Climate Estimates and Plant-Climate Relationships
Publications Related to this Work

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Publications

• Rehfeldt, Gerald E. 2006. A spline model of climate for the Western United States. Gen. Tech. Rep. RMRS-GTR-165. Fort Collins, CO: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station. 21 p.
• Rehfeldt, Gerald E.; Ferguson, Dennis E.; Crookston, Nicholas L. 2008. Quantifying the abundance of co-occurring conifers along Inland Northwest (USA) climate gradients. Ecology. 89(8): 2127-2139.
• Rehfeldt, Gerald E.; Crookston, Nicholas L.; Warwell, Marcus V.; Evans, Jeffrey S. 2006. Empirical Analyses of Plant-Climate Relationships for the Western United States. International Journal of Plant Sciences (167)6:1123-1150.
• Warwell, Marcus. V.; Rehfeldt, Gerald E.; Crookston, Nicholas L. 2008. Modeling Species’ Realized Climatic Niche Space and Predicting their Response to Global Warming for Several Western Forest Species with Small Geographic Distributions. http://www.forestencyclopedia.net, p. 3659.
• Klopfenstein, Ned B.; Kim, Mee-Sook; Hanna, John W.; Richardson, Bryce A.; Lundquist, John E. 2009. Approaches to predicting potential impacts of climate change on forest disease: an example with Armillaria root disease. Res. Pap. RMRS-RP-76. Fort Collins, CO: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station. 10 p.

Submitted and In Press

• Rehfeldt, Gerald E.; Ferguson, Dennis E.; Crookston, Nicholas L. In press. Aspen, Climate, and Sudden Dieback in Western USA. Forest Ecology and Management.

  Contact: Gerald E. Rehfeldt

  Abstract. A bioclimate model predicting the presence or absence of aspen, Populus tremuloides, in western USA from climate variables was developed by using the Random Forests classification tree on forest inventory data from about 118,000 permanent sample plots. A reasonably parsimonious model used eight predictors to describe aspen’s climate profile. Classification errors averaged 4.5 %, most of which were errors of commission. The model was driven primarily by three variables: an annual dryness index, the ratio of summer to annual precipitation, and an interaction of growing season precipitation with the summer-winter temperature differential. Projecting the contemporary climate profile into the future climate projected by three General Circulation Models and two scenarios (SRES A2 and either B1 or B2) suggested that the area occupied by the profile should diminish rapidly over the course of the century, 6-41 % by the decade surrounding 2030, 40-75 % for that surrounding 2060, and 46-94 % for 2090. The relevance of the climate profile to understanding climate-based responses is illustrated by relating trends in climate to the recent incidence of sudden aspen dieback that has plagued portions of the aspen distribution. Of the eight variables in the profile, four reached extreme values during 2000-2003, the period immediately preceding the appearance of damage in aerial surveys.

• Sáenz-Romero, Cuauhtémoc; Rehfeldt, Gerald E.; Crookston, Nicholas L.; Duval, Pierre; St-Amant, Rémi; Beaulieu, Jean; Richardson, Bryce A. In Press. Spline models of contemporary, 2030, 2060 and 2090 climates for Mexico and their use in understanding climate-change impacts on the vegetation. Climatic Change.

  Contact: Cuauhtémoc Sáenz-Romero

  Abstract. Spatial climate models were developed for México and its periphery (southern USA, Cuba, Belize and Guatemala) for monthly normals (1961-1990) of average, maximum and minimum temperature and precipitation using thin plate smoothing splines of ANUSPLIN software on ca. 3800 observations. The fit of the model was generally good: the signal was considerably less than one-half of the number of observations, and reasonable standard errors for the surfaces would be less than 1°C for temperature and 10-15 % for precipitation. Monthly normals were updated for three time periods according to three General Circulation Models and three emission scenarios. On average, mean annual temperature would increase 1.5 ºC by year 2030, 2.3 ºC by year 2060 and 3.7 ºC by year 2090; annual precipitation would decrease -6.7 % by year 2030, -9.0 % by year 2060 and -18.2 % by year 2090. By converting monthly means into a series of variables relevant to biology (e. g., degree-days > 5 ºC, aridity index), the models are directly suited for inferring plant-climate relationships and, therefore, in assessing impact of and developing programs for accommodating global warming. Programs are outlined for (a) assisting migration of four commercially important species of pine distributed in altitudinal sequence in Michoacán State (b) developing conservation programs in the floristically diverse Tehuacán Valley, and (c) perpetuating Pinus chiapensis, a threatened endemic. Climate surfaces, point or gridded climatic estimates and maps are available at http://forest.moscowfsl.wsu.edu/climate/.
  
  Figures associated with this paper can be viewed at http://forest.moscowfsl.wsu.edu/~ncrookston/MexClim/.