Microclimatic conditions anywhere at any time!

Abstract

Maclean (Glob. Change. Biol 10.1111/gcb.14876, 2019) presents the methods for providing fine‐grained, hourly estimates of current and future microclimate over decadal timescales. In this commentary, we argue that this paper is the start of a paradigm shift, in which microclimate data will be available anywhere and at any time. Things will get even better for the future of spatial ecology if we combine the mechanistic models from Maclean with a global geo‐database of in situ microclimatic measurements. This article is a commentary on Maclean, 26, 1003‐1011.

It Is Hot in the Sun: Antarctic Mosses Have High Temperature Optima for Photosynthesis Despite Cold Climate

“…This was evidenced in our microclimate analysis where the temperature experienced by mosses was measured with iBCods, infrared thermometers and/or thermocouples. Ecological researchers have pointed out the importance of a deep description of microclimate in understanding and modeling present and future species distribution and ecosystem functioning, specially in small-stature species ( Convey et al, 2018 ; Lembrechts et al, 2019 ; Lembrechts and Lenoir, 2020 ). In our study, around midday moss surfaces were elevated above mean air temperatures by 16.2(22.3)°C ( Figure 4 ) enhanced by high irradiation and low wind speed, as has been described for Arctic and alpine ecosystems ( Wilson, 1957 ; Körner, 2003 ).…”

Climate Vulnerability Assessment of the Espeletia Complex on Páramo Sky Islands in the Northern Andes

“…Despite statistical imputation-like approaches such as environmental downscaling have been considered to model climate at a higher resolution for specific Páramo complexes (Mavárez et al, 2018), consistently applying such techniques across cordilleras seems unfeasible because accuracy would be constrained by the accessibility of fine-scale bioclimatic data from regional weather stations. These restraints are likely to be overcome soon by incorporating microclimate into SDMs (Lembrechts et al, 2019) through mechanistic algorithms (Lembrechts and Lenoir, 2020) physiological models (Cortés et al, 2013;López-Hernández and Cortés, 2019), hydrological equations (Rodríguez- Morales et al, 2019;Correa et al, 2020), in situ data logging, and remote sensing (Ramón-Reinozo et al, 2019;Zellweger et al, 2019).…”

Bryophytes are predicted to lag behind future climate change despite their high dispersal capacities

“…Given the spatial grain of our study, the hypothesis that some species will persist in small microhabitats, where temperatures can be cooler and humidity higher than in the surrounding environment, cannot be rejected. Data at finer scales for both present and future conditions would therefore be desirable 47 . Recently developed methods to generate fine-grained climatic data taking into account microclimatic effects modulated by microtopographic variation in the terrain, vegetation cover and ground properties using energy balance equations cannot, however, yet be implemented across large spatial scales 48 .…”