Global population dynamics and climate change: comparing species-level impacts on two contrasting large mammals

Mark Hebblewhite, University of Montana, mark.hebblewhite@cfc.umt.edu (Presenter)
Eric S Post, Penn State, esp10@psu.edu
Steven W Running, University of Montana, swr@ntsg.umt.edu

Understanding the effects of climate change on global ecology is a required to predict the effects of climate change on the distribution and abundance of species. To date, most approaches have assessed impacts on individual populations of a species, for example, using Niche modeling. These approaches are limited because they do not address species responses at the global distribution scale of a species. Niche models generally predict uniform distributional shifts, which do not match observations of historic or current observations. Such approaches often ignore key processes that influence climate effects; 1) species interactions, 2) spatial/temporal variation in climatic downscaling to local population dynamics, and 3) climate-driven synchrony and asynchrony. Therefore, the goal of our proposal is to use extensive datasets for two contrasting large mammalian species over the entire range of their global and North American distribution to understand the effects of climate change on global scale population dynamics. We call our approach the Global Population Dynamics approach. To answer these questions we will use global-scale datasets on the distribution of elk and caribou (broad scale telemetry location datasets), combined with one of the most extensive sets of abundance datasets including >100 time series of these species. We will then address our research objectives by 1) developing niche and 2) time-series population-models using matching spatial-temporal time series of remotely sensed vegetation indices from combined AVHRR-MODIS and MODIS NPP time series ( from 1981-the present), MODIS snowcover and landcover, and global time series of climate data. We will then 3) examine effects of climate change on population synchrony, which will allow us to relax the assumptions of uniform climatic response of species given spatial drivers of asynchrony, and extend the naïve predictions of niche models for these two well studied, but contrasting, species. Finally, we will be able to extend our adjusted Niche model projections to potential future effects of climate change using the most recent CMIP-5 climate model outputs developed for the 5th IPCC assessment.

Presentation: 2011_Poster_Hebblewhite_206_257.pdf (2949k)

Presentation Type:  Poster

Session:  Global Change Impact & Vulnerability   (Tue 11:30 AM)

Associated Project(s): 

• Running, Steven: Integrating MODIS Primary Production, and Evapotranspiration Datasets to Monitor Carbon and Water Dynamics for Terrestrial Ecosystem. ...details
• Running, Steven: Validation, improvement and applications of MODIS global terrestrial primary production MOD 17 and a test MODIS evapotranspiration product: Green Compute Cluster ...details
• Related Activity

Poster Location ID: 206