Influence of bioclimatic variables on tree-line conifer distribution in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem: Implications for species of conservation concern

Journal of Biogeography

Volumn 35, Issue 4, 2008, Pages 698-710

  Schrag, Anne M ^a,c   Bunn, Andrew G ^d   Graumlich, Lisa J ^b,c  

^a WORLD WILDLIFE FUND   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA   (United States)

^c MONTANA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^d WESTERN WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Biophysical variables; Climate change; Climate variability; Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem; Pinus albicaulis; Random forest model; Species distribution; Tree line conifer distributions

Indexed keywords

BEETLE; BIOCLIMATOLOGY; BIOPHYSICS; CLIMATE CHANGE; CONIFEROUS TREE; FOREST INVENTORY; KEYSTONE SPECIES; PATHOGEN; SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION; SPECIES CONSERVATION; TREELINE;

GRAND TETON NATIONAL PARK; GREATER YELLOWSTONE ECOSYSTEM; NORTH AMERICA; UNITED STATES; WYOMING;

ABIES; ABIES LASIOCARPA; COLEOPTERA; CONIFEROPHYTA; DENDROCTONUS PONDEROSAE; PICEA; PICEA ENGELMANNII; PINUS ALBICAULIS;

EID: 40749089976     PISSN: 03050270     EISSN: 13652699     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2699.2007.01815.x     Document Type: Article

References (85)

