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Results for “Frontiers in Ecology and Conservation”

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At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources
USGS2019

Operationalizing resilience and resistance concepts to address invasive grass-fire cycles

Plant invasions can affect fuel characteristics, fire behavior, and fire regimes resulting in invasive plant-fire cycles and alternative, self-perpetuating states that can be difficult, if not impossible, to reverse. Concepts related to general resilience to disturbance and resistance to invasive plants provide the basis for managing landscapes to increase their capacity to reorganize and adjust following fire, while concepts related to spatial resilience provide the basis for managing landscapes to conserve resources and habitats and maintain connectivity. New, spatially explicit approaches and decision-tools enable managers to understand and evaluate general and spatial resilience to fire and resistance to invasive grasses across large landscapes in arid and semi-arid shrublands and woodlands. These approaches and tools provide the capacity to locate management actions strategically to prevent development of invasive grass-fire cycles and maintain or improve resources and habitats. In this review, we discuss the factors that influence fire regimes, general and spatial resilience to fire, resistance to invasive annual grasses, and thus invasive grass-fire cycles in global arid and semi-arid shrublands and woodlands. The Cold Deserts, Mediterranean Ecoregion, and Warm Deserts of North America are used as model systems to describe how and why resilience to disturbance and resistance to invasive annuals differ over large landscapes. The Cold Deserts are used to illustrate an approach and decision tools for prioritizing areas on the landscape for management actions to prevent development of invasive grass-fire cycles and protect high value resources and habitats and for determining effective management strategies. The concepts and approach herein represent a paradigm shift in the management of these ecosystems, which allows managers to use geospatial tools to identify resilience to disturbance and resistance to invasive plants in order to target conservation and restoration actions where they will provide the greatest benefits.

Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution↗
USGS2026

Annual grass invasion is transforming the sagebrush biome’s songbird communities

Novel stressors like climate change and biological invasions alter ecological communities, resulting in changes to ecosystem services and biodiversity (that is, ecological transformation). Most ecological transformation research focuses on plants, but animals are likely affected by and plausibly mediate the extent, impact, and pace of transformations. In western North America, where invasive annual grasses are transforming sagebrush-steppe ecosystems, we quantified how transformation in vegetation drives songbird community change. We hypothesized that transformation of vegetation communities via invasion alters wildlife communities by favoring generalists over specialists, albeit with extinction debts that may temporarily obscure transformations’ consequences. Although local-scale songbird diversity increased with grass invasion, we found that this shift was accompanied by ongoing reorganization of songbird communities at larger scales (across the sagebrush biome), driven by heterogeneous impacts of invasion among species and guilds. Through our biome-wide analysis, we were also able to identify high-priority regions for conservation of sensitive songbird species. Our research provides evidence that wildlife communities are transforming alongside vegetation communities and offers insight into the approaches required to quantify nascent community turnover.

western United States↗
USGS2020

Persist in place or shift in space? Evaluating the adaptive capacity of species to climate change

Assessing the vulnerability of species to climate change serves as the basis for climate‐adaptation planning and climate‐smart conservation, and typically involves an evaluation of exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity (AC). AC is a species’ ability to cope with or adjust to changing climatic conditions, and is the least understood and most inconsistently applied of these three factors. We propose an attribute‐based framework for evaluating the AC of species, identifying two general classes of adaptive responses: “persist in place” and “shift in space”. Persist‐in‐place attributes enable species to survive in situ, whereas the shift‐in‐space response emphasizes attributes that facilitate tracking of suitable bioclimatic conditions. We provide guidance for assessing AC attributes and demonstrate the framework's application for species with disparate life histories. Results illustrate the broad utility of this generalized framework for informing adaptation planning and guiding species conservation in a rapidly changing climate.

Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment↗
USGS2021

Editorial: Environmental DNA innovations for conservation

Environmental DNA (eDNA) analysis refers to the collection of bulk environmental samples such as water, sediment, or air, and studying the genetic remnants that organisms have shed into their environment to gain information about species presence.

Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution↗
USGS2020

Oases of the future? Evaluating springs as potential hydrologic refugia in drying climates

Springs in water-limited landscapes are biodiversity hotspots and keystone ecosystems, disproportionately influencing surrounding landscapes despite their often small areas. Some springs served as evolutionary refugia during previous climate drying, supporting relict species in isolated habitats. Understanding whether springs will provide hydrologic refugia from future climate change is important to biodiversity conservation but complicated by hydrologic variability among springs, data limitations, and multiple non-climate threats to groundwater-dependent ecosystems. Here, we present a conceptual framework for categorizing springs as potentially stable, relative, or transient hydrologic refugia in a drying climate. Clues about refugial capacity of springs can be assembled from diverse approaches, including citizen-science-powered ecohydrologic monitoring, remote sensing, landowner interviews, and environmental tracer analysis. Managers can integrate multiple lines of evidence to predict which springs may become future refugia for species of concern, strengthening the long-term effectiveness of springs conservation and restoration and informing climate adaptation for terrestrial and freshwater species.

Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment↗
USGS2013

Watering the forest for the trees: An emerging priority for managing water in forest landscapes

Widespread threats to forests resulting from drought stress are prompting a re-evaluation of priorities for water management on forest lands. In contrast to the widely held view that forest management should emphasize providing water for downstream uses, we argue that maintaining forest health in the context of a changing climate may require focusing on the forests themselves and on strategies to reduce their vulnerability to increasing water stress. Management strategies would need to be tailored to specific landscapes but could include thinning, planting and selecting for drought-tolerant species, irrigating, and making more water available to plants for transpiration. Hydrologic modeling reveals that specific management actions could reduce tree mortality due to drought stress. Adopting water conservation for vegetation as a priority for managing water on forested lands would represent a fundamental change in perspective and potentially involve trade-offs with other downstream uses of water.

Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment↗
USGS2019

The integrated monarch monitoring program: From design to implementation

Steep declines in North American monarch butterfly ( Danaus plexippus ) populations have prompted continent-wide conservation efforts. While monarch monitoring efforts have existed for years, we lack a comprehensive approach to monitoring population vital rates integrated with habitat quality to inform adaptive management and effective conservation strategies. Building a geographically and ecologically representative dataset of monarchs and their habitat will improve these efforts. These data will help track long-term changes in the distribution and abundance of monarchs and their habitats, refine population and habitat models, and illuminate how conservation activities affect monarchs and their habitats. The Monarch Conservation Science Partnership developed the Integrated Monarch Monitoring Program (IMMP) to profile breeding habitats and their use by monarchs in North America. A spatially balanced random sampling framework guides site selection, while also allowing opportunistic inclusion of sites chosen by participants, such as conservation areas. The IMMP weaves new protocols together with those from existing monitoring programs to improve data compatibility for assessing milkweed (Asclepias spp.) density, nectar resources, monarch reproduction and survival, and adult monarch habitat use. Participants may select a protocol subset according to interests or local monitoring objectives, thereby maximizing contributions. Conservation partners, including public and private land managers, academic researchers, and citizen scientists contribute data to a national dataset available for analyses at multiple scales. We describe the program and its development, implementation elements that make the program robust and feasible, participation to date, and how IMMP data can advance research and conservation for monarchs, pollinators, and their habitats.

North America↗
USGS2024

Challenges creating monarch butterfly management strategies for electric power companies in the United States

Returning monarch butterflies ( Danaus plexippus ) to sustainable levels of abundance will require an array of contributors to protect and restore habitat over broad areas. Due to the diversity and scale of land managed by electric power companies across the monarch range, plus an additional 32 million hectares needed for new solar arrays by 2050 to meet renewable energy goals, the industry may have potential to contribute to monarch conservation. However, it is challenging to clearly understand an individual company’s potential for monarch conservation because of the scale and distribution of their specific land assets (ranging from 4,800 to 240,000 hectares in this study alone), the complexity of monarch science, and the lack of a science-based approach for evaluating large land assets for monarch habitat. With monarchs potentially being protected under the United States Endangered Species Act in the future and thereby limiting land management approaches, there is interest from electric power companies to understand how their lands relate to monarchs. In collaboration with companies, we developed a GIS-based model to identify company landholdings that contain high-quality monarch habitat and applied the model to specific landholdings of eight power companies in the United States. We then facilitated discussions with company teams to balance conservation goals, corporate risk, and social opinion. This paper describes non-confidential results for developing a national GIS-based monarch habitat model and applying it to electric power companies who are considering monarch conservation while simultaneously transitioning to a new clean energy future. The model and applied experience may be useful for other organizations working across large landscapes to manage monarchs.

conterminous United States↗
USGS2020

Climate-change refugia in boreal North America: What, where, and for how long?

T The vast boreal biome plays an important role in the global carbon cycle but is experiencing particularly rapid climate warming, threatening the integrity of valued ecosystems and their component species. We developed a framework and taxonomy to identify climate‐change refugia potential in the North American boreal region, summarizing current knowledge regarding mechanisms, geographic distribution, and landscape indicators. While “terrain‐mediated” refugia will mostly be limited to coastal and mountain regions, the ecological inertia (resistance to external fluctuations) contained in some boreal ecosystems may provide more extensive buffering against climate change, resulting in “ecosystem‐protected” refugia. A notable example is boreal peatlands, which can retain high surface soil moisture and water tables even in the face of drought. Refugia from wildfire are also especially important in the boreal region, which is characterized by active disturbance regimes. Our framework will help identify areas of high refugia potential, and inform ecosystem management and conservation planning in light of climate change.

