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The region of Valencia has a marked territorial duality: an urbanised, populated and high-income coastal line, and mountain and depressed inland rural areas. This territorial duality also derives in a functional duality, so that market and regulation drivers seem to assign rural areas specific roles for the provision of raw materials, energy, water, and the like. One of the clearest examples can be found in the design and development of the Wing Energy Plan passed by the Regional Government in 2001, which designated areas for the installation of windmills. However, this regulation has resulted in an outstanding emergence of associations that have organised at several levels (from the local to the national) as a...
Five alcoves (rock shelters) in the Forty-Mile Canyon—Willow Gulch area of the Escalante River Basin in southeastern Utah yielded rich deposits of late Quaternary macrobotanical remains. The deposits were sampled and the contents identified in order to construct a chronology of vegetational change. Fourteen radiocarbon dates indicate that the fossils were deposited between 12,690 and 7510 yr B.P. (years before present). Ninety-one plant taxa were identified, 62 to species. Six species were common to all alcoves: Gambel oak (Quercus gambelii), box-elder (Acer negundo), prickly pear (Opuntia subgenus Platyopuntia), skunkbush (Rhus aromatica var. trilobata), serviceberry (Amelanchier utahensis), and Indian ricegrass...
Abstract (from http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0173844): Urban habitats are characterized by impervious surfaces, which increase temperatures and reduce water availability to plants. The effects of these conditions on herbivorous insects are not well understood, but may provide insight into future conditions. Three primary hypotheses have been proposed to explain why multiple herbivorous arthropods are more abundant and damaging in cities, and support has been found for each. First, less complex vegetation may reduce biological control of pests. Second, plant stress can increase plant quality for pests. And third, urban warming can directly increase pest fitness and abundance. These...
Population changes and shifts in geographic range boundaries induced by climate change have been documented for many insect species. On the basis of such studies, ecological forecasting models predict that, in the absence of dispersal and resource barriers, many species will exhibit large shifts in abundance and geographic range in response to warming. However, species are composed of individual populations, which may be subject to different selection pressures and therefore may be differentially responsive to environmental change. Asystematic responses across populations and species to warming will alter ecological communities differently across space. Common garden experiments can provide a more mechanistic understanding...
Abstract (from http://www.esajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1890/11-2296.1): Physiological tolerance of environmental conditions can influence species-level responses to climate change. Here, we used species-specific thermal tolerances to predict the community responses of ant species to experimental forest-floor warming at the northern and southern boundaries of temperate hardwood forests in eastern North America. We then compared the predictive ability of thermal tolerance vs. correlative species distribution models (SDMs) which are popular forecasting tools for modeling the effects of climate change. Thermal tolerances predicted the responses of 19 ant species to experimental climate warming at the southern site,...
The expansion of protected areas is a critical component of strategies to promote the continued existence of biodiversity (i.e., life at all levels of biological organization) as climate changes, but scientific, social, and economic uncertainties associated with climate change are some of the major obstacles preventing such expansion. New models of climate change and species distribution and new methods of conservation planning now make it possible to explore the uncertainties associated with climate changes and species responses. Yet few reliable estimates of the costs of expanding protected areas and methods for determining these costs exist, largely because of the many (and uncertain) determinants of these costs....
Berry Risk Mapping and Modeling of Native and exotic defoliators in Alaska is a jointly funded project between the Alaska Climate Science Center and the North Pacific Landscape Conservation Cooperative.
Abstract (from http://climatechangeresponses.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40665-016-0015-2): Background Detailed assessments of species responses to climate change are uncommon, owing to the limited nature of most ecological and local climate data sets. Exceptions, such as the case of the Haleakalā silversword, can provide important insights into the complexity of biological responses to changing climate conditions. We present a time series of decadal population censuses, combined with a pair of early population projections, which together span the past 80 years of demographic history for this alpine plant. Results The time series suggests a strong population recovery from the 1930s through the 1980s, likely...
