Factors slowing down upward shifts of trees’ upper elevation limits

Species range limits are expected to be dramatically altered under future climate change and many species are predicted to shift their distribution upslope to track their suitable conditions (i.e. based on their niche). However, there might be large discrepancies between the speed of the upward shift of the climatic niche and the actual migration velocity of the species, especially in long-lived organisms such as trees. Here, we compared the simulations of the upslope displacement of the bioclimatic envelope of 16 tree species inhabiting temperate mountain forests under ongoing and future climate change obtained by correlative species distribution models (SDMs) to those from a dynamic forest model accounting for dispersal, competition and demography. We then partitioned the discrepancy in upslope migration velocity between the SDMs and the dynamic forest model into different components by manipulating dispersal limitation, interspecific competition and demography.

This dataset contains the calibration and evaluation data used to create the bioclimatic envelope models, the predictors for the future scenarios (raster layers) and the bioclimatic input data used in the dynamic forest models used in the following publication (Scherrer et al. 2020).

Paper Citation: Scherrer, D., Vitasse, Y., Guisan , A., Wohlgemuth, T., & Lischke, H. (2020). Competition and demography rather than dispersal limitation slow down upward shifts of trees’ upper elevation limits in the Alps. Journal of Ecology, in press.

• LFI
• SNF (Grant/Award: CR23I2_162754)
• SwissForestLab

Scherrer, D., Vitasse, Y., Guisan , A., Wohlgemuth, T., & Lischke, H. (2020). Competition and demography rather than dispersal limitation slow down upward shifts of trees’ upper elevation limits in the Alps. Journal of Ecology, in press.