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Tongli Wang

Bio: Tongli Wang is an academic researcher from University of British Columbia. The author has contributed to research in topics: Climate change & Ginkgo biloba. The author has an hindex of 29, co-authored 87 publications receiving 6144 citations.


Papers
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: As all tree species will be suffering lags, interspecific competition may weaken, facilitating persistence under suboptimal conditions, and species with small populations, fragmented ranges, low fecundity, or suffering declines due to introduced insects or diseases should be candidates for facilitated migration.
Abstract: Species distribution models predict a wholesale redistribution of trees in the next century, yet migratory responses necessary to spatially track climates far exceed maximum post-glacial rates. The extent to which populations will adapt will depend upon phenotypic variation, strength of selection, fecundity, interspecific competition, and biotic interactions. Populations of temperate and boreal trees show moderate to strong clines in phenology and growth along temperature gradients, indicating substantial local adaptation. Traits involved in local adaptation appear to be the product of small effects of many genes, and the resulting genotypic redundancy combined with high fecundity may facilitate rapid local adaptation despite high gene flow. Gene flow with preadapted alleles from warmer climates may promote adaptation and migration at the leading edge, while populations at the rear will likely face extirpation. Widespread species with large populations and high fecundity are likely to persist and adapt, but will likely suffer adaptational lag for a few generations. As all tree species will be suffering lags, interspecific competition may weaken, facilitating persistence under suboptimal conditions. Species with small populations, fragmented ranges, low fecundity, or suffering declines due to introduced insects or diseases should be candidates for facilitated migration.

1,719 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
08 Jun 2016-PLOS ONE
TL;DR: A software package that facilitates extracting climate data for specific locations from large datasets and provides a user-friendly interface suitable for resource managers and decision makers as well as scientists is developed.
Abstract: Large volumes of gridded climate data have become available in recent years including interpolated historical data from weather stations and future predictions from general circulation models. These datasets, however, are at various spatial resolutions that need to be converted to scales meaningful for applications such as climate change risk and impact assessments or sample-based ecological research. Extracting climate data for specific locations from large datasets is not a trivial task and typically requires advanced GIS and data management skills. In this study, we developed a software package, ClimateNA, that facilitates this task and provides a user-friendly interface suitable for resource managers and decision makers as well as scientists. The software locally downscales historical and future monthly climate data layers into scale-free point estimates of climate values for the entire North American continent. The software also calculates a large number of biologically relevant climate variables that are usually derived from daily weather data. ClimateNA covers 1) 104 years of historical data (1901–2014) in monthly, annual, decadal and 30-year time steps; 2) three paleoclimatic periods (Last Glacial Maximum, Mid Holocene and Last Millennium); 3) three future periods (2020s, 2050s and 2080s); and 4) annual time-series of model projections for 2011–2100. Multiple general circulation models (GCMs) were included for both paleo and future periods, and two representative concentration pathways (RCP4.5 and 8.5) were chosen for future climate data.

670 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, a software package, ClimateWNA, is proposed to provide comprehensive historical climate data and climate change projections at a scale suitable for, and readily accessible to, researchers and resource managers.
Abstract: This study addresses the need to provide comprehensive historical climate data and climate change projections at a scale suitable for, and readily accessible to, researchers and resource managers. This database for western North America (WNA) includes over 20 000 surfaces of monthly, seasonal, and annual climate variables from1901to2009;severalclimatenormalperiods; andmultimodelclimateprojectionsforthe2020s, 2050s, and 2080s. A software package, ClimateWNA, allows users to access the database and query point locations, obtain time series, or generate custom climate surfaces at any resolution. The software uses partial derivative functions of temperature change along elevation gradients to improve medium-resolution baseline climate estimates and calculates biologically relevant climate variables such as growing degree-days, number of frost-free days, extreme temperatures, and dryness indices. Historical and projected future climates are obtained by using monthly temperature and precipitation anomalies to adjust the interpolated baseline data for the location of interest. All algorithms used in the software package are described and evaluated against observations from weather stations across WNA. The downscaling algorithms substantially improve the accuracy of temperature variables over the medium-resolution baseline climate surfaces. Climate variables that are usually calculated from daily data are estimated from monthly climate variables with high statistical accuracy.

632 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
01 Nov 2006-Ecology
TL;DR: A new ecosystem-based climate envelope modeling approach was applied to assess potential climate change impacts on forest communities and tree species, and local predictions of changes to tree species frequencies were generated as a basis for systematic surveys of biological response to climate change.
Abstract: A new ecosystem-based climate envelope modeling approach was applied to assess potential climate change impacts on forest communities and tree species. Four orthogonal canonical discriminant functions were used to describe the realized climate space for British Columbia's ecosystems and to model portions of the realized niche space for tree species under current and predicted future climates. This conceptually simple model is capable of predicting species ranges at high spatial resolutions far beyond the study area, including outlying populations and southern range limits for many species. We analyzed how the realized climate space of current ecosystems changes in extent, elevation, and spatial distribution under climate change scenarios and evaluated the implications for potential tree species habitat. Tree species with their northern range limit in British Columbia gain potential habitat at a pace of at least 100 km per decade, common hardwoods appear to be generally unaffected by climate change, and some of the most important conifer species in British Columbia are expected to lose a large portion of their suitable habitat. The extent of spatial redistribution of realized climate space for ecosystems is considerable, with currently important sub-boreal and montane climate regions rapidly disappearing. Local predictions of changes to tree species frequencies were generated as a basis for systematic surveys of biological response to climate change.

