Coexistence in a Changing Environment

Utah State University, Logan UT

Investigators

Abstract

Climate change poses an increasingly important threat to biodiversity. Much research has focused on how increasing mean temperatures will affect ecological communities, but climate change is also predicted to cause an increase in precipitation variability. Although theory shows that climate variability can have important effects on the coexistence of competing species, a lack of appropriate data has prevented rigorous tests of this theory. The research proposed here takes advantage of unique historical datasets to test the influence of climate variability on coexistence in semiarid ecosystems of the western U.S. During the early and mid-20th century, ecologists at a number of field stations made annual maps of all individual plants species in small plots. This project involves digitizing these original maps and then using statistical analyses and computer models to test whether climate variability promotes or reduces species diversity. Results from this research will quantify the role of climate variability in maintaining biodiversity in five widespread and economically important rangeland ecosystems. These results will provide an important test of general ecological theory as well as a first step towards forecasting the ecological effects of predicted increases in climate variability. Digitally archiving the historical data represents an equally important contribution, since it will give the entire scientific community an unparalleled opportunity to learn about the future by studying the past.