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At least 703 records · Page 39Linked to original sources

United States‐Mexican border watershed assessment: Modeling nonpoint source pollution in Ambos Nogales

Ecological considerations need to be interwoven with economic policy and planning along the United States‐Mexican border. Non‐point source pollution can have significant implications for the availability of potable water and the continued health of borderland ecosystems in arid lands. However, environmental assessments in this region present a host of unique issues and problems. A common obstacle to the solution of these problems is the integration of data with different resolutions, naming conventions, and quality to create a consistent database across the binational study area. This report presents a simple modeling approach to predict nonpoint source pollution that can be used for border watersheds. The modeling approach links a hillslopescale erosion‐prediction model and a spatially derived sediment‐delivery model within a geographic information system to estimate erosion, sediment yield, and sediment deposition across the Ambos Nogales watershed in Sonora, Mexico, and Arizona. This paper discusses the procedures used for creating a watershed database to apply the models and presents an example of the modeling approach applied to a conservation‐planning problem.

Arizona, Sonoma↗

Geological, hydrological, and biological issues related to the proposed development of a park at the confluence of the Los Angeles River and the Arroyo Seco, Los Angeles County, California

A new park is being considered for the confluence of the Los Angeles River and the Arroyo Seco in Los Angeles County, California. Components of the park development may include creation of a temporary lake on the Los Angeles River, removal of channel lining along part of the Arroyo Seco, restoration of native plants, creation of walking paths, and building of facilities such as a boat ramp and a visitor center. This report, prepared in cooperation with the Mountains Recreation and Conservancy Authority, delineates the geological, hydrological, and biological issues that may have an impact on the park development or result from development at the confluence, and identifies a set a tasks to help address these science issues. Geologic issues of concern relate to surface faulting, earthquake ground motions, liquefaction, landsliding, and induced seismicity. Hydrologic issues of concern relate to the hydraulics and water quality of both surface water and ground water. Biological issues of concern include colonization-extinction dynamics, wildlife corridors, wildlife reintroduction, non-native species, ecotoxicology, and restoration of local habitat and ecology. Potential tasks include (1) basic data collection and follow-up monitoring, and (2) statistical and probabilistic analyses and simulation modeling of the seismic, hydraulic, and ecological processes that may have the greatest impact on the park. The science issues and associated tasks delineated for the proposed confluence park will also have transfer value for river restoration in other urban settings.

Scientific Investigations Report↗

Future marsh evolution due to tidal changes induced by human adaptation to sea level rise

With sea level rise threatening coastal development, decision-makers are beginning to act by modifying shorelines. Previous research has shown that hardening or softening shorelines may change the tidal range under future sea level rise. Tidal range can also be changed by natural factors. Coastal marshes, which humans increasingly depend on for shoreline protection, are ecologically sensitive to tidal range. Therefore, it is critical to examine how changes in tidal range could influence marsh processes. A marsh accretion model was used to investigate the ecological response of a San Francisco Bay, California, USA marsh to multiple tidal range scenarios and sea level rise from 2010 to 2100. The scenarios include a baseline scenario with no shoreline modifications in the estuary, a shoreline hardening scenario that amplifies the tidal range, and 14 tidal range scenarios as a sensitivity analysis that span tidal amplification and reduction of the baseline scenario. The modeling results expose key tradeoffs to consider when planning for sea level rise. Compared to the baseline, the hardening scenario shows minor differences. However, further tidal amplification prolongs marsh survival but decreases Sarcocornia pacifica cover, an important species for certain threatened wildlife and an effective attenuator of wave energy. Conversely, tidal reduction precipitates marsh drowning but shows gains in Sarcocornia pacifica cover. These mixed impacts of tidal amplification and reduction shown by the model indicate potential tradeoffs in relation to marsh survival, habitat characteristics, and shoreline protection. This study suggests the need for a cross-sectoral, regional approach to sea level rise adaptation.

