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The persistence of biodiversity in southern California under future land-use scenariosCollaborative research with Dr Helen Regan, UC-Riverside, Principal InvestigatorSponsored by the National Science Foundation (2008-2011)We will investigate the combined impacts of habitat loss and fragmentation, altered fire regime and invasive species on functional groups of plants found in Mediterranean-type and some other fire-prone ecosystems. In particular we address the questions: a) How does projected habitat loss and fragmentation due to urbanization, in conjunction with indirect or synergistic effects (altered fire regimes, competition from invasive species), affect the risk of decline or extinction for plant populations in southern California? b) Which plant species traits are the best predictors of extinction or decline due to habitat loss, altered fire regimes and competition with invasive species? We will link four different modeling approaches to address this: 1) a spatially explicit simulation model of urban growth to project land use and land cover change over the next 50-100 years; 2) potential habitat models for focal species using existing location records and interpolated using statistical and machine learning methods; 3) a landscape model of habitat dynamics including disturbance (such as fire) and succession that incorporates dynamic land-use change from the urban growth model; and 4) stochastic population models for a selected set of focal species to estimate risk of population decline or extinction under the urban growth scenarios coupled with habitat dynamics from the landscape model. This project started in Summer of 2008 with initial modeling activities focusing on the development od species distribution, urbanization and population models. |