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Conservation planning aims to optimize outcomes for select species or ecosystems by directing resources toward high-return sites. The possibility that local benefits might be increased by directing resources beyond the focal area is rarely considered. We present a case study of restoring river connectivity for migratory fish of the Great Lakes Basin by removing dams and road crossings within municipal jurisdictions versus their broader watersheds. We found that greater river connectivity could often be achieved by considering both intra-jurisdictional and extra-jurisdictional barriers. Focusing on jurisdictional barriers alone generally forfeited <20 (median = 0%) of habitat gains for those who value solely habitat...
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Sky Island Alliance (SIA) is a non-governmental organizational that works to protect and restore the rich natural heritage of native species and habitats in the Sky Island Region. We work with volunteers, scientists, land-owners, public officials, and government agencies to establish protected areas, restore healthy landscapes, and promote public appreciation of the region’s unique biological diversity. Because of our long-standing collaborative relationships with land managers and our large corps of skilled volunteers, we were in a unique position to spearhead this project.SIA initiated this springs inventory, assessment and management planning project to develop baseline information on springs in the Sky Island...
Categories: Data, Publication; Types: ArcGIS REST Map Service, Citation, Map Service, OGC WFS Layer, OGC WMS Layer, OGC WMS Service; Tags: 2011, AZ-02, AZ-03, Arizona, Conservation NGOs, All tags...
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Identifying the climatic drivers of an ecological system is a key step in assessing its vulnerability to climate change. Theclimatic dimensions to which a species or system is most sensitive – such as means or extremes – can guide methodologicaldecisions for projections of ecological impacts and vulnerabilities. However, scientific workflows for combining climateprojections with ecological models have received little explicit attention. We review Global Climate Model (GCM)performance along different dimensions of change and compare frameworks for integrating GCM output into ecologicalmodels. In systems sensitive to climatological means, it is straightforward to base ecological impact assessments onmean projected...
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Oil development in the Bakken shale region has increased rapidly as a result of new technologies and strongdemand for fossil fuel. This region also supports a particularly high density and diversity of grassland bird species,which are declining across North America. We examined grassland bird response to unconventional oilextraction sites (i.e. developed with hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling techniques) and associatedroads in North Dakota. Our goal was to quantify the amount of habitat that was indirectly degraded by oil development,as evidenced by patterns of avoidance by birds. Grassland birds avoided areas within 150 m of roads(95% CI: 87–214 m), 267 m of single-bore well pads (95% CI: 157–378 m),...
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Abstract: We present an inverse modeling approach for reconstructing the effective thermal conductivity of snow on a daily basis using air temperature, ground temperature and snow depth measurements. The method is applied to four sites in Alaska. To validate the method we used measured snow densities and snow water equivalents. The modeled thermal conductivities of snow for the two interior Alaska sites have relatively low values and reach their maximum near the end of the snow season, while the conductivities at the two sites on the Alaskan North Slope are higher and reach their maximum earlier in the snow season. We show that the reconstructed daily thermal conductivities allow for more accurate modeling of ground...
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Stopover use by migrating shorebirds is affected by patch-level characteristics of habitat, but the relative influence of broadscale factors is poorly understood. We conducted surveys of ten 10-km-radius landscapes in north-central Oklahoma from 2007 through 2009 to examine the influence of the amount and composition of wetland habitats and surrounding land cover on shorebird use during migration. We used generalized linear modeling and an information-theoretic framework to identify factors that best explained species richness, total abundance, and abundance of four groups of shorebirds classified by breeding status and migration distance. Total abundance and richness both increased with the area of wetland...
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Holocene environmental change is poorly characterized throughout much of the High Plains. Playa wetlands are sites with appreciable potential for reconstructing environmental change because of their environmental sensitivity. Radiocarbon, litho- and magneto-stratigraphic, and stable carbon isotope (δ13C) data for four playas on the Kansas High Plains indicate significant change occurred throughout the Holocene, which had profound impacts on playa ecosystem functions (e.g. groundwater recharge, surface water storage, and habitat). Minimum δ13C values and buried soils observed during the Pleistocene–Holocene transition suggest sufficient moisture to support vegetative cover and promote pedogenesis. Low magnetic susceptibility,...
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There is mounting concern that climate change will lead to the collapse of cyclic population dynamics, yet the influence of climate variability on population cycling remains poorly understood. We hypothesized that variability in survival and fecundity, driven by climate variability at different points in the life cycle, scales up from local populations to drive regional characteristics of population cycling and spatial synchronization.
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Executive Summary: We provide an analysis of Sonoran Desert water network connectivity to inform managers of current conditions for target wildlife and how the connectivity will change as the landscape becomes more water limited.Climate change is expected to lead to fragmentation of the network, increasing coalescence distance by 8% and reducing the persistence and overall number of waters on the landscape. Identification of key water sites, ranked by network connectivity metrics, are presented in Appendix B. Wetland number under our scenario of water limitation will decline by 43% reducing network resilience.Anurans and Caudates, although varying in ability to disperse, generally experienced reduced connectivity...
