Demographic Inertia: Persistence of Plant Populations under Climate Change

这项研究的目的是了解气候变化对草原植物持久性的影响。全球气候变化对物种多样性构成威胁，并可能随着时间的推移导致群落结构的变化。预测种群持久性需要开发将气候变化与人口统计过程联系起来的模型，如种子库持久性、萌发、存活和繁殖力。这项拟议的工作将利用牧场生态学家几十年来在堪萨斯州海斯附近的混草草原上汇编的个体植物的详细历史，来估计在过去气候制度下的存活和招募。此外，还将进行田间和实验室实验，以确定降雨和温度的变化将如何影响植物的生长、繁殖力和萌发。将使用分层贝叶斯方法将这些结果纳入人口预测模型。该研究计划的更广泛影响包括对博士后研究人员进行实地方法、建模和统计方面的培训。这项工作的结果对北美牧场的保护和恢复具有重要意义。

The goal of this research is to understand the consequences of climate change on the persistence of prairie plants. Global climate change poses a threat to species diversity and is likely to lead to change in community structure over time. Predicting population persistence requires developing models that link climate variation to demographic processes, such as seed bank persistence, germination, survival, and fecundity. The proposed work will utilize detailed histories of individual plants that were compiled by range ecologists over many decades in a mixed-grass prairie near Hays, Kansas, to estimate survival and recruitment under past climatic regimes. In addition, field and lab experiments will be conducted to determine how changes in rainfall and temperature will affect plant growth, fecundity and germination. A hierarchical Bayesian approach will be used to incorporate these results into population projection models. Broader impacts of the research program include training of a postdoctoral researcher in field methods, modeling and statistics. Results from this work have relevance for conservation and restoration of North American rangelands.