D2T2 predicting species range under climate change
1. Climate, Land Use, and Sea Level Rise:
Diverse Drivers of Biodiversity Change in the
Face of Climate Change
A. Townsend Peterson
University of Kansas
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6. Studying Drivers of Biodiversity Change
• Many potential drivers: land use change, direct
exploitation, climate change, sea level change…
• Anticipate future change: requires present-day
model, and future projections of drivers
• Document change to date: requires detailed
before-and-after views of distributions,
abundances, and/or conservation status
• We will explore both of these approaches…
33. Significant Drivers of Turnover
• Observed precipitation change – NO
significant effect
• Observed temperature change – YES – strong
significant effects
• Human impact on landscapes – NO significant
effect
• BUT – results are coarse in nature …
36. Summary
• Biodiversity is highly dynamic, but the natural
dynamics are augmented by anthropogenic
change in recent decades
• Studying biodiversity change is complex:
– Future projections are hypothetical and hard to test
– Assessments of change already realized are highly
dependent on before-and-after datasets
• Land use and temperature change effects appear
dominant, but other factors (e.g., sea level rise)
can be important in some cases
• Creativity is key in making these studies possible