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Vulnerability of Plant Species to Global Change

Current Research

Level of Exposure to Climate Change Risk for California Ecosystems

Thorne, J.H., R.M. Boynton, A.J. Holguin, J.A.E. Stewart, & J. Bjorkman. (2016) A climate change vulnerability assessment of California’s terrestrial vegetation. California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW), Sacramento, CA.

Does Geography Play a Bigger Role Than Species Traits? (NSF 1853697)

With Helen Regan (PI) at UC Riverside, we are identifying the elements of plant biodiversity in California that are most vulnerable or most resilient to the interacting threats of climate change, land use change and wildfire in the coming decades. The vulnerability of a plant species to this triple threat depends on their distribution (biogeography) in relation to these threats, as well as their species traits. Plants may be long or short lived (redwood trees versus poppies), may escape habitat fragmentation and loss because their ecological niche places them in locations undesirable for development, or not, and they may have traits that allow them to recover their populations following fire (fire-stimulated seed germination, or resprouting from underground parts). In a changing environment, plants can only move (migrate) out of harm’s way intergenerationally, via seed dispersal. Our project will identify the general aspects of biogeography (where) versus species traits (how) that confer more or less vulnerability to California flora under global change in the coming century as California's human population grows and the climate warms. We are doing this using simulation modeling to project the population growth or decline for a wide range of plant species in California.

NEW PUBLICATION: 2021 A framework linking biogeography and species traits to plant species vulnerability under global change in Mediterranean-type ecosystems

Read about this exciting new sister project to our NSF project here and check out the project web site.

Prior Related Research

Flight line strip showing hyperspectral Convolutional Neural Network-predicted species as colors on hill shaded terrain (from Fricker et al 2019 Remote Sensing, Fig. 4)

How do Microscale Biophysical Processes Mediate Ecosystem Shifts during Climate Change-driven Drought? (2015-18 NSF 1550640)

How are conifer forests and oak woodlands in California responding to climate change? How can airborne remote sensing provide essentail monitoring data products?

Key publications:

Fricker, G.A., Ventura, J.D., North, M., Wolf, J., Davis, F. W., Franklin, J., 2019, A convolutional neural network classifier identifies tree species in mixed conifer forest from hyperspectral imagery, Remote Sensing, 11(19), 2326 https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11192326. Click here for article

Fricker, G.A., Synes, N.W., Serra-Diaz, J. M., North, M.P., Davis, F. W., Franklin, J., 2019, More than climate: Predictors of tree canopy height vary with scale in complex terrain, Sierra Nevada, CA (USA), Forest Ecology & Management 434:142-153. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2018.12.006

Davis, F.W., Synes, N.W., Fricker, G.A., McCullough, I.M., Serra-Diaz, J.M., Franklin, J., Flint, A.L., 2019, LiDAR-derived topography and forest structure predict fine-scale variation in daily surface temperatures in oak savanna and conifer forest landscapes, Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 269-270: 192-202. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agrformet.2019.02.015

Resilient Restoration: Advancing Ecological, Cultural and Community Resilience with Tribal Communities in Southern California (California SGC Climate Change Research Program)

Photo by Condor Visual Media

Do microenvironments govern macroecology? (2011-17 NSF 1065826; F.W. Davis, PI, UCSB)

How will conifer forests and oak woodlands in California shift and reassemble in response to climate change? Will seedling establishment be a bottleneck? Will cool, moist topographic positions act as refugia or stepping stones?

