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Abstract: A significant number of historically existing wetlands that naturally stored rainwater and attenuated flood peaks have now been drained and employed as new farming areas. Beyond the water quality and flow problem, this has resulted in loss of natural habitats of diverse ecological species. Restoring wetlands have hence been proposed as a potential conservation strategy to help attenuate many of these problems. In this study a spatial, multi-objective optimization study of new potential wetlands was carried out to achieve biodiversity improvements in addition to flood reduction benefits and water quality improvements. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) was used to simulate flow and water quality,...
Abstract (from ESA): Estimating population size and resource selection functions (RSFs) are common approaches in applied ecology for addressing wildlife conservation and management objectives. Traditionally such approaches have been undertaken separately with different sources of data. Spatial capture–recapture (SCR) provides a hierarchical framework for jointly estimating density and multi‐scale resource selection, and data integration techniques provide opportunities for improving inferences from SCR models. Despite the added benefits, there have been few applications of SCR‐RSF integration, potentially due to complexities of specifying and fitting such models. Here, we extend a previous integrated SCR‐RSF model...
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Overview Fishes of the Adirondack Park face numerous challenges. Summer Suckers are the only endemic vertebrate yet have suffered major range reductions, so we are analyzing their genome, body shape, and spawning timing to verify their uniqueness and current range. Warming patterns are expected to shift their spawning earlier, potentially intersecting with their recent ancestor (White Suckers) to create hybridization and reduced reproductive success. Minnows are more diverse in the Adirondacks, and our analyses suggest that they show three major distributional patterns that reflect post-glacial colonization and temperature preferences. We are analyzing data from hundreds of lakes to discern the rules that structure...
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Society makes substantial investments in federal, Tribal, state, and private programs to supplement populations of valued species such as stocking fish, planting trees, rebuilding oyster reefs, and restoring prairies. These important efforts require long-term commitment, but climate change is making environmental conditions less predictable and more challenging to navigate. Selection of species for population supplementation is often based on performance prior to release, and one or a few species may then be used for decades even as the environment is changing. When these species are propagated in large numbers, they can become the dominant population as well as genetically overtake any local adaptations. Therefore,...
Abstract (from Ecological Society of America): Successful management of natural resources requires local action that adapts to larger‐scale environmental changes in order to maintain populations within the safe operating space (SOS) of acceptable conditions. Here, we identify the boundaries of the SOS for a managed freshwater fishery in the first empirical test of the SOS concept applied to management of harvested resources. Walleye (Sander vitreus) are popular sport fish with declining populations in many North American lakes, and understanding the causes of and responding to these changes is a high priority for fisheries management. We evaluated the role of changing water clarity and temperature in the decline...
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Studying the impacts of climate on important ecological responses is a recent priority of monitoring programs throughout the Northeast. Established sampling protocols for data collection, whether to inform estimates of species abundance or occupancy, were designed to evaluate the effects of non-climate stressors (e.g., habitat conversion) and related management actions. Traditional modeling approaches may not accurately identify important relationships between species and climate nor elicit useful information on how these species will be impacted by climate change. Management decisions based on these traditional modeling approaches could have negative and unintended consequences on species and habitat conservation....
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Prairies were once widespread across North America, but are now one of the most endangered and least protected ecosystems in the world. Agriculture and residential development have reduced once extensive prairies into a patchwork of remnant prairies and “surrogate” grasslands (e.g., hayfields, planted pastures). Grassland ecosystems and many grassland-dependent birds are also particularly vulnerable to rapid shifts in climate and associated changes in drought and extreme weather. The Central Flyway is a vast bird migration route that comprises more than half of the continental U.S., and extends from Central America to Canada, and harbors the greatest diversity of grassland birds in North America. Throughout this...
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The Hemlock Woolly Adelgid (HWA) is an insect causing extensive hemlock tree die-offs in the northeast, and a lack of information on climate adaptation practices is hindering effective forest management. With the overall goal of fostering resilient forests that support northeastern hemlock ecosystems and wildlife, researchers supported by this Northeast-CASC project will work with land managers to identify information gaps and to develop management plans and a decision support tool tailored to the specific ecological, economic, and cultural management goals of different forests. The Hemlock Woolly Adelgid (HWA) is an invasive insect that has caused extensive hemlock death from Georgia to Maine in many of the densest...
