Ecological Applications最新文献

{"title":"Indigenous knowledge, forest landscape modeling, and the cumulative effects of environmental changes","authors":"Annie Claude Bélisle,&nbsp;Chrystal Mantyka-Pringle,&nbsp;Yan Boulanger,&nbsp;Benoit Croteau,&nbsp;Alice Wapachee,&nbsp;Louis-Joseph Drapeau,&nbsp;Mélanie Desrochers,&nbsp;Hugo Asselin","doi":"10.1002/eap.70053","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/eap.70053","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Boreal landscapes are exposed to climate change, forestry, and other industrial stressors with consequences for Indigenous people's wellbeing and relationship with traditional lands. As a collaborative and transdisciplinary research team including researchers and students from universities, Indigenous communities, and government and non-government organizations, we addressed the consequences of these environmental changes for an Eeyou (Cree) community and an Anishnaabe community in Eastern boreal Canada (Quebec). Our aims were to (1) develop a landscape value model combining qualitative and quantitative data as well as knowledge from Indigenous land-use experts and forest landscape simulations; (2) evaluate the vulnerability of Indigenous landscape values to environmental changes; and (3) assess the relative importance of climate change and forestry as drivers of environmental changes. We developed a set of 12 variables based on interviews with Indigenous experts, describing four dimensions of landscape value: abundance, quality, access, and experience. We then performed forest landscape simulations (2000–2100) with the model LANDIS-II using scenarios combining climate change and forestry gradients. We presented the simulation outputs to Indigenous experts and elicited the probability of fulfilling their needs in the future. We combined Indigenous knowledge and forest landscape simulations within a probabilistic model (Bayesian network). The projections indicate that rapid and acute changes in forest structure and composition are to be expected. The most vulnerable values are those associated with mature and undisturbed forests and include the ability to trap, hunt moose, and recover health and energy from the land (<i>ressourcement</i> in French, KOKi OTAPiNAN NOPiMiK iNATiSi8iN in Anishnaabemowin). Timber harvesting rate influences the timing and amplitude of change. The influence of climate change varied from one region to another and was mostly associated with wildfire frequency. Adaptation strategies may include reducing timber harvesting rates, implementing wildfire-prevention measures, and valuing alternative forest uses.</p>","PeriodicalId":55168,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Applications","volume":"35 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2025-07-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/eap.70053","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144673194","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Restoration maintains high soil carbon stocks in Asia's largest tropical grassland","authors":"Manan Bhan,&nbsp;Chetan Misher,&nbsp;Ankila Hiremath,&nbsp;Abi T. Vanak","doi":"10.1002/eap.70073","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/eap.70073","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Land management changes threaten the ecological functionality of grassland ecosystems worldwide, including the ability of these ecosystems to store carbon in their soils. The Banni grasslands in India, Asia's largest tropical grassland, are no different in this regard. Despite being a highly biodiverse ecosystem with an extensive land use history, information on soil carbon stocks in this ecosystem remains conspicuously absent. In this study, we map soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks within the upper 30 cm depth across land use–land cover classes by combining high-resolution satellite imagery with field-based soil carbon data from a network of long-term monitoring sites. We find that Banni currently stores 27.69 million tons of carbon in its soils, with an average SOC density of 119.61 ± 3.50 tons of carbon per hectare (tC/ha, mean ± SE). These estimates compare favorably with arid and semi-arid grasslands as well as seasonally flooded savannas across the tropics. The highest SOC densities are found in restored grasslands (142.72 ± 5.72 tC/ha), reaffirming the potential of carbon recovery from ecological restoration. Tracing 10 years of land change in the region indicates the further expansion of the invasive tree <i>Prosopis juliflora</i> across the landscape, but its impacts on changes in SOC concentration estimates remain varied. Our results indicate the large SOC storage associated with woody encroachment in Banni and point toward the need for the active management of Banni so that carbon benefits can accrue at meaningful timescales for reversing land degradation and contributing to land-based climate action.</p>","PeriodicalId":55168,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Applications","volume":"35 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2025-07-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144647095","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Thinning restores ungulate foraging habitat in historically logged forests","authors":"Philip J. Manlick,&nbsp;Michael Howe,&nbsp;Jennifer Wen,&nbsp;Jeffrey C. Barnard,&nbsp;Kellen N. Nelson","doi":"10.1002/eap.70075","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/eap.70075","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Legacies of land use can persist for decades, thereby impacting populations, communities, and ecosystems long after the original disturbance has concluded. The coastal rainforests of western North America were fundamentally transformed by commercial logging throughout