Climate change II:impacts

Bio 415/615

Questions

1. What are 2 ways plants and animals have been influenced by climate change over the last 50 years?

2. What is phenology, and how does it indicate global warming?

3. How are corals influenced by global warming?

4. Do plant communities respond to more CO2 in the atmosphere? How are such experiments conducted?

Review• The world has warmed about 1 C in the

past 100 years (compared to 5-7 C in the past 20,000 yrs at mid latitudes)

• The world will continue to warm rapidly, perhaps by 5 C over the next 100 years

• What will happen to plant and animal populations over the next few human generations?

• How to plan for the possibilities in the management of species and communities?

Has recent climate change influenced biodiversity?

Hickling et al. 2005 (UK)

Has warming influenced species distributions?

Will warming influence species distributions?

Iverson & Prasad (USFS)

Forest composition change in the Eastern US by 2100 (current is upper left). NY will resemble current Tennessee, Missouri (oak hickory forests).

Sugar maple: gone?!

Black cherry: ‘sparse’?!

Beech: contraction?

Sweetgum: can it move?

Longleaf pine: can it move?

Phenology (IPCC 2007)

Phenology (IPCC 2007)

Coral bleaching is a stress response in reef-forming corals, related to a loss of their photosynthetic (algal) symbiont.

Between 1876-1979, only 3 bleaching events were recorded in the world. Since 1979, there have been dozens of reports.

Donner et al. (2007) report that “anthropogenic warming may have increased the probability of significant thermal stress events for corals [in the Caribbean] by an order of magnitude.”

Mountain meadow warmingHarte and Shaw 1995

Shrubs increase with warming

Arctic warmingWalker et al. 2006

Shrubs increase with warming

Buxton Climate Change Study

Est. 1993

Buxton, England; 370 m a.s.l., 53 20’ N Lat

+ Temp/water interactions

3x3 m plots, 5 replicates

Long-term climate manipulations

Summer watering (June-Sept)

Winter heating (3 °C )

Summer drought (July-Aug)

No progressive change in composition after 13 years in 3x3 m plots

Grime, Fridley et al. 2008 PNAS

Major life form groups unchanged

Species composition relatively stable

Fine-scale (100 cm2) vegetation and

soil surveys

x

x

xx

x

x x

x

x 10 cm

10 cm

20 cm

240 quadrats (8 per 3x3m plot)

3 m

3 m

80% microsite 80% microsite variance variance withinwithin plots plots

13 out of 25 species exhibited microsite responses in controls (GLM P<0.05)

Plantago lanceolata

Potentilla erecta

Deep site specialists

Abun

danc

e (c

over

cla

ss)

Sanguisorba minor

Thymus polytrichus

Briza media

Shallow site specialists

Generalized Additive Models (GAM)

Fridley et al. 2011 Global Change Biology

Abun

danc

e (c

over

cla

ss)

FACE (Free Air CO2 Enrichment)

What do FACE experiments reveal about enhanced CO2 effects on forests?

DeLucia et al. 1999

Young forest:

enhanced growth

Mature forest: CO2 effects?

Koerner et al. 2005

Mature forest: no consistent difference

Will warming facilitate biological invasions?

Walther et al. 2002

How do we manage ecosystems if the climate is

changing?• Corridors?• Assisted migration?• Manage for local adaptation? Genetic

diversity?• Keep out invaders? For how long?• What about plants and animals that

will have no suitable new climates?• Focus on processes rather than

species?