Application of a field ecological study to optimize adaptive management for invasive plant eradication

A population of barbed goatgrass (Aegilops triuncialis), an annual grass native to the Mediterranean, was discovered in southern California in 2006, over 250 km from the nearest known population, and targeted for eradication. This species forms dense monocultures and is difficult to manage because unlike most non-native annual grasses in California's annual grasslands it has dormant seed and can reestablish from the seed bank. Seed longevity in the field is unknown. Initial spot herbicide treatments were meant to minimize pesticide use while providing for eradication. Although plant density was greatly reduced, detectability declined and after initial population reductions the population rebounded. In 2011, an adaptive management program was designed to eradicate this population while minimizing long-term costs and herbicide use. We addressed the key data gap of seed longevity with a buried seed study running parallel to herbicide applications and focused surveys for any undetected plants nearby. We present our adaptive management program, data on population change under spot treatments, and preliminary results from our buried seed study. For seed collected in both 2011 and 2012, our population had lower dormancy than the Northern California populations. We found lower seed viability than expected (68% to 79%). We found seed longevity declined with depth of burial. Herbicide treatments will continue until seed bank has been exhausted.

According to its proponents, ecosystem-based management (EBM) should yield plans that are rooted in integrative scientific assessments, protective of ecological elements and processes, and capable of adjusting to new information over time. But skeptics worry that EBM will not deliver on its promise and instead will draw scarce resources away from the tools—such as lawsuits, administrative appeals, and public relations campaigns—on which environmentalists historically have relied. This project systematically compares EBM with more conventional approaches to protecting large-scale ecosystems, seeking to isolate the political influences that contribute to more or less environmentally protective outcomes. I conclude that, although EBM generates important environmental benefits, its results often fall short of expectations. This is partly because, in order to achieve consensus, planners agree to pursue environmental and economic goals simultaneously. To this end, they reframe problems in ways that enable them to avoid policies that would impose short-run costs on development interests; they also adopt technology- and management-intensive solutions that impose substantial risk on the environment. Because the resulting plans are environmentally risk-tolerant and provide inadequate funding for monitoring and data analysis, a rhetorical commitment to adaptive management is unlikely to translate into genuine learning from experience.

A diversity of aquatic organisms inhabit mangrove habitats, which are becoming imperiled due to anthropogenic influences. Many mangroves are exposed to wastewater treatment plant effluents, potentially subjecting organisms to endocrine disrupting compounds (EDCs) such as ethinyl estradiol (EE2). The mangrove rivulus (Kryptolebias marmoratus) thrives in mangroves and is an excellent model organism in which to assess anthropogenic effects at the organismal level. Populations consist of self-fertilizing hermaphrodites with males being quite rare. Studies have shown male fish exposed to EDCs in freshwater habitats show a steep drop in sex hormones. We hypothesized that individuals exposed to EE2 would exhibit changes in estradiol (E2) and 11-ketotestosterone (KT; a fish androgen). We used 20 individuals (10 hermaphrodite, 10 male) from an isogenic lineage, SSH (Melbourne Beach, FL). They were kept in 500 ml glass jars with 25 ppt salt water for 30 d. Each day the water was changed and half received a dose of 4 ng/L EE2 and the other half received vehicle. At 30 d we collected waterborne hormone samples and excised gonads for histological analyses. Exposed males showed a decrease in KT while exposed hermaphrodites exhibited no change. Both sexes showed a drop in E2 when exposed. Our findings provide insights into how EDCs might disrupt reproduction in fishes and raise questions concerning the extent of exposure and the mechanisms driving EDC accumulation in mangrove ecosystems.

Oil palm expansion in Indonesia has received global attention over the last few decades as a result of its impact on the environment and human livelihoods. Large-scale industrial expansion of oil palm has driven most of the landscape and societal changes of this agricultural system but the proportion of smallholder farmers is rising rapidly in Indonesia. Here, I present recent work on smallholder oil palm production systems, their compliance with sustainability standards, and compare their environmental impact with other sectors of the industry, namely private enterprises and state-owned plantations. To understand future environmental and socioeconomic trade-offs associated with smallholder oil palm expansion, I conducted a spatially explicit scenario analysis of different pathways of smallholder oil palm expansion in Indonesia and discuss the various conservation and development implications of each scenario.

Climate change is one of the greatest threats facing humanity. Opinion polls suggest that levels of public awareness and risk perception vary worldwide, yet little is known on the underlying correlative structure of climate change perceptions. Here, using a global dataset, we explore the influence of socio-demographic, beliefs, and opinions in predicting public climate change perceptions. Globally, we find strong geographic trends and that education level and cause of global warming are key in classifying an individual's level of awareness and concern, respectively. However, modeling nations separately, we uncover complex interactions and global disparities in their correlative structures. Specifically, education is the strongest predictor of awareness outside of Europe, North America and Australia. Perceived cause of global warming is most critical when predicting threat perception in only Europe and Latin America whereas local temperature change perception is most vital in African and Asian countries. Analyzing the multi-dimensional structure of predictors of threat perception, we show that nations hardly cluster according to their geographic region and their dissimilarities are only weakly explained by national economic and ecological indicators. Overall, our results suggests that national, and international discourses must consider the correlates of public climate change perceptions if we want to build global consensus and collectively respond to this global issue.

