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Climate and disturbance impacts on subalpine forests
Climate and disturbance impacts on subalpine forests
Using data from the USFS Forest Inventory and Analysis database, we've been investigating how climate change and changing forest disturbance regimes are impacting subalpine forest systems across the western US.
Niches, tree-rings, and climate change
Niches, tree-rings, and climate change
As part of my doctoral research, I collected a new network of tree-ring data that span the climatic niche of ponderosa pine. We used these data to demonstrate that species-wide associations with spatial climatic variation cannot predict population-level responses to climate change through time. This work is currently in revision and should be in press soon, stay tuned!
Naturalized distributions and climatic disequilibrium
Naturalized distributions and climatic disequilibrium
Most projections of how species will respond to climate change operate under the assumption that historic native ranges are in equilibrium with species' climatic tolerances. Recent work has demonstrated that this assumption is often invalid, but the frequency and magnitude of these violations are unknown, as are the conservation consequences. To find where species can thrive in climatic conditions outside of those experienced in the native range, we have been using herbarium records to describe the naturalized ranges of plant species globally. Understanding these sorts of mismatches is critical to making better conservation and management decisions in the future.
See our recent publications on this topic:
Perret, Leslie, & Sax. 2019. Naturalized distributions show that climatic disequilibrium is structured by niche size in pines. Global Ecology & Biogeography.
Rosenblad, Perret, & Sax. 2019. Niche syndromes reveal climate-driven extinction threat to island endemic conifers. Nature Climate Change.
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