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Project Overview Climate change threatens plants and animals across the US, making it important to have tools that can efficiently assess species’ vulnerabilities. In this project, CASC scientists and NatureServe are collaborating to update a popular Climate Change Vulnerability Index to include the latest scientific data, improved metrics, and new user-friendly technology. The tool will help state biologists and scientists prioritize conservation efforts, and in time for preparing updates to State Wildlife Action Plans that are due by 2025. Project Summary Climate change is impacting our nation’s plants and animals. To take preventative actions, public land managers need to know which species are most threatened,...
Abstract: Wetland restoration mitigates effects of agricultural development on water quality, flooding, and habitat loss. Multi-objective optimization for wetland locations and sizes has not included objective functions for water quality, hydrology, and habitat in unison, limiting analysis of trade-offs among these ecosystem services. This study establishes two methods to improve the accuracy of simulating wetland restoration with an optimization-simulation framework for analysis of trade-offs: identification of wetland type and constraining wetland and drainage area configurations to potential field-scale wetlands in the study area. Determination of a wetland habitat type used characteristics of the Hydrogeomorphic...
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Indigenous Nations are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, due in part to their reliance on healthy ecosystems to provide culturally significant plants that are used for traditional foods, medicines, and materials. Further, many Indigenous communities have an under-resourced capacity for climate adaptation, resulting in significant environmental justice impacts that range from health disparities to heightened disaster risks. There is growing recognition across the globe of the important role of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) in climate change resilience and the innovative solutions that lie at the intersection of Indigenous and western knowledge. However, Indigenous knowledge has...
Abstract (from arXiv): This paper introduces a novel framework for combining scientific knowledge of physics-based models with neural networks to advance scientific discovery. This framework, termed as physics-guided neural network (PGNN), leverages the output of physics-based model simulations along with observational features to generate predictions using a neural network architecture. Further, this paper presents a novel framework for using physics-based loss functions in the learning objective of neural networks, to ensure that the model predictions not only show lower errors on the training set but are also scientifically consistent with the known physics on the unlabeled set. We illustrate the effectiveness...
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As the climate continues to change, vulnerable wildlife species will need management strategies to help them adapt to these changes. One specific management strategy is based on the idea that in certain locations, climate conditions will remain suitable for species to continue to inhabit into the future. These locations are known as climate “refugia”. In contrast, other locations may become too hot, dry, or wet for species to continue to inhabit. When wildlife managers are considering protecting land for vulnerable species, it can be helpful for them to understand where these climate refugia are located, so that they can be prioritized for conservation. However, most tools used by resource managers to manage these...
Abstract (from arXiv): This paper proposes a physics-guided recurrent neural network model (PGRNN) that combines RNNs and physics-based models to leverage their complementary strengths and improve the modeling of physical processes. Specifically, we show that a PGRNN can improve prediction accuracy over that of physical models, while generating outputs consistent with physical laws, and achieving good generalizability. Standard RNNs, even when producing superior prediction accuracy, often produce physically inconsistent results and lack generalizability. We further enhance this approach by using a pre-training method that leverages the simulated data from a physics-based model to address the scarcity of observed...
Abstract (from ScienceDirect): Climate change is affecting the benefits society derives from forests. One such forest ecosystem service is maple syrup, which is primarily derived from Acer saccharum(sugar maple), currently an abundant and widespread tree species in eastern North America. Two climate sensitive components of sap affect syrup production: sugar content and sap flow. The sugar in maple sap derives from carbohydrate stores influenced by prior year growing season conditions. Sap flow is tied to freeze/thaw cycles during early spring. Predicting climate effects on syrup production thus requires integrating observations across scales and biological processes. We observed sap at 6 sugar maple stands spanning...
Abstract: Land use changes from natural ecosystems to industrial agriculture have impacted water quality and wildlife populations in the Mississippi River basin. Government programs providing technical assistance and monetary incentives have not resulted in adequate adoption rates of conservation practices. While there has been a plethora of research examining the factors associated with conservation adoption, significantly less is understood about the relative importance of these factors. Using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) with agricultural producers in three Midwestern watersheds, we assess the relative importance of environmental and production decision criteria when making decisions to adopt conservation...