California↗

Annual grass invasion in sagebrush-steppe: The relative importance of climate, soil properties and biotic interactions

The invasion by winter-annual grasses (AGs) such as Bromus tectorum into sagebrush steppe throughout the western USA is a classic example of a biological invasion with multiple, interacting climate, soil and biotic factors driving the invasion, although few studies have examined all components together. Across a 6000-km 2 area of the northern Great Basin, we conducted a field assessment of 100 climate, soil, and biotic (functional group abundances, diversity) factors at each of 90 sites that spanned an invasion gradient ranging from 0 to 100 % AG cover. We first determined which biotic and abiotic factors had the strongest correlative relationships with AGs and each resident functional group. We then used regression and structural equation modeling to explore how multiple ecological factors interact to influence AG abundance. Among biotic interactions, we observed negative relationships between AGs and biodiversity, perennial grass cover, resident species richness, biological soil crust cover and shrub density, whereas perennial and annual forb cover, tree cover and soil microbial biomass had no direct linkage to AG. Among abiotic factors, AG cover was strongly related to climate (increasing cover with increasing temperature and aridity), but had weak relationships with soil factors. Our structural equation model showed negative effects of perennial grasses and biodiversity on AG cover while integrating the negative effects of warmer climate and positive influence of belowground processes on resident functional groups. Our findings illustrate the relative importance of biotic interactions and climate on invasive abundance, while soil properties appear to have stronger relationships with resident biota than with invasives.

Oregon↗

Mapping ecological states in the upper Colorado River basin: Implications for fire management

Spatially explicit information on ecosystem dynamics that offers a mechanistic understanding of ecological processes can benefit environmental management. Broad-scale maps based on state-and-transition models provide valuable insight into transitions among ecological states resulting from specific drivers within areas sharing similar climatic and edaphic characteristics ecological sites (ES). We aimed to quantify ecological dynamics of two ES groups in the Upper Colorado River Basin from 1986 to 2022 through annual maps of ecological states and assess potential drivers of observed state change. This region comprises important sagebrush shrublands and pinyon-juniper woodlands affected by non-native annual grass invasion, wildfires, and drought-induced tree mortality. Using field-based and remote sensing data, we modeled vegetation states using random forest models and mapped the states annually from 1986 to 2022. To demonstrate the utility of the state maps for monitoring and management, we used this time series of maps to investigate the influences of fire and drought on state occurrence. Our findings revealed a statistically significant increase in states invaded by non-native annual species (Invaded state), which replaced Grassland and Shrubland states, while Shrubland states decreased significantly, transitioning to invaded and Woodland states. Invaded states had the highest likelihood of burning, followed by Woodlands. Drought was associated with increased area of Grassland and Bare states, but with decreased area of invaded and Shrubland states. These results indicate an accelerating fire cycle is potentially leading to ongoing regional environmental degradation. Despite increasing drought conditions during the study period, the invaded states continued to increase in area, indicating additional underlying mechanisms. Our reproducible, broad-scale, ecologically-driven state mapping process enhances understanding of how drought, fire, and invasion by non-native plants can transform semiarid landscapes of the western USA.

Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming↗

Linking community-climate disequilibrium to ecosystem function

Turnover in species composition often lags behind the pace of climate change, resulting in mismatches between climate and communities. However, the impact of these community-climate disequilibria on ecosystem functions is rarely considered, and current methods for measuring disequilibria assume that species ranges were, until recently, in equilibrium with climate. Here, we develop a simple theoretical model to address both of these problems by linking community-climate disequilibrium with ecosystem functioning. We show how disequilibrium can impair functioning in the near-term even when climate change is expected to enhance functioning in the long-term. Responses are most likely to change over time in communities where turnover is slow, the impact of disequilibrium counteracts the direct effects of climate on ecosystem function, and pre-existing disequilibrium is large. These findings emphasise the importance of precise and unbiased estimates of community-climate disequilibria for improving ecological forecasts. By fitting our model to time series of both climate and ecosystem function from a metacommunity simulation, we show the potential for community-climate disequilibrium to be inferred without direct knowledge about species' distributions or climatic tolerances. We end by outlining a research agenda to apply dynamic disequilibrium concepts and test novel hypotheses across diverse ecosystems.

