Thursday, August 5, 2010: 8:00 AM-11:30 AM
403-405, David L Lawrence Convention Center
SYMP 17 - Pondering the Future by Peering into the Past: Integrating Paleoecology and Contemporary Research to Predict Grassland and Shrubland Responses to Climate Change
We’ve all heard Winston Churchill’s admonition that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. With global climate change the earth is entering a future that may be unlike any we’ve known before, yet still we can and must learn from ecological history in order to understand and address the challenges we face. In this symposium we bring together paleoecologists who have studied historical changes in climate with field ecologists who focus on questions of future change in order to enhance our collective understanding of how grassland and shrubland ecosystems are likely to respond to global warming. Our speakers include paleoecologists whose work has utilized a variety of tools to understand past vegetation change at multiple spatial and temporal scales, and field ecologists who employ experimental, observational, and modeling approaches to assess how rangelands are likely to change under conditions of global warming and changes in precipitation regime. In keeping with ESA’s overall theme for 2010, the broad goal of this symposium is to highlight how different approaches to the science of ecology can help inform our current predictions of grassland and shrubland responses to climate change as well as to identify critical information needs for improved predictive capacity.
Organizer:Rebecca L. McCulley, University of Kentucky
Co-organizers:Mark W. Brunson, Utah State University
Kendra K. McLauchlan, Kansas State University
Moderator:Mark W. Brunson, Utah State University
Endorsement:ESA Rangeland Ecology Section, ESA Paleoecology Section
8:00 AMSYMP 17-1Trends in the Holocene climate, vegetation, and fire history of grasslands in the Midwest and Northern Great Plains, U.S.A
David M. Nelson, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, Eric C. Grimm, Illinois State Museum
8:20 AMSYMP 17-2History of C4 grass abundance and climate change in the Great Plains during the last 23 million years
David Fox, University of Minnesota
8:40 AMSYMP 17-3Crossing evolutionary and contemporary scales: the critical importance of grassland expansion to global silica cycling
E.F. Kelly, Colorado State University
9:00 AMSYMP 17-4Ecosystem sensitivity to climate warming: a modeling approach
Osvaldo E. Sala, Brown University, Laureano Gherardi, Brown University, Debra Peters, USDA Agricultural Research Service, A.K. Knapp, Colorado State University, Haitao Huang, New Mexico State University
9:20 AMSYMP 17-5Ecological responses to warmer pastures in northern Mongolia
Brenda B. Casper, University of Pennsylvania, Pierre Liancourt, University of Pennsylvania, Alain F. Plante, University of Pennsylvania, Brent Helliker, University of Pennsylvania, Lkhagva Ariuntsetseg, National University of Mongolia, Bazartseren Boldgiv, National University of Mongolia, Peter S. Petraitis, University of Pennsylvania
9:40 AM Break
9:50 AMSYMP 17-6Climate change and the climate-nutrition-performance cascade for grazers
Joseph M. Craine, Kansas State University
10:10 AMSYMP 17-7How important is CO2 in the responses of a northern mixed-grass prairie to temperature?
Jack A. Morgan, USDA-ARS, Elise Pendall, University of Wyoming, Daniel R. LeCain, USDA-ARS, Yolima Corrillo, University of Wyoming, Feike A. Dijkstra, USDA-ARS, Dana Blumenthal, USDA-ARS, David P. Smith, USDA-ARS, David G. Williams, University of Wyoming
10:30 AMSYMP 17-8Climate warming and altered precipitation patterns accelerate change in tree establishment in post oak savanna grasslands
Mark G. Tjoelker, Texas A&M University, Astrid Volder, Texas A&M University, David D. Briske, Texas A&M University
10:50 AMSYMP 17-9Effects of climate warming and biofuel feedstock harvest on belowground process in a tallgrass prairie
Xuhui Zhou, University of Oklahoma, Yiqi Luo, University of Oklahoma
11:10 AM Discussion

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See more of The 95th ESA Annual Meeting (August 1 -- 6, 2010)