Dissertation Research: Plant Ecology in Changing Climate, Patterns of species loss and spring phenology in Acadia National Park, Maine

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This project seeks to understand how plant species in Acadia National Park, Maine are responding to climate change. Research in southern New England has found a connection between phenology - the timing of biological events - and species loss in plant communities. Plants with flexible flowering phenology (i.e. blooming earlier in warmer years, and later in cooler years) are less likely to decline in abundance or disappear from the landscape. In Acadia, the researchers used historical data from the late 19th century to record patterns in species loss over the past 120 years. This project will monitor leaf out and flowering phenology in Acadia to record how plants are responding to changing temperatures and explore connections between phenology and species loss. The researchers will work with undergraduates from Maine colleges and universities to monitor leaf out and flowering phenology for thirty plant species on three observational transects that traverse three peaks within the National Park, as well as three experimental transplant gardens along an elevational gradient along one peak. In addition, the researchers will develop a citizen science opportunity for hikers to participate in this research on the three peaks. There is a demonstrated connection between advancing spring plant phenology and warming temperatures in temperate northeast North America. However, plants display differential phenological responses to warming depending on taxa, population, habitat, elevation, and/or geographic location. Phenology is a key plant trait included in many climate vulnerability assessment methods, but its use in these assessments has not been rigorously evaluated, in part because researchers need a better understanding of the environmental controls on phenology at a species level. Here this is achieved through an interdisciplinary approach merging historical ecology, observational and experimental fieldwork, and citizen science in Acadia National Park. In this project, observational monitoring on transects will quantify the relationship between spring temperatures and shifts in phenology at the species level for a community of thirty common plant species in Acadia. Researchers will use these results to facilitate a regional comparison of phenology and species loss for conspecific populations in Acadia versus Concord, Massachusetts. Three reciprocal transplant gardens at three elevations on one peak will test the relative effects of environmental cues and genetic differences at the population level on spring phenology for three understory plant species in Acadia. This project will further our understanding of the ecological effects of climate change, educate visitors about climate change research, and inform resource management in Acadia National Park.