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Abstract (from http://www.esajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1890/13-1961.1): Trees provide ecosystem services that counter negative effects of urban habitats on human and environmental health. Unfortunately, herbivorous arthropod pests are often more abundant on urban than rural trees, reducing tree growth, survival, and ecosystem services. Previous research where vegetation complexity was reduced has attributed elevated urban pest abundance to decreased regulation by natural enemies. However, reducing vegetation complexity, particularly the density of overstory trees, also makes cities hotter than natural habitats. We ask how urban habitat characteristics influence an abiotic factor, temperature, and a biotic factor,...
Abstract (from MDPI ) Sleeper species are innocuous native or naturalized species that exhibit invasive characteristics and become pests in response to environmental change. Climate warming is expected to increase arthropod damage in forests, in part, by transforming innocuous herbivores into severe pests: awakening sleeper species. Urban areas are warmer than natural areas due to the urban heat island effect and so the trees and pests in cities already experience temperatures predicted to occur in 50–100 years. We posit that arthropod species that become pests of urban trees are those that benefit from warming and thus should be monitored as potential sleeper species in forests. We illustrate this with two case...
Abstract (from SpringerLink) Predation by natural enemies is important for regulating herbivore abundance and herbivory. Theory predicts that complex habitats support more natural enemies, which exert top-down control over arthropods and therefore can reduce herbivory. However, it is unclear if theory developed in other more natural systems similarly apply to predation by vertebrate and invertebrate natural enemies across urban habitats of varying complexity. We used plasticine caterpillar models to assess risk of predation by birds and insects, collected leaf-feeding arthropods, and measured herbivory in willow oak trees (Quercus phellos) in two seasons to determine how predation influenced herbivory across urban...
Great Lakes fishery managers and stakeholders have little information regarding how climate change could affect the management of recreationally and commercially important fisheries, which have been valued at more than $7 billion USD annually. Our research focused on how climate change could influence fish habitat (including water temperature, ice cover, and water levels), phytoplankton production that supports fish biomass, and ultimately the growth and consumption of many important recreational and commercial fish species. This final report was produced for the NCCWSC-funded project Forecasting Climate Change Induced Effects on Recreational and Commercial Fish Populations in the Great Lakes.
Changes in the Earth’s climate are expected to impact freshwater habitats around the world by altering water temperatures, water levels, and streamflow. These changes will have consequences for inland fish – those found within lakes, rivers, streams, canals, reservoirs, and other landlocked waters – which are important for food, commerce, and recreation around the world. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in 2011, 33.1 million people fished and spent $41.8 billion in the United States alone. Yet to date, little comprehensive research has been conducted to investigate the effects of climate change on inland fisheries at a large scale. The aim of this project was to summarize the current state of knowledge,...
Abstract: Coastal mangrove–freshwater marsh ecotones of the Everglades represent transitions between marine salt-tolerant halophytic and freshwater salt-intolerant glycophytic communities. It is hypothesized here that a self-reinforcing feedback, termed a “vegetation switch,” between vegetation and soil salinity, helps maintain the sharp mangrove–marsh ecotone. A general theoretical implication of the switch mechanism is that the ecotone will be stable to small disturbances but vulnerable to rapid regime shifts from large disturbances, such as storm surges, which could cause large spatial displacements of the ecotone. We develop a simulation model to describe the vegetation switch mechanism. The model couples vegetation...
Abstract: Restoration of degraded wet meadows found on upland valley floors has been proposed to achieve a range of ecological benefits, including augmenting late‐season streamflow. There are, however, few field and modelling studies documenting hydrologic changes following restoration that can be used to validate this expectation, and published changes in groundwater levels and streamflow following restoration are inconclusive. Here, we assess the streamflow benefit that can be obtained by wet‐meadow restoration using a physically based quantitative analysis. This framework employs a 1‐dimensional linearized Boussinesq equation with a superimposed solution for changes in storage due to groundwater upwelling and...
Native Americans in the Southwest United States are thought to be particularly vulnerable to climate change. Tribal resiliency to climate change can be affected by multiple climate-related threats and by tribal communities’ close reliance on natural resources for sustenance, economic development, and maintenance of cultural traditions. A scientifically rigorous assessment of such threats to Native Americans is a pressing need across southwestern landscapes. This project examined factors affecting Native American tribes, including water rights for fish and wildlife, protection of wetlands, and enhancement and recovery of the Pyramid Lake, Nevada fishery, and protection of important fish species. This project aimed...
