Demographic Inertia: Persistence of Plant Populations under Climate Change

Utah State University, Logan UT

Investigators

Abstract

The goal of this research is to understand the consequences of climate change on the persistence of prairie plants. Global climate change poses a threat to species diversity and is likely to lead to change in community structure over time. Predicting population persistence requires developing models that link climate variation to demographic processes, such as seed bank persistence, germination, survival, and fecundity. The proposed work will utilize detailed histories of individual plants that were compiled by range ecologists over many decades in a mixed-grass prairie near Hays, Kansas, to estimate survival and recruitment under past climatic regimes. In addition, field and lab experiments will be conducted to determine how changes in rainfall and temperature will affect plant growth, fecundity and germination. A hierarchical Bayesian approach will be used to incorporate these results into population projection models. Broader impacts of the research program include training of a postdoctoral researcher in field methods, modeling and statistics. Results from this work have relevance for conservation and restoration of North American rangelands.