Collaborative Research: Quantifying Climate-forced Extinction Risks for Lizards, Amphibians, Fishes, and Plants

由于人为碳增加而导致的气候变化正在改变全球的温度和降雨模式。这些环境变化正在改变植物群落，进而可能导致许多脊椎动物物种的局部灭绝。例如，当面临长期的热浪和干旱时，树木可能无法从土壤中吸取足够的水分，从而无法掉下大部分树叶。减少的树叶覆盖使更多的阳光照射到地面，放大了当地变暖的趋势，并增加了植物本身和许多脊椎动物物种的热和水压力。该奖项的目的是评估气候驱动的植物群落变化如何增加某些冷血脊椎动物物种(即蜥蜴、青蛙)的灭绝率。这项研究假设，许多这样的脊椎动物物种正在灭绝，部分原因是气温上升直接给它们带来压力，部分原因是气温上升也损害了植物群落，动物依赖植物群落获得食物、水和避难所。将在五大洲最近灭绝了目标动物物种的特定地点进行深入研究。在这些地点，拥有动植物生理学和生态学专业知识的研究人员将合作，量化最近的干旱和暖期改变植物群落的程度，这反过来又增加了动物的热和水压力。然后，这些地方研究将被链接(通过遥感方法和在线数据库)，以创建一个全球数据集，其中整合了关于温度、降雨量、植物死亡以及目标动物对热和水胁迫的生理极限的信息。这些数据将使科学家能够以前所未有的准确性预测和测试目标脊椎动物物种的灭绝速度与当前和预期的降雨量、温度和植物群落变化之间的关系。以前的气候变暖影响模型侧重于植物或动物，但不是两者。例如，许多气候变化科学家孤立地研究动物系统，因此只强调气候变化本身对动物类群的作用(例如，气温上升限制了蜥蜴在阳光直射下觅食)。该项目的不同之处在于：a)模拟气候驱动的植物群落变化如何增加暖期和干旱条件；b)展示植物群落的变化如何改变目标动物物种可用的环境，并突破它们的生理极限，加快它们的灭绝速度。这个模型将建立在实地研究的基础上，这些研究测试动物灭绝的非气候相关原因；这将使科学家能够确定解释目标动物灭绝速度不断上升的因素。将开发新的基于网络的产品，利用遥感技术预测全球生态系统当前和未来的退化。这种规模的项目需要具有气候学、生理学、生物多样性和遥感专业知识的科学家之间的合作。来自20个国家的国际团队将共同参与这一项目；新一代博士后研究员和数百名研究生将接受气候变化研究中最新的生理学和数学方法方面的培训。

Climate change due to increases in anthropogenic carbon is altering global patterns of temperature and rainfall. These environmental changes are transforming plant communities, which in turn may be causing local extinctions of many vertebrate species. For example, when faced with prolonged heat waves and droughts, trees may be unable to draw sufficient water from the soil and drop most of their leaves. Diminished leaf cover allows more sunlight to reach the ground, amplifying local warming trends and increasing heat and water stress for plants themselves and for many vertebrate species. The goal of this award is to evaluate how climate-driven changes to plant communities are increasing extinction rates for certain "cold-blooded" vertebrate species (i.e., lizards, frogs). This study hypothesizes that many such vertebrate species are going extinct in part because rising temperatures are directly stressful to them, and in part because rising temperatures also damage plant communities, upon which animals rely for food, water, and shelter. Intensive studies will be made at specific localities on five continents where targeted animal species have recently gone extinct. At these sites, researchers with expertise in plant and animal physiology and ecology will collaborate to quantify the extent to which recent droughts and warm-spells have altered plant communities, which in turn have increased heat and water stress on animals. These local studies will then be linked (via remote sensing methods and online databases), to create a worldwide data set that integrate information on temperature, rainfall, plant die-offs, and the physiological limits of targeted animals to heat and water stress. Such data will enable scientists to predict and test, with unprecedented accuracy across regions and continents, how extinction rates among targeted vertebrate species relate to current and expected changes in rainfall, temperature, and plant communities.Previous models of climate-warming impacts have focused on plants or animals, but not both. For example, many climate change scientists study animal systems in isolation of plant systems, thus emphasizing only the role of changing climate per se on animal taxa (e.g., rising temperatures limit lizards from foraging in direct sunlight). This project differs by a) modeling how climate-driven changes to plant communities increase warm spells and drought conditions, and b) showing how changes to plant communities alters the environment available used by the targeted animals species and push their physiological limits, speeding their extinction rates. This model will be grounded by field studies that test for non-climate related causes of animal extinctions; this will enable scientists to determine the factors that explain the ever increasing extinction rates among targeted animals. New web-based products will be developed that use remote sensing technology to predict current and future degradations in ecosystems across the globe. A project of this scope requires collaboration among scientists with expertise in climatology, physiology, biodiversity, and remote sensing. An international team from 20 countries will work together on this project; a new generation of postdoctoral research fellows and hundreds of graduate students will be trained in the latest physiological and mathematical methods in climate change studies.