Ecology Letters↗

Patterns of zero and nonzero counts suggest spatiotemporal distributions, aggregation, and dispersion of invasive carp

Bigheaded carp Hypophthalmichthys spp. are invasive species native to Asia expanding in the Mississippi River Basin in North America. An understanding of spatiotemporal distribution and aggregation of invasive carp is key to establishing when and where to focus surveillance designed to monitor expansion, and to managing harvest programs designed to curb population densities. We applied a two-stage hurdle model to assess three aspects of bigheaded carp ecology: distribution, relative abundance, and aggregation. Stage 1 was a binary 0/1 model that represented fish presence (p), and stage 2 was a truncated count distribution that had no zeros and included counts ≥ 1 only (C). Estimates of p and C varied temporally and spatially, but not in harmony and sometimes in opposing directions, indicating temporal and spatial swings in fish distributions and aggregations. Intense fish aggregations in channels in spring shown by low p’s and high C’s, eventually scattered by summer and fall as shown by high p’s and low C’s. An alternative but complementary interpretation of our observations is that p indexes incidence of aggregations and C indexes size of aggregations. Partitioning catch into its zero and nonzero components provided insight into population ecology that can inform development of monitoring and management of harvesting programs targeted at lessening potential effects of the invasion.

Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Car↗

Epidemiological modeling of SARS-CoV-2 in white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) reveals conditions for introduction and widespread transmission

Emerging infectious diseases with zoonotic potential often have complex socioecological dynamics and limited ecological data, requiring integration of epidemiological modeling with surveillance. Although our understanding of SARS-CoV-2 has advanced considerably since its detection in late 2019, the factors influencing its introduction and transmission in wildlife hosts, particularly white-tailed deer ( Odocoileus virginianus ), remain poorly understood. We use a Susceptible-Infected-Recovered-Susceptible epidemiological model to investigate the spillover risk and transmission dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 in wild and captive white-tailed deer populations across various simulated scenarios. We found that captive scenarios pose a higher risk of SARS-CoV-2 introduction from humans into deer herds and subsequent transmission among deer, compared to wild herds. However, even in wild herds, the transmission risk is often substantial enough to sustain infections. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the strength of introduction from humans influences outbreak characteristics only to a certain extent. Transmission among deer was frequently sufficient for widespread outbreaks in deer populations, regardless of the initial level of introduction. We also explore the potential for fence line interactions between captive and wild deer to elevate outbreak metrics in wild herds that have the lowest risk of introduction and sustained transmission. Our results indicate that SARS-CoV-2 could be introduced and maintained in deer herds across a range of circumstances based on testing a range of introduction and transmission risks in various captive and wild scenarios. Our approach and findings will aid One Health strategies that mitigate persistent SARS-CoV-2 outbreaks in white-tailed deer populations and potential spillback to humans.

PLOS Computational Biology↗

Conceptualizing and communicating ecological river restoration

We present a general conceptual model for communicating aspects of river restoration and management. The model is generic and adaptable to most riverine settings, independent of size. The model has separate categories of natural and social-economic drivers, and management actions are envisioned as modifiers of naturally dynamic systems. The model includes a decision-making structure in which managers, stakeholders, and scientists interact to define management objectives and performance evaluation. The model depicts a stress to the riverine ecosystem as either (1) deviation in the regimes (flow, sediment, temperature, light, biogeochemical, and genetic) by altering the frequency, magnitude, duration, timing, or rate of change of the fluxes or (2) imposition of a hard structural constraint on channel form. Restoration is depicted as naturalization of those regimes or removal of the constraint. The model recognizes the importance of river history in conditioning future responses. Three hierarchical tiers of essential ecosystem characteristics (EECs) illustrate how management actions typically propagate through physical/chemical processes to habitat to biotic responses. Uncertainty and expense in modeling or measuring responses increase in moving from tiers 1 to 3. Social-economic characteristics are shown in a parallel structure that emphasizes the need to quantify trade-offs between ecological and social-economic systems. Performance measures for EECs are also hierarchical, showing that selection of measures depend on participants’ willingness to accept uncertainty. The general form is of an adaptive management loop in which the performance measures are compared to reference conditions or success criteria and the information is fed back into the decision-making process.

Book chapter↗

Incorporating imperfect detection into joint models of communites: A response to Warton et al.

