Evaluating the Utility of Species Distribution Models in Informing Climate Change-Resilient Grassland Restoration Strategy

• DOI: 10.3389/fevo.2019.00033
• Publication Date: 2019-02-15T04:19:35Z
• Authors: Nicholas J. Lyon; Diane M. Debinski; Imtiaz Rangwala
• Keywords: Growing season; Species distribution

Tallgrass prairie ecosystems in North America are heavily degraded and require effective restoration strategies if specialist taxa to be preserved. One common management tool used restore grassland is the application of a seed-mix native plant species. While this technique short-term, it critical that species’ resilience changing climate evaluated when designing these mixes. By utilizing species distribution models (SDMs), bioclimatic envelopes–and thus geographic area suitable for them–can quantified predicted under various future regimes, current seed-mixes may modified include more resilient or exclude affected We response on functional groups examine generalizability among particular groups. selected fourteen representing cool-season warm-season grasses, forbs, legumes we modeled their responses both moderate extreme future. Our group ‘composite maps’ show responded similarly other within group, while grasses showed less inter-species concordance. The value as rough method evaluating climate-resilience therefor supported, but candidate grass will individualized attention. This result suggests designers able use with occurrence records generate group-level predictions assess which there prohibitively few modeling.