Climate driver timing and population dynamics

Sanne Evers – Martin-Luther University, iDiv and UFZ

Population models are an incredibly powerful tool in ecology to understand and forecast population dynamics. In the light of current and future climate change, accurate incorporation of climate drivers in population models is vital. When discussing climate drivers, the often explored component is the climate variable, such as temperature or precipitation. However, another important component of climate drivers is their time frame. This component has considerably less variation in the literature. In structured plant population models this can be seen through the frequency of climate drivers in the growing season. In this talk. Dr. Evers will discuss her research that shows climate driver timing for plant vital rates are much more diverse. Furthermore, Dr. Evers will show that including more diverse climate driver timing can not only improve the accuracy of our vital rate models, it also has implications for population forecasts and the effects of vital rate correlations and climate autocorrelation.