Downscaling Climate over Complex Terrain: High Finescale (<1000 m) Spatial Variation of Near-Ground Temperatures in a Montane Forested Landscape (Great Smoky Mountains)*

Landscape-driven microclimates in mountainous terrain pose significant obstacles to predicting the response of organisms to atmospheric warming, but few if any studies have documented the extent of such finescale variation over large regions. This paper demonstrates that ground-level temperature regimes in Great Smoky Mountains National Park (Tennessee and North Carolina) vary considerably over fine spatial scales and are only partially linked...