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Our goal was to predict road culvert passability, as defined by culvert outlet drop and outlet water velocity, for three fish swimming groups using remotely collected environmental variables that have been shown to influence the passability of road culverts.We generated four boosted regression tree models, one for road culvert outlet drop and one each for the three culvert outlet water velocities, and predicted the probability of impassable road culverts on low-order streams based on the models. Independent variables in the modelsincluded the upstream area draining to the culvert, slope at the culvert, stream segment gradient and stream reach gradient.Gradient of the stream segment was the most important predictor...
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Northern Great Lakes forests represent an ecotone in the boreal–temperate transition zone and are expected to change dramatically with climate change. Managers are increasingly seeking adaptation strategies to manage these forests. We explored the efficacy of two alternative management scenarios compared with business-as-usual (BAU) management: expanding forest reserves meant to preserve forest identity and increase resistance, and modified silviculture meant to preserve forest function and increase adaptive capacity. Our study landscapes encompassed northeastern Minnesota and northern Lower Michigan, which are predicted to experience significant changes in a future climate and represent a gradient of latitude,...
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Sediment accumulation threatens the viability and hydrologic functioning of many naturally formed depressional wetlands across the interior regions of North America. These wetlands provide many ecosystem services and vital habitats for diverse plant and animal communities. Climate change may further impact sediment accumulation rates in the context of current land use patterns. We estimated sediment accretion in wetlands within a region renowned for its large populations of breeding waterfowl and migrant shorebirds and examined the relative roles of precipitation and land use context in the sedimentation process. We modeled rates of sediment accumulation from 1971 through 2100 using the Revised Universal Soil Loss...
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​Abstract: Climate change predictions include warming and drying trends, which are expected to be particularly pronounced in the southwestern United States. In this region, grassland dynamics are tightly linked to available moisture, yet it has proven difficult to resolve what aspects of climate drive vegetation change. In part, this is because it is unclear how heterogeneity in soils affects plant responses to climate. Here, we combine climate and soil properties with a mechanistic soil water model to explain temporal fluctuations in perennial grass cover, quantify where and the degree to which incorporating soil water dynamics enhances our ability to understand temporal patterns, and explore the potential consequences...
Categories: Data, Publication; Types: Citation, Map Service, OGC WFS Layer, OGC WMS Layer, OGC WMS Service; Tags: 2012, AZ-02, AZ-03, AZ-04, Academics & scientific researchers, All tags...
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Quantitative studies focusing on the collection of semibuoyant fish eggs, which are associated with a pelagic broadcast-spawning reproductive strategy, are often conducted to evaluate reproductive success. Many of the fishes in this reproductive guild have suffered significant reductions in range and abundance. However, the efficiency of the sampling gear used to evaluate reproduction is often unknown and renders interpretation of the data from these studies difficult. Our objective was to assess the efficiency of a modified Moore egg collector (MEC) using field and laboratory trials. Gear efficiency was assessed by releasing a known quantity of gellan beads with a specific gravity similar to that of eggs from representatives...
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Climate change poses major challenges for conservation and management because it alters the area, quality, and spatial distribution of habitat for natural populations. To assess species’ vulnerability to climate change and target ongoing conservation investments, researchers and managers often consider the effects of projected changes in climate and land use on future habitat availability and quality and the uncertainty associated with these projections. Here, we draw on tools from hydrology and climate science to project the impact of climate change on the density of wetlands in the Prairie Pothole Region of the USA, a critical area for breeding waterfowl and other wetland-dependent species. We evaluate the potential...
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A key challenge in aquatic restoration efforts is documenting locations where ecological connectivity is disrupted in water bodies that are dammed or crossed by roads (road crossings). To prioritize actions aimed at restoring connectivity, we argue that there is a need for systematic inventories of these potential barriers at regional and national scales. Here, we address this limitation for the North American Great Lakes basin by compiling the best available spatial data on the locations of dams and road crossings. Our spatial database documents 38 times as many road crossings as dams in the Great Lakes basin, and case studies indicate that, on average, only 36% of road crossings in the area are fully passable...
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Developing conservation strategies for threatened species increasingly requires understanding vulnerabilities to climate change, in terms of both demographic sensitivities to climatic and other environmental factors, and exposure to variability in those factors over time and space. Weconducted a range-wide, spatially explicit climate change vulnerability assessment for Eastern Massasauga (Sistrurus catenatus), a declining endemic species in a region showing strong environmental change. Using active season and winter adult survival estimates derived from 17 data sets throughout the species’ range, we identified demographic sensitivities to winter drought, maximum precipitation during the summer, and the proportion...
