DISSERTATION RESEARCH: How will eco-evolutionary dynamics contribute to the range shifts of plants under climate change?

如果气候对自然群落有很大影响，气候变化应该导致冷适应物种的丧失，代价是当地社区适应温暖的物种。然而，这些可预测的结果并不总是发生。一些社区没有因应气候变暖而改变。该项目将把两个太平洋西北国家公园的历史数据与目前的调查进行比较，以确定为什么一些植物群落能抵抗气候变化的影响，而另一些则不能。该项目将有助于我们了解气候变化的后果，并将这一信息传达给国家公园管理局和太平洋西北地区的其他资源管理人员。学生培训将加强科学工作力量。该项目将在预测气候变化植物群落的变化问题上取得进展，尽管存在区分具有相似预期结果的驱动因素的内在挑战。该项目将确定气候对太平洋西北部山区植物群落的强烈影响。将使用30多年前在两个国家公园(北喀斯喀兹国家公园和雷尼尔山国家公园)收集的植物群落组成的重新调查数据集、新开发的联合物种分布模型和高分辨率气候数据来检验群落组成与生物气候变量关系的假设。对历史和重新调查数据的分析，以及分别进行播种试验，将用于评估变化趋势是否表明对气候变化的韧性或敏感性。该项目将与国家公园管理局合作制定战略，将这些知识纳入资源管理人员的长期规划。未来科学家的培训将在研究生和本科生层面进行。

If climate has a large effect on natural communities, climate change should result in the loss of cold-adapted species at the expense of warm-adapted species in local communities. These predictable results do not always occur, however. Some communities do not change in response to climate warming. This project will compare historical data from two Pacific Northwest National Parks with current surveys to determine why some plant communities resist the effects of climate change while others do not. The project will contribute to our understanding of the consequences of climate change and communicate this information to National Park Service and other resource managers in the Pacific Northwest. Student training will strengthen the scientific workforce.This project will make progress on the problem of predicting change in plant communities with climate change given apparent stasis, despite the inherent challenges of differentiating drivers with similar expected outcomes. The project will determine how strongly climate influences plant communities in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest. Hypotheses on relations of community composition and bioclimatic variables will be tested using resurvey data sets of plant community composition originally collected over 30 years ago in two National Parks (North Cascades National Park and Mount Rainier National Park), newly developed joint species distribution models, and high resolution climate data. Analyses of historical and resurvey data and, separately, seeding experiments will be used to assess whether trends of change indicate resilience or sensitivity to climate change. The project will develop strategies in collaboration with the National Park Service to incorporate this knowledge into long-term planning for resource managers. Training of future scientists will occur at graduate and undergraduate levels.