook is being used throughout the Forest Service and by other agencies to integrate climate change in sustainable resource management.
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Structural and Functional Loss in Restored Wetland Ecosystems
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Wetlands, which include tropical mangroves and boreal
peatlands, are among the most valuable ecosystems in the
world because they provide critical ecosystem goods and
services, such as carbon storage, biodiversity conservation,
fish production, water purification, and erosion control. As
global change accelerates the loss of wetlands, attempts
are increasing to restore this fragile habitat and its
associated functioning. There has been no global evaluation,
however, of how effective such restoration efforts
have been. Here, we present a meta-analysis of the
biological structure (driven mostly by plant communities)
and biogeochemical functioning (driven primarily by the
storage of carbon in wetland soils) of 621 wetland sites.
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Restoration of Ailing Wetlands
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It is widely held that humankind’s destructive
tendencies when exploiting natural resources leads to
irreparable harm to the environment. Yet, this thinking
runs counter to evidence that many ecological systems
damaged by severe natural environmental disturbances
(e.g., hurricanes) can restore themselves via processes of
natural recovery. The emerging field of restoration
ecology is capitalizing on the natural restorative tendencies
of ecological systems to build a science of repairing
the harm inflicted by humans on natural environment.
Evidence for this, for example, comes from a new metaanalysis
of 124 studies that synthesizes recovery of
impacted wetlands worldwide. While it may take up to
two human generations to see full recovery, there is
promise, given human will, to restore many damaged
wetlands worldwide
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