Warton et al. [1] advance community ecology by describing a statistical framework that can jointly model abundances (or distributions) across many taxa to quantify how community properties respond to environmental variables. This framework specifies the effects of both measured and unmeasured (latent) variables on the abundance (or occurrence) of each species. Latent variables are random effects that capture the effects of both missing environmental predictors and correlations in parameter values among different species. As presented in Warton et al. , however, the joint modeling framework fails to account for the common problem of detection or measurement errors that always accompany field sampling of abundance or occupancy, and are well known to obscure species- and community-level inferences.

Trends in Ecology and Evolution↗

The biogeography of relative abundance of soil fungi versus bacteria in surface topsoil

Fungi and bacteria are the two dominant groups of soil microbial communities worldwide. By controlling the turnover of soil organic matter, these organisms directly regulate the exchange of carbon between the soil and the atmosphere. Fundamental differences in the physiology and life history of bacteria and fungi suggest that variation in the biogeography of soil fungal and bacterial relative abundance could drive striking differences in carbon decomposition and soil organic matter formation across different biomes. However, a lack of global and predictive information on the distribution of these organisms in terrestrial 45 ecosystems has prevented the inclusion of soil fungal and bacterial relative abundance and the associated processes into global biogeochemical models. Here, we used a global scale dataset in the top soil surface (>3000 distinct observations of soil fungal and bacterial abundance) to generate the first quantitative and spatially high resolution (1km) explicit map of soil fungal proportion, defined as fungi/fungi + bacteria, across terrestrial ecosystems. We reveal striking latitudinal trends where fungal dominance increases in cold and high latitude environments with large soil carbon stocks. There was strong non-linear response of fungal 50 dominance to environmental gradient, i.e., mean annual temperature (MAT) and net primary productivity (NPP). Fungi and bacteria dominated in regions with low and high MAT and NPP, respectively, thus representing slow vs. fast soil energy channels, a concept with a long history in soil ecology. These high-resolution models provide the first steps towards representing the major soil microbial groups and their functional differences in global biogeochemical models to improve predictions of soil organic matter turnover under current and future climate scenarios

Earth System Science Data↗

Confronting uncertainty: Contributions of the wildlife profession to the broader scientific community

Most wildlife professionals are engaged in 1 or both of 2 basic endeavors: science and management. These endeavors are a focus of many other disciplines, leading to widespread sharing of general methodologies. Wildlife professionals have appropriately borrowed and assimilated many methods developed primarily in other disciplines but have also led the development of one class of quantitative methods, those that confront and incorporate uncertainty. Uncertainty arises in counts of focal entities, for which wildlife professionals have developed effective methods to deal with the common problems of nondetection and misclassification. These methods have been borrowed by disciplines as varied as paleobiology, medicine, human epidemiology, industrial quality control, military target acquisition, remote sensing, and human census. Uncertainty also arises in the modeling of those counts, specifically the observation and ecological processes that generated them. Wildlife professionals recognized the fundamental importance of model selection and rapidly assimilated methods for selecting the most appropriate model for a given data set. These methods for dealing with uncertainty inherent to counting and modeling are critical to the conduct of science and management. Wildlife professionals have developed additional methods for incorporating uncertainty in the accumulation of knowledge and the development of optimal decisions in an environment of learning. In some cases, professionals in other disciplines are using methods developed and popularized in the wildlife profession, but there is much potential for greater use. In this essay, I describe these areas of wildlife leadership, document their assimilation by other disciplines, and emphasize the potential for more interdisciplinary use of these methods.

Journal of Wildlife Management↗

A model for evaluation of sediment exposure and burial for freshwater mussels from heavy particle sedimentation

