Correlative ecological niche model applications to predicting landscape-scale woody plant encroachment in Kansas tallgrass prairie systems.

ABSTRACT

Woody plant encroachment (WPE) in grassland ecosystems has been a pervasive process across the Great Plains, yet a predictive understanding of where it will occur has been elusive. As an exploration of tools of potential utility in this challenge, we mapped WPE processes over the years 2015-2021 in a set of 9 counties in central Kansas. We developed and tested two correlative models based on landscape features one that assessed distribution of evergreen trees in 2015, and another that assessed areas of WPE in succeeding years. Both models were successful, being able to predict 2015 forest distributions and being able to predict WPE during 2015-2021, as functions of characteristics of landscapes. These simple, correlative models will certainly not be able to predict WPE processes globally, or even regionally, but provide first proof-of-concept explorations for the central Great Plains region.