L-490 Project area - species range shifts

I want to develop several projects in the SDM or Species Distributional Modeling arena. SDM is a well developed area of research. Basically what you do, using basic GIS techniques, is take the location of species and the associated environmental (climate) conditions, and recognize this as the climate requirements for that species. If you wish to predict future shifts of species with climate change, you take a modeled future climate map and simply select those locations with the conditions that satisfy your species’ climate requirements, climate requirements that are biogeographically and empirically determined as detailed above. 

While that logic makes sense on the surface, these models are not validated by past climate shifts and past distribution changes but are rather entirely inferred from present conditions. It is conceivable that other factors that change with climate (CO2) modify a species’ environmental requirements. This is likely because of details of plant physiology, anatomy, and plants’ need for atmospheric carbon. Under this scenario, species in the future will not just shift to where their present conditions (environmental requirements) are met. The species will shift towards their new requirements, set by an interaction of climate and CO2.

These issues can be explored both by pure biogeography natural experiment research, and by more familiar greenhouse experiment.

I believe this area of research has a high potential in terms of impacting the scientific community. This research is especially important in the changing climate. Will our species range shift models be predictive? One could hope. But the only way to know is to check with a variety of experiments, observations and models. If you are interested in this area of research contact me, and we can talk about the kinds of studies that would be possible in this arena.