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Best Management Practices for Golden-winged Warbler Habitats in the Appalachian Region: A Guide for Land Managers and Landowners
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This guide is intended to provide land managers and landowners with regional, habitat-specific strategies and techniques to begin developing and restoring habitat for Golden-winged Warblers. This document includes general information that applies to all habitat types in the Appalachian region and should be used along with supplemental documents dedicated to the management of specific regional habitat types (deciduous forests, minelands, abandoned farmlands, grazed forestland/montane pastures, utility rights-of-way, forest and shrub wetlands) most important to Golden-winged Warblers.
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Fact Sheets
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Golden-Winged Warbler Appalachians Fact Sheets
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Best Management Practices for Golden-winged Warbler Habitat in Forest and Shrub Wetlands of the Appalachians
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This is a supplemental document that provides information on managing forest and shrub wetlands in the Appalachians to develop and restore habitat for Golden-winged Warblers. This guide should be used in conjunction with the Best Management Practices for Golden-winged Warbler Habitats in the Appalachian Region, which includes general information that applies to all habitat types in the Appalachian region.
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Fact Sheets
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Golden-Winged Warbler Appalachians Fact Sheets
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Creating Wetlands: Primary Succession, Water Quality Changes, and Self-Design over 15 Years
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The succession of vegetation, soil development, water quality changes, and carbon and nitrogen dynamics are summarized in this article for a pair of 1-hectare flow-through-created riverine wetlands for their first 15 years. Wetland plant richness increased from 13 originally planted species to 116 species overall after 15 years, with most of the increase occurring in the first 5 years. The planted wetland had a higher plant community diversity index for 15 years, whereas the unplanted wetland was more productive. Wetland soils turned hydric within a few years; soil organic carbon doubled in 10 years and almost tripled in 15 years. Nutrient removal was similar in the two wetlands in most years, with a trend of decreased removal over 15 years for phosphorus. Denitrification accounted for a small percentage of the nitrogen reduction in the wetlands. The wetlands were effective carbon sinks with retention rates of 1800–2700 kilograms of carbon per hectare per year, higher than in comparable reference wetlands and more commonly studied boreal peatlands. Methane emission rates are low enough to create little concern that the wetlands are net sources of climate change radiative forcing. Planting appears to have influenced carbon accumulation, methane emissions, and macrophyte community diversity.
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Comparing carbon sequestration in temperate freshwater wetland communities
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High productivity and waterlogged conditions make many freshwater wetlands significant carbon sinks. Most wet- land carbon studies focus on boreal peatlands, however, with less attention paid to other climates and to the effects of hydrogeomorphic settings and the importance of wetland vegetation communities on carbon sequestration. This study compares six temperate wetland communities in Ohio that belong to two distinct hydrogeomorphic types: an isolated depressional wetland site connected to the groundwater table, and a riverine flow-through wetland site that receives water from an agricultural watershed. Three cores were extracted in each community and analyzed for total carbon content to determine the soil carbon pool. Sequestration rates were determined by radiometric dating with 137Cs and 210Pb on a set of composite cores extracted in each of the six communities. Cores were also extracted in uplands adjacent to the wetlands at each site. Wetland communities had accretion rates ranging from 3.0 to 6.2 mm yr␣1. The depressional wetland sites had higher (P < 0.001) organic content (146 ± 4.2 gC kg␣1) and lower (P < 0.001) bulk density (0.55 ± 0.01 Mg m␣3) than the riverine ones (50.1 ± 6.9 gC kg␣1 and 0.74 ± 0.06 Mg m␣3). The soil carbon was 98–99% organic in the isolated depressional wetland communities and 85–98% organic in the riv- erine ones. The depressional wetland communities sequestered 317 ± 93 gC m␣2 yr␣1, more (P < 0.01) than the river- ine communities that sequestered 140 ± 16 gC m␣2 yr␣1. The highest sequestration rate was found in the Quercus palustris forested wetland community (473 gC m␣2 yr␣1), while the wetland community dominated by water lotus (Nelumbo lutea) was the most efficient of the riverine communities, sequestering 160 gC m␣2 yr␣1. These differences in sequestration suggest the importance of addressing wetland types and communities in more detail when assessing the role of wetlands as carbon sequestering systems in global carbon budgets.
Keywords: 137Cs, 210Pb, carbon accumulation, Gahanna Woods, Nelumbo lutea, Old Woman Creek, Phragmites australis, Quercus palustris, wetland community, wetland hydrgeomorphology
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Climatic change and wetland desiccation cause amphibian decline in Yellowstone National Park
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Amphibians are a bellwether for environmental degradation, even in natural ecosystems such as Yellowstone National Park in the western United States, where species have been actively protected longer than anywhere else on Earth. We document that recent climatic warming and resultant wetland desiccation are causing severe declines in 4 once-common amphibian species native to Yellowstone. Climate monitoring over 6 decades, remote sensing, and repeated surveys of 49 ponds indicate that decreasing annual precipitation and increasing temperatures during the warmest months of the year have significantly altered the landscape and the local biological communities. Drought is now more common and more severe than at any time in the past century. Compared with 16 years ago, the number of permanently dry ponds in northern Yellowstone has increased 4-fold. Of the ponds that remain, the proportion supporting amphibians has declined significantly, as has the number of species found in each location. Our results indicate that climatic warming already has disrupted one of the best-protected ecosystems on our planet and that current assessments of species’ vulnerability do not adequately consider such impacts.
