Rebecca Snell

University of Toronto, Faculty of Forestry

PhD proposal

I am interested in how plant-animal interactions will affect our current understanding of the impacts of climate change on vegetation.

Generally, current vegetation simulation models consider seed dispersal in one of three ways.

i) Perfect dispersal, where if the climate will support the vegetation it will grow there. This could create unreaslistic scenarios where vegetation has to migrate hundreds of kilometers each year in order to keep up with the change in climate.

ii) No dispersal, where vegetation will remain in their current location if the climate remains favorable in that location. This also creates unreaslitic scenarios, where populations would just become smaller and more fragmented as climate changes.

iii) Some combination of the two.

I am incorporating a mechanistic representation of seed dispersal into a vegetation-climate model (LPJ-GUESS). The model will simulate relalistic dispersal limitations that will aid in our estimations and understanding of migration rates under rapid climate change scenarios.

Some pictures from a trip to Guatemala (June/July 2006)

Cerro Alux

On the way to Chelemha (cloud forest)

Bromeliads, Chelemha

Inside a Calla lily, Cerro Alux

Rebecca, Kelly and Gill - our arrival at the Guatemalan airport

Bromeliad flowering stalk, Chelemha