Climatic Change and Desert Vegetation Distribution: Assessing Thirty Years of Change in Southern Nevada's Mojave Desert

Guida, Ross J.; Abella, Scott R.; Smith, William J.; Stephen, Haroon; Roberts, Chris L.

doi:10.1080/00330124.2013.787007

Cited by 21 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…In a global all-taxa meta-analysis, species shifted their median elevations upward by 11 m/decade during the 1900s and 2000s (Chen et al 2011). While some studies in temperate biomes reported that certain species moved downslope or remained in place (Lenoir et al 2010), we anticipated that if desert communities are particularly sensitive to warming and drying, desert species should shift upward to track cooler and moister climates, as previously observed for three high-elevation Mojave Desert species (Guida et al 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 69%

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Persistence and turnover in desert plant communities during a 37‐yr period of land use and climate change

Abella

Guida

Roberts

et al. 2019

Ecological Monographs

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Understanding long‐term changes in ecological communities during global change is a priority for 21st‐century ecology. Deserts, already at climatic extremes, are of unique interest because they are projected to be ecosystems most responsive to global change. Within a 500‐km2 landscape in the Mojave Desert, USA, we measured perennial plant communities at 100 sites three times (1979, 2008, and 2016) during 37 yr to evaluate six hypotheses of community change. These hypotheses encompassed shifts in community measures (e.g., diversity, cover) and species elevational distributions, biotic homogenization, disproportionately large change at the highest elevations, relationships between turnover and species’ responses to disturbance and drought, and that environmental refugia (e.g., moist topographic positions) would receive species during climatic warming and drying. Most community measures changed temporally, such as species density (species/600 m2) increasing 23% and plant cover doubling between 1979 and 2016. There was no increase in nonnative species and minimal evidence for biotic homogenization. High‐elevation communities did not display greater change than low‐elevation communities. Moreover, environmental refugia factored little in species shifts. While species distributional changes were unrelated to affinity for disturbance, the six most persistent species (persisting on >80% of sites) were long‐lived shrubs not associated with disturbance. Overall, seemingly paradoxically, climatic warming and drying was associated with increasing plant abundance. Comparing the 1970s to 2007–2016, precipitation in the study area declined 16% from 17 to 14 cm/yr and average daily minimum temperature rose 13% (1.2°C). The current climate with fewer freezes, together with reduced grazing, could be among the most optimal for desert perennials in the past century, although potential response lags to continuing warming and drying are uncertain. This study of long‐term elevational shifts in communities during global change is among few in deserts, and the average upward elevational shift of 6 m/decade for species in our study is within the range reported for temperate biomes. However, the 41% of species moving downslope is unusually high. We propose that dynamics within desert perennial communities follow a core‐transient species model where a site's species are either highly persistent or transient in approximately equal proportions.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 69%

“…), we anticipated that if desert communities are particularly sensitive to warming and drying, desert species should shift upward to track cooler and moister climates, as previously observed for three high‐elevation Mojave Desert species (Guida et al. ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 71%

Persistence and turnover in desert plant communities during a 37‐yr period of land use and climate change

Abella

Guida

Roberts

et al. 2019

Ecological Monographs

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“…Most shrubland components in semiarid lands are vulnerable to climate variations, especially to precipitation changes, because precipitation effects on plants are mediated primarily by the distribution and dynamics of soil water interacting with species' roots, which usually exist in low soil moisture content (Reynolds, Kemp & Tenhunen, 2000;Schwinning et al, 2005;Weltzin et al, 2003). Furthermore, variations in precipitation strongly influence arid and semiarid land plant composition and dynamics (Branson et al, 1976;Cook & Irwin, 1992;Pelaez et al, 1994;Reynolds et al, 2000;Xian et al, 2012b), even at higher elevations (Guida et al, 2014). The long-term climate data analysis shows that for the period 1895-2011 in the northwest region, the most recent 35 years have included a few very wet years, including the wettest year on record in 1996 (Kunkel et al, 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Characterization of shrubland ecosystem components as continuous fields in the northwest United States

Xian

Homer

Rigge

et al. 2015

Remote Sensing of Environment

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Accurate and consistent estimates of shrubland ecosystem components are crucial to a better understanding of ecosystem conditions in arid and semiarid lands. An innovative approach was developed by integrating multiple sources of information to quantify shrubland components as continuous field products within the National Land Cover Database (NLCD). The approach consists of several procedures including field sample collections, highresolution mapping of shrubland components using WorldView-2 imagery and regression tree models, Landsat 8 radiometric balancing and phenological mosaicking, medium resolution estimates of shrubland components following different climate zones using Landsat 8 phenological mosaics and regression tree models, and product validation. Fractional covers of nine shrubland components were estimated: annual herbaceous, bare ground, big sagebrush, herbaceous, litter, sagebrush, shrub, sagebrush height, and shrub height. Our study area included the footprint of six Landsat 8 scenes in the northwestern United States. Results show that most components have relatively significant correlations with validation data, have small normalized root mean square errors, and correspond well with expected ecological gradients. While some uncertainties remain with height estimates, the model formulated in this study provides a cross-validated, unbiased, and cost effective approach to quantify shrubland components at a regional scale and advances knowledge of horizontal and vertical variability of these components.Published by Elsevier Inc.

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“…, Guida et al. ). For upslope tree species, the results also support vulnerability expectations—upslope tree species are far more likely to regenerate in lower vulnerability habitats.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Also, these systems are especially resistant to stress, drought extremes, and to variability across temporal scales (Pockman and Sperry 2000, Enright and Miller 2007, Bhattachan et al 2014. We deferred analysis of the desert systems and refer the reader to other recent vulnerability studies that include desert systems (Comer et al 2012, Rehfeldt et al 2012, Munson et al 2013, Guida et al 2014.…”

Section: Optimal Climatic Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using climate projections to assess ecosystem vulnerability at scales relevant to managers

2019

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Land managers require information about the ongoing and potential effects of future climate to coordinate responses for ecosystems, species, and human communities at scales that are operationally meaningful. Our study focused on the vulnerability for all upland ecosystem types of Arizona and New Mexico in the southwestern United States. Local vulnerability across the two‐state area was represented by the level of departure for late 21st‐century climate from the characteristic pre‐1990 climate envelope of the ecosystem type at each given location, resulting in a probability surface of climate impacts for the two‐state area and an uncertainty assessment based on agreement in results among multiple global climate models. Though the results varied from one ecosystem type to the next, the majority of lands were forecast as high vulnerability and low uncertainty, reflecting significant agreement among climate model projections for the southwestern United States. We then tested our results in relation to ongoing ecological processes that have both regional and global change implications and discovered significant relationships with wildfire severity, upward tree species recruitment, and the encroachment of scrub into semidesert grassland. The testing helped determine the efficacy of the vulnerability surface, as a product of relatively high spatial and thematic resolution, in supporting local planning and management decisions. Most important, this study links climate and changes in vegetation by ecosystem processes that are already ongoing. The results affirm the value of climate model downscaling and show that this portable approach to correlative modeling has value in determining the location and magnitude of potential climate‐related impacts.

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Climatic Change and Desert Vegetation Distribution: Assessing Thirty Years of Change in Southern Nevada's Mojave Desert

Cited by 21 publications

References 40 publications

Persistence and turnover in desert plant communities during a 37‐yr period of land use and climate change

Persistence and turnover in desert plant communities during a 37‐yr period of land use and climate change

Characterization of shrubland ecosystem components as continuous fields in the northwest United States

Using climate projections to assess ecosystem vulnerability at scales relevant to managers

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