Freshwater mussels (Bivalvia: Unionida) are an ecologically important faunal group. Excessive sediments, both in suspended and deposited formats, are believed to have negative effects on survival of freshwater mussels. However, there is a lack of quantitative tools for assessing the impact of abrupt and excessive sedimentation on freshwater mussel habitats. This gap in knowledge poses challenges for construction planning that necessitates evaluating sedimentation effects on mussels. In this paper, we present a simple Lagrangian particle tracking (LPT) model designed to investigate the downstream distances from the sediment release point where mussels may face risks of sediment exposure and burial during episodic sedimentation events. We validated the model in predicting the deposition of sands ranging from 125 to 625 μ m "> 625μm in diameter within an open channel. Subsequently, we applied the LPT model to a representative stretch of mussel habitats in the lower Osage River, Missouri, USA. Implementing the LPT model using computational fluid dynamics analysis of river hydrodynamics, we investigated the downstream distances impacted by a hypothetical sedimentation event. The results indicate that the mussels within tens and hundreds of meters may be at risk of burial under low and high flow conditions, respectively. Mussels within hundreds and potentially thousands of meters may be at risks of sediment exposure under low and high flow conditions, respectively. The impacted distance is highly dependent on the sediment diameters and flow conditions. These results contribute valuable insights into the potential impacts of sedimentation on freshwater mussel habitats, aiding in informed decision-making for construction projects near these critical aquatic ecosystems.

Ecological Modelling↗

Measurement of sounds emitted by certain high-resolution geophysical survey systems

Scientific questions regarding the impact of anthropomorphic noise in the marine environment have resulted in an increasing number of regulatory requirements and precautionary mitigation strategies to reduce the risks associated with high-resolution marine geophysical surveys performed in waters subjected to government jurisdiction. An example of regulatory frameworks includes the Marine Mammal Protection Act in the United States and the Marine Strategy Framework Directive 2008/56/EC in the European Union. Regulatory compliance often requires an assessment of the potential ecological risks before initiating a marine geophysical survey. However, the acoustic source data needed to estimate the risk associated with the operation of a given high-resolution survey system are frequently lacking. A comprehensive measurement program was performed to quantify the characteristics of sounds radiated by a variety of commercial marine geophysical survey systems, including boomers, sparkers, airguns, chirp sub-bottom profilers, sidescan sonars, and swath-bathymetric sonars [Crocker and Fratantonio, “Characteristics of high-frequency sounds emitted during high-resolution marine geophysical surveys,” Naval Undersea Warfare Center, Newport, RI, USA, NUWC-NPT Tech. Rep. 12, 203, 2016]. Calibrated acoustic source data, including source levels, source spectra, and beam patterns, were acquired for a total of 18 different marine geophysical survey systems. The data support modeling to estimate the potential ecological impacts resulting from the operation of certain high-resolution marine geophysical survey systems.

IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering↗

Evaluating temporal and spatial transferability of a tidal inundation model for foraging waterbirds

For ecosystem models to be applicable outside their context of development, temporal and spatial transferability must be demonstrated. This presents a challenge for modeling intertidal ecosystems where spatiotemporal variation arises at multiple scales. Models specializing in tidal dynamics are generally inhibited from having wider ecological applications by coarse spatiotemporal resolution or high user competency. The Tidal Inundation Model of Shallow-water Availability (TiMSA) uniquely simulates tides to empirically derive a time-integrated measure of availability for a shallow-water depth range defined by the user. To evaluate temporal and spatiotemporal transferability, we employed TiMSA at the development site in the Florida Keys and at novel subsites in the Florida Bay (application site) under a different time period (application period). We used foraging little blue herons ( Egretta caerulea ) as the ecological unit with which to constrain the model's “water depth window,” that is, range of water depths to estimate shallow-water availability. At the development site, temporally consistent water depth windows contrasted with interannual variation in shallow-water availability, which revealed short-term changes in Little Blue Heron foraging habitat. At the application site, water depth accuracy varied by subsite and was correlated with spatial error in bathymetric elevation. Although TiMSA parameters were sensitive to environmental temporal variation and uncertainty in spatial data, a spatially explicit water depth window generated reliable estimates of shallow-water conditions over space and time at the development and application sites. By exploring the contributing factors to model error, we provide solutions to reduce uncertainty of TiMSA parameters at potential application sites and recommendations for addressing bathymetric inaccuracy in digital elevation models. Accurately quantifying spatiotemporal changes of shallow water has implications for monitoring habitat conditions for tidally influenced species and projecting future changes to coastal ecosystems in response to anthropogenic stressors and natural disturbances such as sea level rise.

