Managing ecosystems in an era of rapid change is inherently challenging not only because of uncertainty in future climate but also due to diverse responses of ecosystems to climate. Projections of ecological transformation alongside information about plausible vegetation trajectories can help land managers explore divergent scenarios and consider how modeled outcomes match their observations. Climate‐analog impact models (AIMs...

Climate connectivity, the ability of a landscape to promote or hinder the movement of organisms in response to a changing climate, is contingent on multiple factors including the distance organisms need to move to track suitable climate over time (i.e. climate velocity) and the resistance they experience along such routes. An additional consideration which has received less attention is that human land uses increase resistance...

Forest dynamics and tree species composition vary substantially between Paleotropical and Neotropical forests, but these broad biogeographic regions are treated uniformly in many land models. To assess whether these regional differences translate into variation in productivity and carbon (C) storage, we compiled a database of climate, tree stem growth, litterfall, aboveground net primary production (ANPP), and aboveground biom...

As climatic conditions shift in coming decades, persistence of many populations will depend on their ability to colonize habitat newly suitable for their climatic requirements. Opportunities for such range shifts may be limited unless areas that facilitate dispersal under climate change are identified and protected from land uses that impede movement. While many climate adaptation strategies focus on identifying refugia, this...

Tropical forests dominate global terrestrial carbon (C) exchange, and recent droughts in the Amazon Basin have contributed to short‐term declines in terrestrial carbon dioxide uptake and storage. However, the effects of longer‐term climate variability on tropical forest carbon dynamics are still not well understood. We synthesised field data from more than 150 tropical forest sites to explore how climate regulates tropical for...

Gridded temperature data sets are typically produced at spatial resolutions that cannot fully resolve fine‐scale variation in surface air temperature in regions of complex topography. These data limitations have become increasingly important as scientists and managers attempt to understand and plan for potential climate change impacts. Here, we describe the development of a high‐resolution (250 m) daily historical (1979–2012)...

Aim Determine if differences in the climatic niche between conspecific adult and juvenile trees of the western U nites S tates vary by species traits and to assess if forest canopies moderate the sensitivity of juvenile trees to climatic variation. Location The western U nites S tates. Methods Using data from the USDA F orest I nventory and A nalysis programme, we compare the distribution of conspecific adult and juvenile tree...

Aim The uncertainty associated with species distribution model ( SDM ) projections is poorly characterized, despite its potential value to decision makers. Error estimates from most modelling techniques have been shown to be biased due to their failure to account for spatial autocorrelation ( SAC ) of residual error. Generalized linear mixed models ( GLMM ) have the ability to account for SAC through the inclusion of a spatial...

Rapid climate change has the potential to affect economic, social, and biological systems. A concern for species conservation is whether or not the rate of on‐going climate change will exceed the rate at which species can adapt or move to suitable environments. Here we assess the climate velocity (both climate displacement rate and direction) for minimum temperature, actual evapotranspiration, and climatic water deficit (defic...

Ecology Letters (2011) 14 : 939–947 Abstract Tropical rain forests play a dominant role in global biosphere‐atmosphere CO 2 exchange. Although climate and nutrient availability regulate net primary production (NPP) and decomposition in all terrestrial ecosystems, the nature and extent of such controls in tropical forests remain poorly resolved. We conducted a meta‐analysis of carbon‐nutrient‐climate relationships in 113 sites...

There is compelling evidence from glacial and interglacial periods of the Quaternary of the utilization of microrefugia. Microrefugia are sites that support locally favorable climates amidst unfavorable regional climates, which allow populations of species to persist outside of their main distributions. Knowledge of the location of microrefugia has important implications for climate change research as it will influence our und...