FOR ANY OF THE 80 SPECIES,
What is the current distribution of importance value (basal area and no. of stems of understory and overstory)? (Source: FIA and Little's Maps) How would this distribution change if climate (ie., temperature, precipitation and potential evapotranspiration) were to change according to 5 GCM climate change models? (GISS, GFDL, UKMO, Hadley & CCC) Which variables (among the 34 climatic, edaphic, topographic and land-use variables) are driving the distribution geographically? What are the life-history, regeneration and disturbance characteristics? What are the optimum ranges of certain important ecological attributes? (eg., temperature, precipitation, growth rate, elevation, slope, pH, permeability, water-holding capacity, etc.) Can we get a quantitative index for the changes in importance values, area, and north-south shifts according to different GCM climate change scenarios? |
COMBINED OUTPUT OF 80 SPECIES: Can we predict how the forest types would change according to different GCM climate change scenarios compared to the current scenario? What would be the "5-GCM" average forest-type map be like? What is the level of agreement among GCMs with regard to forest-types? How can we obtain a county-level database of the many tree species occurring in the county, sorted by its importance value? |