1. Geographic Distributions of Plant Diversity in the Southeastern US Aaron Moody, Bob Peet, Todd Jobe, Jen Costanza, Dahl Winters, Matt Simon NASA Biodiversity and Ecological Forecasting Team Meeting – May 1-2, 2008 NASA-NNG06GI70G

3. Plot Data : Nested Modules from 0.1 m to 0.1 ha Species by cover class Tree species by size class

4. Remote Sensing: TM & MODIS: NPP Vegetation indices Land Cover and Change Heterogeneity Fragmentation

5. Question: Does plant richness (α- diversity) vary with productivity? How do these relationships vary by functional type, community type, ecoregion, extent, and sample scale?

6. Question: How does turnover in community composition (β-diversity) relate to environmental gradients? How do these relationships vary by functional type, community type, ecoregion, and sample scale?

7. Question: What are the effects of landscape heterogeneity and human land fragmentation on richness

8. Question: How do species area z- values vary by community type, ecoregion, and functional type?

9. Productivity declines with latitude only for forest interior plots

10. Hump-shaped relationship between richness and “producitivity”

12. Change in richness with NPP is conditioned by level of fragmentation

13. Distance decay in similarity for trees

14. Turnover along NPP gradient – trees

15. Richness declines with heterogeneity

17. Plots with 5 or more Exotic Species

18. Greatest % change within 1km (515 plots)

19. Plant Diversity and Productivity Structural Equation Model

20. Continuing work emphasizes: Richness and turnover analyses by functional type, community type, and ecoregion Multi-scale analyses Analysis of species-area z-values

21. Thank You