http://consblog.org Fri, 09 Dec 2011 17:58:08 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 http://consblog.org/index.php/2008/08/13/climate-change-and-conservation-scaling-down-to-the-ground-stuart-weiss/ http://consblog.org/index.php/2008/08/13/climate-change-and-conservation-scaling-down-to-the-ground-stuart-weiss/#comments Wed, 13 Aug 2008 18:55:10 +0000 Tim http://consblog.org/?p=46 As a scholar of the checkerspot butterfly, Weiss is concerned that the macroclimatic models of climate change are irrelevant to species with small home ranges. His talk presented methods for down-scaling climate data to model mesoclimates (1-100km), topoclimates (10m to 1km) and microclimates. By using iButtons (tiny, cheap, climatic sensors — we’re using them at my field site in Carrizo and despite being kind of finicky to get started, they are very cool), and a multiple regression using topographic features, he can model quite accurately (r^2=.93) how temperature is distributed across the site. By embedding this model across the mountain range, temperature can be modeled to much higher resolution than the current country-wide climate change models.

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