NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2012

气候和水文对美国西部树木更新和分布的影响。尽管迅速的气候变化被广泛认为是对生态系统稳定的主要威胁，但对于物种和群落对未来条件的适应能力有多大，人们几乎没有达成一致意见。气候变化的后果将对干旱地区的生态系统，如美国西部的森林，由于强烈的海拔和气候梯度尤为明显。预测树种再生模式将是理解气候变化对西部森林影响的核心。这项研究将通过开发一个统计框架来吸收不同的、公开的、跨越空间和时间的数据集，研究美国西部树木繁殖的气候和水文限制，并最终研究树木分布的限制。该研究员将由半干旱植物群落动力学专家威廉·劳恩罗斯博士和生态学家和统计建模师安德鲁·菲利博士指导。该项目强调解决紧迫问题所需的跨学科性质，例如全球变化对物种分布的影响以及开发利用广泛、公开可用数据集的方法。这项研究通过确定当地和区域人口减少风险最大的树种，以及强调在未来预测的气候制度下树木再生可能失败的地理区域，使社会受益。这些信息将有助于指导土地管理者和政策制定者管理美国西部公共和私人土地上的森林。

Climatic and hydrologic influences on tree regeneration and distribution in the western United States.Though rapid climate change is widely recognized as a major threat to ecosystem stability, there is little agreement about how resilient species and communities will be to future conditions. The consequences of climate changes will be particularly pronounced for dry-region ecosystems such as forests of the western US due to strong elevation and climatic gradients. Predicting patterns of tree species regeneration will be central to understanding the impact of climate change on western forests. This research will examine the climatic and hydrologic limitations on tree reproduction, and ultimately the limitations on tree distributions, in the western US by developing a statistical framework for assimilating diverse, publicly-available datasets across space and time.The Fellow will be mentored by Dr. William Lauenroth, an expert in semiarid plant community dynamics, and Dr. Andrew Finely, an ecologist and statistical modeler. This project stresses the interdisciplinary nature needed to address pressing issues such as the influence of global change on species distribution and the development of methods for utilizing extensive, publicly-available datasets. The research benefits society by identifying tree species with the greatest risk of local and regional population decline as well as highlighting geographic areas where tree regeneration is likely to fail under future predicted climate regimes. This information will help guide land managers and policymakers in managing forests on public and private lands across the western US.