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Conservation of biological communities requires accurate estimates of abundance for multiple species. Recent advances in estimating abundance of multiple species, such as Bayesian multispecies N-mixture models, account for multiple sources of variation, including detection error. However, false-positiveerrors (misidentification or double counts), which are prevalent in multispecies data sets, remain largely unaddressed. The dependent-double observer (DDO) method is an emerging method that both accounts for detection error and is suggested to reduce the occurrence of false positives because it relies on two observers working collaboratively to identify individuals. To date, the DDO method has not been combined with...
This final report was developed in December 2014 for the project Critically Evaluating Existing Methods and Supporting a Standardization of Terrestrial and Wetland Habitat Classification and Mapping that Includes Characterization of Climate Sensitive Systems.
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Wetland hydroperiod, the length of time water is available in wetlands, is sensitive to changes in precipitation, temperature and timing due to climate variation. Truncated hydroperiod has major implications for wetland-dependent species (e.g., waterfowl, amphibians) and human water allocation (PPP LCC Need 1). To characterize wetland hydroperiod in the Plains and Prairie Pothole Region, we first identify location and hydroperiod of wetlands using field-based and remotely sensed training data (RapidEye, Landsat). We define hydroperiod as wetland ephemerality, where ephemerality represents the persistence of a wetland across the growing season. We then link hydroperiod to climatic variation by relating climate time-series...
map background search result map search result map Sampling Efficiency of the Moore Egg Collector Broad-scale Relationships Between Shorebirds and Landscapes in the Southern Great Plains Report, Inventory and Assessment Protocols, Adaptation Plan, and Presentation for: Springs in the Sky Island Region: Inventory, Assessment, and Management Planning Project Publication and Report: Ecosystem Water Balance in a Desert Grassland Quantitative and Predictive Analysis: Landscape Connectivity of Isolated Waters for Wildlife in the Sonoran Desert Publication: Restoring aquatic ecosystem connectivity requires expanding inventories of both dams and road crossings Publication: Predicting road culvert passability for migratory fishes Publication: Local-Scale Benefits of River Connectivity Restoration Planning Beyond Jurisdictional Boundaries Publication: Climate variability drives population cycling and synchrony Publication: Demographic consequences of climate change and land cover help explain a history of extirpations and range contraction in a declining snake species Publication: Effects of alternative forest management on biomass and species diversity in the face of climate change in the northern Great Lakes region The Effect of Snow: How to Better Model Ground Surface Temperatures Publication: Holocene records of environmental change in High Plains playa wetlands, Kansas, US A multispecies dependent double-observer model: A new method to for estimating multispecies abundance Projected wetland densities under climate change: habitat loss but little geographic shift in conservation strategy Designing ecological climate change impact assessments to reflect key climatic drivers Sediment Accumulation in Prairie Wetlands under a Changing Climate: the Relative Roles of Landscape and Precipitation Avoidance of unconventional oil wells and roads exacerbates habitat loss for grassland birds in the North American great plains Using a multiscale, probabilistic approach to identify spatial-temporal wetland gradients The Effect of Snow: How to Better Model Ground Surface Temperatures Report, Inventory and Assessment Protocols, Adaptation Plan, and Presentation for: Springs in the Sky Island Region: Inventory, Assessment, and Management Planning Project Avoidance of unconventional oil wells and roads exacerbates habitat loss for grassland birds in the North American great plains Publication: Holocene records of environmental change in High Plains playa wetlands, Kansas, US Quantitative and Predictive Analysis: Landscape Connectivity of Isolated Waters for Wildlife in the Sonoran Desert Broad-scale Relationships Between Shorebirds and Landscapes in the Southern Great Plains Sampling Efficiency of the Moore Egg Collector Publication: Effects of alternative forest management on biomass and species diversity in the face of climate change in the northern Great Lakes region A multispecies dependent double-observer model: A new method to for estimating multispecies abundance Projected wetland densities under climate change: habitat loss but little geographic shift in conservation strategy Designing ecological climate change impact assessments to reflect key climatic drivers Using a multiscale, probabilistic approach to identify spatial-temporal wetland gradients Sediment Accumulation in Prairie Wetlands under a Changing Climate: the Relative Roles of Landscape and Precipitation Publication: Restoring aquatic ecosystem connectivity requires expanding inventories of both dams and road crossings Publication: Predicting road culvert passability for migratory fishes Publication: Local-Scale Benefits of River Connectivity Restoration Planning Beyond Jurisdictional Boundaries Publication and Report: Ecosystem Water Balance in a Desert Grassland Publication: Climate variability drives population cycling and synchrony Publication: Demographic consequences of climate change and land cover help explain a history of extirpations and range contraction in a declining snake species