LTREB RENEWAL: Collaborative Research: Population- and community-level mechanisms of range limitation in a variable and changing environment

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Anticipating the effects of global climate change requires an understanding of how the abundances and geographic distributions of plants and animals will respond to altered weather patterns. This project continues a long-term study of two alpine plants from northern Alaska to the high alpine of New Mexico. Data collected to date show that near their southern limits, both species show declining survival but higher growth. These compensatory responses mitigate climate effects in most years, but break down in the warmest years. Over the next five years, the project will gather more detailed data to tie these ecological responses to local and regional climate and use climate change predictions to project the future range limits of the species. Understanding how climate, and climate change, determine ecological dynamics is a central requirement for understanding when, where, and why climate change will or will not have serious consequences. This research will build capacity to anticipate climate change impacts, including the development of field and population modeling methods that can be extended to other species and ecosystems. Beyond the applied benefits of this understanding, the work will contribute to long-standing questions about the forces that naturally set range limits and determine patterns of biological diversity. The research incorporates both formal training in field and modeling methods to graduate and undergraduate students and informal education to the general public. The latter includes active involvement in non-profit education centers, public lectures through the National Park Service, and a series of articles written for the popular media.