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American Journal Of Botany:

Projections of Suitable Habitat For Rare Species Under Global Warming
Scenarios

Cristina Guerrero
Biology 1615 Final Paper
November 14, 2017
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F. Thomas Ledig, Gerald E. Rehfeldt, Cuauhtemoc Saenz-Romero, and Celestino Flores

Lopez; are all scientists who worked together to learn the effects climate change may on some

rare species in different parts of the planet. The rare species were spruces, one from southwestern

USA and others from Mexico. It is known that certain plants grow in certain conditions and

climate change can be a factor that can affect these plants from continuing to grow and

reproduce. The scientists wanted to learn how these plants can adapt to the change so they wont

go extinct; as the article states it,

Organisms respond to climate change by adaptation, a shift in their geographic

distribution, or extinction. For many species, adaptation will not be swift enough to cope

with rapidly changing conditions, and shifts in geographic distribution may be the only

alternative extinction.

The materials and methods used in the study were some climatic models, Random Forests

statistical procedures, three general circulation models, two sets of carbon emission scenarios

and the endangered spruces. The climatic models and random forests statistical procedures were

used to determine habitats for the rare species and the general circulations models & carbon

emissions were used to predict the future weather conditions. The study dealt with 76 locations

in were the spruces were present. In places where there were no spruces they used a ARCMAP

software to get samples of those dynamics. This way they could cross check with the areas that

did have the spruces and associate with the areas that had none of the rare species there because

of the weather conditions in that area, that did not allow it. Errors couldve also been made

within the study by just observations that is why the article states that the scientists did;
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Out-of-bag errors are composed of errors of omission (a prediction of false when true)

or errors of commission (a prediction of true when false) and are calculated as the

proportion of the total number of errors to the total number of observations in the forest.

In making predictions, each, each tree of each forest provides a vote concerning the

classification of an observation. Because the error converges to a limit as the number of

trees in the forest becomes large. Our analyses consist of 500 trees in each of 20

forests.

This is how Brieman suggested to do so the number could be equal in the observations, this

allowed them to not have as many errors as they couldve had if they were without this method.

But it also brought complications, the method provided them with many restrictions of samples.

So, what they would do is combine the five spruce taxa into a single classification. For future

climate predictions, the GCM output was used. This helped calculate all the way out to the year

2090 climate changes. Knowing future weather conditions was ideal so we can know how to

adapt the rare species to them for their survival.

The results of this study, there was an average of 4.3% out-of-bag errors.

In the observations, they saw a potential decrease of all taxa in 2030, 2060, and 2090. There was

also potential disappearance one species in 2016 and it will reappear again 2090 due to the

climate changes between the decades. In Mexico, the area did not develop for any taxa and in the

U.S. the species shrank in the north and south.

In conclusion, the study was valuable to the endangered species, in the form that they can

now be helped for their survival to the environmental changes that are and will be happening in

the near future.

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Works Cited

Ledig, F., Rehfeldt, G. E., Saenz-Romero, C., & Flores-Lopez, C. (2010). Projections of
Suitable Habitat For Rare Species Under Global Warming Scenarios. The American Journal Of
Botany 97(6),970-987. Retrieved November 14, 2017, from http://www.amjbot.org/