Community vulnerability and climate change

1. Community vulnerability and climate change Jason Kreitler, USGS

2. Various projects ongoing • Geography of climate change • mostly ecological • Vulnerability and how to adapt? • Community vulnerability to wildland fire • Socioecological • Less climate change

3. Impacts of climate change on communities • Important general questions: • Is climate changing? • How, where, and at what rate? • What are the effects? • What are the threats? • How do those threats affect people & communities? • Changes in magintude and timing of temp & precip, vegetation distrubution and phenology • Drought, changes in severity and length of fire season, flooding, sea level rise, snowmelt timing • Direct exposure to threats, changes to agricultural production, changes in ecosystem services, cultural disruption, economic disruption, conflict

4. Global CO2 emissions – IPCC 4th assessment growing population, high carbon energy sources A2 B1: stabilizing population, rapid technology conversion Raupach et al. 2007 PNAS

5. Projections of future temperature – IPCC 4th assessment A2 B1 IPCC 2007, Fig. 10.4

6. Bay Area climate precipitation water deficit winter min temperature summer max temperature PRISM climate layers downscaled to 270 m by Al and Lorrie Flint, USS

7. Climatic Water Deficit:excess evaporative demand relative to available water CWD PET depends on temperature and insolation Water availability depends on precipitation, soil storage and runoff courtesy: Al and Lorrie Flint, USGS see Stephenson 1998 J. Biogeog.

8. Several, independent approaches to vegetation modeling agree: future climates favor shrub and grassland at the expense of forest ‘Random forest’ model of CalVeg types 800 m resolution, UCSC regional climate model Predictive vegetation modeling of Bay Area vegetation 270 m downscaled climate, GFDL mid-century future forest remaining forest  woodland forest  shrubland Diana Stalberg et al. 2010 PLoS ONE (PRBO) Will Cornwell et al. in prep. (UC Berkeley)

9. The vulnerability of vegetation types is very patchy: high probabilities of change occur where vegetation patches are near the edge of their climate envelope Relative probability of vegetation transition (GFDL A2, mid-century vs. present) W. Cornwell et al. in prep.

10. Native vegetation transitions vs. alien invasions vegetation transitions depend on: mortality of existing mature plants propagule sources for new species ? source: Larry Workman QIN, Panoramio.com

11. Agents of mortality: Disease Sudden oak death source: Center for Invasive Species Research UC Riverside source: UC Davis; http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070815145316.htm

12. Agents of mortality: Drought and pests piñon pine mortality credit: Craig Allen, USGS

13. Agents of mortality: Fire Historical probability of fire 1950-2003 (climate-driven model) 16 GCM ensemble (A2 scenario): change relative to historical period 2010-2039 (A2) 2070-2099 (A2) Figures: courtesy Meg Krawchuck and Max Mortiz, UC Berkeley Historical: Parisien and Moritz 2009 Ecol. Monogr. Futures: Moritz et al. in review

14. Cohesive Strategy • 3 Phases • Just finished Phase 2 • Next, how to quantify for national tradeoff analysis

15. Fire adapted human community conceptual diagrams

16. Fire adapted human community conceptual diagrams