global warming landscape change remote sensing amphibian community drought
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Bird Richness and Abundance in Response to Urban Form in a Latin American City
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There is mounting evidence that urban areas influence biodiversity. Generalizations how- ever require that multiple urban areas on multiple continents be examined. Here we evaluated the role of urban areas on avian diversity for a South American city, allowing us to examine the effects of urban features common worldwide, using the city of Valdivia, Chile as case study. We assessed the number of birds and their relative abundance in 152 grid cells of equal size (250 m2) distributed across the city. We estimated nine independent variables: land cover diversity (DC), building density (BD), impervious surface (IS),municipal green space (MG),non-municipal green space (NG), domestic garden space (DG), distance to the periphery (DP), social welfare index (SW), and vegetation diversity (RV). Impervious surface represent 41.8% of the study area, while municipal green, non-municipal green and domestic garden represent 11.6%, 23.6% and 16% of the non- man made surface. Exotic vegetation species represent 74.6% of the total species identified across the city. We found 32 bird species, all native with the exception of House Sparrow and Rock Pigeon. The most common species were House Sparrow and Chilean Swallow. Total bird richness responds negatively to IS and MG, while native bird richness responds positively to NG and negatively to BD, IS DG and, RV. Total abundance increase in areas with higher values of DC and BD, and decrease in areas of higher values of IS, SW and VR. Native bird abundance responds positively to NG and negatively to BD, IS MG, DG and RV. Our results suggest that not all the general patterns described in previous studies, conducted mainly in the USA, Europe, and Australia, can be applied to Latin American cities, having important implications for urban planning. Conservation efforts should focus on non-municipal areas, which harbor higher bird diversity, while municipal green areas need to be improved to include elements that can enhance habitat quality for birds and other species. These findings are relevant for urban planning in where both types of green space need to be considered, especially non-municipal green areas, which includes wetlands, today critically threatened by urban development.
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Global change and the groundwater management challenge
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With rivers in critical regions already exploited to capacity throughout the world and ground- water overdraft as well as large-scale contamination occurring in many areas, we have entered an era in which multiple simultaneous stresses will drive water management. Increasingly, groundwater resources are taking a more prominent role in providing freshwater supplies. We discuss the competing fresh ground- water needs for human consumption, food production, energy, and the environment, as well as physical hazards, and conflicts due to transboundary overexploitation. During the past 50 years, groundwater man- agement modeling has focused on combining simulation with optimization methods to inspect important problems ranging from contaminant remediation to agricultural irrigation management. The compound challenges now faced by water planners require a new generation of aquifer management models that address the broad impacts of global change on aquifer storage and depletion trajectory management, land subsidence, groundwater-dependent ecosystems, seawater intrusion, anthropogenic and geogenic contamination, supply vulnerability, and long-term sustainability. The scope of research efforts is only beginning to address complex interactions using multiagent system models that are not readily formulated as optimization problems and that consider a suite of human behavioral responses.
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On the difference in the net ecosystem exchange of CO2 between deciduous and evergreen forests in the southeastern United States
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The southeastern United States is experiencing a rapid regional increase in the ratio of pine to deciduous forest ecosystems at the same time it is experiencing changes in climate. This study is focused on exploring how these shifts will affect the carbon sink capacity of southeastern US forests, which we show here are among the strongest carbon sinks in the continental United States. Using eight-year-long eddy covariance records collected above a hardwood deciduous forest (HW) and a pine plantation (PP) co-located in North Carolina, USA, we show that the net ecosystem exchange of CO2 (NEE) was more variable in PP, contributing to variability in the difference in NEE between the two sites (DNEE) at a range of timescales, including the interannual timescale. Because the variability in evapotranspira- tion (ET) was nearly identical across the two sites over a range of timescales, the factors that determined the variabil- ity in DNEE were dominated by those that tend to decouple NEE from ET. One such factor was water use efficiency, which changed dramatically in response to drought and also tended to increase monotonically in nondrought years (P < 0.001 in PP). Factors that vary over seasonal timescales were strong determinants of the NEE in the HW site; however, seasonality was less important in the PP site, where significant amounts of carbon were assimilated outside of the active season, representing an important advantage of evergreen trees in warm, temperate climates. Additional variability in the fluxes at long-time scales may be attributable to slowly evolving factors, including canopy structure and increases in dormant season air temperature. Taken together, study results suggest that the carbon sink in the southeastern United States may become more variable in the future, owing to a predicted increase in drought frequency and an increase in the fractional cover of southern pines.
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Effect of fine wood on juvenile brown trout behaviour in experimental stream channels
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In-stream wood can increase shelter availability and prey abundance for stream-living fish such as brown trout, Salmo trutta, but the input of wood to streams has decreased in recent years due to harvesting of riparian vegetation. During the last decades, fine wood (FW) has been increasingly used for biofuel, and the input of FW to streams may therefore decrease. Although effects of in-stream FW have not been studied as extensively as those of large wood (LW), it is probably important as shelter for small-sized trout. In a laboratory stream experiment, we tested the behavioural response of young-of-the-year wild brown trout to three densities of FW, with trout tested alone and in groups of four. Video recordings were used to measure the proportion of time allocated to sheltering, cruising and foraging, as well as the number of aggressive interactions and prey attacks. Cruising activity increased with decreasing FW density and was higher in the four-fish groups than when fish were alone. Foraging decreased and time spent sheltering in FW increased with increasing FW density. Our study shows that juvenile trout activity is higher in higher fish densities and that trout response to FW is related to FW density and differs from the response to LW as reported by others.
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National Wetlands Inventory
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The National Wetlands Inventory Program has been producing wetland maps and geospatial wetland data for the United States since the mid-1970s. The focus of the program has been to map or prepare digital databases to deliver to the public, as well as project and report on national wetland trends using a probability-based sampling design.
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Planning In Practice
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Conservation Planning Projects
