A Land of Flowers on a Latitude of Deserts: Aiding Conservation and Management of Florida's Biodiversity by Using Predictions from "Down-Scaled" AOGCM Climate Scenarios in Combination with Ecological Modeling

The objectives of this project are to develop the knowledge necessary to make accurate predictions of the response of species and their ecosystems to climate change.
We propose to down-scale predictions from a suite of coupled Atmosphere-Ocean General Circulation Models (AOGCMs) to make regional scale predictions for the southeastern United States. For the time being the hydrologic and biologic models are confined to Florida. Climate outputs will then be used as inputs to a suite of species / habitat / ecosystem models that are currently being used in two key areas: the Greater Everglades and Suwannee River-Big Bend as a proof of concept that down-scaled climate results can work in ecological forecast models. We will run three scenarios of Land Use/Land Cover (LULC): past (circa 1900), present, and future (2041-2070). Additional climate model runs will address the contribution of green house gasses to climate variability and change over the Florida peninsula. Model perturbation experiments will be performed to address sources of variability and their contribution to the output regional climate change scenarios. We will develop scenarios that specifically address potential changes in temperature (land and near sea surface) and rainfall fields over the peninsula. We will then provide these scenarios and modeling results to resource management groups (NGOs, state and federal) via workshops in which the scenarios will be used to predict responses of additional selected species, habitats and ecosystems.
Our approach is to develop regional climate predictions and subsequent ecological predictions for two 30-year long time periods as well as for the present. The first 30-year period is the recent past, spanning the period from 1971-2000. This will be used as a control, with copious observations of both climate variables (e.g. rainfall, ET) and species (e.g. densities, ranges) to verify both climate and ecology model outputs and to serve as a baseline to systematically judge the impacts of an altered climate. The second 30-year time period will begin 30 years in the future and extend for the thirty years from 2041-2070. This is a time horizon that is immediately relevant to habitat management.