1. Alexander, R.R. Shepperd, W.D. (1990) Engelmann spruce (Picea engelmannii Parry ex Engelm.). Silvics of North America, volume 2: 1. Conifers; 2. Hardwoods (ed. by R.M. Burns B.H. Honkala pp. 353-388. Agriculture Handbook 654, US Department of Agriculture Forest Service, Washington, DC.
2. Alexander, R.R., Shearer, R.C. Shepperd, W.D. (1990) Subalpine fir (Abies lasiocarpa [Hook.] Nutt.). Silvics of North America, volume 2: 1. Conifers; 2. Hardwoods (ed. by R.M. Burns B.H. Honkala pp. 97 120. Agriculture Handbook 654, US Department of Agriculture Forest Service, Washington, DC.
3. Araújo, M.B. Guisan, A. (2006) Five (or so) challenges for species distribution modelling. Journal of Biogeography, 33, 1677 1688.
4. Araújo, M.B., Thuiller, W. Pearson, R.G. (2006) Climate warming and the decline of amphibians and reptiles in Europe. Journal of Biogeography, 33, 1712 1728.
5. Arno, S.F. Hoff, R.J. (1990) Whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis Engelm.). Silvics of North America, volume 2: 1. Conifers; 2. Hardwoods (ed. by R.M. Burns B.H. Honkala pp. 530 554. Agriculture Handbook 654, US Department of Agriculture Forest Service, Washington, DC.
6. Bartlein, P.J., Whitlock, C. Shafer, S.L. (1997) Future climate in the Yellowstone National Park region and its potential impact on vegetation. Conservation Biology, 11, 782 792.
7. Bassman, J.H., Johnson, J.D., Fins, L. Dobrowolski, J.P. (2003) Rocky Mountain ecosystems: diversity, complexity and interactions. Tree Physiology, 23, 1081 1089.
8. Breiman, L. (2001) Random forests. Machine Learning, 45, 5 32.
9. Bristow, K.L. Campbell, G.S. (1984) On the relationship between incoming solar radiation and daily maximum and minimum temperature. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 31, 159 166.
10. Brown, D.G. (1994) Predicting vegetation types at treeline using topography and biophysical disturbance variables. Journal of Vegetation Science, 5, 641 656.
11. Bunn, A.G., Waggoner, L.A. Graumlich, L.J. (2005) Topographic mediation of growth in high elevation foxtail pine (Pinus balfouriana Grev. et Balf.) forests in the Sierra Nevada, USA. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 14, 103 114.
12. Cairns, D.M. (2001) A comparison of methods for predicting vegetation type. Plant Ecology, 156, 3 18.
13. Cairns, D.M. Moen, J. (2004) Herbivory influences tree lines. Journal of Ecology, 92, 1019 1024.
14. Camarero, J.J. Gutiérrez, E. (2004) Pace and pattern of recent treeline dynamics: response of ecotones to climatic variability in the Spanish Pyrenees. Climatic Change, 63, 181 200.
15. Congalton, R.G. Green, K. (1999) Assessing the accuracy of remotely sensed data: principles and practices. Lewis Publishers, Boca Raton, FL.
16. Daniels, L.D. Veblen, T.T. (2004) Spatiotemporal influences of climate on altitudinal treeline in northern Patagonia. Ecology, 85, 1284 1296.
17. Davis, M.B. Shaw, R.G. (2001) Range shifts and adaptive responses to Quaternary climate change. Science, 292, 673 679.
18. Davis, M.B. Zabinski, C. (1992) Changes in geographical range resulting from greenhouse warming: effects on biodiversity in forests. Global warming and biological diversity (ed. by R.L. Peters T.E. Lovejoy pp. 297 308. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.
19. Davis, A.J., Jenkinson, L.S., Lawton, J.L., Shorrocks, B. Wood, S. (1998) Making mistakes when predicting shifts in species range in response to global warming. Nature, 391, 783 786.
20. Despain, D.G. (1987) The two climates of Yellowstone National Park. Proceedings of Montana Academy of Science, 47, 11 19.
21. Despain, D.G. (1990) Yellowstone vegetation: consequences of environment and history in a natural setting. Roberts Reinhart Publishers, Boulder, CO.
22. Dobson, A. (2003) Metalife Science, 301, 1488 1490.
23. Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI), Inc. (2005) ArcMap version 9.1. Redlands. Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI), Inc., CA.
24. Germino, M.J., Smith, W.K. Resor, A.C. (2002) Conifer seedling distribution and survival in an alpine-treeline ecotone. Plant Ecology, 162, 157 168.
25. Grant, M.C. Mitton, J.B. (1977) Genetic differentiation among growth forms of Engelmann spruce and subalpine fir at tree line. Arctic and Alpine Research, 9, 259 263.
26. Guisan, A. Thuiller, W. (2005) Predicting species distribution: offering more than simple habitat models. Ecology Letters, 8, 993 1009.
27. Guisan, A. Zimmerman, N.E. (2000) Predictive habitat distribution models in ecology. Ecological Modelling, 135, 147 186.
28. Halpin, P.N. (1997) Global climate change and natural-area protection: management responses and research directions. Ecological Applications, 7, 828 843.
29. Hamlet, A.F., Mote, P.W., Clark, M.P. Lettenmaier, D.P. (2007) Twentieth-century trends in runoff, evapotranspiration, and soil moisture in the western United States. Journal of Climate, 20, 1468 1486.
30. Hannah, L., Midgley, G.F. Millar, D. (2002) Climate change-integrated conservation strategies. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 11, 485 495.
31. Hansen, A.J., Neilson, R.P., Dale, V.H., Flather, C.H., Iverson, L.R., Currie, D.J., Shafer, S., Cook, R. Bartlein, P.J. (2001) Global change in forests: responses of species, communities, and biomes. BioScience, 51, 765 779.
