Modeled distribution shifts of North American birds over four decades based on suitable climate alone do not predict observed shifts.

As climate change alters the global environment, it is critical to understand the relationship between shifting climate suitability and species distributions. Key questions include whether observed changes in population abundance are aligned with the velocity and direction of shifts predicted by climate suitability models and if the responses are consistent among species with similar ecological traits. We examined the direction and velocity of the observed abundance-based distribution centroids compared with the model-predicted bioclimatic distribution centroids of 250 bird species across the United States from 1969 to 2011.

Invasive species do not exploit early growing seasons in burned tallgrass prairies.

Invasive species management is key to conserving critically threatened native prairie ecosystems. While prescribed burning is widely demonstrated to increase native diversity and suppress invasive species, elucidating the conditions under which burning is most effective remains an ongoing focus of applied prairie ecology research. Understanding how conservation management interacts with climate is increasingly pressing, because climate change is altering weather conditions and seasonal timing around the world.

Future changes in fire weather, spring droughts, and false springs across U.S. National Forests and Grasslands.

Public lands provide many ecosystem services and support diverse plant and animal communities. In order to provide these benefits in the future, land managers and policy makers need information about future climate change and its potential effects. In particular, weather extremes are key drivers of wildfires, droughts, and false springs, which in turn can have large impacts on ecosystems.

Evaluation of downscaled, gridded climate data for the conterminous United States.

Weather and climate affect many ecological processes, making spatially continuous yet fine-resolution weather data desirable for ecological research and predictions. Numerous downscaled weather data sets exist, but little attempt has been made to evaluate them systematically. Here we address this shortcoming by focusing on four major questions: (1) How accurate are downscaled, gridded climate data sets in terms of temperature and precipitation estimates? (2) Are there significant regional differences in accuracy among data sets? (3) How accurate are their mean values compared with extremes? (4) Does their accuracy depend on spatial resolution? We compared eight widely used downscaled data sets that provide gridded daily weather data for recent decades across the United States.

Spatial Competition: Roughening of an Experimental Interface.

Limited dispersal distance generates spatial aggregation. Intraspecific interactions are then concentrated within clusters, and between-species interactions occur near cluster boundaries. Spread of a locally dispersing invader can become motion of an interface between the invading and resident species, and spatial competition will produce variation in the extent of invasive advance along the interface.