Vulnerablity of riparian obligate species in the Rio Grande to the interactive effects of fire, hydrological variation and climate change

Predictions for future species distributions will be coupled with scores representing species adaptive capacity to quantify vulnerability to changing climate and disturbance regimes. Future distribution will be estimated by integrating output from models of fire behavior, bioclimate models of plant and animal species distributions, and projections of future river flow. Measures of adaptive capacity will address non-modeled species characteristics such as dispersal capacity, drought sensitivity and biotic interactions. Maps will be generated that identify areas with suitable habitat as defined by climate space, hydrological characteristics, and disturbance regime.

We will also use this information to create decision support tools that outline critical intervention points for species conservation under changing climate. Our goal is to identify the conditions and locations where biodiversity will be most affected by future changes as well as which species are most likely to experience declining or enhanced populations as a result of those changes. This effort will allow managers to identify critical needs with respect to species conservation under climate change by identify potential intervention points for managing native and exotic species as well as the location of critical habitats for protection or preservation for riparian and wetland species. The methods developed for this project can be applied to other riparian systems.