Florida↗

How to model a new invader? US-invaded range models outperform global or combined range models after 100 occurrences

Invasive species are an economic and ecological burden, and efforts to limit their impact are greatly improved with reliable maps based on species distribution models (SDMs). However, the potential distribution of new invaders is difficult to anticipate because they are still spreading with few observations in their invaded habitat. Therefore, an accepted practice in predicting the distribution of invasive species has been to incorporate habitat information from its entire geographic distribution (invaded and native ranges) into SDMs. Yet, this approach, due to niche shifts, niche expansions, and data deficiencies, commonly misrepresents where an invasive species is found in its new range. Here, we use time series records (invasion stages) from 13 invasive plant species in North America to explore the tension between modeling invasive species using global range and invaded range data and to determine if there is a “tipping point” at which one SDM strategy performs better than the other in predicting the ultimate distribution. At the earliest invasion stage, models developed using both invaded range and global occurrences on average performed better and had less variability across species than other model strategies at this stage. However, after as few as 100 observations of an invasive plant had been made, US-invaded range models, on average, outperformed global range models and models that combined occurrences. By building models with global and US-scale predictors, we show that higher performance of invaded range models was in part because of greater data quality at the invaded-range scale. Our work demonstrates that after relatively few observations of an invasive species in its invaded range, it is more accurate to model its potential distribution using only information from the invaded range while disregarding information from other regions. This work develops a robust and comprehensive approach to modeling novel distributions of newly observed invasive species.

North America↗

Predicting what helminth parasites a fish species should have using Parasite Co-occurrence Modeler (PaCo)

Fish pathologists are often interested in which parasites would likely be present in a particular host. Parasite Co-occurrence Modeler (PaCo) is a tool for identifying a list of parasites known from fish species that are similar ecologically, phylogenetically, and geographically to the host of interest. PaCo uses data from FishBase (maximum length, growth rate, life span, age at maturity, trophic level, phylogeny, and biogeography) to estimate compatibility between a target host and parasite species–genera from the major helminth groups (Acanthocephala, Cestoda, Monogenea, Nematoda, and Trematoda). Users can include any combination of host attributes in a model. These unique features make PaCo an innovative tool for addressing both theoretical and applied questions in parasitology. In addition to predicting the occurrence of parasites, PaCo can be used to investigate how host characteristics shape parasite communities. To test the performance of the PaCo algorithm, we created 12,400 parasite lists by applying any possible combination of model parameters (248) to 50 fish hosts. We then measured the relative importance of each parameter by assessing their frequency in the best models for each host. Host phylogeny and host geography were identified as the most important factors, with both present in 88% of the best models. Habitat (64%) was identified in more than half of the best models. Among ecological parameters, trophic level (41%) was the most relevant while life span (34%), growth rate (32%), maximum length (28%), and age at maturity (20%) were less commonly linked to best models. PaCo is free to use at www.purl.oclc.org/fishpest .

Journal of Parasitology↗

Brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis) movement and survival after removal of two dams on the West Branch of the Wolf River, Wisconsin

Dam removals allow fish to access habitats that may provide ecological benefits and risks, but the extent of fish movements through former dam sites has not been thoroughly evaluated for many species. We installed stationary PIT antennas in 2016 and 2017 to evaluate movements and survival of brook trout Salvelinus fontinalis in the West Branch of the Wolf River (WBWR) in central Wisconsin following removal of two dams and channel modifications designed to promote fish movement. These changes provided access to lacustrine habitats that might provide suitable winter habitat or act as ecological sinks. We used multistate models to estimate transition probabilities between river sections, to determine whether brook trout: (a) moved between multiple river sections and (b) entered lacustrine habitats as seasonal refuges, but eventually returned to lotic habitat. We also used a Cormack-Jolly-Seber model to evaluate whether apparent survival of brook trout in the WBWR was comparable to other populations. Few fish moved among river sections or used lacustrine habitat (<5% of tagged fish); most brook trout remained in sections where they were initially tagged, potentially due to quality habitat located throughout the river. Like other studies, brook trout in the WBWR appear to experience high mortality based on low number of detections, few physical recaptures and an estimated eight-month apparent survival rate of 0.27. In scenarios where fish can already access suitable habitat, removal of dams may not result in substantial increases in fish movement and colonisation of newly accessible habitat may not occur immediately.

Wisconsin↗