CAREER: Computational and visualization tools for translating climate change into ecological impacts

华盛顿大学获得了一笔拨款，用于开发将气候变化转化为生态影响的计算和可视化工具。这些工具将回答这样一个问题：给定的（例如3°C）气候变暖会对生物和生态群落产生什么影响？它们将增强学生和公众对气候变化的生物学后果的理解，并提高研究人员和管理人员预测这些生物学后果的能力。该项目将开发和传播一个交互式网络应用程序，即绘制动物环境压力图（MESA），以可视化昆虫和热压力地区的预测体温；极端热应力事件的发生率；我国重点品种蝴蝶和蚱蜢的发育速度指标和种群增长率。MESA的核心将是一个生物物理模型，用于估算昆虫和环境之间的热交换。这将解决目前生物物理模型难以获得的问题，这导致大多数分析将体温近似为气温，尽管有大量证据表明这种假设可能导致不正确的结论。这些预测结果将与观测到的气候对昆虫的影响（如物候变化）的照片和小插图一起显示在谷歌地球界面上。用户将选择探索焦点蚱蜢和蝴蝶物种或选择大小，形状和一般变温动物的颜色模型。MESA将提供对未来气候变化情景的历史和实时估计和预测。MESA的原型将用于科罗拉多州，随后扩展到北美。这将涉及开发当前和未来气候的高时空分辨率环境数据，以适当量化生物如何对环境手段和变化作出反应。我们将使用焦点蝴蝶和蚱蜢物种的历史丰度和分布数据来测试MESA。该项目将开展教育和推广活动，以便学生和公众可以使用网络应用程序来了解给定数量的变暖如何转化为生物体的热应力。该项目将开发各种以探究为基础的实践教育资源，为高中和本科生提供可视化和解释热应力的经验。项目人员将与当地教育机构合作开发教育模块，并最终将这些模块贡献给国家气候变化教育机构。这些模块将遵循扩大科学参与的最佳实践，项目人员将与旨在从代表性不足的群体中招收学生的倡议合作。学生将接受生态学和计算方法的交叉训练。该项目将广泛传播MESA？向机构科学家提供热应力可视化，并通过公开演示。与相关的计划（如物候可视化工具）相结合将利用项目？对预测和规划气候变化的生态影响的好处。有关该项目的更多信息，请访问PI的实验室网站http://faculty.washington.edu/lbuckley/。一个托管计算和可视化工具以及教育材料的网站即将推出。

The University of Washington is awarded a grant to develop computational and visualization tools for translating climate change into ecological impacts. The tools will answer the question: what impact will a given (for example, 3°C) climate warming have on organisms and ecological communities? They will enhance student and public understanding of the biological consequences of climate change and improve the capacity of researchers and managers to predict these biological consequences. The project will develop and disseminate an interactive web application, Mapping Environmental Stress on Animals (MESA), for visualizing the predicted body temperatures of insects and areas of thermal stress; the incidence of extreme thermal stress events; indicators of development rate, and population growth rate for our focal butterfly and grasshopper species. The core of MESA will be a biophysical model that budgets heat exchange between insects and the environment. This will address the current inaccessibility of biophysical models, which leads most analyses to approximate body temperatures as air temperatures despite numerous demonstrations that this assumption can lead to incorrect conclusions. The predictions will be visualized in a Google Earth interface along with photos and vignettes of observed climate impacts on insects such as shifts in phenology. Users will chose to explore focal grasshopper and butterfly species or choose the size, shape, and coloration of a generic ectotherm to model. MESA will offer historic and real-time estimates and predictions for future climate change scenarios. MESA will be prototyped for Colorado and subsequently extended in scope to North America. This will involve developing high spatial and temporal resolution environmental data for both current and future climates to appropriately quantify how organisms respond to both environmental means and variability. We will test MESA using historical abundance and distribution data on focal butterfly and grasshopper species. The project will develop educational and outreach activities so that students and the public can use the web application to understand how a given amount of warming translates into thermal stress on organisms. The project will develop a variety of inquiry-based, hands-on education resources to provide high school and undergraduate students with experience visualizing and interpreting thermal stress. Project personnel will partner with local education initiatives to develop the education modules and will ultimately contribute the modules to national climate change education initiatives. The modules will follow best practices for broadening participation in science and project personnel will partner with initiatives aimed at recruiting students from underrepresented groups. Students will receive cross training in ecology and computational approaches. The project will broadly disseminate MESA?s visualizations of thermal stress to agency scientists and through public presentations. Interfacing with related initiatives such as a phenology visualization tool will leverage the project?s benefits to predicting and planning for the ecological impacts of climate change. For more information about the project visit the PI's lab website at http://faculty.washington.edu/lbuckley/. A website hosting the computational and visualization tools and educational materials will be forthcoming.