Monitoring of environmental programs is much advocated but rarely practised over sufficiently long time frames to provide data to improve future design. An alternative explored in this paper is retrospective evaluation. A series of retrospective evaluations of environmental programs targeting water quality and vegetation extent and condition suggested that a mixture of quantitative and qualitative methods applied at three different scales can be used to measure change in environmental condition and infer cause, providing assessment of the effectiveness of interventions. Landscape scale analysis using air photos is a readily available method of establishing change in vegetation extent, while space-for-time substitution was found to be an effective way to establish relationships between land use and water quality in the absence of longitudinal data. Property scale analysis through workshops with land owners and local experts was found to be a rapid way of attributing observed change between natural and human influence that can be subsequently tested through landholder surveys and interviews. Site scale modelling using Bayesian Belief Networks or State-and-Transition models that combine empirical data, landholder experience and expert opinion provide approaches to defining current and feasible future states of target ecosystems and a means of participatory goal setting in relation private land conservation. We conclude by discussing the implications of these results for conservation opportunity assessment.

For over four decades, NASA has used the vantage point of space to observe Earth. The NASA Earth Science Division includes a Biodiversity program, a basic research program using satellite and airborne remote sensing technology to detect and understand patterns of biodiversity and characterize how they are changing through time. This program is complemented by the division's Ecological Forecasting program, an applications program that promotes the use of NASA observations, models, and scientific results for societal benefit by transitioning tools and applications to use by conservation partners. Conservation biology is a key focus for both the Biodiversity and Ecological Forecasting programs. Here, we describe these two programs, outline their aims, and review the solicitation and selection processes that support research and applications projects relevant to conservation biology. Additionally, we highlight recently-launched and soon-to-be launched NASA satellite missions that will contribute to the next generation of observations that advance conservation science and practice. We will also provide examples of how funded research contributes to the conservation community. Finally, we identify resources for obtaining NASA datasets, which are all freely available, as well as NASA visualizations, which are showcased via the NASA hyperwall in the ICCB exhibit area.

The WILD LEO Project is an attempt to provide anti-poaching teams with the technology and training necessary to undertake advanced intelligence gathering and analysis. The Wildlife Intelligence and Leadership Development (WILD) training protocols were specifically developed for Law Enforcement Officers (LEOs) in Queen Elizabeth Protected Area, Uganda. The WILD LEO team consists of foot patrol rangers, crime analysts, prosecutors and commanders. Using digital cameras with integrated GPS units, the foot patrol rangers are creating a spatially referenced, photographic database of poaching activity. The crime analysts use these photos to prepare patrol coverage maps and maps of illegal activity to help commanders make informed deployment decisions. The georeferenced photos are also used by the prosecution team as courtroom evidence to prove poachers were operating inside the protected area. By design, The WILD LEO Project utilizes low-cost technology and open source software to ensure sustainability in law enforcement operations with limited budgets. This presentation will discuss the project’s implementation, initial findings and potential for expansion within and beyond Uganda.

Habitat fragmentation and invasion of alien species are among the largest threats to biodiversity worldwide. Habitat fragmentation and invasions may be spatially autocorrelated but the relative effects of both phenomena on native biodiversity and ecosystems services are unknown. The aim of this study was to assess the relative effects of habitat fragmentation (habitat patch size and its isolation) and invasion (presence of invasive plant Solidago spp.) on species richness of native plants and pollinators (wild bees, hoverflies, butterflies) inhabiting fallow lands in the agricultural landscape of Poland. Using GIS we chose habitat patches that ranged in size between 0.5 ha and 4 ha and isolation between 25 m and 300 m. The habitat patches were divided into two categories: invaded and non-invaded by alien plant. We found that in smaller, more isolated habitat patches invasion of alien species was rare in comparison with larger and less distanced habitat patches. Likewise, plant and pollinator species richness was larger in more distanced non-invaded habitat patches than in invaded patches which were not isolated from each other. Our results clearly show that when the habitat fragmentation and invasion of alien species co-occur in one area the latter has much stronger negative effect on biodiversity and ecosystem services. Thus, in some circumstances the habitat patch isolation may prevent spread of invasive alien species.

Australian stock routes form a vast network of corridors, containing some of the best examples of threatened woodland communities. Despite their conservation value, some of these remnants may now be sold. Given both the ready availability of wildlife atlas data, and the growing use of presence-only methods for species distribution modelling, we hoped to determine whether use of atlas data alone could effectively identify which stock routes should be prioritised for protection. We constructed two sets of habitat maps for 30 species (ten birds, ten microbats, and ten bees) for a 15000km2 region. The first set of habitat maps was based on generalised linear models of data collected during targeted surveys. The second set was generated using presence-only wildlife atlas data in MaxEnt. We then used Zonation to see which portions of the landscape, and which routes specifically, should receive priority for protection for each taxonomic group. There was often direct conflict between habitat maps generated based on survey vs atlas data for individual species, and there was also little congruence in priority areas identified for the different taxonomic groups. Consideration of survey and atlas habitat maps together greatly improved the generality of priority areas for all groups. We demonstrate that even small investments for additional surveys in less-visited areas, and consideration of less-conspicuous groups, can improve the adequacy of conservation planning for a range of taxa.

