Novel climates, no-analog communities, and ecological surprises

Williams, John W.; Jackson, Stephen T.

doi:10.1890/1540-9295(2007)5[475:ncncae]2.0.co;2

Cited by 457 publications

(611 citation statements)

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“…This ensures that we are exploring as much of the parameter space as possible within a finite computational budget. This is particularly important in a no‐analog future where past observations of variable combinations may be unsuitable for understanding climate‐change conditions (Williams & Jackson, ). This expanded sensitivity analysis allows both scientists and model developers to focus on collecting and managing data to which the model is most sensitive, while also identifying the dominant hydrologic processes and model representations that need to be best represented in future modeling exercises, as these sensitivities are on par or as great as uncertainties associated with multimodel spread in future projections.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Global Sensitivity of Simulated Water Balance Indicators Under Future Climate Change in the Colorado Basin

Bennett

Blanco

Jonko

et al. 2018

Water Resources Research

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The Colorado River Basin is a fundamentally important river for society, ecology, and energy in the United States. Streamflow estimates are often provided using modeling tools which rely on uncertain parameters; sensitivity analysis can help determine which parameters impact model results. Despite the fact that simulated flows respond to changing climate and vegetation in the basin, parameter sensitivity of the simulations under climate change has rarely been considered. In this study, we conduct a global sensitivity analysis to relate changes in runoff, evapotranspiration, snow water equivalent, and soil moisture to model parameters in the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) hydrologic model. We combine global sensitivity analysis with a space‐filling Latin Hypercube Sampling of the model parameter space and statistical emulation of the VIC model to examine sensitivities to uncertainties in 46 model parameters following a variance‐based approach. We find that snow‐dominated regions are much more sensitive to uncertainties in VIC parameters. Although baseflow and runoff changes respond to parameters used in previous sensitivity studies, we discover new key parameter sensitivities. For instance, changes in runoff and evapotranspiration are sensitive to albedo, while changes in snow water equivalent are sensitive to canopy fraction and Leaf Area Index (LAI) in the VIC model. It is critical for improved modeling to narrow uncertainty in these parameters through improved observations and field studies. This is important because LAI and albedo are anticipated to change under future climate and narrowing uncertainty is paramount to advance our application of models such as VIC for water resource management.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Global Sensitivity of Simulated Water Balance Indicators Under Future Climate Change in the Colorado Basin

Bennett

Blanco

Jonko

et al. 2018

Water Resources Research

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“…Models and data generally predict that differences in temperature and rainfall variation will persist into the future, although scientists lack confidence in long‐term predictions of precipitation variability, in particular (IPCC, 2012). In other words, our study sites are representative of most current patterns of climate variation, but might not represent future climates that experience simultaneous shifts in mean conditions and increased variability (Williams & Jackson, 2007).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate and local environment structure asynchrony and the stability of primary production in grasslands

Gilbert

MacDougall

Kadoya

et al. 2020

Global Ecol Biogeogr

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Aim: Climate variability threatens to destabilize production in many ecosystems.Asynchronous species dynamics may buffer against such variability when a decrease in performance by some species is offset by an increase in performance of others.However, high climatic variability can eliminate species through stochastic extinctions or cause similar stress responses among species that reduce buffering. Local conditions, such as soil nutrients, can also alter production stability directly or by influencing asynchrony. We test these hypotheses using a globally distributed sampling experiment.Location: Grasslands in North America, Europe and Australia. Time period: Annual surveys over 5 year intervals occurring between 2007 and 2014.Major taxa studied: Herbaceous plants. Methods:We sampled annually the per species cover and aboveground community biomass [net primary productivity (NPP)], plus soil chemical properties, in 29 grasslands. We tested how soil conditions, combined with variability in precipitation and temperature, affect species richness, asynchrony and temporal stability of primary productivity. We used bivariate relationships and structural equation modelling to examine proximate and ultimate relationships.Results: Climate variability strongly predicted asynchrony, whereas NPP stability was more related to soil conditions. Species richness was structured by both climate variability and soils and, in turn, increased asynchrony. Variability in temperature and precipitation caused a unimodal asynchrony response, with asynchrony being lowest at low and high climate variability. Climate impacted stability indirectly, through its effect on asynchrony, with stability increasing at higher asynchrony owing to lower inter-annual variability in NPP. Soil conditions had no detectable effect on asynchrony but increased stability by increasing the mean NPP, especially when soil organic matter was high. Main conclusions:We found globally consistent evidence that climate modulates species asynchrony but that the direct effect on stability is low relative to local soil conditions. Nonetheless, our observed unimodal responses to variability in temperature and precipitation suggest asynchrony thresholds, beyond which there are detectable destabilizing impacts of climate on primary productivity.

