Optimal Seed Deployment Under Climate Change Using Spatial Models: Application to Loblolly Pine in the Southeastern US
研究开发了一种贝叶斯空间模型，利用气候变量预测不同来源火炬松种子在特定种植地点的相对表现，发现未来气候下最优策略是将种子从南部温暖区迁移到北部寒冷区。
Provenance tests are a common tool in forestry designed to identify superior genotypes for planting at specific locations. The trials are replicated experiments established with seed from parent trees collected from different regions and grown at several locations. In this work, a Bayesian spatial approach is developed for modeling the expected relative performance of seed sources using climate variables as predictors associated with the origin of seed source and the planting site. The proposed modeling technique accounts for the spatial dependence in the data and introduces a separable Matérn covariance structure that provides a flexible means to estimate effects associated with the origin and planting site locations. The statistical model was used to develop a quantitative tool for seed deployment aimed to identify the location of superior performing seed sources that could be suitable for a specific planting site under a given climate scenario. Cross-validation results indicate that the proposed spatial models provide superior predictive ability compared to multiple linear regression methods in unobserved locations. The general trend of performance predictions based on future climate scenarios suggests an optimal assisted migration of loblolly pine seed sources from southern and warmer regions to northern and colder areas in the southern USA. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.