Mitigating threats to plant species in the presence of climate change

The Centre for Statistics awarded funding researchers in the School of Health in Social Science.

Research Team: Glenna Nightingale

Project Summary: This project will result in the creation of an R package which will demonstrate existing statistical methodology, area interaction point process models, in a novel area of application– mitigation of climate change threat to public health. The proposed models (incorporated in the R package) will facilitate the quantification of the impact of climate change (temperature, rainfall, pH) on the spatial distribution of key plant species (for nutrition in environmentally vulnerable communities) in a multi-species plant community. Climate change has been implicated as negatively impacting on crop yield and food security (https://www.actionagainsthunger.org/story/8-crops-endangered-climate-change ). The mitigation of these effects needs to be addressed in multipronged ways – including the use of spatial models. The models will also quantify the inter-plant associations and thus inform reforestation/replanting efforts. This quantification will improve the knowledge on the underlying processes which govern the coexistence of multispecies.