My name is Graydon Gillies. I’m a 4th-year honours undergraduate student at UBC studying Environmental Sciences, currently enrolled in GEOS 370 – Advanced GIS. Throughout my degree I have developed a fond interest in ecology, botany, and climate change. I’m always curious to learn more about how these different components of our world interact – specifically, I’m interested in range shifts. As the world gets warmer due to climate change, some organisms will be forced to migrate poleward or to higher elevations in order to track cooler temperatures. These changes have a myriad of implications for the fitness and survival of different species. To delve deeper into this topic, I used GIS to examine how a species may respond to changes in temperature and precipitation. By using functions within ArcGIS, I model the habitat suitability of the shrub Artemisia tridentata, or ‘big sagebrush’, and examine how it’s suitable habitat changes under different climate scenarios.

Throughout this project web page, you will find several maps. You may click on any of them to open a high-resolution .pdf version. You can navigate to the different sections of the project using the tabs at the top of the screen. Thank you for taking the time to check out my project!

Click here to see the introduction.