Key publications:

Davis, F. W., Sweet, L.*, Serra-Diaz, J. M.*, McCullough, I., Dingman, J., Flint, A., Flint, L., Franklin, J., Syphard, A. D., Regan, H. M., Moritz, M. A., Hannah, L., Redmond, K., Hall, A., Sork, V., 2016, Shrinking windows of opportunity for oak seedling establishment in southern California mountains, Ecosphere 7(11): Click here for Article e01573

Serra-Diaz, J. M.*, Franklin, J., Sweet, L.*, Syphard, A. D., Dingman, J., McCullough, I., Syphard, A. D., Regan, H. M., Davis, F. W., Flint, A., Flint, L., Moritz, M. A., and Hannah, L., 2016, Averaged 30-year climate change projections mask opportunities for species establishment. Ecography 39(9):844-845. doi: 10.1111/ecog.02074

Serra-Diaz, J. M.*, Scheller, R. M., Syphard, A. D. and Franklin, J., 2015, Disturbance and climate microrefugia mediate tree range shifts during climate change, Landscape Ecology 30:1039-1063. DOI 10.1007/s10980-015-0173-9

The persistence of biodiversity in southern California under future land-use scenarios (2008-12 NSF 0824708)

We investigated the combined impacts of habitat loss and fragmentation, altered fire regime and invasive species on functional groups of plants found in Mediterranean-type ecosystems. We asked: How does projected habitat loss and fragmentation due to urbanization, in conjunction with indirect or synergistic effects (altered fire regimes, competition from invasive species), affect the risk of decline or extinction for plant populations in southern California?

Key findings:

Current configurations of individual conservation areas will not support suitable habitat for species of conservation concern under urbanization and climate change scenarios, as projected by species distribution models. However, networks of conservation areas may collectively support suitable habitat under global change scenarios, and so coordination among reserves is necessary for their effective management.
Long-lived obligate seeding plants are more vulnerable to frequent fire than they are to distribution shifts due to climate change or habitat loss from urban growth as long as fire return intervals are short.
Resprouting species are more vulnerable to habitat loss or habitat shifts due to climate change than they are to altered fire regime. Current known dispersal rates are insufficient to track shifting suitable habitat.
The annual herb we studied is most vulnerable to invasive species’ encroachment. The rank order of impacts of other threats depends on the global climate model and species distribution model used.
Species distribution models produce the greatest uncertainty, or variability, the results of linked SDM, GCM, population and fire models. This is followed by GCMs, land-use change and population model type. Uncertainty in parameter estimates for the population model had little impact on results relative to model choice for SDMs, GCMs and population models.

Selected publications:

Bonebrake, T. C., A. D. Syphard, J. Franklin, K. E. Anderson, T. Mizerek, H. R. Akçakaya, C. Winchell, and H. M. Regan, 2014, Fire management, managed relocation and land conservation options for long-lived obligate seeding plants under global change, Conservation Biology 28(4):1057-106 . DOI: 10.1111/cobi.1225

Conlisk, E., Syphard, A. D., Franklin, J., Flint, L., Flint, A., and Regan, H. M. 2013. Management implications of uncertainty in assessing impacts of multiple landscape-scale threats to species persistence using a linked modeling approach. Global Change Biology 3(3):858-869. DOI: 10.1111/gcb.12090

Conlisk, E., Lawson, D., Syphard, A. D., Franklin, J., Flint, A., Flint, L., Regan, H. M. 2012. The roles of dispersal, fecundity, and predation in the population viability of an oak species (Quercus engelmannii) under global change. PLoS One 7(5): e36391. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0036391

Franklin, J., Regan, H. M., Syphard, A. D., 2014, Linking spatially explicit species distribution and population models to plan for the persistence of species under global change, Environmental Conservation 41(2):97-109. doi:10.1017/S0376892913000453 http://journals.cambridge.org/repo_A90ZTsCA

Regan, H. M., Syphard, A. D., Franklin, J., Swab, R. Markovchick-Nicholls, L., Flint, A. L., Flint, L. E. and Zedler, P. H. 2012. Evaluation of assisted colonization strategies under climate change for a rare, fire-dependent plant. Global Change Biology 18:936-947. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2486.2011.02586.x

Regan, H. M., Crookston, J. B., Swab, R., Franklin, J., and Lawson, D. M. 2010, Habitat fragmentation and altered fire regime create trade-offs for an obligate seeding shrub, Ecology 91(4):1114-1123