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

华盛顿大学获得一笔赠款，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的问题：给定的（例如3°C）气候变暖将对生物和生态群落产生什么影响？ 它们将提高学生和公众对气候变化的生物后果的理解，并提高研究人员和管理人员预测这些生物后果的能力。 该项目将开发和传播一个交互式网络应用程序，绘制动物的环境压力（梅萨），以可视化昆虫的预测体温和热应力区域;极端热应力事件的发生率;发育率指标，以及我们的重点蝴蝶和蝗虫物种的人口增长率。 梅萨的核心将是一个生物物理模型，预算昆虫和环境之间的热交换。这将解决目前生物物理模型的不可访问性，这导致大多数分析将体温近似为空气温度，尽管许多证据表明这种假设可能导致错误的结论。 这些预测将沿着出现在谷歌地球界面上，并附有观察到的气候对昆虫影响的照片和插图，如物候变化。 用户将选择探索重点蝗虫和蝴蝶物种或选择的大小，形状和颜色的一个通用的外温动物模型。 梅萨将为未来气候变化情景提供历史和实时估计和预测。 梅萨将以科罗拉多为原型，随后扩展到北美。 这将涉及为当前和未来的气候开发高空间和时间分辨率的环境数据，以适当量化生物体如何对环境手段和变化作出反应。 我们将使用重点蝴蝶和蚱蜢物种的历史丰度和分布数据来测试梅萨。 该项目将开展教育和推广活动，使学生和公众可以使用网络应用程序来了解一定量的变暖如何转化为生物体的热应力。 该项目将开发各种基于探究的实践教育资源，为高中和本科生提供可视化和解释热应力的经验。 项目人员将与地方教育举措合作，开发教育模块，并最终将这些模块提供给国家气候变化教育举措。 这些模块将遵循扩大科学参与的最佳做法，项目人员将与旨在从代表性不足的群体中招募学生的举措合作。学生将接受生态学和计算方法的交叉培训。 该项目将广泛传播梅萨？的可视化热应力机构的科学家和通过公开演示。 与相关举措（如物候可视化工具）的接口将利用该项目？气候变化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/。 即将建立一个网站，提供计算和可视化工具及教育材料。

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.