Due largely to human impacts, such as climate change, habitat destruction, and the spread of invasive species, many ecosystems around the world are changing rapidly. Many of these changes are expected to result in range shifts. Mountain ecosystems are likely to be particularly affected by climate change, with species on mountain tops unable to shift their elevational distribution any higher. I used demographic data from five Pinus albicaulis populations in the Elkhorn Mountains and downscaled climate data from ClimateWNA to test for the effects of climate on P. albicaulis populations. I used both functional linear models and a Bayesian approach that accounts for lagged effects of climate conditions to test for effects of climate variables on P. albicaulis demographic rates. I then used integral population models to scale up to population level affects and predict the future climate distribution based on projected future climate conditions.
Results/Conclusions
Pinus albicaulis populations responded positively to temperature and negatively to precipitation. This suggests that P. albicaulis will not be directly negatively affected by a warmer and drier climate in the immediate future. However, they might still be negatively affected by interactions between climate and other threats, and with further increases in temperature, they might hit a tipping point that will lead to eventual population decline.