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The forests of the Northeastern United States are home to some of the greatest diversity of nesting songbirds in the country. Climate change, shifts in natural disturbance regimes, and invasive species pose threats to forest habitats and bird species in the northeastern United States and represent major challenges to natural resource managers. Although broad adaptation approaches have been suggested for sustaining forested habitats under global change, it is unclear how effective the implementation of these strategies at local and regional scales will be for maintaining habitat conditions for a broad suite of forest-dependent bird species over time. Moreover, given the diversity in forest stakeholders across the...
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Downscaling is the process of making a coarse-scale global climate model into a finer resolution in order to capture some of the localized detail that the coarse global models cannot resolve. There are two general approaches of downscaling: dynamical and statistical. Within those, many dynamical models have been developed by different institutions, and there are a number of statistical algorithms that have been developed over the years. Many past studies have evaluated the performance of these two broad approaches of downscaling with respect to climate variables (e.g., temperature, precipitation), but few have translated these evaluations to ecological metrics that managers use to make decisions in planning for...
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Infrastructure development and climate change pose significant threats to migratory bird populations by altering their distributions and habitat. This Northeast CASC-supported research team will use citizen-science and structured monitoring data to identify current and future areas that are important for migratory bird species across the Northeastern US. Researchers will produce high-resolution forecasts of species’ distributions and publish protocols to help the US Fish and Wildlife Service and other institutions, make informed decisions to minimize negative impacts of infrastructure development on bird populations. Infrastructure development projects, including renewable energy projects, can negatively affect...
Abstract (from Fisheries Oceanography): The timing of recurring biological and seasonal environmental events is changing on a global scale relative to temperature and other climate drivers. This study considers the Gulf of Maine ecosystem, a region of high social and ecological importance in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean and synthesizes current knowledge of (a) key seasonal processes, patterns, and events; (b) direct evidence for shifts in timing; (c) implications of phenological responses for linked ecological‐human systems; and (d) potential phenology‐focused adaptation strategies and actions. Twenty studies demonstrated shifts in timing of regional marine organisms and seasonal environmental events. The most common...
map background search result map search result map Identifying and Evaluating Adaptation Science for Forest Habitats and Bird Communities in the Northeast Evaluation of Downscaled Climate Modeling Techniques for the Northeast U.S.: A Case Study of Maple Syrup Production Strategies for Reducing the Vulnerability of Grassland Birds to Climate Change within the Central Flyway Refugia are Important but are they Connected? Mapping Well-Connected Climate Refugia for Species of Conservation Concern in the Northeastern U.S. Putting the Sampling Design to Work: Enhancing Species Monitoring Programs in the Face of Climate Change Climate-Adaptive Population Supplementation (CAPS) to Enhance Fishery and Forestry Outcomes Indigenous-led Restoration and Stewardship of Culturally Significant Plants for Climate Change Adaptation in the Northeast Adirondack Fish Conservation: Safeguarding Summer Suckers, Understanding Minnow Diversity, Limiting Smallmouth Bass Invasions, Developing Climate-Adapted Stocking Forecasting Changes in Avian Biodiversity Under Changing Climate Climate Smart Forest Adaptation in the Wake of Hemlock Woolly Adelgid Developing a Next-Generation Climate Change Vulnerability Index in Support of Climate-Informed Natural-Resource Management Climate-Adaptive Population Supplementation (CAPS) to Enhance Fishery and Forestry Outcomes Climate Smart Forest Adaptation in the Wake of Hemlock Woolly Adelgid Refugia are Important but are they Connected? Mapping Well-Connected Climate Refugia for Species of Conservation Concern in the Northeastern U.S. Putting the Sampling Design to Work: Enhancing Species Monitoring Programs in the Face of Climate Change Adirondack Fish Conservation: Safeguarding Summer Suckers, Understanding Minnow Diversity, Limiting Smallmouth Bass Invasions, Developing Climate-Adapted Stocking Indigenous-led Restoration and Stewardship of Culturally Significant Plants for Climate Change Adaptation in the Northeast Forecasting Changes in Avian Biodiversity Under Changing Climate Identifying and Evaluating Adaptation Science for Forest Habitats and Bird Communities in the Northeast Evaluation of Downscaled Climate Modeling Techniques for the Northeast U.S.: A Case Study of Maple Syrup Production Strategies for Reducing the Vulnerability of Grassland Birds to Climate Change within the Central Flyway Developing a Next-Generation Climate Change Vulnerability Index in Support of Climate-Informed Natural-Resource Management