the 20th century, resulting in depauperate second-growth forests that provide limited understory production and foraging habitat for herbivores. The Tongass National Forest in Alaska, USA, is the largest contiguous tract of coastal temperate rainforest in the world, but nearly 200,000 ha of second-growth forest have created a need to restore understory plant communities and foraging habitat for ungulates like Sitka black-tailed deer (<i>Odocoileus hemionus sitkensis</i>), a regional indicator of forest health and key subsistence resource for local and Indigenous communities. We leveraged a 16-year adaptive management experiment—the Tongass-Wide Young Growth Studies (TWYGS) program—to test the effects of precommercial thinning on forage availability and use by deer in second-growth forests. We measured plant communities, presence–absence of browse, and slash debris in 14,908 quadrats across 730 plots and found that plant community composition, understory forage biomass, digestible energy, and digestible protein were all significantly higher in thinned plots versus controls. Precommercial thinning also doubled browse probabilities relative to unthinned stands, and plots treated within 35 years of stand initiation experienced the highest gains. Deer selected for both plant quantity and plant quality, as browse was positively associated with both digestible energy and digestible protein. Conversely, slash debris generated by precommercial thinning reduced browse probability by an average of 11.3%, but these effects attenuated as slash decomposed over the course of the study. We found no effects of landscape composition on relative browse probability, indicating that fine-scale resource quality and accessibility were the strongest drivers of habitat use by deer over nearly two decades of sampling. Collectively, our results show that precommercial thinning is a valuable management tool that increases forage and deer habitat use in second-growth coastal rainforests. This study highlights the enduring legacies of forest disturbance and underscores the value of adaptive management experiments with long-term monitoring to optimize habitat management for wildlife.</p>","PeriodicalId":55168,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Applications","volume":"35 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2025-07-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144615068","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Forecasting alien species establishment and source regions: Quantitative assessment of potential ant invasions in Japan","authors":"Yazmín Zurápiti,&nbsp;Jamie M. Kass,&nbsp;Benoit Guénard,&nbsp;Evan P. Economo","doi":"10.1002/eap.70071","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/eap.70071","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Due to the costs and difficulties of mitigating past biological invasions, there is a critical need for improved predictions of establishment risk for alien species and their source regions to guide the deployment of preventive measures. Here, focusing on a global pool of ant species known to be spread by humans, we develop a computational workflow to predict threats for a country or region of interest. Specifically, the workflow (1) predicts which alien species are most likely to be established based on climatic suitability with species distribution models, (2) clusters areas threatened by similar assemblages of alien species, and (3) identifies global regions that can act as important sources for these species. We apply this workflow to estimate which ants with human-assisted invasion histories around the globe may establish in Japan, an island country with broad climatic and topographic diversity. To reduce forecast uncertainty, we exclude models that we assess to result in dubious transfers based on evaluations of species already established in Japan and avoid making model extrapolations. To better account for the full invasion process, we also estimate introduction risk and spread within Japan and integrate these with our establishment risk and potential sources estimates. Our results indicate that all prefectures of Japan have potential risks of new alien ant establishments, though lower latitudes and small archipelagoes have the highest predicted vulnerability. When combined with the likelihood of spread, we expect shifts in vulnerability toward highly populated areas and in proximity to international ports. Interestingly, the source regions with the most alien species presenting establishment threats are in southern Europe and the subtropical Americas rather than in Asia, in part because many Asian species have already been introduced to Japan. When considering introduction risk based on global trade patterns, the United States was most likely to be a source of future introductions. We discuss the implications of these results for global management policies and cargo surveillance. The workflow described here can be deployed worldwide for different taxa to predict the establishment potential of alien invasions and their sources, and also to design more practical and efficient preventive strategies.