32. Hausenbuiller, R.L. (1985) Soil science: principles and practices. William C. Brown Publishers, Dubuque, IA.
33. Hernandez, P.C. (2004) Rural residential development in the Greater Yellowstone: rates, drivers and alternative future scenarios. MSc thesis, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT.
34. Innes, J.L. (1991) High-altitude and high-latitude tree growth in relation to past, present and future global climate change. The Holocene, 1, 168 173.
35. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (2007) Climate change 2007: the physical science basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [WWW document, last accessed 2 October 2007]. URL http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/wg1- report.html.
36. Iverson, L.R. Prasad, A.M. (1998) Predicting abundance of 80 tree species following climate change in eastern United States. Ecological Monographs, 68, 465 485.
37. Jackson, S.T. Overpeck, J.T. (2000) Responses of plant populations and communities to environmental changes of the late Quaternary. Paleobiology, 26, 194 220.
38. Keane, R.E. (2001) Successional dynamics: modelling an anthropogenic threat. Whitebark pine communities: ecology and restoration (ed. by D.F. Tomback, S.F. Arno R.E. Keane pp. 159 192. Island Press, Washington DC.
39. Kendall, K. (2003) Whitebark pine communities [WWW document]. URL http://www.nrmsc.usgs.gov/research/whitebar.htm [accessed on 15 June 2006].
40. Kipfmueller, K.F. Kupfer, J.A. (2005) Complexity of successional pathways in subalpine forests of the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness Area. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 95, 495 510.
41. Körner, C. (1998) A re-assessment of high elevation treeline positions and their explanation. Oecologia, 115, 445 459.
42. Körner, C. Paulsen, J. (2004) A world-wide study of high altitude treeline temperatures. Journal of Biogeography, 31, 713 732.
43. Koteen, L. (2002) Climate change, whitebark pine and grizzly bears in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Wildlife responses to climate change: North American case studies (ed. by S.H. Schneider T.L. Root pp. 343 414. Island Press, Washington DC.
44. Lawler, J.J., White, D., Neilson, R.P. Blaustein, A.R. (2006) Predicting climate-induced range shifts: model differences and model reliability. Global Change Biology, 12, 1568 1584.
45. Lawrence, R.L., Wood, S.D. Sheley, R.L. (2006) Mapping invasive plants using hyperspectral imagery and Breiman Cutler classifications (RandomForest). Remote Sensing of Environment, 100, 356 362.
46. Liaw, A. Wiener, M. (2002) Classification and regression by randomForest. R News, 2, 18 22.
47. Lillesand, T.M. Keifer, R.W. (1999) Remote sensing and image interpretation (4th ed.). John Wiley & Sons Inc., Hoboken, NJ.
48. Lloyd, A.H. Fastie, C.L. (2002) Spatial and temporal variability in the growth and climate response of treeline trees in Alaska. Climatic Change, 52, 481 509.
49. Lloyd, A.H. Graumlich, L.J. (1997) Holocene dynamics of treeline forests in the Sierra Nevada. Ecology, 78, 1199 1210.
50. Logan, J.A. Powell, J.A. (2001) Ghost forests, global warming and the mountain pine beetle (Coleoptera: Scolytidae). American Entomologist, Fall, 160 172.
51. Logan, J.A Powell, J.A 2005) Ecological consequences of climate change altered forest insect disturbance regimes. [WWW document]. URL http://www.usu.edu/beetle/publications_bark_beetle.htm [accessed on 18 Oct 2007].
52. Logan, J.A., Régniére, J. Powell, J.A. (2003) Assessing the impacts of global warming on forest pest dynamics. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 1, 130 137.
53. Malanson, G.P., Butler, D.R., Fagre, D.B., Walsh, S.J., Tomback, D.F., Daniels, L.D., Rester, L.M, Smith, W.K., Weiss, D.J., Peterson, D.L., Bunn, A.G., Hiemstra, C.A, Liptzin, D., Bourgeron, P.S., Shen, Z. Millar, C.I. (in press) Alpine treeline of western North America and global climate change: linking organism-to-landscape dynamics. Physical Geography.
54. Martínez-Meyer, E., Peterson, A.T. Hargrove, W.W. (2004) Ecological niches as stable distributional constraints on mammal species, with implications for Pleistocene extinctions and climate change projections for biodiversity. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 13, 305 314.
55. Mattson, D.J. Reinhart, D.P. (1997) Excavation of red squirrel middens by grizzly bears in the whitebark pine zone. Journal of Applied Ecology, 34, 926 940.
56. Mattson, D.J., Kendall, K.C. Reinhart, D.P. (2001) Whitebark pine, grizzly bears and red squirrels. Whitebark pine communities: ecology and restoration (ed. by D.F. Tomback, S.F. Arno R.E. Keane pp. 121 136. Island Press, Washington DC.
57. McCaughey, W.W. Schmidt, W.C. (2001) Whitebark pine, grizzly bears and red squirrels. Whitebark pine communities: ecology and restoration (ed. by D.F. Tomback, S.F. Arno R.E. Keane pp. 29 40. Island Press, Washington DC.
58. McKenzie, D., Peterson, D.W., Peterson, D.L. Thorton, P.E. (2003) Climatic and biophysical controls on conifer species distributions in mountain forests of Washington State, USA. Journal of Biogeography, 30, 1093 1108.
