Latitudinal variation in the impacts of climate warming
Predicting spatial patterns in thermal tolerance and vulnerability of species under climate warming remains a challenge. Current knowledge is mainly from experiment-based thermal physiology of limited numbers of ectotherms, yet large-scale evaluations on plants remain elusive. We propose a novel approach, i.e. thermal distribution curves, to describe species' realized thermal niches and then estimate their thermal tolerance and warming risks under projected climate warming in 2050s and 2070s.
Climate and land-cover changes are major threats to biodiversity, and their impacts are expected to intensify in the future. Protected areas (PAs) are crucial for biodiversity conservation. We present a systematic study of the impacts of future climate and land-cover changes on the conservation status of woody species and PA effectiveness in China. Our results suggest that future climate and land-cover changes will reduce PA effectiveness, and the spatial prioritization of biodiversity conservation should consider the influences of future global changes on biodiversity. These results shed new light on the conservation priorities for the post-2020 expansion of PAs in China.
Impacts of climate and land-cover changes on woody species distribtions in China
The tree of life (TOL) is severely threatened by climate and land-cover changes. Preserving the TOL is urgent, but has not been included in the post-2020 global biodiversity framework. Protected areas (PAs) are critical to biological conservation. However, we know little about the effectiveness of existing PAs in preserving the TOL of plants and how to prioritize PA expansion for better TOL preservation under future climate and land-cover changes.
Conservation of tree of life of woody plants in China
China is one of the mega-biodiversity countries and the threatened species list of China’s higher plants was reported in 2017. This list provided important data for biological conservation and protected area planning from regional to global scales. However, it was mainly based on the past and current status of species population and distribution, while future responses of species to climate and land-cover changes were rarely considered. This will lead to an underestimation of future local extinction risks. We thus evaluated the impacts of climate and land-cover changes on woody species distributions and estimated changes in the extent of occurrence (EOO) for each species. We updated the list of threatened woody species in China based on the IUCN Red List Criteria.
A new list of threatened woody species in China under future global change scenarios
Assessing how functional traits relate to environmental gradients provides insight into mechnisms governing species distributions. Phenology is a key feature of plants since it determines the species' ability to capture resources and it defines the season and duration of growth and reproduction. Previous studies suggest that plant phenology is strongly affected by global changes (e.g. climate change; urbanization) , and changes in phenology can be used to forcast the consequences of global changes on species distributions. I am carrying out a NSF-funded study investigating plant responses to climate change in the Eastern United States. We aim to characterize large-scale patterns of phenological response and to model and predict the accompanying and associated changes in species distributions.
How the plant functional traits affect species distributions in the future?
