Integrating Species‐Specific Information in Models Improves Regional Projections Under Climate Change
Cécile C. Remy, Dan J. Krofcheck, Alisa R. Keyser, Marcy E. Litvak,Scott L. Collins and Matthew D. Hurteau
Abstract :
Vegetation responses to climate change are commonly simulated using models that generalize the characteristics of species and ecosystems to facilitate global–scale modeling efforts. In this article, we compared the climate sensitivity of the dominant woody vegetation types in New Mexico using a simplified model parameterization that treated all species the same, regardless of ecosystem type, versus a species-specific model parameterization.
Our results show that, when subjected to increasing temperature and decreasing precipitation, the simulations using the simplified parameterization differs substantially from the species-specific parameterization by homogenizing the diversity of specific adaptations for dealing with higher temperature and drought.
Link : agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2019GL082762