Adaptive capacity in the foundation tree species Populus fremontii: implications for resilience to climate change and non-native species invasion in the American Southwest.

Populus fremontii (Fremont cottonwood) is recognized as one of the most important foundation tree species in the southwestern USA and northern Mexico because of its ability to structure communities across multiple trophic levels, drive ecosystem processes and influence biodiversity via genetic-based functional trait variation. However, the areal extent of P. fremontii cover has declined dramatically over the last century due to the effects of surface water diversions, non-native species invasions and more recently climate change. Consequently, P. fremontii gallery forests are considered amongst the most threatened forest types in North America. In this paper, we unify four conceptual areas of genes to ecosystems research related to P. fremontii's capacity to survive or even thrive under current and future environmental conditions: (i) hydraulic function related to canopy thermal regulation during heat waves; (ii) mycorrhizal mutualists in relation to resiliency to climate change and invasion by the non-native tree/shrub, Tamarix; (iii) phenotypic plasticity as a mechanism for coping with rapid changes in climate; and (iv) hybridization between P. fremontii and other closely related Populus species where enhanced vigour of hybrids may preserve the foundational capacity of Populus in the face of environmental change. We also discuss opportunities to scale these conceptual areas from genes to the ecosystem level via remote sensing. We anticipate that the exploration of these conceptual areas of research will facilitate solutions to climate change with a foundation species that is recognized as being critically important for biodiversity conservation and could serve as a model for adaptive management of arid regions in the southwestern USA and around the world.

Mortality gradients within and among dominant plant populations as barometers of ecosystem change during extreme drought.

Understanding patterns of plant population mortality during extreme weather events is important to conservation planners because the frequency of such events is expected to increase, creating the need to integrate climatic uncertainty into management. Dominant plants provide habitat and ecosystem structure, so changes in their distribution can be expected to have cascading effects on entire communities. Observing areas that respond quickly to climate fluctuations provides foresight into future ecological changes and will help prioritize conservation efforts. We investigated patterns of mortality in six dominant plant species during a drought in the southwestern United States. We quantified population mortality for each species across its regional distribution and tested hypotheses to identify ecological stress gradients for each species. Our results revealed three major patterns: (1) dominant species from diverse habitat types (i.e., riparian, chaparral, and low- to high-elevation forests) exhibited significant mortality, indicating that the effects of drought were widespread; (2) average mortality differed among dominant species (one-seed juniper[Juniperus monosperma (Engelm.) Sarg.] 3.3%; manzanita[Arctostaphylos pungens Kunth], 14.6%; quaking aspen[Populus tremuloides Michx.], 15.4%; ponderosa pine[Pinus ponderosa P. & C. Lawson], 15.9%; Fremont cottonwood[Populus fremontii S. Wats.], 20.7%; and pinyon pine[Pinus edulis Engelm.], 41.4%); (3) all dominant species showed localized patterns of very high mortality (24-100%) consistent with water stress gradients. Land managers should plan for climatic uncertainty by promoting tree recruitment in rare habitat types, alleviating unnatural levels of competition on dominant plants, and conserving sites across water stress gradients. High-stress sites, such as those we examined, have conservation value as barometers of change and because they may harbor genotypes that are adapted to climatic extremes.