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The Importance of Land-Use Legacies to Ecology and Conservation
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Recognition of the importance of land-use history and its legacies in most ecological systems has been a major factor driving the recent focus on human activity as a legitimate and essential subject of environmental science. Ecologists, conservationists, and natural resource policymakers now recognize that the legacies of land-use activities continue to influence ecosystem structure and function for decades or centuries—or even longer— after those activities have ceased. Consequently, recognition of these historical legacies adds explanatory power to our understanding of modern conditions at scales from organisms to the globe and reduces missteps in anticipating or managing for future conditions. As a result, environmental history emerges as an integral part of ecological science and conservation planning. By considering diverse ecological phenomena, ranging from biodiversity and biogeochemical cycles to ecosystem resilience to anthropogenic stress, and by examining terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems in temperate to tropical biomes, this article demonstrates the ubiquity and importance of land-use legacies to environmental science and management.
Keywords: land use, disturbance, conservation, ecosystem process, natural resource management
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The increasing intensity of the strongest tropical cyclones
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Atlantic tropical cyclones are getting stronger on average, with a 30-year trend that has been related to an increase in ocean temperatures over the Atlantic Ocean and elsewhere1–4. Over the rest of the tropics, however, possible trends in tropical cyclone intensity are less obvious, owing to the unreliability and incompleteness of the observational record and to a restricted focus, in previous trend analyses, on changes in average intensity. To quantify and determine the significance of these trends, we use quantile regression. Quantile regression as employed here is a method to estimate the change (trend) in lifetime-maximum wind speed quantile as a function of year. A quantile is a point taken from ntensities that cyclones achieve during their lifetimes), estimated from homogeneous data derived from an archive of satellite records. We find significant upward trends for wind speed quantiles above the 70th percentile, with trends as high as 0.36 0.09 m s21 yr21 (s.e.) for the strongest cyclones. We note separate upward trends in the estimated lifetime-maximum wind speeds of the very strongest tropical cyclones (99th percentile) over each ocean basin, with the largest increase at this quantile occurring over the North Atlantic, although not all basins show statistically significant increases. Our results are qualitatively consistent with the hypothesis that as the seas warm, the ocean has more energy to convert to tropical cyclone wind.
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The Influence of Climate, Soils, Weather, and Land Use on Primary Production and Biomass Seasonality in the US Great Plains
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Identifying the conditions and mechanisms that control ecosystem processes, such as net primary production, is a central goal of ecosystem ecology. Ideas have ranged from single limiting-resource theories to colimitation by nutrients and climate, to simulation models with edaphic, climatic, and competitive controls. Although some investigators have begun to consider the influence of land-use practices, especially cropping, few studies have quantified the impact of cropping at large scales relative to other known controls over ecosystem processes. We used a 9-year record of produc- tivity, biomass seasonality, climate, weather, soil conditions, and cropping in the US Great Plains to quantify the controls over spatial and temporal patterns of net primary production and to esti- mate sensitivity to specific driving variables. We considered climate, soil conditions, and long-term average cropping as controls over spatial patterns, while weather and interannual cropping varia- tions were used as controls over temporal vari- ability. We found that variation in primary production is primarily spatial, whereas variation in seasonality is more evenly split between spatial and temporal components. Our statistical (multi- ple linear regression) models explained more of the variation in the amount of primary produc- tion than in its seasonality, and more of the spatial than the temporal patterns. Our results indicate that although climate is the most important variable for explaining spatial patterns, cropping explains a substantial amount of the residual variability. Soil texture and depth con- tributed very little to our models of spatial vari- ability. Weather and cropping deviation both made modest contributions to the models of temporal variability. These results suggest that the controls over seasonality and temporal variation are not well understood. Our sensitivity analysis indicates that production is more sensitive to climate than to weather and that it is very sen- sitive to cropping intensity. In addition to iden- tifying potential gaps in out knowledge, these results provide insight into the probable long- and short-term ecosystem response to changes in climate, weather, and cropping.
Key words: primary production; carbon; land use; agriculture; climate; weather; soil; seasonality; cropping; grassland; US Great Plains.
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The influence of conversion of forest types on carbon sequestration and other ecosystem services in the South Central United States
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This paper develops a forestland management model for the three states in the South Central United States (Arkansas,
Louisiana, and Mississippi). Forest type and land-use shares are estimated to be a function of economic and physical variables.
The results suggest that while historically pine plantations in this region have been established largely on old agricultural land,
in the future pine plantations are likely to occur on converted hardwood-forest lands. This shift in the supply of land for
plantations could have large effects on above-ground carbon storage and other ecosystem services. Subsidies of approximately
$12–27 per ha per year would maintain the area of hardwood forests and reduce carbon emissions from the above-ground and
product pool carbon stocks over the next 30 years. Across the several scenarios considered, results suggest that maintaining
hardwoods could be an efficient carbon sequestration alternative.
