Description:

Janneke Hille Ris Lambers,

Professor of BiologyUniversity of Washington

Topic: Coexistence, niche space, climate change

Abstract: "Predicting how climate change will influence the plants and animals with which we share our planet is one of the most challenging problems ecologists face. Climate is often assumed to be the dominant force governing species distributions, which leads to the prediction that all species will simply shift their ranges poleward and upward as the planet warms. Locally, ecological communities should therefore gain warm-adapted species at the expense of cold-adapted species, which should decline in abundance (i.e. communities should ‘thermophilize’). However, fine-scale variation in climate change drivers (i.e. microclimate refugia), demographic inertia (i.e. slow rates of species turnover) and differences among species in their sensitivity and rates of response to climate drivers will add significant complexity to this simple prediction. A major research goal of the Hille Ris Lambers lab is to explore these complexities with observations, experiments and modeling. In this talk, I will present some of our most recent work disentangling the many processes that will influence how forest communities at Mt. Rainier National Park and beyond will respond to climate change. In doing so, I will highlight some of the complications we face in identifying whether ecological communities will be sensitive or resilient to climate change."