Models of climatic normals for genecology and climate change studies in British Columbia

Maps of interpolated climate normals have recently become essential tools for many types of forestry research, such as studying genetic adaptation of trees to local environments, modeling species ranges shifts, or forest productivity under climate change scenarios. In this paper, we evaluate two widely used climate models for British Columbia with respect to their general precision and regional bias. We discuss limitations due to the resolution of the current “state of the art” PRISM climate model and provide new methodology for “intelligent” up-sampling of the PRISM model for studies that require spatially explicit climate data. In order to stress the importance of choosing an adequate climate model and understanding its limitations, we provide two examples where baseline climate models caused misleading predictions of how the climate envelope of ecosystems shifts as a consequence of increased temperature, and how tree growth may respond to climate change.