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Climate and land use change will strongly affect tropical island ecosystems and trust species (like migratory birds and threatened and endangered species). The risks of significant negative impacts are likely to be higher in these island systems than in many temperate regions of the world because of the limited size of their land masses, high numbers of species that only exist in narrowly defined regions, and expectations that tropical environments will experience greater changes in temperature. Tropical island communities are faced with making important decisions related to adaptation that could impact the health of important natural resources and ecosystems. However, a lack of scientific guidance and information...
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Coastal marshes are vital habitats that protect and support our coastal communities and economies by providing protection from storm surge, filtering pollutants, and providing recreational opportunities. Rising sea levels threaten marshes and jeopardize the benefits they provide to human communities and ecosystems. To preserve these benefits, coastal resource managers need to understand how marshes will change in the short- and long-term in response to rising sea levels. Scientific models provide resource managers with an effective way to visualize and understand these changes, but the numerous choices of marsh models currently available can be overwhelming to coastal managers. The similarities and differences...
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While 21st century temperatures are projected to increase in Puerto Rico and the broader U.S. Caribbean (whose geography is contained within the Caribbean Landscape Conservation Cooperative, or CLCC), the low variability and already high annual average temperatures suggest that the largest climate-related impact on ecosystems and water resources is more likely to be through changes in the timing, pattern, and availability of moisture. The development of adaptation strategies that respond to anthropogenic climate change for the CLCC, and particularly for Puerto Rico, is currently hindered by the lack of local-scale climate scenarios that resolve the complex topographical and meso-scale climate features that will...
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The Global Change Graduate Fellows Program is designed to train the next generation of global change scientists by providing financial, scientific, and professional development support for graduate students who are interested in multi-disciplinary research. They come together across disciplines to discover, collaborate, and share their knowledge with diverse stakeholders. Additionally, students need to be dedicated to making the science related to climate change better, where better means more true, of a greater impact, or, as our land grant mission dictates, more ethical and just. This program is sponsored by the USGS Southeast Climate Adaptation Science Center and NC State University. Applicants must be an NC...
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Coral reefs are some of the most biologically rich and economically valuable ecosystems in the world. They provide food, fishing, and recreation opportunities for millions of people, protect coastlines from storms, and shelter thousands of plant and animal species. However, climate change is contributing to the degradation of coral reefs in two significant ways: warming temperature and increasing acidification of ocean waters. Scientists are actively working to gather more specific information about how these factors will impact coral reef ecosystems. The purpose of this study was to identify differences in climate vulnerability among three important reef-building coral species in the Florida Keys. Researchers...
Abstract (from http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0099604): Across the globe, species distributions are changing in response to climate change and land use change. In parts of the southeastern United States, climate change is expected to result in the poleward range expansion of black mangroves ( Avicennia germinans) at the expense of some salt marsh vegetation. The morphology of A. germinans at its northern range limit is more shrub-like than in tropical climes in part due to the aboveground structural damage and vigorous multi-stem regrowth triggered by extreme winter temperatures. In this study, we developed aboveground allometric equations for freeze-affected black mangroves which...
Climate change is already affecting biodiversity, in particular shifting the ranges of species as they move to cooler places. One problem for wildlife as their ranges shift is that their path is often impeded by habitat fragmentation. Because of this, the most common recommended strategy to protect wildlife as climate changes is to connect their habitats, providing them safe passage. In partnership with South Atlantic LCC members, we previously assessed current and projected connectivity for three species (black bear [Ursus americanus], Rafinesque’s big‐eared bat [Corynorhinus rafinesquii], timber rattlesnake [Crotalus horridus]) that inhabit bottomland hardwoods throughout the southeastern US. We observed large...
This file contains results from the project "Assessing climate-sensitive ecosystems in the southeastern U.S.", funded by the Department of Interior's Southeast Climate Science Center. Metrics required to use the Habitat Climate Change Vulnerability Index (HCCVI) framework, as developed by NatureServe are reported in this spreadsheet. The ecosystems are: East Gulf Coastal Plain Near-Coast Pine Flatwoods, and the Nashville Basin Limestone Glade and Woodland.
Urbanization represents an unintentional global experiment that can provide insights into how species will respond and interact under future global change scenarios. Cities produce many conditions that are predicted to occur widely in the future, such as warmer temperatures, higher carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations and exacerbated droughts. In using cities as surrogates for global change, it is challenging to disentangle climate variables—such as temperature—from co-occurring or confounding urban variables—such as impervious surface—and then to understand the interactive effects of multiple climate variables on both individual species and species interactions. However, such interactions are also difficult to replicate...
Winter climate change has the potential to have a large impact on coastal wetlands in the southeastern U.S. Warmer winter temperatures and reductions in the intensity of freeze events would likely lead to mangrove forest range expansion and salt marsh displacement in parts of the U.S. Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic coast. The objective of this research was to better understand some of the ecological implications of mangrove forest migration and salt marsh displacement. The potential ecological effects of mangrove migration are diverse ranging from important biotic impacts (e.g., coastal fisheries, land bird migration; colonial nesting wading birds) to ecosystem stability (e.g., response to sea level rise and drought;...
Abstract (from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.12791/abstract): Urban green spaces provide ecosystem services to city residents, but their management is hindered by a poor understanding of their ecology. We examined a novel ecosystem service relevant to urban public health and esthetics: the consumption of littered food waste by arthropods. Theory and data from natural systems suggest that the magnitude and resilience of this service should increase with biological diversity. We measured food removal by presenting known quantities of cookies, potato chips, and hot dogs in street medians (24 sites) and parks (21 sites) in New York City, USA. At the same sites, we assessed ground-arthropod diversity...
