Clarifying the role of the resist–accept–direct framework in supporting resource management planning processes
No abstract available.
Conservation Biology↗
Geology topics
Joel H. Reynolds
Publications and source records attributed to Joel H. Reynolds.
Accurately characterizing climate change scenario planning in the U.S. National Park Service: Comment on Murphy et al. 2023
We more accurately locate the boundary between current practice and research priorities regarding climate change scenario planning in U.S. federal land management agencies by supplementing the characterization in a recent article (“Understanding perceptions of climate change scenario planning in United States public land management agencies”) of its use in the U.S. National Park Service. Accurately reflecting the full depth and breadth of efforts to streamline and mainstream the method for climate change adaptation planning in the U.S. National Park Service provides readers helpful guidance and resources called for by Murphy et al.
Society and Natural Resources↗
Climate-resource scenarios to inform climate change adaptation in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve: Summary of 2021 climate change scenario planning
This report illustrates use of scenario planning as a climate change adaptation tool supporting Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve’s Resource Stewardship Strategy. The primary objective of scenario planning is to help resource managers and scientists make management and planning decisions informed by assessments of critical future uncertainties. This report outlines a process that synthesized future climate projections into three distinct but plausible and relevant climate summaries for the focal area and used them to develop climate-resource scenarios through participatory scenario planning. Initial steps identified the priority resource management topics and the corresponding related climate uncertainties. Next, local climate summaries were used to develop divergent climate futures: those that describe the broadest possible range of plausible conditions while capturing relevant uncertainty. The final phase further developed the climate futures and their resource implications. These participatory scenario planning exercises occurred virtually in fall (August–November) 2021. The climate-resource scenarios informed adaptation strategies in conjunction with the park’s Resource Stewardship Strategy development. The scope and complexity of this effort is unique but elements from the scenarios and resource implications have broad applicability to other large, protected areas in Alaska and Northwest Canada.
Alaska↗
Innovation in climate adaptation: Harnessing innovation for effective biodiversity and ecosystem adaptation
Climate change poses growing risks to species, ecosystems, and people, and is challenging many of the assumptions that underpin modern conservation practice. As climate impacts accelerate, conventional conservation approaches are being compromised and losing their effectiveness. As a result, there is an urgent need to not only center climate adaptation in conservation policy and practice, but for adaptation responses to be bolder and more innovative. Innovation in Climate Adaptation is designed to address this need by promoting creativity and innovation in the practice of climate adaptation for biodiversity and ecosystem conservation. The guide is not about promoting innovation for the sake of innovation; rather, it is intended to help policymakers, researchers, and resource managers harness the power of innovation to achieve more effective adaptation outcomes.
Report↗
So goes the snow: Alaska snowpack changes and impacts on pacific salmon in a warming climate
In Alaska’s watersheds, climate change is altering the nature and role of the snowpack, defined as snow accumulation that melts in spring. Generally, the amount of precipitation that falls as snow and the length of the snow-cover season both decrease as temperatures exceed 0°C (32°F) more frequently. The impacts of climate change on snowpack vary among watersheds. In southern, coastal parts of Alaska, large decreases in spring snowpack are expected by the mid-21st century, even with more winter precipitation because temperatures warm to above freezing, causing a shift from snow to rain or more melt during the winter. In contrast, modest early spring increases in the snowpack are expected in watersheds where temperatures remain below freezing. In these locations temperatures warm but remain cold enough for the extra winter precipitation to fall as snow, even though the snowpack will begin accumulating later in the fall and melt earlier in the spring as temperatures rise during those warmer seasons. Because potential impacts on hydrological and ecological systems will vary among watersheds, it is difficult to generalize the resulting ecological impacts at broad spatial scales. Here, we explore likely impacts on hydrology in critical anadromous fish habitat in southwest Alaska.
Alaska↗
Planning for future climates at Wrangell-St. Elias: Mainstreaming park-based actions
No abstract available.
Alaska↗
A RADical approach to conservation in Alaska: Rapid climate change requires a new perspective
In Alaska, conservation areas are managed to promote the persistence of wild species, habitats, cultural resources, visitor experiences, and ecosystem services. Many conservation areas are managed by federal or state agencies, and have specific boundaries, missions, and legislative mandates. Many are also the domains of Indigenous and local people who derive livelihoods and cultural identity from these lands. These areas vary considerably as to whether they are managed solely for conservation versus other additional values. Myriad threats challenge the sustainability of these values, and conservation areas often exist to mitigate such threats. But regardless of jurisdiction, legal contexts, or historical impacts, all these places face challenges, unprecedented during human habitation, from one globally pervasive threat: anthropogenic climate change. Yes, ecosystems, including people who depend on them, have adapted to constant change in Alaska over most of the Holocene if not before (at least the last 18kyr). And this experience has conferred upon its constituents learned adaptive capacity, capabilities, and knowledges among the most flexible on the planet. We discuss the implications of the Resist, Accept, Direct adaptation framework in the context of conservation management in Alaska.
Alaska↗
RAD adaptive management for transforming ecosystems
Intensifying global change is propelling many ecosystems toward irreversible transformations. Natural resource managers face the complex task of conserving these important resources under unprecedented conditions and expanding uncertainty. As once familiar ecological conditions disappear, traditional management approaches that assume the future will reflect the past are becoming increasingly untenable. In the present article, we place adaptive management within the resist–accept–direct (RAD) framework to assist informed risk taking for transforming ecosystems. This approach empowers managers to use familiar techniques associated with adaptive management in the unfamiliar territory of ecosystem transformation. By providing a common lexicon, it gives decision makers agency to revisit objectives, consider new system trajectories, and discuss RAD strategies in relation to current system state and direction of change. Operationalizing RAD adaptive management requires periodic review and update of management actions and objectives; monitoring, experimentation, and pilot studies; and bet hedging to better identify and tolerate associated risks.
