Geology topics

Monica Moritsch

Publications and source records attributed to Monica Moritsch.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

USGS2024

Birdwatching preferences reveal synergies and tradeoffs among recreation, carbon, and fisheries ecosystem services in Pacific Northwest estuaries, USA

Coastal ecosystems provide multiple ecosystem services that are valued in diverse ways. The Nisqually River Delta (the Delta), an estuary in Puget Sound, Washington, U.S.A., is co-managed by the Nisqually Indian Tribe and the Billy Frank Jr. Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge. In an ecosystem services assessment, we used different service-appropriate methods including citizen science, statistical and geospatial models, and scenario analysis to evaluate three ecosystem services – recreational birdwatching, soil carbon accumulation and fishery production – indicated as priorities for the Refuge, Nisqually Indian Tribe, and surrounding communities. We developed a generalized additive mixed model set based on eBird mobile application birdwatching observations to understand the biological and landscape features that influence birdwatching and to project birdwatching visitation based on scenarios of Delta habitat change. We evaluated ecosystem service synergies and tradeoffs associated with habitat change for three coastal habitat types using scenario outputs from the birdwatching model and published results on Delta soil carbon accumulation and fishery production. The highest-ranked birdwatching models explained 88 % of the deviance and showed that visitation was greatest in winter months when distance to major cities was approximately 20 km. Recreational birdwatching increased with increasing area of forested wetland, emergent wetland, aquatic vegetation bed, open access, and total estuary. With increasing forested and emergent wetland area, recreational birdwatching, out-migrating juvenile Chinook salmon weight and soil carbon accumulation all increased. With increasing aquatic vegetation bed (resulting from sea level rise), recreational birdwatching increased, but salmon weight and soil carbon accumulation decreased. We identified practical ways in which ecosystem services may be incorporated into adaptive management frameworks that support climate adaptation decision making. This study illustrated how use of ecosystem services can help managers make decisions that have greater benefit for wildlife and people, communicate the societal value of decisions and increase local support and participation.

Washington↗

USGS2023

A decade of death and other dynamics: Deepening perspectives on the diversity and distribution of sea stars and wasting

Mass mortality events provide valuable insight into biological extremes and also ecological interactions more generally. The sea star wasting epidemic that began in 2013 catalyzed study of the microbiome, genetics, population dynamics, and community ecology of several high-profile species inhabiting the northeastern Pacific but exposed a dearth of information on the diversity, distributions, and impacts of sea star wasting for many lesser-known sea stars and a need for integration across scales. Here, we combine datasets from single-site to coast-wide studies, across time lines from weeks to decades, for 65 species. We evaluated the impacts of abiotic characteristics hypothetically associated with sea star wasting (sea surface temperature, pelagic primary productivity, upwelling wind forcing, wave exposure, freshwater runoff) and species characteristics (depth distribution, developmental mode, diet, habitat, reproductive period). We find that the 2010s sea star wasting outbreak clearly affected a little over a dozen species, primarily intertidal and shallow subtidal taxa, causing instantaneous wasting prevalence rates of 5%–80%. Despite the collapse of some populations within weeks, environmental and species variation protracted the outbreak, which lasted 2–3 years from onset until declining to chronic background rates of ∼2% sea star wasting prevalence. Recruitment began immediately in many species, and in general, sea star assemblages trended toward recovery; however, recovery was heterogeneous, and a marine heatwave in 2019 raised concerns of a second decline. The abiotic stressors most associated with the 2010s sea star wasting outbreak were elevated sea surface temperature and low wave exposure, as well as freshwater discharge in the north. However, detailed data speaking directly to the biological, ecological, and environmental cause(s) and consequences of the sea star wasting outbreak remain limited in scope, unavoidably retrospective, and perhaps always indeterminate. Redressing this shortfall for the future will require a broad spectrum of monitoring studies not less than the taxonomically broad cross-scale framework we have modeled in this synthesis.

Biological Bulletin↗

USGS2023

Knowledge coproduction on the impact of decisions for waterbird habitat in a changing climate

Scientists, resource managers, and decision-makers increasingly use knowledge co-production to guide the stewardship of future landscapes under climate change. This process was applied in the California Central Valley, USA to solve complex conservation problems, where managed wetlands and croplands are flooded between fall and spring to support some of the largest concentrations of shorebirds and waterfowl in the world. We co-produced scenario narratives, spatially-explicit flooded waterbird habitat models, data products, and new knowledge about climate adaptation potential. We document our co-production process, and using the co-produced models, we ask: “when and where do management actions make a difference?” and “when does climate override these actions?” The outcomes of this process provide lessons learned on how to co-create usable information and how to increase climate adaptive capacity in a highly managed landscape. We found that: 1) actions to restore wetlands and prioritize their water supply create habitat outcomes resilient to climate change impacts particularly in March, when habitat is most limited, 2) land protection combined with management can increase the ecosystem's resilience to climate change, and 3) the uptake and use of this information was influenced by the roles of different stakeholders, plus rapidly changing water policies, discrepancies in decision-making time frames, and immediate crises of extreme drought. While a broad stakeholder group contributed knowledge to scenario narratives and model development, to co-produce usable information, data products were tailored to a small set of decision contexts, leading to fewer stakeholder participants over time. A boundary organization convened stakeholders across a large landscape, and early adopters helped to build legitimacy, yet broad-scale use of climate adaptation knowledge will depend on state and local policies, engagement with decision-makers that have legislative and budgetary authority, and the capacity to fit data products to specific decision needs.

California↗