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Abstract The distribution and future fate of ectothermic organisms in a warming world will be dictated by thermalscapes across landscapes. That is particularly true for stream fishes and cold-water species like trout, salmon, and char that are already constrained to high elevations and latitudes. The extreme climates in those environments also preclude invasions by most non-native species, so identifying especially cold habitats capable of absorbing future climate change while still supporting native populations would highlight important refugia. By coupling crowd-sourced biological datasets with high-resolution stream temperature scenarios, we delineate network refugia across >250 000 stream km in the Northern...
Abstract: As the climate changes, human land use may impede species from tracking areas with suitable climates. Maintaining connectivity between areas of different temperatures could allow organisms to move along temperature gradients and allow species to continue to occupy the same temperature space as the climate warms. We used a coarse-filter approach to identify broad corridors for movement between areas where human influence is low while simultaneously routing the corridors along present-day spatial gradients of temperature. We modified a cost–distance algorithm to model these corridors and tested the model with data on current land-use and climate patterns in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. The...
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Conclusions: In fragmented watersheds, macrohabitat attributes measured at the patch scale were far more effective in predicting trout translocation success than measurements taken at the landscape scale Thresholds/Learnings: As a course filter indicator of cutthroat trout translocation success, the study found that translocations have a greater than 50% chance of fruitful establishment in watersheds >14.7km2 in area. Synopsis: This study aimed to identify stream-scale and basin-scale macrohabitat attributes limiting successful translocation and persistence of native cutthroat trout populations in fragmented landscapes along the Rio Grande. The study developed models of habitat attributes measured at two scales...
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Synopsis: Using multi-scale seasonal models, this study explored how broad scale landscape context and local resource heterogeneity influenced local resource selection among threatened forest-dwelling woodland caribou in southern Quebec. Caribou consistently avoided roads, however researchers identified thresholds in road proximity effects. The threshold distance at which caribou avoid roads is 1.25 km for active roads and 0.75 km from derelict roads. Open lichen woodlands were an important cover type for caribou during winter and spring, whereas deciduous forests, wetlands, and even young disturbed stands became important during calving and summer. Landscape cover type and amount explained more variation in habitat...
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Synopsis: In an attempt to better characterize the influence of human settlement patterns on wolf distribution, this paper examined how radio-collared gray wolves responded to different road types and human presence at the boundaries of Kenai National Wildlife Refuge in south-central Alaska. Wolves tended to avoid oilfield access roads that were open to the public, but were attracted to gated pipeline access roads and secondary gravel roads with limited human use. The low use access and secondary roads likely provided an easy travel corridor for wolves. Prior to intensive trapping and hunting from 1978-1979, wolves demonstrated little territorial adjustment in response to a heavily used highway. However, only after...
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Synopsis: This study analyzed the effects of vegetation change on hydrological fluctuations in the Columbia River basin over the last century using two land cover scenarios. The first scenario was a reconstruction of historical land cover vegetation, c. 1900. The second scenario was more recent land cover as estimated from remote sensing data for 1990. The results show that, hydrologically, the most important vegetation-related change has been a general tendency towards decreased vegetation maturity in the forested areas of the basin. This general trend represents a balance between the effects of logging and fire suppression. In those areas where forest maturity has been reduced as a result of logging, wintertime...
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Synopsis: This study evaluates whether previous observations of a higher percentage of parasitism and parasitoid diversity in a complex agricultural landscape, relative to a simple landscape, represent a general phenomenon. Rates of parasitism and parasitoid diversity of the armyworm (Pseudaletia unipuncta) were assessed in three replicate (Onondaga, Ingham, and Benton) regions in southern Michigan. Within each region, a simple landscape (primarily cropland) and a complex landscape (cropland intermixed with mid and late successional noncrop habitats) were identified through analysis of aerial photographs. In each landscape, three maize fields were selected, and second to fourth instar P. unipuncta were released...
We enhanced the agro-hydrologic VegET model to include snow accumulation and melt processes and the separation of runoff into surface runoff and deep drainage. Driven by global weather datasets and parameterized by land surface phenology (LSP), the enhanced VegET model was implemented in the cloud to simulate daily soil moisture (SM), actual evapotranspiration (ETa), and runoff (R) for the conterminous United States (CONUS) and the Greater Horn of Africa (GHA). Evaluation of the VegET model with independent data showed satisfactory performance, capturing the temporal variability of SM (Pearson correlation r: 0.22–0.97), snowpack (r: 0.86–0.88), ETa (r: 0.41–0.97), and spatial variability of R (r: 0.81–0.90). Absolute...