</p>","PeriodicalId":55168,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Applications","volume":"35 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2025-07-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/eap.70071","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144615057","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"High sensitivity to ocean acidification in wild out-migrating juvenile Pacific salmon is not impacted by feeding success","authors":"Andrea Y. Frommel,&nbsp;Arash Akbarzadeh,&nbsp;Virginie Chalifoux,&nbsp;Tobi J. Ming,&nbsp;Brenna Collicutt,&nbsp;Kate Rolheiser,&nbsp;Rumer Opie,&nbsp;Kristina M. Miller,&nbsp;Colin J. Brauner,&nbsp;Brian P. V. Hunt","doi":"10.1002/eap.70058","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/eap.70058","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Salmon populations are declining worldwide, with high mortality rates during juvenile marine migration presenting a bottleneck to recruitment. The ocean conditions along the main migratory route of juvenile salmon in British Columbia are characterized by high variability in CO₂, with the amplitude, duration, and frequency of ocean acidification events exacerbated by climate change. Similarly, the variability in ocean conditions affects the abundance and diversity of plankton prey, leading to areas of food paucity for juvenile salmon. We investigated the combined effects of ocean acidification (control and 3200 μatm CO₂) and food limitation (ad libitum, ½ ration, and food deprived) on the survival, condition, and gene expression profiles of juvenile Chum salmon (<i>Oncorhynchus keta</i>) to develop predictive biomarkers for CO₂ exposure and food deprivation. Ocean acidification caused a direct 3-fold increase in mortality over 25 days of exposure, which was unaffected by food availability but differentially affected smaller fish. CO₂ exposure induced transcriptomic changes in a suite of genes associated with ion regulation, while food deprivation was associated with a differential expression of stress, immune, and mortality markers, as well as reduced condition factor. Our data indicate that CO₂ directly impairs ionoregulatory capacity to the point of failure in juvenile Chum salmon and that these effects cannot be compensated through increased energy from food. Applying our gene panels as biomarkers to a subset of fish with known exposure, we were able to accurately predict exposure to CO₂ and food deprivation (74% and 90%, respectively). By combining these gene panels with previously established biomarkers for other environmental stressors, the recent environmental stress history of wild fish can be determined and can be used in models to predict salmon returns, informing fisheries management and conservation efforts.</p>","PeriodicalId":55168,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Applications","volume":"35 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2025-07-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/eap.70058","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144598599","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Objective risk assessment of bark and ambrosia beetles non-indigenous to North America","authors":"Andrew J. Johnson,&nbsp;David Bednar,&nbsp;Jiri Hulcr","doi":"10.1002/eap.70072","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/eap.70072","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Pest risk assessment informs regulatory decisions to facilitate safe trade while also protecting a country's agricultural and environmental resources. The first step in pest risk assessment is pest categorization which can help determine whether an in-depth examination is needed. We created a model to predict the potential impact of non-indigenous bark and ambrosia beetles (Curculionidae: Scolytinae). This model uses biological variables derived from extensive assessment of alien species and produces a five-point scale of impact prediction. We accommodate uncertainty and missing data using random decision tree forests with Monte Carlo simulations. Non-indigenous bark beetles include both invasive species with significant ecological impacts, such as widespread tree death, and others that pose little risk. We assembled a comprehensive list of 60 introduced non-native bark beetle species in the continental United States as the training set. Forty-two potentially predictive variables were chosen from reports on behaviors, pestilence, recorded damage/interpretations in literature, biological traits, and interactions with fungi including plant pathogens. The model builds upon strategies used by USDA-APHIS in existing risk assessments, specifically the Objective Prioritization of Exotic Pests (OPEP) model, with changes in the following: (1) a transparent dataset for building and training the model enabling future updates and use in other systems, (2) uncertainty simulations using values derived from an extensive natural history matrix rather than an assumed equal distribution, and (3) predictions made on the probability of multiple impact levels, allowing users to decide based on acceptable risk. The model is designed for pest risk analysis for Scolytinae in the continental United States but can be adapted to other pests or regions. We tested the model's performance by iteratively removing each species from the training set and retraining the model. The retrained models accurately predicted the removed species. To demonstrate the model's application, we predicted the impact of scolytine beetles not yet present in the continental United States, <i>Xylosandrus morigerus</i> and <i>Hypoborus ficus</i>, plus an additional hypothetical species with no known data. Our model predicts that these species are likely to have moderate impacts and unlikely to have high impacts if they were introduced.