North America↗
USGS2016

Scaling-up camera traps: monitoring the planet's biodiversity with networks of remote sensors

Countries committed to implementing the Convention on Biological Diversity's 2011–2020 strategic plan need effective tools to monitor global trends in biodiversity. Remote cameras are a rapidly growing technology that has great potential to transform global monitoring for terrestrial biodiversity and can be an important contributor to the call for measuring Essential Biodiversity Variables. Recent advances in camera technology and methods enable researchers to estimate changes in abundance and distribution for entire communities of animals and to identify global drivers of biodiversity trends. We suggest that interconnected networks of remote cameras will soon monitor biodiversity at a global scale, help answer pressing ecological questions, and guide conservation policy. This global network will require greater collaboration among remote-camera studies and citizen scientists, including standardized metadata, shared protocols, and security measures to protect records about sensitive species. With modest investment in infrastructure, and continued innovation, synthesis, and collaboration, we envision a global network of remote cameras that not only provides real-time biodiversity data but also serves to connect people with nature.

Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment↗
USGS2025

Sparse genetic data limit biodiversity assessments in protected areas globally

Global conservation targets include protecting genetic diversity within species. Yet few studies have assessed whether protected areas (PAs) include genetically diverse populations across species globally. A first step is understanding the availability of population genetic data that could be used in these assessments. We surveyed georeferenced population-level nuclear (as opposed to mitochondrial or plastid-based) genetic data across continents and marine biomes (36,354 populations, 2809 species) and found substantial geographic and taxonomic gaps. Most data were concentrated in Europe and North America, with major gaps in Africa and Asia. For most taxonomic groups, data were available for <1% of described species. Globally, 52.08% of the total areal extent of PAs lacked genetically sampled populations. These gaps in data availability highlight the need for targeted genetic data collection, harmonization, and sharing to improve genetic diversity monitoring and conservation planning. Combined with proxy-based genetic indicators, such data are needed to inform PA assessments, bolster area-based conservation initiatives like 30 × 30, and support achievement of global genetic conservation targets.

Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment↗
USGS2024

Disease-smart climate adaptation for wildlife management and conservation

Climate change is a well-documented driver and threat multiplier of infectious disease in wildlife populations. However, wildlife disease management and climate-change adaptation have largely operated in isolation. To improve conservation outcomes, we consider the role of climate adaptation in initiating or exacerbating the transmission and spread of wildlife disease and the deleterious effects thereof, as illustrated through several case studies. We offer insights into best practices for disease-smart adaptation, including a checklist of key factors for assessing disease risks early in the climate adaptation process. By assessing risk, incorporating uncertainty, planning for change, and monitoring outcomes, natural resource managers and conservation practitioners can better prepare for and respond to wildlife disease threats in a changing climate.

Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment↗
USGS2015

How a national vegetation classification can help ecological research and management

The elegance of classification lies in its ability to compile and systematize various terminological conventions and masses of information that are unattainable during typical research projects. Imagine a discipline without standards for collection, analysis, and interpretation; unfortunately, that describes much of 20th-century vegetation ecology. With differing methods, how do we assess community dynamics over decades, much less centuries? How do we compare plant communities from different areas? The need for a widely applied vegetation classification has long been clear. Now imagine a multi-decade effort to assimilate hundreds of disparate vegetation classifications into one common classification for the US. In this letter, we introduce the US National Vegetation Classification (USNVC; www.usnvc.org) as a powerful tool for research and conservation, analogous to the argument made by Schimel and Chadwick (2013) for soils. The USNVC provides a national framework to classify and describe vegetation; here we describe the USNVC and offer brief examples of its efficacy.

Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment↗
USGS2019

An old tree and its many‐shaped leaves

Plant leaf shape is highly variable. The beauty of leaves can be purely aesthetic, but also derives from the mystery of adaptive significance. This mystery is especially compelling for species with strongly varying leaf shape on a single tree. The desert poplar (Populus euphratica Oliv.) is an ancient and protected species, and forms riparian forests in deserts of mid and west Asia, north Africa and southern Europe. More than half of all desert poplar forest is found along the Tarim River within the Taklamakan, a desert in northwest China. The Taklamakan is in the rain shadow of the Himalayas and the world’s second largest shifting sand desert. There, forest extent has been greatly reduced, mostly due to flow diversion for agriculture, but many old trees persist. The tree in the picture is the oldest recorded living desert poplar. The innermost ring in a core dates back to 1709 or earlier. The leaves on this tree vary widely in shape, from smooth to dentate, from narrow to broad, and from linear to lanceolate to ovate. Drought is a dominant stressor in this hyperarid environment with highly variable temperature and soil salinity. Leaf shape may relate to tradeoffs among water conservation, thermoregulation and growth rate. Is this extremely wide variation in leaf shape on a single tree an adaptation to the large temporal fluctuations in the environment? Alternatively, could leaf polymorphism be a neutral and thus non-adaptive consequence of variable gene expressions related to developmental stages. Answers to these questions can enrich the ecological and evolutionary understanding of trees and ecological drought.

Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment↗
USGS2023

Movement behavior, habitat selection, and functional responses to habitat availability among four species of wintering waterfowl in California

Habitat selection analyses provide a window into the perceived value of habitats by animals and how those perceptions compare with other animals, change across time, or change in relation to availability (termed functional responses). Habitat selection analysis and functional responses can be used to develop strategies to avoid habitat limitations, guide habitat management, and set attainable conservation goals. GPS relocations of marked animals are the principal data used in habitat selection analysis. The accuracy and frequency with which tracking devices collect data are increasing and may result in non-stationary point processes that result from latent behaviors previously unidentifiable in sparse data.

California↗
USGS2013

Biodiversity in a changing climate: a synthesis of current and projected trends in the US

This paper provides a synthesis of the recent literature describing how global biodiversity is being affected by climate change and is projected to respond in the future. Current studies reinforce earlier findings of major climate-change-related impacts on biological systems and document new, more subtle after-effects. For example, many species are shifting their distributions and phenologies at faster rates than were recorded just a few years ago; however, responses are not uniform across species. Shifts have been idiosyncratic and in some cases counterintuitive, promoting new community compositions and altering biotic interactions. Although genetic diversity enhances species' potential to respond to variable conditions, climate change may outpace intrinsic adaptive capacities and increase the relative vulnerabilities of many organisms. Developing effective adaptation strategies for biodiversity conservation will not only require flexible decision-making and management approaches that account for uncertainties in climate projections and ecological responses but will also necessitate coordinated monitoring efforts.

Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment↗
USGS2006

Linking the concept of scale to studies of biological diversity: evolving approaches and tools.

Although the concepts of scale and biological diversity independently have received rapidly increasing attention in the scientific literature since the 1980s, the rate at which the two concepts have been investigated jointly has grown much more slowly. We find that scale considerations have been incorporated explicitly into six broad areas of investigation related to biological diversity: (1) heterogeneity within and among ecosystems, (2) disturbance ecology, (3) conservation and restoration, (4) invasion biology, (5) importance of temporal scale for understanding processes, and (6) species responses to environmental heterogeneity. In addition to placing the papers of this Special Feature within the context of brief summaries of the expanding literature on these six topics, we provide an overview of tools useful for integrating scale considerations into studies of biological diversity. Such tools include hierarchical and structural-equation modelling, kriging, variable-width buffers, k -fold cross-validation, and cascading graph diagrams, among others. Finally, we address some of the major challenges and research frontiers that remain, and conclude with a look to the future.

Diversity and Distributions↗
USGS2020

Eradication of peste des petits ruminants and the wildlife-livestock interface

Growing evidence suggests that multiple wildlife species can be infected with peste des petits ruminants virus (PPRV), with important consequences for the potential maintenance of PPRV in communities of susceptible hosts, and the threat that PPRV may pose to the conservation of wildlife populations and resilience of ecosystems. Significant knowledge gaps in the epidemiology of PPRV across the ruminant community (wildlife and domestic), and the understanding of infection in wildlife and other atypical host species groups (e.g., camelidae, suidae, and bovinae) hinder our ability to apply necessary integrated disease control and management interventions at the wildlife-livestock interface. Similarly, knowledge gaps limit the inclusion of wildlife in the FAO/OIE Global Strategy for the Control and Eradication of PPR, and the framework of activities in the PPR Global Eradication Programme that lays the foundation for eradicating PPR through national and regional efforts. This article reports on the first international meeting on, “Controlling PPR at the livestock-wildlife interface,” held in Rome, Italy, March 27–29, 2019. A large group representing national and international institutions discussed recent advances in our understanding of PPRV in wildlife, identified knowledge gaps and research priorities, and formulated recommendations. The need for a better understanding of PPRV epidemiology at the wildlife-livestock interface to support the integration of wildlife into PPR eradication efforts was highlighted by meeting participants along with the reminder that PPR eradication and wildlife conservation need not be viewed as competing priorities, but instead constitute two requisites of healthy socio-ecological systems.

Frontiers in Veterinary Science↗