Workshop: Climate change and species interactions: ways forward

Cary Institute Of Ecosystem Studies, Inc., Millbrook NY

Investigators

Abstract

This award will support a two-day conference on climate change and species interactions. Changing climatic conditions threaten some species with declines and extinctions, can induce pests and pathogens to spread, and can disrupt local communities of interacting species. These changes present major challenges for ecologists, including: (1) predicting how individual species will change in their traits, abundance, and distribution; (2) understanding how communities of interacting species will change in their structure and function; and (3) forecasting how the anticipated changes in these species and communities will influence their abilities to provide ecosystem services such as air and water filtration, carbon sequestration, erosion prevention, and protection against disease. Scientists need new models, experimental approaches, and statistical tools to address these challenges, and specifically to project where individual species will move, how species will evolve, how entire ecological communities will change, and how those species and communities will change in their abilities to perform ecosystem services. Conference sessions will include: Beyond traditional models of climate change and species responses; Neglected issues in climate change/species interactions research; Ways forward: Concepts; and Ways forward: Approaches. Presentations and discussions will be summarized in an edited book and white paper. Mitigating the negative effects of climate change on ecological communities and the ecosystem services they provide requires advances in basic science and strategies to guide future efforts. In addition to fostering critical networking of a diverse set of ecologists and evolutionary biologists working on impacts of climate change, the conference and book will provide the materials for both established and student ecologists, policy experts, and natural resource managers to pose creative and effective solutions to the environmental and societal problems caused by climate change.