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“…Clearly, climate change has historically reshuffled biological organization, generating novel communities (Williams & Jackson, ). To our knowledge, this study is the first that sheds light on such reassembly patterns from the functional characteristics of communities across multiple taxa.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It has been argued that a certain level of biodiversity can stabilize ecosystems, with different species providing functional complementarity under different conditions, thereby buffering the effects of environmental change (Mori et al ., ). However, considering the evidence of historical ‘community dis‐assembly and re‐assembly’ (Williams & Jackson, ), an unsolved question remains: how is the functional redundancy of ecological communities (Mori et al ., ) affected by climate change?…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Functional redundancy of multiple forest taxa along an elevational gradient: predicting the consequences of non‐random species loss

Mori

Shiono

Haraguchi

et al. 2015

Journal of Biogeography

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Aims Climate change can substantially alter ecological communities. However, we hypothesized that, even if novel communities emerge, those communities may not be novel in terms of functional composition. To infer the processes associated with rising temperatures, we evaluated elevational taxonomic/functional turnover of plant and invertebrate communities. Because climate change interacts synergistically with other environmental factors, and therefore is not the sole driver of change in ecological communities, we also considered how the taxonomic/functional composition of the communities would be affected by mammalian overgrazing/browsing, which has become prominent in the study region.Location Shiretoko National Park, Shiretoko Peninsular, Hokkaido, Japan.Methods We investigated the diversity of eight groups of organisms (taxa) in forests of northern Japan, and calculated the distance decay of taxonomic/functional similarity (Sørensen's b-diversity) along an elevational gradient. A null model was used to separate functional turnover from taxonomic turnover. We then simulated how taxonomic/functional turnover along the gradient would be changed after non-random loss of species sensitive to mammalian herbivory.Results We found that each group showed elevational decay in taxonomic similarity. Along an elevational gradient, species groups structured by stronger dispersal limitation showed faster species turnover. This suggested differences in the process of climate-induced species reassembly among the groups. We also found that elevational turnover of communities based on functional traits tended to be lower than that based on taxonomic identity for the majority of the groups, supporting our hypothesis of functional redundancy across the elevational gradient. We thus speculated that climate-induced emergence of taxonomically novel communities may have limited influence on critical ecosystem processes supported by functional diversity. Furthermore, while random species loss did not change functional turnover, non-random loss of species attributable to mammalian herbivory substantially accelerated elevational functional turnover of the taxa. This suggested a possible loss of the functional redundancy of communities.Main conclusions Future communities may be novel not simply because climates are changing at unprecedented rates but also because of the synergetic influences of other environmental changes. Thus ecological processes may be more seriously affected in the future than is generally anticipated based on ª 2015 John Wiley

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Novel climates, no-analog communities, and ecological surprises

Cited by 457 publications

References 0 publications

Global Sensitivity of Simulated Water Balance Indicators Under Future Climate Change in the Colorado Basin

Global Sensitivity of Simulated Water Balance Indicators Under Future Climate Change in the Colorado Basin

Climate and local environment structure asynchrony and the stability of primary production in grasslands

Functional redundancy of multiple forest taxa along an elevational gradient: predicting the consequences of non‐random species loss

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