Conclusions
The objective of this study was to determine if ecosites sampled in the field differ in their response to climate and it appears that they do differ. The second objective was to determine if the relationship between the site location of an ecosite and a projected future climate also very from ecosystem to ecosystem. It would seem that at least for the climate variables explored in this study that yes, there is the same pattern of variability in climate characteristics in a future climate compared to the contemporary climate. The last objective was to test the hypothesis that mapped ecosystems, using the ecological classification and grouping ecosystems, could be used to spatially show which ecosystems are vulnerable to change. There doesn’t appear to be a clear relationship between the field plots and random location with climate variables. The lack of a clear-cut agreement could be due to mapping error or random sampling method.On this point statistical analysis of the data is required and further exploration of the data sets used.
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The climate projection scenarios used were a collection of several climate projection models representing various carbon emissions scenarios. In future analysis, I would recommend looking scenario outcomes and determining where they agree and do not agree. Such an approach would calculate agreement between the different projection scenarios. This approach can also reveal, spatially, areas that have little agreement in the outcome which can also be a powerful analytical tool then simply averaging the scenarios at the start of the modelled process. Additional work should include a multivariate analysis to consider the influence of climate and abiotic factors at the same time to understand the degree the climate envelope drives ecosystems at a local scale.
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