With leadership and coordination provided by the Eastern Tallgrass Prairie and Big Rivers Landscape Conservation Cooperative, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (LCCs), which collectively span the geographic extent of the Mississippi River Basin (MRB), have identified high nutrient runoff (a major contributor to Gulf of Mexico hypoxia), and declines in wildlife populations (especially grassland and riparian bird species), as major conservation challenges requiring collaborative action. This project focused on development and application of spatial decision support systems (DSSs), coupled with surveys of agricultural producers, to assist the LCC community and partner resource management...
We developed high-resolution climate projections for the mid- and late 21st century across the Great Lakes region, including the Midwest and Northeast United States and southern Canada. We applied a regional climate model that addresses future changes in Great Lakes’ water temperatures, ice cover, and evaporation, which critically impact lake-effect snowfall. This new dataset is highly valuable, given that most global climate models applied in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and National Climate Assessment either completely lack the Great Lakes or largely under-represent their coverage and impacts. After quantifying projected changes in weather severity based on air temperature and snow...
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...
Greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) is a candidate for listing under the Endangered Species Act because of population and habitat fragmentation coupled with inadequate regulatory mechanisms to control development in critical areas. In addition to the current threats to habitat, each 1 degree celsius increase due to climate change is expected to result in an additional 87,000 km2 of sagebrush (Artemisia spp.) that will be converted to unsuitable habitat for sage-grouse. Thus, the future distribution and composition of sagebrush landscapes is likely to differ greatly from today’s configuration. We conducted a large, multi-objective project to identify: (1) characteristics of habitats required by sage-grouse,...
Urban forests provide well-documented environmental and societal benefits valued at more than four billion dollars per year in the United States. As cities expand onto land once occupied by rural forests, urban trees take on an even more vital role in mitigating global climate change, conserving biodiversity, and protecting human health. Maintaining the health of trees is challenging in cities and in forests under climate change because of tree stress and pests. Unhealthy trees do not provide adequate ecosystem services or conservation value compared to healthy trees. In this work we found that exotic trees can remain healthy and maintain biodiversity of arthropods (e.g. spiders and insects) that is similar to native...
Abstract (from http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate2252.html): Climate change will decrease worldwide biodiversity through a number of potential pathways1, including invasive hybridization2 (cross-breeding between invasive and native species). How climate warming influences the spread of hybridization and loss of native genomes poses difficult ecological and evolutionary questions with little empirical information to guide conservation management decisions3. Here we combine long-term genetic monitoring data with high-resolution climate and stream temperature predictions to evaluate how recent climate warming has influenced the spatio-temporal spread of human-mediated hybridization between...
Abstract (from http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0142031): Given the role of infectious disease in global pollinator decline, there is a need to understand factors that shape pathogen susceptibility and transmission in bees. Here we ask how urbanization affects the immune response and pathogen load of feral and managed colonies of honey bees ( Apis mellifera Linnaeus), the predominant economically important pollinator worldwide. Using quantitative real-time PCR, we measured expression of 4 immune genes and relative abundance of 10 honey bee pathogens. We also measured worker survival in a laboratory bioassay. We found that pathogen pressure on honey bees increased with urbanization...
Nesting strategies and use of important in-water habitats for far-ranging marine turtles can be determined using satellite telemetry. Because of a lack of information on habitat-use by marine turtles in the northern Gulf of Mexico, we used satellite transmitters in 2010 through 2012 to track movements of 39 adult female breeding loggerhead turtles (Caretta caretta) tagged on nesting beaches at three sites in Florida and Alabama. During the nesting season, recaptured turtles emerged to nest 1 to 5 times, with mean distance between emergences of 27.5 km; however, several turtles nested on beaches separated by ~250 km within a single season. Mean total distances traveled throughout inter-nesting periods for all turtles...
Use of existing marine protected areas (MPAs) by far-ranging marine turtles can be determined using satellite telemetry. Because of a lack of information on MPA use by marine turtles in the Gulf of Mexico, we used satellite transmitters in 2010 and 2011 to track movements of 11 adult female breeding green turtles (Chelonia mydas) tagged in Dry Tortugas National Park (DRTO), in the Gulf of Mexico, south Florida, USA. Throughout the study period, turtles emerged every 9–18 days to nest. During the intervals between nesting episodes (i.e., inter-nesting periods), the turtles consistently used a common core-area within the DRTO boundary, determined using individual 50% kernel-density estimates (KDEs). We mapped the...