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High and dry: high elevations disproportionately exposed to regional climate change in Mediterranean-climate landscapes

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Abstract

Context

Predicting climate-driven species’ range shifts depends substantially on species’ exposure to climate change. Mountain landscapes contain a wide range of topoclimates and soil characteristics that are thought to mediate range shifts and buffer species’ exposure. Quantifying fine-scale patterns of exposure across mountainous terrain is a key step in understanding vulnerability of species to regional climate change.

Objectives

We demonstrated a transferable, flexible approach for mapping climate change exposure in a moisture-limited, mountainous California landscape across 4 climate change projections under phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) for mid-(2040–2069) and end-of-century (2070–2099).

Methods

We produced a 149-year dataset (1951–2099) of modeled climatic water deficit (CWD), which is strongly associated with plant distributions, at 30-m resolution to map climate change exposure in the Tehachapi Mountains, California, USA. We defined climate change exposure in terms of departure from the 1951–1980 mean and historical range of variability in CWD in individual years and 3-year moving windows.

Results

Climate change exposure was generally greatest at high elevations across all future projections, though we encountered moderate topographic buffering on poleward-facing slopes. Historically dry lowlands demonstrated the least exposure to climate change.

Conclusions

In moisture-limited, Mediterranean-climate landscapes, high elevations may experience the greatest exposure to climate change in the 21st century. High elevation species may thus be especially vulnerable to continued climate change as habitats shrink and historically energy-limited locations become increasingly moisture-limited in the future.

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Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge funding support from the National Science Foundation Macrosystems Biology Program, NSF #EF-1065864. We thank our collaborating investigators A. Hall, K. Redmond and H. Regan for associated projects that led to this paper. We also thank J. Frew, C. Tague and L. Sweet for useful comments and suggestions. We thank the Tejon Ranch Company and the Tejon Ranch Conservancy for cooperation and land access. JM S-D acknowledges further support from the GRUMETS team 2014 SGR 1491 Generalitat de Catalunya grant. Finally, we appreciate useful comments from the journal subject editor and four peer reviewers.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California, 2400 Bren Hall, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, USA

    Ian M. McCullough & Frank W. Davis

  2. Air Resources Board, California Environmental Protection Agency, 10001 I St., P.O. Box 2815, Sacramento, CA, 95812, USA

    John R. Dingman

  3. U.S. Geological Survey, California Water Science Center, Placer Hall, 6000 J. St., Sacramento, CA, 95189, USA

    Lorraine E. Flint & Alan L. Flint

  4. Harvard Forest, Harvard University, Petersham, MA, 01366, USA

    Josep M. Serra-Diaz

  5. Conservation Biology Institute, 10423 Sierra Vista Ave, La Mesa, CA, 91941, USA

    Alexandra D. Syphard

  6. Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, University of California, 130 Mulford Hall, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA

    Max A. Moritz

  7. Betty and Gordon Moore Center for Science and Oceans, Conservation International, 2011 Crystal Drive Suite 500, Arlington, VA, 22202, USA

    Lee Hannah

  8. School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning, Arizona State University, P.O. Box 875302, Tempe, AZ, 85287-5302, USA

    Janet Franklin

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  1. Ian M. McCullough
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  2. Frank W. Davis
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  8. Max A. Moritz
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  9. Lee Hannah
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  10. Janet Franklin
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ian M. McCullough.

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McCullough, I.M., Davis, F.W., Dingman, J.R. et al. High and dry: high elevations disproportionately exposed to regional climate change in Mediterranean-climate landscapes. Landscape Ecol 31, 1063–1075 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-015-0318-x

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