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Forecasting Mosquito Phenology in a Shifting Climate: Synthesizing Continental-scale Monitoring Data
Climate change is expected to have significant effects on the phenology of vectors of arthropod-borne diseases, particularly mosquitoes. However, forecasting the direction and magnitude of future phenological shifts requires a more detailed understanding of the climate drivers of mosquito phenology. Addressing this knowledge gap is particularly salient for mosquitoes, as they have the potential to affect human health through transmission of zoonotic disease. While models based on climate and mosquito life history have been created at local or regional scales, national-scale predictions of the timing of mosquito activity are not readily available for the U.S. Our workshop proposes to synthesize primary data on mosquito...
While it is widely recognized that microorganisms are intimately linked with every biogeochemical cycle in all ecosystems, it is not clear how and when microbial dynamics constrain ecosystem processes. As a result, it is know clear how to apply the value of increasingly detailed characterization of microbial properties to our understanding of ecosystem ecology. Several recent papers have demonstrated how information about microbial dynamics can be incorporated into ecosystem models (Allison et al. 2010, McGuire and Treseder 2010, Todd - Brown et al. 2011a), but it is generally not clear what types of microbial data are most useful in explaining variation in biogeochemical processes and ecosystem functioning, especially...
The transport of dissolved organic matter (DOM) by rivers is an important component of the global carbon cycle, affects ecosystems and water quality, and reflects biogeochemical and hydrological processes in watersheds. Understanding the fundamental relationships between discharge and DOM concentration and composition reveals important information about watershed flow paths, soil flushing, connectivity to riparian zones, organic matter leaching, soil moisture, and climatic influences. Data to describe these processes - both magnitude and timing - is critical for modeling and predicting watershed DOM dynamics, particularly in light of land use and climate change . Despite several decades of data collection, a synthesis...
Categories: Data,
Project;
Tags: All Working Groups,
Completed,
Land Resources,
River,
Water Resources,
These data were released prior to the October 1, 2016 effective date for the USGS’s policy dictating the review, approval, and release of scientific data as referenced in USGS Survey Manual Chapter 502.8 Fundamental Science Practices: Review and Approval of Scientific Data for Release. The enhanced National Land Cover Data 1992 ("NLCDe 92") served as the primary source for nationally consistent mapped land cover during the first decade of sampling for the National Water-Quality Assessment (NAWQA) Program of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). This 30-meter (30-m) resolution digital map was developed by overlaying USGS's original satellite imagery-based 1992 National Land Cover Data ("NLCD 92") with selected classifications...
Streamflow is declining in many parts of the United States (US) due to factors including groundwater pumping, land use change, and climate change. Streamflow depletion, a reduction in groundwater discharge to a stream due to human activities such as pumping and/or land use change, tends to evolve slowly and can be entirely invisible for many years to decades. This is because streamflow depletion can be masked by the natural and/or climate change-induced variability in streamflow, and groundwater storage can buffer the impacts on streams. The negative effects on both anthropogenic and ecological systems can evolve over decades or more, and specific causes and potential solutions to these issues are often difficult...
Forests sequester the majority of the terrestrial biosphere’s carbon and are key components of the global carbon cycle, potentially contributing substantial feedbacks to ongoing climatic changes. It is therefore remarkable that no consensus yet exists about the fundamental nature of tree mass growth (and thus carbon sequestration rate). Specifically, does tree mass growth rate increase, decrease, or stay the same with increasing tree size? The answer could have profound implications for our ability to forecast the role of forests in the global carbon cycle and to devise appropriate adaptation and mitigation strategies for forests in the face of rapid climatic changes. We will conduct the first global-scale characterization...
The three-dimensional (3D) form of the Earth’s surface results from both abiotic and biotic forces. Major abiotic forces, such as tectonic uplift, erosion, and climate, exert strong influence over land surface morphology. Biotic forces, including, significantly, humans, also shape the landscape, but often at different temporal and spatial scales and magnitudes than geologic forces. Because the processes shaping the land surface, as expressed in its topography, are ongoing, topographic change is ever present and is a factor that must be broadly considered in studies of natural and built environments. Remote sensing data, especially in the form of derived high-resolution measurements of the topography, have been widely...
Categories: Project;
Tags: Active,
All Working Groups,
Land Resources,
Land Resources,
Land Resources,
USGS PRISM (Pliocene Research, Interpretation and Synoptic Mapping) Project global data sets of Pliocene conditions, which form the most comprehensive global reconstruction for any warm period prior to the recent past, are used to drive numerical climate model simulations designed to explore the impact of climate forcings and feedbacks during the Pliocene. The Pliocene world provides an unequaled paleo-‐laboratory to test the sensitivity of the physical models that estimate the impacts of future warming and challenges our understanding of the sensitivity of key components of the climate system and how they are simulated (e.g., polar vs. tropical sensitivity, the role of ocean circulation in a warming climate, the...
