Biogeography drives plant exposure to future climate and land use change in the California Floristic Province

Keywords: climate change exposure, plant rarity, species distribution modeling
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Friday
Session Start / End Time: 2/25/2022 09:40 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/25/2022 11:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 42

Abstract

Understanding how vulnerability varies across species is a key component of conservation management and predictive frameworks for identifying vulnerable species are needed in the face of rapid climate and land use change. Characteristics of species’ spatial distributions -- spatial range traits -- influence their vulnerability to global change. Rare species are often more vulnerable to changing environments than common species, due to small range sizes, narrow habitat requirements, and/or small populations. Similarly, “location-based” aspects of species’ distributions, such as topographic complexity and distance to the coastline, affect their vulnerability to changing environmental conditions, as well. In this research, I asked how species' spatial range traits relate to their exposure to future climate and land use change for a set of plant species in the California Floristic Province (CFP)? Using vegetation surveys and environmental data, I built species distribution models (SDMs) to predict geographic range loss for 112 plant species under climate and land use change. I then used generalized additive models for location scale and shape (GAMLSS) to test hypotheses about relative geographic range loss and species’ spatial range traits, including range size, abundance, niche breadth, range topographic complexity, distance to coast, and elevation. Preliminary results support that plant species with small range sizes in topographically flat regions are the most exposed to climate and land use change.