Wednesday, August 10, 2016: 8:00 AM-11:30 AM
Grand Floridian Blrm F, Ft Lauderdale Convention Center
Organizer:
Sally E. Koerner, Duke University
Co-organizers:
Kimberly J. La Pierre, UC Berkeley; and
Meghan L. Avolio, National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center
Moderator:
Sally E. Koerner, Duke University
Global change is pervasive throughout almost every ecosystem on the planet. Nitrogen loads have tripled since the beginning of industrialization. Atmospheric CO2 concentrations have risen dramatically over the past decades. Climate is changing with predicted increases in mean annual temperatures, alterations in precipitation patterns, and more frequent weather extremes. Disturbance regimes are being altered, with some disturbances increasing in frequency like hurricanes, and others decreasing or being eliminated from the landscape like fire. We know that each of these global change drivers can independently have multiple effects on community composition and the functioning of ecosystems, as responses to global change drivers when acting in isolation, or occasionally with one interacting variable, have been intensively studied. Yet, these global change factors are not acting on ecosystems in isolation. Instead, multiple global change drivers are simultaneously affecting most ecosystems and it remains unknown how these effects combine in the real world. There is some evidence that ecosystem responses to simultaneous alteration of multiple global change drivers are not simply additive. Rather these multiple drivers may be antagonistic, creating a dampening effect, or mutually synergistic, amplifying the effect. These possibilities suggest that the single factor studies that are the norm in ecology are not always sufficient to predict impacts of co-occurring global change drivers. This organized oral session will address the impact of multiple global change drivers on community dynamics and ecosystem function, presenting a combination of terrestrial and aquatic case studies as well as meta-analysis synthetic studies.
The overarching goal of our session is explore how multiple global change drivers interact to affect multiple levels of biological organization bringing together speakers studying the effects of global changes drivers from multiple perspectives. This session will begin with presentations on ecosystem function response followed by presentations on responses of community composition, and finally presentations on trophic interactions. Each of these three topics will have a presentation on a meta-analysis as well as case study like presentations on different ecosystems. Overall, this organized oral session will synthesize studies examining multiple global change drivers with the aim of presenting what is currently known as well as foster discussion of how best to study the effects of global change drivers.
9:20 AM
Plant community responses to multiple global change drivers: A synthesis examining the magnitude and variance of responses
Kimberly J. La Pierre, UC Berkeley;
Meghan L. Avolio, National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center;
Forest Isbell, University of Minnesota;
Nathan P. Lemoine, Colorado State University;
Emily Grman, Eastern Michigan University;
Gregory R. Houseman, Wichita State University;
David S Johnson, VIMS;
Sally E. Koerner, Duke University;
Kevin R. Wilcox, University of Oklahoma;
Corre Data Consortium, Multiple Institutions