This proposal brings together biologists and geoscientists to evaluate the evolution of stress tolerance and adaptation to extreme environments in plants. Stress tolerance has been studied mainly from a physiological perspective using laboratory and field experiments. In contrast, this project will take a combined environmental and evolutionary perspective using national public databases and a “big data” approach. Thus the proposal will illustrate an application of spatially integrated big datasets for basic research, a synthesis goal of the Powell Center. We will use the geochemical and mineralogical data from the USGS Soil Geochemical Landscapes of the Conterminous United States Project, digital elevation and...
Categories: Data,
Project;
Tags: Active,
All Working Groups,
Ecosystems,
Energy and Minerals,
Land Resources,
The impacts of nitrogen (N) deposition on plant diversity loss have been well documented across N deposition gradients in Europe, but much less so in the U.S. Published N fertilizer studies suggest losses will occur in the US, but many of these were done at levels of N input that were higher than modeled and measured N deposition, and higher than presumed N critical loads. The recent availability of modeled N deposition across the U.S. (e.g. using CMAQ) has provided a high‐resolution tool to identify regions where steep N deposition gradients facilitate detection of ecological shifts. A number of plant diversity (richness plus abundance) data sets across the U.S. have explained diversity shifts based on anthropogenic...
Regional- to continental-scale paleoclimate syntheses of temperature and hydroclimate in North America are essential for understanding long-term spatiotemporal variability in climate, and for properly assessing risk on decadal and longer timescales. However, existing syntheses rely almost exclusively on tree-ring records, which are known to underestimate low-frequency variability and rarely extend beyond the last millennium. Meanwhile, many additional records from a variety of archives are available and hold the potential of broadening and enhancing our understanding of past climate in North America over the past two thousand years. We propose to bring together a diverse group of with expertise that spans the relevant...
Current land use practices have affected ecosystem structure and processes in ways that have degraded delivery of key ecosystem services controlling exchanges of carbon and nitrogen with the atmosphere and surface and groundwater systems. These impacts are observed in the emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) and N pollution in our nation’s water systems and coastal areas. Improvements in databases of climate, soils, and land use practices in the north central Great Plains (i.e., NCGP: Colorado, Kansas, Wyoming, Nebraska, Montana, South Dakota, and North Dakota) provide a unique opportunity for integration and synthesis of this information on the exchanges of C and N affecting our environmental resources. In addition,...
Categories: Data,
Project;
Types: Downloadable,
GeoTIFF,
Map Service,
Raster;
Tags: All Working Groups,
Atmosphere,
Carbon,
Completed,
Ecosystems,
The timing of breeding is constrained in Arctic ecosystems and small temporal differences in when individuals breed can have large effects on fitness. Arctic ecosystems are generally warming more rapidly than other ecosystems which, for migratory species, can cause an imbalance, or mismatch, between when they have evolved to breed versus when it is optimal to breed environmentally. Geese are abundant herbivores summering in tundra ecosystems, and whose presence has important feedbacks on ecosystem processes. Some goose populations have already exhibited signs that spring vegetation phenology is occurring earlier than individuals are able to breed, with a consequent effect on their reproductive fitness. The magnitude...
Categories: Data,
Project;
Types: Downloadable,
GeoTIFF,
Map Service,
Raster;
Tags: All Working Groups,
Completed,
Ecosystems,
Land Resources,
plants
Global climate change is putting unprecedented pressure on global croplands and their water use, vital for ensuring future food security for the world's rapidly expanding human population. The end of the green green revolution (productivity per unit of land) era has meant declining global per capita agricultural production requiring immediate policy responses to safeguard food security amidst global climate change and economic turbulence. Above all, global croplands are water guzzlers, consuming between 60-90% of all human water use. With increasing urbanization, industrialization, and other demands (e.g., bio-fuels) on water there is increasing pressure to reduce agricultural water use by producing more food from...
Projecting the effects of climate change on plant and animal species distributions and abundance is critical to successful long‐term conservation and restoration efforts. There have been significant recent advances made in the areas of: (1) climate forecasts; (2) habitat niche modeling; (3) mechanistic modeling; and (4) observation techniques and networks. However, projections of biological change are fundamentally limited by a lack of integration and inter‐comparison between these various forecasting approaches. The proposed working group will focus on integrating ecological forecasting methods for two well studied invasive species: cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) and gypsy moth (Lymantria dispar). Our goal is to...
Our ability to effectively manage natural resources is founded in an understanding of how our actions and the environment influence populations, communities, and ecosystems. Current practices use monitoring data from the past to determine key ecological relationships and make predictions about the future with the assumption that those relationships will remain constant. However, many natural systems are undergoing rapid changes due to external factors including climate change, urbanization, and energy development, leading to a situation in which our observations of the past are poor predictors of the future. Ignoring such changes could lead to management decisions that are sub-optimal at best or detrimental at worst....
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