A warming climate, fire exclusion, and land cover changes are altering the conditions that produced historical fire regimes and facilitating increased recent wildfire activity in the northwestern United States. Understanding the impacts of changing fire regimes on forest recruitment and succession, species distributions, carbon cycling, and ecosystem services is critical, but challenging across broad spatial scales. One important and understudied aspect of fire regimes is the unburned area within fire perimeters; these areas can function as fire refugia across the landscape during and after wildfire by providing habitat and seed sources. With increasing fire activity, there is speculation that fire intensity and...
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In March 1988 the Long Term Resource Monitoring Program requested that scopes of work be developed for three problems: sedimentation, navigation effects, and water level fluctuations. After consultations with two prominent plant ecologists, Dr. John Barko, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Environmental Laboratory, and Dr. John Titus, Southern University of New York, a scope of work was prepared outlining a study to determine concentrations of suspended solids limiting aquatic plant growth on the Upper Mississippi River. All work tasks were then prioritized by the Long Term Resource Monitoring Program's Problem Solving Work Group. This scope of work was recommended for funding, however, the timeframe for initiation of...
Climate change has significant effects on critical ecosystem functions such as carbon and water cycling. Vegetation and especially forest ecosystems play an important role in the carbon and hydrological cycles. Vegetation models that include detailed belowground processes require accurate soil data to decrease uncertainty and increase realism in their simulations. The MC2 DGVM uses three modules to simulate biogeography, biogeochemistry and fire effects, all three of which use soil data either directly or indirectly. This study includes a correlation analysis of the MC2 model to soil depth by comparing a subset of the model’s carbon and hydrological outputs using soil depth data of different scales and qualities....
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The Healthy Beaches for People and Fish project was completed by Friends of the San Juans in partnership with Coastal Geologic Services, Salish Sea Biological and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife in 2014. Project approach and work was guided by a technical advisory group, which included representatives from The University of Washington, United States Geological Survey, Puget Sound Partnership, Skagit River Systems Cooperative, Samish Indian Nation, San Juan County Public Works, San Juan County Salmon Recovery Lead Entity, The Tulalip Tribes, Padilla Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve and the Washington State Departments of Ecology, Natural Resources and Fish and Wildlife. The project contained...
The evaluation of historical water use in the Upper Rio Grande Basin (URGB), United States and Mexico, using Landsat-derived actual evapotranspiration (ETa) from 1986 to 2015 is presented here as the first study of its kind to apply satellite observations to quantify long-term, basin-wide crop consumptive use in a large basin. The rich archive of Landsat imagery combined with the Operational Simplified Surface Energy Balance (SSEBop) model was used to estimate and map ETa across the basin and over irrigated fields for historical characterization of water-use dynamics. Monthly ETa estimates were evaluated using six eddy-covariance (EC) flux towers showing strong correspondence (r2 > 0.80) with reasonable error rates...
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Conclusions: Report presents a framework for assessing the condition of Southern Alberta’s natural assets and their ability to provide ecosystem goods and services. Measurable indicators of ecosystem services, including broad and fine scale landscape indicators, were also distilled from a literature review. Thresholds/Learnings: Wetland cover should be maintained at >15% for watersheds with high potential for phosphorus loading & eutrophication. Impervious cover should be maintained at or below 25% in heavily urbanizing watersheds. Synopsis: This report develops a framework for assessing the condition of Southern Alberta’s natural assets and their resulting ability to provide ecosystem goods and services. The...
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Conclusions: Habitat changes resulting from timber harvest have altered the predator–prey balance leading to asymmetric predation affecting the survivial rates of endangered mountain caribou Thresholds/Learnings: As young forest stands increase in proportion to old forests, caribou population densities and survival rates decline as they become increasingly vulnerable to predation and extripation. Synopsis: Timber harvesting in areas of Mountain Caribou habitat have created landscapes of early seral forests. Such habitat changes have altered the predator–prey balance resulting in asymmetric predation in which predators are maintained by alternative prey (i.e. apparent competition). This study estimates survival...
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Synopsis: Reviews information on grassland bird habitat requirements including a focus on the importance of grassland cover, size of contiguous patches, and other landscape factors. Some species require large blocks of unbroken grassland habitat for nesting. In general, where large blocks of undisturbed grassland occur, grassland birds are able to fulfill most of their requirements during the nesting season. For many bird species, these habitats provide winter and migration cover as well. The more grassland available in an area, particularly in large unbroken blocks, the greater the number of area-sensitive grassland birds the area is able to support. Pastures and crop fields also often provide attractive cover...
