EAGER: Demographic models of interior western U. S. tree distributions - climate in the context of competition, disturbance, and natural enemies

虽然一个世纪的生态学研究已经大大完善了我们对影响物种在景观上分布的因素的理解，但我们还没有理解它们的相对作用。在全球变化，特别是气候变化的时代，这个问题变得越来越紧迫。该项目将评估一些被认为控制树种分布的基本因素的重要性，以及它们的重要性如何在地理和环境梯度中变化。美国西部内陆森林的四种主要和广泛分布的树种将被研究。种群模型将用于整合影响单个树木生长、生存和再生的许多因素，以捕捉决定整个生命周期的力量。该项目将通过培养一名博士后学者、扩大对K-12学生和教师的联系以及与美国林务局土地管理者的合作，促进科学队伍的发展和更好地管理公共土地。该项目将在一个新的尺度上应用一套完善的人口生态学（人口学、扰动分析）工具和思想，以更好地理解在生态位框架内形成地理范围的力量，从而推动人口和社区生态学领域的发展。目的是评估1)影响物种分布的基本因素的重要性：气候、竞争、干扰及其相互作用；2)它们的重要性在地理和环境分布中是如何变化的。分析将集中在杉木、油松、黄松和孟氏伪杉木上，它们跨越了一系列竞争-压力-综合策略。在美国西部连续8个州的约7万个森林清查和分析（FIA）样地中，使用标记个体的全范围数据，将三个关键关键率的回归组合成整体投影模型。

While a century of ecological research has greatly refined our understanding of the factors influencing the distributions of species on the landscape, we have yet to understand their relative roles. This problem has become increasingly urgent in an era of global change, particularly climate change. This project will evaluate the importance of some of the fundamental factors thought to govern tree species distributions and how their importance varies across geographic and environmental gradients. Four dominant and widespread tree species of interior western US forests will be studied. Population modeling will be used to integrate the many factors influencing individual tree growth, survival, and regeneration to capture the forces determining the full life cycle. This project will contribute to developing the scientific workforce and to better management of public lands through the training of a postdoctoral scholar, outreach to K-12 students and teachers, and collaboration with US Forest Service land managers. This project will advance the field of population and community ecology by applying a well-established set of tools and ideas from population ecology (demography, perturbation analysis) at a new scale, to better understand the forces shaping geographic ranges within a niche framework. The objectives are to evaluate 1) the importance of fundamental factors thought to govern species distributions: climate, competition, disturbance, and their interactions; and 2) how their importance varies across geographic and environmental distributions. The analysis will be focused on Pinus edulis, P. contorta, P. ponderosa, and Pseudotsuga menziesii, which span a range of competition-stress-ruderal strategies. Regressions of three key vital rates will be combined to form integral projection models using range-wide data on marked individuals in ~70,000 Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) plots across the eight states of the contiguous western US.