|
|
Ecosystems are changing worldwide and critical decisions that affect ecosystem health and sustainability are being made every day. As ecologists, we have a responsibility to ensure that these decisions are made with access to the best available science. However, to bring this idea into practice, ecology needs to make a substantial leap forward towards becoming a more predictive science. Furthermore, even for basic, conceptual questions there is a lot to be gained by addressing problems from a forecasting perspective, with more frequent data-model comparisons helping to highlight misunderstandings and reframe long-standing questions. Ecological forecasting is occurring across a wide range of ecological sub-disciplines,...
|
These data reflect movement values for brown treesnakes from Guam that were translocated (moved by humans) to new locations or were resident (left in place) on Guam. The data are related to the specimen's treatment group, individual values, locations and other details affiliated with radio telemetry based acquisition and positional changes by the individual snakes across tracking events. The data were collected to help inform early detection and rapid response efforts for brown treesnakes in the Mariana Islands.
|
This Data Release compiles records of brook trout abundance from 745 unique sites across the southern Appalachian mountains from 1958-2021. Records were compiled from 10 institutions, primarily state natural resource agencies. Data were collected from wadeable stream environments with standard backpack electrofishing methods, and observed abundances of adult and juvenile brook trout are reported for each electrofishing pass within sample sites.
|
Fish represent high quality protein and nutrient sources, but Hg contamination is ubiquitous in aquatic ecosystems and can pose health risks to fish and their consumers. Potential health risks posed to fish and humans by Hg contamination in fish were assessed in western Canada and the United States. A large compilation of inland fish Hg concentrations was evaluated in terms of potential health risk to the fish themselves, health risk to predatory fish that consume Hg contaminated fish, and to humans that consume Hg contaminated fish. The probability that a fish collected from a given location would exceed a Hg concentration benchmark relevant to a health risk was calculated. These exceedance probabilities and their...
|
A fundamental environmental challenge facing humanity in the 21st century and beyond is predicting the impacts of global environmental change. This challenge is complicated by the fact that we live on a non-stationary, unreplicated planet that is rapidly moving outside the envelope of natural variability into an historical non-analog world. In other words, while the past helps inform us about how the world has worked, it may no longer be the relevant frame of reference for management, conservation, and sustainability. In this future world the two questions at the foundation of sustainability are “How are ecosystems and the services they provide going to change in the future?” and “How do human decisions affect this...
|
View more...
|
