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Joshua J. Lawler

Climate change is already affecting species in many ways. Because individual species respond to climate change differently, some will be adversely affected by climate change whereas others may benefit. Successfully managing species in a changing climate will require an understanding of which species will be most and least impacted by climate change. Although several approaches have been proposed for assessing the vulnerability of species to climate change, it is unclear whether these approaches are likely to produce similar results. In this study, we compared the relative vulnerabilities to climate change of 76 species of birds, mammals, amphibians, and trees based on three different approaches to assessing vulnerability....
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This report summarizes the results from a climate change adaptation workshop focused on the Columbia Plateau landscape in eastern Washington and parts of Idaho and Oregon. The objective of the workshop was to collaborate with landscape managers to apply results from the Pacific Northwest climate change vulnerability assessment (PNWCCVA) to on-the-ground ecological management objectives. Specifically, we sought to address the following questions: How can model results and datasets be applied to assist with management decisions? How can model results and datasets be made more useful for informing species and landscape management?To this end, we presented information and data developed as part of the PNWCCVA to workshop...
Abstract (from http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-016-1608-2): Many recent changes in tree species distributions, mortality, and growth rates have been linked to changes in climate. Managing forests in the face of climate change will require a basic understanding of which tree species will be most vulnerable to climate change and in what ways they will be vulnerable. We assessed the relative vulnerability to climate change of 11 tree species in western North America using a multivariate approach to quantify elements of sensitivity to climate change, exposure to climate change, and the capacity to adapt to climate change. Our assessment was based on a combination of expert knowledge, published studies,...
Abstract (from http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v5/n9/full/nclimate2699.html): Contemporary climate change is causing large shifts in biotic distributions1, which has the potential to bring previously isolated, closely related species into contact2. This has led to concern that hybridization and competition could threaten species persistence3. Here, we use bioclimatic models to show that future range overlap by the end of the century is predicted for only 6.4% of isolated, congeneric species pairs of New World birds, mammals and amphibians. Projected rates of climate-induced overlap are higher for birds (11.6%) than for mammals (4.4%) or amphibians (3.6%). As many species will have difficulty tracking shifting...
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