Interpreting particular climatic drivers of local and regional vegetation change from paleoecological records is complex. I explicitly simulated vegetation change from the late-Glacial period to the present on the Olympic Peninsula, WA and made formal comparisons to pollen records. A temporally continuous paleoclimate scenario drove the process-based vegetation model, LPJ-GUESS. Nine tree species and a grass type were parameterized, with special attention to species requirements for establishment as limited by snowpack. Simulations produced realistic present-day species composition in five forest zones and captured late-Glacial to late Holocene transitions in forest communities. Early Holocene fire-adapted communities were not simulated well by LPJ-GUESS. Scenarios with varying amounts of snow relative to rain showed the influence of snowpack on key bioclimatic variables and on species composition at a subalpine location. This study affirms the importance of exploring climate change with methods that consider species interactions, transient dynamics, and functional components of the climate.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uoregon.edu/oai:scholarsbank.uoregon.edu:1794/13328 |
| Date | 03 October 2013 |
| Creators | Fisher, David |
| Contributors | Gavin, Daniel |
| Publisher | University of Oregon |
| Source Sets | University of Oregon |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Rights | All Rights Reserved. |
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