September 22, 2022: IRES Faculty Seminar with Tongli Wang


IRES Seminar Series

Time: 12:30pm to 1:20pm 

Location: Beaty Museum Theatre (2212 Main Mall)

View video

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Climate and ecological models for forest adaptation to climate change

Abstract: 

The impacts of climate on forest ecosystems have been observed in different aspects, including large-scale diebacks, increased pest and disease infections, and intensified forest fires. A major cause of these problems is due to the mismatch between the climate that trees have adapted to in the past and the climate that the trees are experiencing now and in the future due to climate change. Ecological models can be used to predict such mismatches at the ecosystem/species (ecological niche models) and the population (population response functions) levels. The model predictions can help develop adaptive strategies based on the available genetic resources created by nature. The quality of climate data can substantially affect the credibility of those models. My talk will brief on our research in developing scale-free climate models, ecological niche models, response functions, and landscape genomic models. 

Tongli Wang

Associate Professor at the Department of Forest and Conservation Sciences

Bio: 

Tongli Wang is an Associate Professor at the Department of Forest and Conservation Sciences, Faculty of Forestry, UBC. Tongli’s research interests include ecological genetics and forest adaptation to climate change. Some tools that he developed have been widely used, including 1) ClimateNA that generates scale-free climate data for North America for historical and future periods; 2) climate niche models predicting the shifts of climate habitats for forest ecosystems (flying BEC zones) and tree species under climate change; and 3) climate response functions for climate-based seed transfer at the population level. He is also interested in exploring the potential of using genomic data to help forests to adapt to climate change.