Because microorganisms are sensitive to temperature, ongoing global warming is predicted to influence microbial community structure and function. We used large-scale warming experiments established at two sites near the northern and southern boundaries of US eastern deciduous forests to explore how microbial communities and their function respond to warming at sites with differing climatic regimes. Soil microbial community structure and function responded to warming at the southern but not the northern site. However, changes in microbial community structure and function at the southern site did not result in changes in cellulose decomposition rates. While most global change models rest on the assumption that taxa...
Abstract (from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/pce.12790/full): Future climate change is expected to increase temperature (T) and atmospheric vapour pressure deficit (VPD) in many regions, but the effect of persistent warming on plant stomatal behaviour is highly uncertain. We investigated the effect of experimental warming of 1.9–5.1 °C and increased VPD of 0.5–1.3 kPa on transpiration and stomatal conductance (gs) of tree seedlings in the temperate forest understory (Duke Forest, North Carolina, USA). We observed peaked responses of transpiration to VPD in all seedlings, and the optimum VPD for transpiration (Dopt) shifted proportionally with increasing chamber VPD. Warming increased mean water use...
Rapid climate change may prompt species distribution shifts upward and poleward, but species movement in itself is not sufficient to establish climate causation. Other dynamics, such as disturbance history, may prompt species distribution shifts resembling those expected from rapid climate change. Links between species distributions, regional climate trends and physiological mechanism are needed to convincingly establish climate-induced species shifts. We examine a 38-year shift (1974–2012) in an elevation ecotone between two closely related ant species, Aphaenogaster picea and A. rudis. Even though A. picea and A. rudis are closely related with North American distributions that sometimes overlap, they also exhibit...
This project represents a collaboration between individuals at the U.S. Geological Survey’s (USGS) Wetland and Aquatic Research Center, the Northern Gulf of Mexico Sentinel Site Cooperative, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) to produce customized two-pager information sheets for 54 federal coastal refuges, parks, and reserves across the northern Gulf of Mexico (i.e., sea-level rise sensitive federally-managed lands within Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida). The project team included Bogdan Chivoiu (Cherokee Nation Technologies at USGS), Michael Osland (USGS), Renee Collini (Northern Gulf of Mexico Sentinel Site Cooperative), Sara Martin (Northern Gulf of Mexico Sentinel Site Cooperative),...
Abstarct (from Oikos): Urban landscapes are characterized by high proportions of impervious surface resulting in higher temperatures than adjacent natural landscapes. In some cities, like those at cooler latitudes, trees may benefit from warmer urban temperatures, but trees in many cities are beset with problems like drought stress and increased herbivory. What drives patterns of urban tree health across urbanization and latitudinal temperature gradients? In natural systems, latitude–herbivory relationships are well‐studied, and recent temperate studies have shown that herbivory generally increases with decreasing latitudes (warmer temperatures). However, the applicability of this latitude–herbivory theory in already‐warmed...
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We compiled and analyzed a database of burn permits for prescribed fires conducted in Florida and Georgia from 2006-2016. The dataset contains the number of permitted burns and expected acres burned by county in the two states for every day in the 11 year period. Also included are the county-wide average daily weather conditions for temperature and relative humidity, calculated from the University of Idaho gridMet dataset.
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Publicly accessible open spaces provide valuable opportunities for people to exercise, play, socialize, and build community. People are more likely to use public open spaces that are close (ideally within walking distance) to their homes, and larger open spaces often provide more amenities. To assess the potential benefit of creating new open space in the southeast US, we identified areas without access to open space within a certain distance category (in this case, 3 miles). Then, for each 30-meter pixel in the study area, we then totaled the number of people within 3 miles who do not currently have access to open space within that distance. This represents the number of people who would benefit from new open space...
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Wild insect pollination has significant positive effects on pollinator-dependent crop production. To assess the spatial distribution of potential wild insect pollination, we mapped the supply of potential wild pollinator habitat (forest, grassland, wetland, and shrubland land cover types) based on the 2011 National Land Cover Dataset.
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This project generated a series of freely available datasets that provide projections of climate change at appropriate spatial scales that can directly address specific management questions. These climate change projections are the result of “downscaling” output from global climate models (GCMs) that formed the basis of many conclusions in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment Report 5 (AR5). The datasets include projections of climate variables in addition to daily temperature and precipitation such as surface winds, humidity, and solar radiation that are needed in hydrologic and ecological modeling. Two products, one at a 4-km resolution and the other at a 6-km resolution, covering the...
map background search result map search result map Impact of Ocean Warming and Acidification on Growth of Reef-Building Corals Modeling Future Temperature and Precipitation for Puerto Rico and the U.S. Caribbean Downscaling Climate Projections to Understand Future Temperature and Precipitation Patterns in the Southeast Climate Change Implications for the Conservation of Amphibians in Tropical Environments Prescribed Fire Permit Records for Georgia and Florida Improving the Usability of Modeling Tools for Predicting Coastal Marsh Response to Sea Level Rise Global Change Fellows Climate Change Implications for the Conservation of Amphibians in Tropical Environments Prescribed Fire Permit Records for Georgia and Florida Modeling Future Temperature and Precipitation for Puerto Rico and the U.S. Caribbean Impact of Ocean Warming and Acidification on Growth of Reef-Building Corals Improving the Usability of Modeling Tools for Predicting Coastal Marsh Response to Sea Level Rise Global Change Fellows Downscaling Climate Projections to Understand Future Temperature and Precipitation Patterns in the Southeast