557 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, a methodology to generate scalefree climate data through the combination of interpolation techniques and elevation adjustments is presented, which is applied to monthly temperature and precipitation normals for 1961-90 produced by the Parameter-elevation Regressions on Independent Slopes Model (PRISM) for British Columbia, Yukon Territories, the Alaska Panhandle, and parts of Alberta and the United States.
Abstract: Applying climate data in resource management requires matching the spatial scale of the climate and resource databases. Interpolating climate data in mountainous regions is difficult. In this study, we present methodology to generate scalefree climate data through the combination of interpolation techniques and elevation adjustments. We apply it to monthly temperature and precipitation normals for 1961–90 produced by the Parameter-elevation Regressions on Independent Slopes Model (PRISM) for British Columbia, Yukon Territories, the Alaska Panhandle, and parts of Alberta and the United States. Equations were developed to calculate biologically relevant climate variables including various degree-days, number of frost-free days, frost-free period, and snowfall from monthly temperature and precipitation data. Estimates of climate variables were validated using an independent dataset from weather stations that were not included in the development of the model. Weather station records generally agreed well with estimated climate variables and showed significant improvements over original PRISM climate data. A stand-alone MS Windows application was developed to perform all calculations and to integrate future climate predictions from various global circulation models. We demonstrate the use of this application by showing how climate change may affect lodgepole pine seed planning zones for reforestation in British Columbia. Copyright  2006 Royal Meteorological Society.

344 citations


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TL;DR: For the next few weeks the course is going to be exploring a field that’s actually older than classical population genetics, although the approach it’ll be taking to it involves the use of population genetic machinery.
Abstract: So far in this course we have dealt entirely with the evolution of characters that are controlled by simple Mendelian inheritance at a single locus. There are notes on the course website about gametic disequilibrium and how allele frequencies change at two loci simultaneously, but we didn’t discuss them. In every example we’ve considered we’ve imagined that we could understand something about evolution by examining the evolution of a single gene. That’s the domain of classical population genetics. For the next few weeks we’re going to be exploring a field that’s actually older than classical population genetics, although the approach we’ll be taking to it involves the use of population genetic machinery. If you know a little about the history of evolutionary biology, you may know that after the rediscovery of Mendel’s work in 1900 there was a heated debate between the “biometricians” (e.g., Galton and Pearson) and the “Mendelians” (e.g., de Vries, Correns, Bateson, and Morgan). Biometricians asserted that the really important variation in evolution didn’t follow Mendelian rules. Height, weight, skin color, and similar traits seemed to

9,847 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present the first global assessment of recent tree mortality attributed to drought and heat stress and identify key information gaps and scientific uncertainties that currently hinder our ability to predict tree mortality in response to climate change and emphasizes the need for a globally coordinated observation system.

5,811 citations

01 Jan 1993

2,271 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the most important potential impacts of climate change on forest goods and services are summarized for the Boreal, Temperate Oceanic, TOC, Mediterranean, and mountainous regions.

1,831 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors identify ten contrasting perspectives that shape the vulnerability debate but have not been discussed collectively and present a set of global vulnerability drivers that are known with high confidence: (1) droughts eventually occur everywhere; (2) warming produces hotter Droughts; (3) atmospheric moisture demand increases nonlinearly with temperature during drought; (4) mortality can occur faster in hotter Drought, consistent with fundamental physiology; (5) shorter Drought can become lethal under warming, increasing the frequency of lethal Drought; and (6) mortality happens rapidly
Abstract: Patterns, mechanisms, projections, and consequences of tree mortality and associated broad-scale forest die-off due to drought accompanied by warmer temperatures—“hotter drought”, an emerging characteristic of the Anthropocene—are the focus of rapidly expanding literature. Despite recent observational, experimental, and modeling studies suggesting increased vulnerability of trees to hotter drought and associated pests and pathogens, substantial debate remains among research, management and policy-making communities regarding future tree mortality risks. We summarize key mortality-relevant findings, differentiating between those implying lesser versus greater levels of vulnerability. Evidence suggesting lesser vulnerability includes forest benefits of elevated [CO2] and increased water-use efficiency; observed and modeled increases in forest growth and canopy greening; widespread increases in woody-plant biomass, density, and extent; compensatory physiological, morphological, and genetic mechanisms; dampening ecological feedbacks; and potential mitigation by forest management. In contrast, recent studies document more rapid mortality under hotter drought due to negative tree physiological responses and accelerated biotic attacks. Additional evidence suggesting greater vulnerability includes rising background mortality rates; projected increases in drought frequency, intensity, and duration; limitations of vegetation models such as inadequately represented mortality processes; warming feedbacks from die-off; and wildfire synergies. Grouping these findings we identify ten contrasting perspectives that shape the vulnerability debate but have not been discussed collectively. We also present a set of global vulnerability drivers that are known with high confidence: (1) droughts eventually occur everywhere; (2) warming produces hotter droughts; (3) atmospheric moisture demand increases nonlinearly with temperature during drought; (4) mortality can occur faster in hotter drought, consistent with fundamental physiology; (5) shorter droughts occur more frequently than longer droughts and can become lethal under warming, increasing the frequency of lethal drought nonlinearly; and (6) mortality happens rapidly relative to growth intervals needed for forest recovery. These high-confidence drivers, in concert with research supporting greater vulnerability perspectives, support an overall viewpoint of greater forest vulnerability globally. We surmise that mortality vulnerability is being discounted in part due to difficulties in predicting threshold responses to extreme climate events. Given the profound ecological and societal implications of underestimating global vulnerability to hotter drought, we highlight urgent challenges for research, management, and policy-making communities.

1,786 citations