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 - 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 -