The Hawaiian Islands are home to a variety of native species that have been subject to numerous threats including development of habitat for human use, predation by introduced herbivores, and competition with invasive plant species. In addition to these threats global climate change is expected to increase temperature and alter patterns of precipitation in Hawaii. This project models the relative vulnerability of native plant species to the effects of climate change, in order to assist resource managers in effectively allocating limited resources to efficiently preserve and protect current and future habitat for native plants. We modeled vulnerability by creating an expert system – a network model linking biological...
Abstract (from http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-15-0088.1): A comprehensive understanding of the spatial, seasonal, and diurnal patterns in cloud cover frequency over the Hawaiian Islands was developed using high-resolution image data from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensors aboard the Terra and Aqua satellites. The Terra and Aqua MODIS cloud mask products, which provide the confidence that a given 1-km pixel is unobstructed by cloud, were obtained for the entire MODIS time series (10-plus years) over the main Hawaiian Islands. Monthly statistics were generated from the daily cloud mask data, including mean cloud cover...
Climate change is already affecting species in many ways. Because individual species respond to climate change differently, some will be adversely affected by climate change whereas others may benefit. Successfully managing species in a changing climate will require an understanding of which species will be most and least impacted by climate change. Although several approaches have been proposed for assessing the vulnerability of species to climate change, it is unclear whether these approaches are likely to produce similar results. In this study, we compared the relative vulnerabilities to climate change of 76 species of birds, mammals, amphibians, and trees based on three different approaches to assessing vulnerability....
Abstract (from http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0088948): Reproduction in rare plants may be influenced and limited by a complex combination of factors. External threats such as invasive species and landscape characteristics such as isolation may impinge on both pollination and seed predation dynamics, which in turn can strongly affect reproduction. I assessed how patterns in floral visitation, seed predation, invasive ant presence, and plant isolation influenced one another and ultimately affected viable seed production in Haleakalā silverswords (Argyroxiphium sandwicense subsp. macrocephalum) of Hawai’i. Floral visitation was dominated by endemic Hylaeus bees, and patterns of visitation...
Abstract: We report on net ecosystem production (NEP) and key environmental controls on net ecosystem exchange (NEE) of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) between a mangrove forest and the atmosphere in the coastal Florida Everglades. An eddy covariance system deployed above the canopy was used to determine NEE during January 2004 through August 2005. Maximum daytime NEE ranged from −20 to −25 μ mol (CO 2 ) m −2 s −1 between March and May. Respiration (R d ) was highly variable (2.81 ± 2.41 μ mol (CO 2 ) m −2 s −1 ), reaching peak values during the summer wet season. During the winter dry season, forest CO 2 assimilation increased with the proportion of diffuse solar irradiance in response to greater radiative transfer...
Abstract (from http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10980-015-0160-1): Content Changing aspen distribution in response to climate change and fire is a major focus of biodiversity conservation, yet little is known about the potential response of aspen to these two driving forces along topoclimatic gradients. Objective This study is set to evaluate how aspen distribution might shift in response to different climate-fire scenarios in a semi-arid montane landscape, and quantify the influence of fire regime along topoclimatic gradients. Methods We used a novel integration of a forest landscape succession and disturbance model (LANDIS-II) with a fine-scale climatic water deficit approach to simulate dynamics of...
Abstract (from Environmental Entomology) An insect species’ geographic distribution is probably delimited in part by physiological tolerances of environmental temperatures. Gloomy scale (Melanaspis tenebricosa (Comstock)) is a native insect herbivore in eastern U.S. forests. In eastern U.S. cities, where temperatures are warmer than nearby natural areas, M. tenebricosa is a primary pest of red maple (Acer rubrum L.; Sapindales: Sapindaceae) With warming, M. tenebricosa may spread to new cities or become pestilent in forests. To better understand current and future M. tenebricosa distribution boundaries, we examined M. tenebricosa thermal tolerance under laboratory conditions. We selected five hot and five cold experimental...