</p>","PeriodicalId":55168,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Applications","volume":"35 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2025-07-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/eap.70072","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144589871","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Threshold responses of birds to agricultural intensification in Mediterranean olive groves","authors":"Vicente García-Navas,&nbsp;Rubén Tarifa,&nbsp;Teresa Salido,&nbsp;Ana González-Robles,&nbsp;Antonio López-Orta,&nbsp;Francisco Valera,&nbsp;Pedro J. Rey","doi":"10.1002/eap.70057","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/eap.70057","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Olive groves are the most representative crop of the Mediterranean basin. This agroforestry system is undergoing a strong transformation in recent decades as a result of the agricultural intensification process prevailing in the Northern Hemisphere. Although some authors have suggested that farmland biodiversity responds non-linearly to the complexity of agricultural landscapes, few studies have used community thresholds to identify potential tipping points. Here, we examined the existence of synchronous responses in bird abundance across a gradient of decreasing agricultural intensification in Spanish olive groves. Our study system comprised 25 sites, each consisting of a pair of farms: one with intensive management and the other one with extensive management of the herbaceous cover. We explored whether bird abundances exhibit non-linear threshold responses to ant abundance and tree density at a local (field) scale, plant diversity (both herbaceous and woody plants) at a local (farm) scale, and to proportion of natural habitat at a landscape scale using Threshold Indicator Taxa ANalysis (TITAN). We found a higher incidence of positive responses with decreasing levels of intensification, and these were not restricted to certain guilds or avian families. Few indicator species showed a significant negative response. Thresholds detected were not sharp but rather gradual changes along the environmental gradients. Although they do not necessarily support evidence of ecological thresholds characterized by rapid changes in species abundance or distribution, these patterns can help identify optimal change points for management decisions. Specifically, our results indicate that reaching a minimum threshold of ~85 and 15 species of herbaceous and woody plants, respectively, per unit of surface can entail a gain in terms of bird diversity for olive farms with virtually no detrimental effects. Overall, this study shows that the adoption of agri-environmental measures like the maintenance of ground cover and patches of natural habitat has a positive impact on different species inhabiting this woody crop, and this effect occurs at different spatial scales.</p>","PeriodicalId":55168,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Applications","volume":"35 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2025-07-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/eap.70057","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144589568","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Tropical dry woodland loss in India since 1880 and its relation to current megafauna distributions","authors":"Tamanna Kalam,&nbsp;Matthias Baumann,&nbsp;Florian Pötzschner,&nbsp;C. Sudhakar Reddy,&nbsp;Arash Ghoddousi,&nbsp;Parth Sarathi Roy,&nbsp;Tobias Kuemmerle","doi":"10.1002/eap.70054","DOIUrl":"10.1002/eap.70054","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Tropical dry woodlands provide ecosystem services to hundreds of millions of people and support high biodiversity. Despite their importance, many dry woodlands are under high and rising human pressure, including in India, where they provide essential habitat for iconic megafauna. However, there are notable gaps in our understanding of long-term changes in dry woodlands and how they relate to the present-day distribution of megafauna. Here, we reconstructed tropical dry woodland change since the 19th century, identified archetypes of change, and explored their relationship with current megafauna distributions. More specifically, we compared the reliability of existing satellite-based woodland maps and integrated them into an ensemble map of contemporary dry woodland cover in India. This allowed us to derive recent changes in dry woodlands since 1995 and, by integrating them with historical maps, long-term changes since 1880. Finally, we used non-parametric spatial clustering to detect typical patterns of long-term woodland change and compared these to the current distribution of 14 megafauna species. These analyses yielded four major insights. First, we show a massive historical loss of dry woodland cover in India since the 19th century, with over 22 Mha (equaling 65% of dry woodlands) lost, underscoring the threatened nature of these ecosystems. Second, we identified six archetypes of woodland change, three characterized by different levels of continuous woodland decline and three showing a forest transition pattern of historical decline, stability, and subsequent recovery. This highlights the regional variations in woodland dynamics across India's dry woodlands. Third, we found a strong and positive link between current megafauna distribution and high woodland cover, especially for threatened species (<i>r</i> = 0.43, <i>p</i> &lt; 0.05), regardless of woodland histories, pointing to the importance of maintaining larger tracts of dry woodlands for safeguarding megafauna and for megafauna restoration potential where woodlands are recovering. Finally, we show that Indian dry woodlands are still undergoing widespread losses of 6.5 Mha since 1995, and pressure on them has been increasing recently. Therefore, better protection and monitoring of dry woodlands is urgently needed, and our analyses can provide a basis for context-specific land-use and conservation planning.