Urban sustainability research seeks to improve the livability of our cities through the exploration of the flows and fluxes of materials in urban ecosystems. Several fluxes and flows occur in private yards; thus yards provide an opportunity for households to put into practice the reality that ‘sustainability begins at home’. Individual household-level stewardship decisions might scale up and improve city-level and even regional sustainability. When backyard stewardship closely mimics the wildlands, these ‘sustainable yards’ have the potential to alleviate the impacts of habitat loss on urban bird diversity. Identifying ways to strengthen stewardship participation becomes necessary for effective bird conservation efforts. Guidelines exist for designs and management of sustainable yards, and a growing body of research documents how birds and other wildlife respond to backyard habitats. However, neither has yet spurred a national movement, nor do we fully understand household attitudes towards urban wildlife and preferences for sustainable yards. We highlight strategies for communicating the importance of urban wildlife, identify new conservation partners for large-scale management of private property, suggest iterative steps urban stewards can practice for immediate positive results, and emphasize the importance of scientific engagement with the public. Yards that support biodiversity have an important role to play in our efforts to improve the sustainability of our cities.

Leslie will provide closing remarks for the symposium, highlighting the connections among the themes addressed by the earlier speakers. To help guide the discussion to follow, Leslie, an ecologist and conservation scientist with substantial experience in interdisciplinary investigations of conservation and management, will introduce a framework for human-environment scholarship that researchers and practitioners alike may use to develop more effective collaborations and navigate the diverse approaches are used to investigate the processes and impacts of ecosystem-based approaches.

Ecotoxicology is the science that studies exposure, fate and adverse effects of chemical pollutants on populations, communities and ecosystems. This discipline goes beyond measuring chemical concentrations in the environment and conduct of standardized toxicity tests. A more holistic view of the fate and effects of contaminants is essential. Interrelationships among pollutants, soil and water properties, atmospheric conditions, habitat quality, food availability, infectious diseases, predator prey relationships, and other complexities of life in both natural and human-dominated ecosystems are required to evaluate sustainability of ecosystem health and services. The technologies and processes that have brought us advances in health care, abundant and nutritious food, modern transportation, communication, entertainment, and comfort have also affected our environment. Chemical hazard and risk are regulated to some degree by governmental regulations and international treaties. Although such controls have afforded some protection, pollutants continue to impact biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. Often, ecological problems associated with contaminants have been of such scale that they have threatened long-term survival of sensitive species. In this presentation, we focus on the complexity of assessing the effects of toxicants, including their indirect effects and interactions in concert with the multiple anthropogenic stressors of today’s world.

Scientists, resource managers, and conservationists face an ever-present challenge of collecting data of sufficient rigor that it can be used to inform management with confidence. Enabling electronic data collection using a new tool known as WhaleSpotter, data collection using opportunistic platforms becomes much easier. Caribbean Regional Association of Whale and Dolphin Watching Operators has implemented a unique cloud-based data collection program affording the opportunity to collaborate on cetacean sightings across the region. With an extensive network of members through more than ten islands in the Caribbean region, Caribwhale works to promote conservation education, implements operator training and certification programs to ensure a high caliber among its members. Collaborations have led to scientific publications, reports, and innovative projects advancing regional conservation. Caribwhale's sighting database tool allows operators to document sightings during whale watch excursions, and collaborate on photo-identification. This unique collaboration has resulted in filling in knowledge gaps in species distribution and inter-island movements. The successful collaboration could not have been achieved without the efforts of stakeholders from diverse disciplines. Partners from academia, private-sector businesses, and non-government organizations are working together to fill in critical knowledge gaps of cetacean distribution.

Canada’s boreal forest region, which supports hundreds of Aboriginal communities, is one of the last places on earth that retains significant, vast ecosystems that have not been touched by large-scale industrial development. This combination presents a special opportunity found in few other regions on earth to apply this kind of truly balanced approach to sustainable development. Already there are a great many First Nations and Inuit governments in partnership with provincial and municipal governments, corporations, and other entities that have designed and implemented initiatives that are positive models of responsible and sustainable development. For example, both the Ontario and Quebec governments have pledged to balance protection of tens of millions of acres of northern lands with mining, forestry and other industrial land-uses that use leading edge environmental and social standards. First Nations like the Labrador Innu, Poplar River of Manitoba, and the Deh Cho of the Northwest Territories are some among many that have completed comprehensive land-use plans that provide visions to provide a long-term sustainable future for their communities and the environment in which they live. In this presentation I will describe some of the best examples of initiatives from across Canada’s boreal forest region that apply true sustainable development principles.