Vegetative traits of plants can respond directly to changes in the environment, such as those occurring under climate change. That phenotypic plasticity could be adaptive, maladaptive, or neutral. We manipulated the timing of spring snowmelt and amount of summer precipitation in factorial combinatio

Climate change can impact plant fitness and population persistence directly through changing abiotic conditions and indirectly through its effects on species interactions. Pollination and seed predation are important biotic interactions that can impact plant fitness, but their impact on population g

Temperature and precipitation variability in response to climate change affects water cycling of watersheds and can potentially impact water quality, water availability, elemental and molecular fluxes, and biogeochemical processes. Here we report the measurements of light stable isotopes and greenho

Phenology - the timing of life events - determines how a species’ life cycle aligns with the abiotic and biotic environment, however, climate change has altered the environmental cues organisms use to track climate leading to shifts in phenology. In high latitude environments, phenological shifts in

The phenology of vegetation, namely leaf-out and senescence, can influence the Earth’s climate over regional spatial scales and long time periods (e.g., over 30 years or more), in addition to microclimates over local spatial scales and shorter time periods (weeks to months). However, the effects of

Species responses to climate change depend on environment, genetics, and interactions among these factors. Intraspecific cytotype (ploidy level) variation is a common type of genetic variation in many species. However, the importance of intraspecific cytotype variation in determining demography acro

How does recent climate warming and climate variability alter fitness, phenotypic selection and evolution in natural populations? We combine biophysical, demographic and evolutionary models with recent climate data to address this question for the subalpine and alpine butterfly, Colias meadii , in t

Phylogenetic relationships may underlie species‐specific phenological sensitivities to abiotic variation and may help to predict these responses to climate change. Although shared evolutionary history may mediate both phenology and phenological sensitivity to abiotic variation, few studies have expl

Environmental variation often induces shifts in functional traits, yet we know little about whether plasticity will reduce extinction risks under climate change. As climate change proceeds, phenotypic plasticity could enable species with limited dispersal capacity to persist in situ, and migrating p

Climate change is a global process that will impact local places in heterogeneous and unpredictable manners. This dissertation considers whose knowledge and observations could contribute to conservation and climate adaptation planning, how perceptions influence social-ecological feedbacks, and how s

Plants have been migrating into higher elevations in order to cope with the stresses of the changing climate. However, not all plants are capable of migrating as far or as fast as others. This study examines leaf traits of Boechera stricta, a plant with limited migratory capabilities, at different e

Over the next century the increasing concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other contributing greenhouse gases is predicted to generate an average increase in temperature 1-6˚C (Saavedra et al., 2003; Cleland et al., 2012). The proposed warming climate suggests a common myth of global warming th

Due to climate change, wildflowers are blooming earlier and earlier and suffering lower reproductive success. There are two general, non-mutually-exclusive hypotheses about why this lower reproductive success may be occurring. One is that plants are blooming before their pollinators and therefore ar

• Premise of the study: Numerous long‐term studies in seasonal habitats have tracked interannual variation in first flowering date (FFD) in relation to climate, documenting the effect of warming on the FFD of many species. Despite these efforts, long‐term phenological observations are still lacking

Variation in species’ responses to abiotic phenological cues under climate change may cause changes in temporal overlap among interacting taxa, with potential demographic consequences. Here, we examine associations between the abiotic environment and plant–pollinator phenological synchrony using a l