How are fires and their impacts going to change in the future?

Direct impacts of climate changes on species compositions and ecosystem function (UCI)

We will use the MAPSS biogeography model to examine the direct impact of projected climate change on species composition and ecosystem function. The biogeography rules for MAPPS were originally developed from observations in North America, and we will confirm that these rules work in California’s Mediterranean climate by comparing the modeled current vegetation distribution with the baseline vegetation map from the CA GAP analysis project. We will determine the response of vegetation to climate change by comparing the modeled distributions of vegetation, leaf area index, and species composition for the 20 year historical period (1981-2000) against those projected for the last 10 years of the IPCC climate change scenario (2050-2060).