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

虽然经过世纪的生态学研究，我们对影响景观中物种分布的因素有了更深入的了解，但我们还没有了解它们的相对作用。在全球变化，特别是气候变化的时代，这一问题变得日益紧迫。该项目将评估一些被认为支配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。将研究美国西部内陆森林的四种主要和广泛分布的树种。人口建模将被用来整合影响个体树木生长，生存和再生的许多因素，以捕捉决定整个生命周期的力量。该项目将有助于发展科学劳动力，并通过博士后学者的培训，推广到K-12学生和教师，并与美国林务局土地管理人员合作，更好地管理公共土地。该项目将通过在新的规模上应用一套完善的工具和来自人口生态学（人口统计学，扰动分析）的想法来推进人口和社区生态学领域，以更好地了解在生态位框架内塑造地理范围的力量。其目的是评估1）被认为支配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）它们的重要性如何在地理和环境分布中变化。分析将集中在美味松，P.扭叶松，P.黄松，花旗松，跨越了一系列的竞争压力，杂草的策略。三个关键的生命率的回归将结合起来，形成整体预测模型，使用范围内的数据标记的个人在约70,000森林资源清查和分析（FIA）地块横跨美国西部的八个州。

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.