59. Mearns, L.O., Giorgi, F., Whetton, P., Pabon, D., Hulme, M. Lal, M. (2003) Guidelines for use of climate scenarios developed from regional climate model experiments. Data Distribution Centre of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, East Anglia, UK.
60. Millar, C.I., Graumlich, L.J., Delany, D.L., Westfall, R.D. King, J.C. (2004) Response of subalpine conifers in the Sierra Nevada, California, USA, to twentieth-century warming and decadal climate variability. Arctic, Antarctic and Alpine Research, 36, 181 200.
61. Miller, D.A. White, R.A. (1998) A conterminous United States multilayer soil characteristics dataset for regional climate and hydrology modelling. Earth Interactions, 2, 1 26.
62. National Park Service (NPS) (2006) Yellowstone National Park web site. [WWW document] http://www.nps.gov/yell [accessed on 15 June 2006].
63. National Research Council (2006) Surface temperature reconstructions for the last 2,000 years. National Academy Press, Washington, DC.
64. Norris, J.R., Jackson, S.T. Betancourt, J.L. (2006) Classification tree and minimum-volume ellipsoid analyses of the distribution of ponderosa pine in the western USA. Journal of Biogeography, 33, 342 360.
65. Parmesan, C. (2006) Ecological and evolutionary responses to recent climate change. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics, 37, 637 669.
66. Parmesan, C. Yohe, G. (2003) A globally coherent fingerprint of climate change impacts across natural systems. Nature, 421, 37 42.
67. Parmesan, C., Ryrholm, N., Stefanescu, C., Hill, J.K., Thomas, C.D., Descimon, H., Huntley, B., Kaila, L., Killberg, J., Tammaru, T., Tennent, W.J., Thomas, J.A. Warren, M. (1999) Poleward shifts in geographical ranges of butterfly species associated with regional warming. Nature, 399, 579 583.
68. Pearson, R.G. Dawson, T.P. (2003) Predicting the impacts of climate change on the distribution of species: are area bioclimatic envelope models useful? Global Ecology and Biogeography, 12, 361 371.
69. Pearson, R.G., Raxworthy, C.J., Nakamura, M. Peterson, A.T. (2007) Predicting species' distributions from small numbers of occurrence records: a test case using cryptic geckos in Madagascar. Journal of Biogeography, 34, 102 117.
70. Peterson, A.T. (2003) Predicting the geography of species' invasions via ecological niche modeling. The Quarterly Review of Biology, 78, 419 433.
71. Prasad, A.M., Iverson, L.R. Liaw, A. (2006) Newer classification and regression tree techniques: bagging and random forests for ecological prediction. Ecosystems, 9, 181 199.
72. R Core Development Team (2005) R: a language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna.
73. Rochefort, R.M., Little, R.L., Woodward, A. Peterson, D.L. (1994) Changes in sub-alpine tree distribution in western North America: a review of climatic and other causal factors. The Holocene, 4, 89 100.
74. Romme, W.H. Turner, M.G. (1991) Implications of global climate change for biogeographic patterns in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Conservation Biology, 5, 373 386.
75. Root, T.L., Price, J.T., Hall, K.R., Schneider, S.H., Rosenzweig, C. Pounds, J.A. (2003) Fingerprints of global warming on wild animals and plants. Nature, 421, 57 60.
76. Smith, W.K., Germin, M.J., Hancock, T.E. Johnson, D.M. (2003) A perspective on altitudinal limits of alpine timberlines. Tree Physiology, 23, 1101 1112.
77. Thorton, P.E., Running, S.W. White, M.A. (1997) Generating surfaces of daily meteorological variables over large regions of complex terrain. Journal of Hydrology, 190, 214 251.
78. Thuiller, W., Lavorel, S., Araújo, M.B., Sykes, M.T. Prentice, I.C. (2005) Climate change threats to plant diversity in Europe. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 102, 8245 8250.
79. Tomback, D.F., Arno, S.F. Keane, R.E. (2001) The compelling case for management intervention. Whitebark pine communities: ecology and restoration (ed. by D.F. Tomback, S.F. Arno R.E. Keane pp. 3 25. Island Press, Washington DC.
80. Tranquillini, W. (1979) Physiological ecology of the alpine timberline. Springer-Verlag, New York.
81. US Department of Agriculture Forest Service (2001) The Forest Inventory and Analysis database: database description and users manual (ed. by P.D. Miles, G.J. Brand, C.L. Alerich, L.F. Bednar, S.W. Woudenberg, J.F. Glover E.N. Ezell USDA Forest Service, North Central Research Station, St. Paul, MN. Digital copy available at: http://www.srs.fs.fed.us/pubs/abstract/viewpub.jsp?index=10840 [accessed 2 October 2007].
82. Whitlock, C. (1993) Postglacial vegetation and climate of Grand Teton and southern Yellowstone National Parks. Ecological Monographs, 63, 173 198.
83. Whitlock, C. Bartlein, P.J. (1993) Spatial variations of Holocene climatic change in the Yellowstone region. Quaternary Research, 39, 231 238.
84. Whittaker, R.J., Araújo, M.B., Jepson, P., Ladle, R., Watson, J.E. Willis, K.J. (2005) Conservation biogeography: assessment and prospect. Diversity and Distributions, 11, 3 23.
85. Woodward, F.I. Beerling, D.J. (1997) The dynamics of vegetation change: health warnings for equilibrium 'dodo' models. Global Ecology and Biogeography Letters, 6, 413 418.