Noelle Beckman

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  Population persistence of plants under global change
  Noelle Beckman
  In response to global change, species must adapt to environmental changes or move to track suitable habitat in order to persist. Interdisciplinary approaches can help us understand and predict a population’s ability to track changing environments due to global warming and habitat loss. In response to global warming, species shift their ranges poleward to track suitable habitat for growth, survival, and reproduction. Meanwhile, habitat loss results in the loss of both species and functional diversity. We can predict the ability of populations to persist and track suitable habitat in response to different global change scenarios by parameterizing mathematical models with data on dispersal and demography. Data on dispersal and demography are intensive to collect; hence, fundamental research on population dynamics and spread often focus on a few well-parameterized case studies. We can harness the growing availability and accessibility of data in combination with spatial population models to estimate the vulnerability of species to global warming and habitat loss. While data are becoming more available and accessible, the joint data on dispersal and demography tend to be sparse across species. I will discuss several novel approaches to tackle these limitations by synthesizing advances in mathematical models and publicly-available data.