BioScience↗
Co-producing knowledge: The Integrated Ecosystem Model for resource management in Arctic Alaska
Assessments of climate-change effects on ecosystem processes and services in high-latitude regions are hindered by a lack of decision-support tools capable of forecasting possible future landscapes. We describe a collaborative effort to develop and apply the Integrated Ecosystem Model (IEM) for Alaska and northwestern Canada to explore how climate change influences interactions among disturbance regimes, permafrost integrity, hydrology, and vegetation, and how these dynamics in turn influence resource management decisions. This process emphasizes co-production of knowledge among decision makers, scientists, major funders, partners, and stakeholders. We highlight research findings based on IEM applications in Arctic Alaska, as well as successes and challenges of the co-production process. The overall framework and lessons from our work with the IEM are relevant to other collaborative efforts outside the Arctic that aim to develop a decision-support tool or an undertaking of equivalent scope.
Alaska↗
Icefield-to-ocean linkages across the northern Pacific coastal temperate rainforest ecosystem
Rates of glacier mass loss in the northern Pacific coastal temperate rainforest (PCTR) are among the highest on Earth, and changes in glacier volume and extent will affect the flow regime and chemistry of coastal rivers, as well as the nearshore marine ecosystem of the Gulf of Alaska. Here we synthesize physical, chemical and biological linkages that characterize the northern PCTR ecosystem, with particular emphasis on the potential impacts of glacier change in the coastal mountain ranges on the surface–water hydrology, biogeochemistry, coastal oceanography and aquatic ecology. We also evaluate the relative importance and interplay between interannual variability and long-term trends in key physical drivers and ecological responses. To advance our knowledge of the northern PCTR, we advocate for cross-disciplinary research bridging the icefield-to-ocean ecosystem that can be paired with long-term scientific records and designed to inform decisionmakers.
Pacific coastal temperate rainforest↗
Persistence rates and detection probabilities of bird carcasses on beaches of Unalaska Island, Alaska following the wreck of the M/V Selendang Ayu
Mark–recapture techniques were used to estimate persistence rates and detection probabilities of bird carcasses associated with the oil spill following the wreck of the M/V Selendang Ayu at Unalaska Island, Alaska. Only 14.6% of carcasses placed on beaches remained after 24 hours, and all carcasses that remained had been scavenged to some degree. Daily persistence rates for scavenged carcasses on subsequent days were substantially higher at 79.1%. Most carcasses (>98%) were removed by scavengers at night. When they made a single pass, observers searching beaches for carcasses that had washed ashore found only about 40% of carcasses known to be present. This detection probability did not vary between pairs of search teams or between beaches. Detection probability increased to about 70% when teams searched the same beach segment twice. Our data indicate that only a small fraction of beached carcasses would likely be found using standard beach survey protocols and search frequencies. These data emphasize the importance of measuring persistence and detection rates for each mortality event.
Alaska↗
Efficiently estimating salmon escapement uncertainty using systematically sampled data
Fish escapement is generally monitored using nonreplicated systematic sampling designs (e.g., via visual counts from towers or hydroacoustic counts). These sampling designs support a variety of methods for estimating the variance of the total escapement. Unfortunately, all the methods give biased results, with the magnitude of the bias being determined by the underlying process patterns. Fish escapement commonly exhibits positive autocorrelation and nonlinear patterns, such as diurnal and seasonal patterns. For these patterns, poor choice of variance estimator can needlessly increase the uncertainty managers have to deal with in sustaining fish populations. We illustrate the effect of sampling design and variance estimator choice on variance estimates of total escapement for anadromous salmonids from systematic samples of fish passage. Using simulated tower counts of sockeye salmon Oncorhynchus nerka escapement on the Kvichak River, Alaska, five variance estimators for nonreplicated systematic samples were compared to determine the least biased. Using the least biased variance estimator, four confidence interval estimators were compared for expected coverage and mean interval width. Finally, five systematic sampling designs were compared to determine the design giving the smallest average variance estimate for total annual escapement. For nonreplicated systematic samples of fish escapement, all variance estimators were positively biased. Compared to the other estimators, the least biased estimator reduced bias by, on average, from 12% to 98%. All confidence intervals gave effectively identical results. Replicated systematic sampling designs consistently provided the smallest average estimated variance among those compared.
American Fisheries Society Symposium↗
Temporal variation in phenotypic and genotypic traits in two sockeye salmon populations, Tustumena Lake, Alaska
Sockeye salmon Oncorhynchus nerka in two tributary streams (about 20 km apart) of the same lake were compared for temporal variation in phenotypic (length, depth adjusted for length) and genotypic (six microsatellite loci) traits. Peak run time (July 16 versus 11 August) and run duration (43 versus 26 d) differed between streams. Populations were sampled twice, including an overlapping point in time. Divergence at microsatellite loci followed a temporal cline: Population sample groups collected at the same time were not different ( F ST = 0), whereas those most separated in time were different ( F ST = 0.011, P = 0.001). Although contemporaneous sample groups did not differ significantly in microsatellite genotypes ( F ST = 0), phenotypic traits did differ significantly (MANOVA, P < 0.001). Fish from the larger stream were larger; fish from the smaller stream were smaller, suggesting differential fitness related to size. Results indicate run time differences among and within sockeye salmon populations may strongly influence levels of gene flow.
Alaska↗