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Anne Stoner

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Predicting Sky Island Forest Vulnerability to Climate Change: Fine Scale Climate Variability, Drought Tolerance, and Fire Response
The sky island forests of the southwestern United States are one of the most diverse temperate forest ecosystems in the world, providing key habitat for migrating and residential species alike. Black bear, bighorn sheep, mule deer, and wild turkey are just a few of the species found in these isolated mountain ecosystems that rise out of the desert landscape. However, recent droughts have crippled these ecosystems, causing significant tree death. Climate predictions suggest that this region will only face hotter and drier conditions in the future, potentially stressing these ecosystems even further. Simple models predict that vegetation will move to cooler and wetter locations in response to this warming. However,...
Abstract (from http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-016-1598-0): Empirical statistical downscaling (ESD) methods seek to refine global climate model (GCM) outputs via processes that glean information from a combination of observations and GCM simulations. They aim to create value-added climate projections by reducing biases and adding finer spatial detail. Analysis techniques, such as cross-validation, allow assessments of how well ESD methods meet these goals during observational periods. However, the extent to which an ESD method’s skill might differ when applied to future climate projections cannot be assessed readily in the same manner. Here we present a “perfect model” experimental design that quantifies...
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Testing Downscaled Climate Projections: Is Past Performance an Indicator of Future Accuracy?
When climate models are developed, researchers test how well they replicate the climate system by using them to model past climate. Ideally, the model output will match the climate conditions that were actually recorded in the past, indicating that the model correctly characterizes how the climate system works and can be used to reliably project future conditions. However, this approach assumes that models that reliably project past climate conditions will accurately predict future climate conditions, even though the climate system might have changed. This research contributes to generating more reliable local-scale climate projections by testing the assumption that the climatological relationships which existed...
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