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Simulating Impacts of Ice Storms on Forest Ecosystems
Published on: June 30, 2020
An ecological 'footprint' of climate change
Gian-Reto Walther1, Silje Berger, Martin T Sykes
1Institute of Geobotany, University of Hannover, Nienburger Street 17, 30167 Hannover, Germany. walther@geobotanik.uni-hannover.de
Abstract:
Recently, there has been increasing evidence of species' range shifts due to changes in climate. Whereas most of these shifts relate ground truth biogeographic data to a general warming trend in regional or global climate data, we here present a reanalysis of both biogeographic and bioclimatic data of equal spatio-temporal resolution, covering a time span of more than 50 years. Our results reveal a coherent and synchronous shift in both species' distribution and climate. They show not only a shift in the northern margin of a species, which is in concert with gradually increasing winter temperatures in the area, they also confirm the simulated species' distribution changes expected from a bioclimatic model under the recent, relatively moderate climate change.
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