Developing quantitative skills for ecological data: the effects of climate warming on phenological variation and species interactions
Author(s): Jill Hamilton1, Zachary Tarble1
North Dakota State University
2358 total view(s), 1456 download(s)
Inouye_2000_PNAS_Data_sightings.xlsx(XLSX | 12 KB)
RMBL.Phenology_FacultyNotes_Quantitativeskills.pdf(PDF | 446 KB)
RMBL_Complementary_Assignment_Powerpoint.pptx(PPTX | 3 MB)- RMBL_phenology_2000to2010.xlsx(XLSX | 11 KB)
- WarmingMeadowExperiment_RMBL.xlsx(XLSX | 10 KB)
- Link to TIEE publication and teaching materials for The Biology of Climate Change: The effects of a changing climate on migrating and over-wintering species at a high-elevation field station
- Digital RMBL | Digital RMBL
- License terms
Description
This adaptation combines the teaching module ‘The Biology of Climate Change: The effects of a changing climate on migrating and over-wintering species at a high-elevation field station’ (Wu and Ellwein 2017) with a new dataset from a long-term Warming Meadow Experiment led by Dr. John Harte and colleagues monitoring biomass accumulation in shrubs in forbs in response to experimental warming (Harte and Shaw 1995, Price and Waser 1998, Saleska et al. 2002, Harte et al. 2015). The goal of this adaptation is to test hypotheses associated with phenological changes over time and examine the consequences of phenological mis-match between species, while developing skills associated with data visualization and analysis using observational and manipulated field experiments. This activity is designed to be carried out in a 1.15 hr lecture style course with potential options for homework as assigned.
The authors thank Carrie Wu for helpful advice developing the adaptation and John Harte and his numerous colleagues for contributing data to this module, as well as numerous RMBL scientists for their work on the Digital RMBL web site, and participants in the 2018 QUBES DIG into Data Faculty Mentoring Network for support and valuable discussions.
Please cite as:
Jill Hamilton and Zachary Tarble. 2018. Developing quantitative skills for ecological data: the effects of climate warming on phenological variation and species interactions.
Notes
This lesson is an adaptation of the teaching module: Wu, C and A. Ellwein (2017) The Biology of Climate Change: The effects of a changing climate on migrating and over-wintering species at a high-elevation field station. Teaching Issues and Experiments in Ecology 13: http://tiee.esa.org/vol/v13/issues/data_sets/wu/abstract.html
This lesson incorporates new data from Dr. John Harte’s Warming Meadow experiment at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (Harte and Shaw 1995, Saleska et al. 2002, Harte et al. 2015; https://www.digitalrmbl.org/for-instructors/wm-teachers-guide/). For over 25 years, Dr. Harte has been artificially warming a subalpine meadow in Gothic, Colorado to evaluate the consequences of climate warming on community composition. Here we use biomass accumulation data from shrubs and forbs in control and heated plots within the Warming Meadow experiment. This activity is designed to be carried out in a 1.15 hr lecture style course with potential homework as assigned.
Cover Image: Winter and summer in a warming alpine meadow (Photos courtesy of Dr. John Harte)
Cite this work
Researchers should cite this work as follows:
- Hamilton, J., Tarble, Z. (2018). Developing quantitative skills for ecological data: the effects of climate warming on phenological variation and species interactions. DIG into Data FMN (2018), QUBES Educational Resources. doi:10.25334/Q44Q7G