CLIFTRAP

Ongoing climate change is increasing global temperature and altering precipitation regimes at an unprecedented rate, challenging species capacity to keep up with their environment. 

Plant species responses to changes in climate are rarely synchronic or immediate, thus leading to a potential mismatch between the species climatic requirements and the climatic conditions of the sites where they occur. The magnitude of the climatic disequilibrium depends on the species velocity to colonize new habitats with favourable climatic conditions, the capacity of the existing species to acclimate and adapt to the new climate and the extinction delay of current surviving species.

The general objective of CLIFTRAP is to better understand the relationship between plant climatic disequilibrium and functional traits diversity and coordination. To address this goal, we will work across different spatial scales and organisational levels, from regional to local scales and from community to species level, respectively. CLIFTRAP addresses the following specific objectives:

1. Integrate functional metrics and climatic characterization, including climatic disequilibrium, of species and communities in a common operational frame.
2. Analyse the relationship between community climatic disequilibrium and functional traits coordination and diversity at regional scale.
3. Analyse the relationship between populations’ climatic disequilibrium and functional trait coordination at local scale.
4. Assess population and species resilience to extreme drought at local scale, in relation to the combined contribution of species functional traits and climatic characterization.

Proyecto PID2024-162917NA-I00 financiado por MICIU/AEI /10.13039/501100011033 y por FEDER, UE