</p>","PeriodicalId":55168,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Applications","volume":"35 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2025-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/eap.70054","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144568532","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Aspen impedes wildfire spread in southwestern United States landscapes","authors":"Matthew P. Harris,&nbsp;Jonathan D. Coop,&nbsp;Jared A. Balik,&nbsp;Jessika R. McFarland,&nbsp;Sean A. Parks,&nbsp;Camille S. Stevens-Rumann","doi":"10.1002/eap.70061","DOIUrl":"10.1002/eap.70061","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Aspen (<i>Populus tremuloides</i>) forests are generally thought to impede fire spread, yet the extent of this effect is not well quantified in relation to other vegetation types. We examined the influence of aspen cover on interpolated daily fire spread rates, the relative abundance of aspen at fire perimeters versus burn interiors, and whether these relationships shifted under more fire-conducive atmospheric conditions. Our study incorporated 314 fires occurring between 2001 and 2020 in the southwestern United States and a suite of gridded vegetation, topography, and fire weather predictor variables. We found that aspen slows fire progression: as aspen cover on the landscape increased, daily area burned and linear spread rate decreased. Where aspen cover was &lt;10%, daily fire growth averaged 1112 ha/day and maximum linear spread was 2.1 km/day; where aspen exceeded 25%, these values dropped to 368 ha/day and 1.3 km/day. Aspen also serves as a barrier to fire spread, demonstrated through a higher proportion of aspen cover at fire perimeters than in burn interiors. Finally, though favorable fire weather conditions increased fire growth rates, differences between aspens and conifers persisted. Our results affirm that aspen stands can act as a firebreak, with clear applications for vegetation management. For example, interventions that shift conifer to aspen cover could lessen the risk of fire for nearby values at risk (e.g., communities, infrastructure) but still support forest ecosystem function. Further, wildfire-driven conversion from conifer to aspen forest types in some landscapes may produce a negative feedback that could dampen expected increases in fire activity under a warmer and drier climate.</p>","PeriodicalId":55168,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Applications","volume":"35 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2025-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/eap.70061","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144568499","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Environmental drivers of productivity explain population patterns of an Arctic-nesting bird across a half-century","authors":"Antti Piironen,&nbsp;Jeffrey M. Knetter,&nbsp;Kyle A. Spragens,&nbsp;Joshua L. Dooley,&nbsp;Vijay Patil,&nbsp;Eric T. Reed,&nbsp;Megan Ross,&nbsp;Daniel Gibson,&nbsp;Adam C. Behney,&nbsp;Mark J. Petrie,&nbsp;Todd A. Sanders,&nbsp;Mitch D. Weegman","doi":"10.1002/eap.70067","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/eap.70067","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Joint estimation of demographic rates and population size has become an essential tool in ecology because it enables evaluating mechanisms for population change and testing hypotheses about drivers of demography in a single modeling framework. This approach provides a comprehensive perspective on population dynamics and how animal populations will respond to global pressures in future years. However, long-term data for such analyses are often limited in quantity and quality. We developed an integrated population model combining data on demography and population size from nine different sources to understand the population ecology of the lesser snow goose (<i>Anser caerulescens caerulescens</i>) in the Pacific Flyway in North America from 1970 to 2022. We divided the flyway population into Wrangel Island and Western Arctic subpopulations and assessed demographic mechanisms for population change and environmental and anthropogenic drivers that influenced demography. During 1970–2022, the estimated spring population of snow geese in the Pacific Flyway increased from ~300,000 to ~2,300,000. Short-term changes in population growth rate were primarily driven by changes in productivity in the Western Arctic and productivity and immigration in Wrangel Island. Changes in hunting and natural mortality had less influence on short-term but likely contributed to the pronounced long-term population growth. Early snowmelt positively influenced per capita productivity in both regions, and warm, rainy weather during the non-breeding season was associated with high per capita productivity in the Western Arctic. In the Western Arctic, per capita productivity was negatively associated with population size, and adult natural mortality was positively associated with population size, indicating density-dependent regulation in this subpopulation. In Wrangel Island, warm weather in early fall decreased juvenile natural mortality. Our results demonstrate that per capita productivity and immigration, rather than adult survival, were the primary mechanisms of short-term population change in this long-lived species. Our results also indicate that environmental conditions and density-dependent effects can impact population dynamics more than harvest, even for a long-lived, commonly harvested species. We demonstrate that a warming climate can have multiple effects on demography, emphasizing the importance of assessing a variety of spatial and temporal factors when predicting how populations might respond to large-scale environmental changes. This emphasizes the importance of conservation plans that consider these environmental drivers, although this may complicate direct management of such populations.</p>","PeriodicalId":55168,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Applications","volume":"35 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2025-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/eap.70067","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144550909","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}