TY - JOUR T1 - IN REVIEW: Plant production responses to precipitation differ along an elevation gradient and are enhanced under extremes. JF - Oecologia Y1 - 2017 A1 - Munson,SM A1 - Bunting,E A1 - Bradford,JB A1 - Butterfield,BJ A1 - Gremer,JR N1 - [Original String]:Munson, S.M., Bunting E., Bradford, J.B., Butterfield, B.J. and Gremer, J.R. In review. Plant production responses to precipitation differ along an elevation gradient and are enhanced under extremes. Oecologia. ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Chapter Five – Tradeoffs and Compatibilities Among Ecosystem Services : Biological, Physical and Economic Drivers of Multifunctionality JF - Advances in Ecological Research Y1 - 2016 A1 - Butterfield,BJ A1 - Camhi,AL A1 - Rubin,RL A1 - Schwalm,CR AB - Balancing the joint production of multiple ecosystem services, also referred to as the 鈥榤ultifunctionality鈥 of an ecosystem or landscape, requires understanding of the ecological processes that produce and economic processes that evaluate those services. Here, we review the ecological tradeoffs and compatibilities among ecosystem processes that influence ecosystem multifunctionality with respect to ecosystem services, including variation in functional strategies, constraints on community assembly and direct effects of the abiotic environment. We then review how different valuation methods may alter the magnitude of tradeoffs and compatibilities in monetary terms. Among communities, functional diversity increases ecosystem multifunctionality, but community-average trait values are emerging as important drivers of ecosystem services with greater potential to produce tradeoffs when compared to functional diversity. However, research that links organismal functional strategies to community assembly rules in real, heterogeneous landscapes demonstrate that predictable tradeoffs among species do not consistently scale up to the community level, necessitating further research on trait-based community assembly in order to develop general predictive models of biotic effects on ecosystem multifunctionality. Abiotic factors are frequently incorporated into mapping assessments of multifunctionality, but the emergent tradeoffs and compatibilities in ecosystem services driven by those factors are rarely assessed, despite a number of studies that have demonstrated their clear importance in ecosystem multifunctionality. Finally, while a variety of valuation methods are used to quantify the joint production of ecosystem services, only provisioning services are typically directly valued and assumed to have fixed correlations with other ecosystem services that can lead to inaccurate valuation, and potentially inappropriate prioritisation, of multiple ecosystem services. VL - 54 UR - http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0065250415000264 ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Does the stress gradient hypothesis hold water? An assessment of vegetation effects on soil moisture and implications for plant-plant interactions. JF - Functional Ecology Y1 - 2016 A1 - Butterfield,BJ A1 - Bradford,J A1 - Armas,C A1 - Prieto,I A1 - Pugnaire,FI VL - 30 N1 - [Original String]:Butterfield, B.J., Bradford, J., Armas, C., Prieto, I. and Pugnaire, F.I. (2016). Does the stress gradient hypothesis hold water? An assessment of vegetation effects on soil moisture and implications for plant-plant interactions. Functional Ecology, 30, 10-19. ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Prestoration: Using species in restoration that will persist now and into the future. JF - Restoration Ecology Y1 - 2016 A1 - Butterfield,BJ A1 - Copeland,SM A1 - Munson,SM A1 - Roybal,CM A1 - Wood,TE AB -

Climate change presents newchallenges for selecting species for restoration. If migration fails to keep pace with climate change, as models predict, the most suitable sources for restoration may not occur locally at all. To address this issue, we propose a strategy of “prestoration”: utilizing species in restoration for which a site represents suitable habitat now and into the future. Using the Colorado Plateau, United States, as a case study, we assess the ability of grass species currently used regionally in restoration to persist into the future using projections of ecological niche models (or climate envelope models) across a suite of climate change scenarios. We then present a technique for identifying new species that best compensate for future losses of suitable habitat by current target species. We found that the current suite of species, selected by a group of experts, is predicted to perform reasonably well in the short term, but that losses of prestorable habitat by mid-century would approach 40%. Using an algorithm to identify additional species, we found that fewer than 10 species could compensate for nearly all of the losses incurred by the current target species. This case study highlights the utility of integrating ecological niche modeling and future climate forecasts to predict the utility of species in restoring under climate change across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales.

N1 - [Original String]:Butterfield, B.J., Copeland, S.M., Munson, S.M., Roybal, C.M. and Wood, T.E. (In press). Prestoration: Using species in restoration that will persist now and into the future. Restoration Ecology. ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Temperature is better than precipitation as a predictor of plant community assembly across a dryland region. JF - Journal of Vegetation Science Y1 - 2016 A1 - Butterfield,BJ A1 - Munson,SM AB -

Question

How closely do plant communities track climate? Research suggests that plant species converge toward similar environmental tolerances relative to the environments that they experience. Whether these patterns apply to severe environments or scale up to plant community-level patterns of relative climatic tolerances is poorly understood. Using estimates of species' climatic tolerances acquired from occurrence records, we determined the contributions of individual species' climatic niche breadths and environmental filtering to the relationships between community-average climatic tolerances and the local climates experienced by those communities.

Location

Southwestern United States drylands.

Methods

Interspecific variation in niche breadth was assessed as a function of species' climatic optima (median climatic niche value). The relationships between climatic optima and tolerances were used as null expectations for the relationship between abundance-weighted mean climatic tolerances of communities and the local climate of that community. Deviations from this null expectation indicate that species with greater or lesser climatic tolerances are favoured relative to co-occurring species. The intensity of environmental filtering was estimated by comparing the range of climatic tolerances within each community to a null distribution generated from a random assembly algorithm.

Results

The temperature niches of species were consistently symmetrical and of similar breadths, regardless of their temperature optima. In contrast, precipitation niches were skewed toward wetter conditions, and niche breadth increased with increasing precipitation optima. At the community level, relationships with climate were much stronger for temperature than for precipitation. Furthermore, cold and heat were stronger assembly filters than drought or precipitation, with the intensity of environmental filtering increasing at both ends of climatic gradients. Community-average climatic tolerances did deviate significantly from null expectations, indicating that species with higher or lower relative climatic tolerances were favoured under certain conditions.

Conclusions

Despite strong water limitation of plant performance in dryland ecosystems, communities tracked variation in temperature much more closely, intimating strong responses to anticipated temperature increases. Furthermore, abundance distributions were biased toward species with higher or lower relative climatic tolerances under different climatic conditions, but predictably so, indicating the need for assembly models that include processes other than simple environmental filtering.

VL - 27 IS - 5 N1 - [Original String]:Butterfield, B.J. and Munson, S.M. (In press). Temperature is better than precipitation as a predictor of plant community assembly across a dryland region. Journal of Vegetation Science. ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Local climate and cultivation, but not ploidy, predict functional trait variation in Bouteloua gracilis (Poaceae). JF - Plant Ecology Y1 - 2015 A1 - Butterfield,BJ A1 - Wood,TE VL - 216 IS - 10 N1 - [Original String]:Butterfield, B.J. and Wood, T.E. 2015. Local climate and cultivation, but not ploidy, predict functional trait variation in Bouteloua gracilis (Poaceae). 2015. Plant Ecology, 216 (10):1341-1349. DOI: 10.1007/s11258-015-0510-8 ER -