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Conclusions: Caribou subpopulation persistence and landscape occupancy depends highly on the degree of forest cover, cover type, and distance from human presence. Thresholds/Learnings: Synopsis: This study evaluates factors influencing the persistence and landscape occupancy of caribou subpopulations in southern British Columbia. Data from 235 radio-collared caribou across 13 subpopulations were used to derive a landscape occupancy index. The index was analyzed against 33 landscape variables including, land cover, terrain, climate, and human influence. At the metapopulation level, the persistence of subpopulations correlated with the extent of wet climate conditions and the distribution of old forests and alpine...
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Floods have become increasingly prominent in recent decades causing devastating effects on lives and livelihoods worldwide. Efficient tools to assess the drivers of floods, such as increasing urbanization, could help to minimize flood hazards. Urbanization increases the design peak flow (maximum potential surface water flow from a precipitation event with an average probability of occurring once in a specific recurrence interval), which is a key information needed for designing stormwater management infrastructures such as culverts and storm sewers. A web-based application was developed to explore the potential changes (1985 to 2020) in design peak flow of urban areas across the conterminous United States driven...
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Synopsis: Recensuses of 54 Wisconsin prairie remnants showed that 8 to 60 percent of the original plant species were lost from individual remnants over a 32- to 52-year period. The pattern of species loss was consistent with the proposed effects of fire suppression caused by landscape fragmentation. Short, small-seeded, or nitrogen-fixing plants showed the heaviest losses, as did species growing in the wettest, most productive environments. The interruption of landscape-scale processes (such as wildfire) by fragmentation is an often overlooked mechanism that may be eroding biodiversity in many habitats around the world. Conclusions: Fragmentation may interrupt landscape-scale processes, such as fire, that are key...
Synopsis: This paper aimed to quantify the relative importance of habitat area and configuration, as well as the contrast in resistance between habitat and non-habitat, on genetic differentiation patterns. Using spatially explicit, individual-based simulation modeling, researchers found that habitat configuration had stronger relationships with genetic differentiation than did habitat area. The pattern of habitat in a landscape will affect the distribution of the population and the degree of connectivity across it, resulting in differential patterns of gene flow. Researchers also evaluated the predictive ability of six widely used landscape metrics and found that patch cohesion and correlation length of habitat...
map background search result map search result map Factors influencing the dispersion and fragmentation of endangered mountain caribou populations Changes in landscape composition influence the decline of a threatened woodland caribou population Minimum habitat requirements for establishing translocated cutthroat trout populations. Ecosystem Goods and Services Southern Alberta Assessment of Natural Asset Condition Effects of land cover change on streamflow in the interior Columbia River Basin (USA and Canada). Assessing the influence of resource co-variates at multiple spatial scales: an application to forest-dwelling caribou faced with intensive human activity. Grassland Birds Gray wolf response to refuge boundaries and roads in Alaska. Does agricultural landscape structure affect parasistism and parasitoid diversity? Ecological determinants of species loss in remnant prairies. Feasibility study: Impacts of turbidity on growth and production of submersed plants Sea Level Rise Vulnerability Assessment for San Juan County, Washington A Web-Based Application for Exploring Potential Changes in Design Peak Flow of US Urban Areas Driven by Land Cover Change Sea Level Rise Vulnerability Assessment for San Juan County, Washington Assessing the influence of resource co-variates at multiple spatial scales: an application to forest-dwelling caribou faced with intensive human activity. Does agricultural landscape structure affect parasistism and parasitoid diversity? Minimum habitat requirements for establishing translocated cutthroat trout populations. Gray wolf response to refuge boundaries and roads in Alaska. Ecological determinants of species loss in remnant prairies. Factors influencing the dispersion and fragmentation of endangered mountain caribou populations Changes in landscape composition influence the decline of a threatened woodland caribou population Ecosystem Goods and Services Southern Alberta Assessment of Natural Asset Condition Feasibility study: Impacts of turbidity on growth and production of submersed plants Effects of land cover change on streamflow in the interior Columbia River Basin (USA and Canada). Grassland Birds A Web-Based Application for Exploring Potential Changes in Design Peak Flow of US Urban Areas Driven by Land Cover Change