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THE INSURANCE VALUE OF BIODIVERSITY IN THE PROVISION OF ECOSYSTEM SERVICES
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From the text: In the face of uncertainty, diversity provides insurance for risk-averse economic agents. For example, investors in financial markets diversify their asset portfolio in order to hedge their risk; firms diversify their activities, products or services when facing an uncertain market environment; farmers traditionally grow a variety of crops in order to decrease the adverse impact of uncertain environmental and market conditions. In this paper, I argue that biological diversity plays a similar role: it can be interpreted as an insurance against the uncertain provision of ecosystem services, such as biomass production, control of water run-off, pollination, control of pests and diseases, nitrogen fixation, soil regeneration, etc. Such ecosystem services are generated by ecosystems and are used by utility- maximizing and risk-averse economic agents (Daily [1997], Millennium Ecosystem Assessment [2005]).
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The LANDFIRE Program
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The LF Program provides 20+ national geo-spatial layers (e.g. vegetation, fuel, disturbance, etc.), databases, and ecological models that are available to the public for the US and insular areas.
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The Last Dragons - Protecting Appalachia's Hellbenders
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An intimate glimpse at North America's Eastern Hellbender, an ancient salamander that lives as much in myth as in reality.... and in many waters, myths are all that remain of these sentinel stream-dwellers. Video by Freshwaters Illustrated.
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The Last Glacial Maximum
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We used 5704 14C, 10Be, and 3
He ages that span the interval from 10,000 to 50,000 years ago
(10 to 50 ka) to constrain the timing of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) in terms of global
ice-sheet and mountain-glacier extent. Growth of the ice sheets to their maximum positions
occurred between 33.0 and 26.5 ka in response to climate forcing from decreases in northern
summer insolation, tropical Pacific sea surface temperatures, and atmospheric CO2. Nearly all
ice sheets were at their LGM positions from 26.5 ka to 19 to 20 ka, corresponding to minima in
these forcings. The onset of Northern Hemisphere deglaciation 19 to 20 ka was induced by an
increase in northern summer insolation, providing the source for an abrupt rise in sea level. The
onset of deglaciation of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet occurred between 14 and 15 ka, consistent
with evidence that this was the primary source for an abrupt rise in sea level ~14.5 ka.
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The late Precambrian greening of the Earth
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Many aspects of the carbon cycle can be assessed from temporal changes in the 13C/12C ratio of oceanic bicarbonate. 13C/12C can temporarily rise when large amounts of 13C-depleted photosyn- thetic organic matter are buried at enhanced rates1, and can decrease if phytomass is rapidly oxidized2 or if low 13C is rapidly released from methane clathrates3. Assuming that variations of the marine 13C/12C ratio are directly recorded in carbonate rocks, thousands of carbon isotope analyses of late Precambrian examples have been published to correlate these otherwise undatable strata and to document perturbations to the carbon cycle just before the great expansion of metazoan life. Low 13C/12C in some Neoproterozoic carbonates is considered evidence of carbon cycle perturbations unique to the Precambrian. These include complete oxidation of all organic matter in the ocean2 and complete produc- tivity collapse such that low-13C/12C hydrothermal CO2 becomes the main input of carbon4. Here we compile all published oxygen and carbon isotope data for Neoproterozoic marine carbonates, and consider them in terms of processes known to alter the isotopic composition during transformation of the initial precipitate into limestone/dolostone. We show that the combined oxygen and carbon isotope systematics are identical to those of well- understood Phanerozoic examples that lithified in coastal pore fluids, receiving a large groundwater influx of photosynthetic carbon from terrestrial phytomass. Rather than being perturba- tions to the carbon cycle, widely reported decreases in 13C/12C in Neoproterozoic carbonates are more easily interpreted in the same way as is done for Phanerozoic examples. This influx of terrestrial carbon is not apparent in carbonates older than 850 Myr, so we infer an explosion of photosynthesizing communities on late Precambrian land surfaces. As a result, biotically enhanced weathering generated carbon-bearing soils on a large scale and their detrital sedimentation sequestered carbon 5. This facilitated a rise in O2 necessary for the expansion of multicellular life.
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The Latest on Volcanic Eruptions and Climate
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2nd paragraph: It is well known that large volcanic eruptions inject sulfur gases into the stratosphere, which convert to sulfate aerosols with a life- time of several months to about 2 years. The radiative effects of these aerosol clouds produce global cooling and are an important natural cause of climate change. Regional responses include winter warming of Northern Hemisphere continents and weakening of summer Asian and African monsoons. Even though there has not been a large eruption since the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines on 15 June 1991, research contin- ues to produce interesting results.
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