The Experts below are selected from a list of 1830 Experts worldwide ranked by ideXlab platform
D Kingdom - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Disturbance Ecology of Tasmanian highland grassland — an overview and implications for conservation management
Papers and Proceedings of the Royal Society of Tasmania, 2020Co-Authors: S Leonard, D KingdomAbstract:Active manipulation of Disturbances such as fire and grazing is often necessary to maintain or enhance biodiversity values in grasslands. However in many instances information is lacking on the Disturbance regimes most likely to achieve conservation aims. This paper provides an overview of the effects of fire and grazing in Tasmanian highland grasslands, and the implications of these for conservation management of this vegetation. In Tasmania, highland grassland is defined as occurring above 600 m above sea level. The vegetation is typically dominated by species of Poa. Highland grassland is grazed by a suite of native herbivores and has a history of stock grazing, which continues at some sites of high biodiversity value. There is evidence that Indigenous Tasmanians regularly burnt highland grasslands and that Indigenous burning was instrumental in maintaining grassland at sites that otherwise would be forest. For highland grasslands below 1000 m asl, a reduction in the biomass of dominant grasses through Disturbance is necessary in order to maintain plant species diversity. The use of periodic fire, together with native grazing, is likely to be beneficial in this regard. The combination of fire and grazing is also likely to prevent woody plant invasion and maintain vegetation structural heterogeneity. The near ubiquity of native grazing species means there is no ecological imperative for stock grazing. Low productivity of grasslands occurring above 1000 m means that competitive exclusion of interstitial species by grasses is unlikely and therefore active application of Disturbance as a management tool will rarely, if ever be necessary. Disturbance management should be accompanied by a well-designed monitoring program and regular review of the management strategy
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Disturbance Ecology of tasmanian highland grassland an overview and implications for conservation management
Papers and Proceedings of the Royal Society of Tasmania, 2017Co-Authors: S Leonard, D KingdomAbstract:Active manipulation of Disturbances such as fire and grazing is often necessary to maintain or enhance biodiversity values in grasslands. However in many instances information is lacking on the Disturbance regimes most likely to achieve conservation aims. This paper provides an overview of the effects of fire and grazing in Tasmanian highland grasslands, and the implications of these for conservation management of this vegetation. In Tasmania, highland grassland is defined as occurring above 600 m above sea level. The vegetation is typically dominated by species of Poa. Highland grassland is grazed by a suite of native herbivores and has a history of stock grazing, which continues at some sites of high biodiversity value. There is evidence that Indigenous Tasmanians regularly burnt highland grasslands and that Indigenous burning was instrumental in maintaining grassland at sites that otherwise would be forest. For highland grasslands below 1000 m asl, a reduction in the biomass of dominant grasses through Disturbance is necessary in order to maintain plant species diversity. The use of periodic fire, together with native grazing, is likely to be beneficial in this regard. The combination of fire and grazing is also likely to prevent woody plant invasion and maintain vegetation structural heterogeneity. The near ubiquity of native grazing species means there is no ecological imperative for stock grazing. Low productivity of grasslands occurring above 1000 m means that competitive exclusion of interstitial species by grasses is unlikely and therefore active application of Disturbance as a management tool will rarely, if ever be necessary. Disturbance management should be accompanied by a well-designed monitoring program and regular review of the management strategy
Erica A Newman - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Disturbance Ecology in the anthropocene
Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 2019Co-Authors: Erica A NewmanAbstract:With the accumulating evidence of changing Disturbance regimes becoming increasingly obvious, there is potential for Disturbance Ecology to become the most valuable lens through which climate-related Disturbance events are interpreted. In this paper, I revisit some of the central themes of Disturbance Ecology and argue that the knowledge established in the field of Disturbance Ecology continues to be relevant to ecosystem management, even with rapid changes to Disturbance regimes and changing Disturbance types in local ecosystems. Disturbance Ecology has been tremendously successful over the past several decades at elucidating the interactions between Disturbances, biodiversity, and ecosystems, and this knowledge can be leveraged in different contexts. Primarily, management in changing and uncertain conditions should be focused primarily on the long-term persistence of that native biodiversity which has evolved within the local Disturbance regime, and is likely to go extinct with rapid changes to Disturbance intensity, frequency, and type. Where possible, conserving aspects of natural Disturbance regimes will be vital to preserving functioning ecosystems and to that native biodiversity that requires Disturbance for its continued existence, though these situations may become more limited over time. Finally, scientists must actively propose management policies that incorporates knowledge of Disturbance Ecology. Successful policies regarding changing Disturbance regimes for biodiversity will not merely be reactive, and will recognize that for natural ecosystems as for human society, not all desired outcomes are simultaneously possible.
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Disturbance macroEcology integrating Disturbance Ecology and macroEcology with different age post fire stands of a closed cone pine forest
bioRxiv, 2018Co-Authors: Erica A Newman, Max A. Moritz, M Wilber, Karen E Kopper, Donald A Falk, Donald Mckenzie, John HarteAbstract:Abstract Macroecological studies have generally restricted their scope to relatively steady-state systems, and as a result, how biodiversity and abundance metrics are expected to scale in Disturbance-dependent ecosystems is unknown. We examine macroecological patterns in a fire-dependent forest of Bishop pine (Pinus muricata). We target two different-aged stands in a stand-replacing fire regime, one a characteristically mature stand with a diverse understory, and one more recently disturbed by a stand-replacing fire (17 years prior to measurement). We compare the stands using macroecological metrics of species richness, abundance and spatial distributions that are predicted by the Maximum Entropy Theory of Ecology (METE), an information-entropy based theory that has proven highly successful in predicting macroecological metrics across a wide variety of systems and taxa. Ecological patterns in the mature stand more closely match METE predictions than do data from the recently disturbed stand. This suggests METE’s predictions are more robust in late-successional, slowly changing, or steady-state systems than those in rapid flux with respect to species composition, abundances, and organisms’ sizes. Our findings highlight the need for a macroecological theory that incorporates natural Disturbance and other ecological perturbations into its predictive capabilities, because most natural systems are not in a steady state.
Ashley Shade - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Towards a unifying framework of Disturbance Ecology through crowdsourced science
2020Co-Authors: Emily B. Graham, Colin Averill, Ben Bond-lamberty, Joseph E. Knelman, Stefan Krause, Ariane L. Peralta, Ashley Shade, A. Peyton Smith, Susan Cheng, Nicolas FaninAbstract:Disturbances fundamentally alter ecosystem functions; yet predicting the impacts of Disturbances remains a key scientific challenge. The study of Disturbances is ubiquitous across almost all ecological disciplines, yet varying terminology and methodologies have led to the lack of an agreed upon, cross-disciplinary foundation for discussing and quantifying the complexity of Disturbances. This shortcoming presents an increasingly urgent challenge due to accelerating global change and the threat of interacting Disturbances that can further destabilize ecosystem responses. By harvesting the ‘swarm intelligence’ of an interdisciplinary cohort of contributors spanning 42 institutions across 15 countries, we propose a pathway towards a new conceptual model of ecological Disturbances. Together we identify an essential limitation in Disturbance Ecology––that the word ‘Disturbance’ is used interchangeably to refer to both the events that cause and the consequences of ecological change, despite fundamental distinctions between the two meanings. We develop a generalized framework of ecosystem Disturbances to reconcile this limitation and enable examination of the drivers and impacts of Disturbances simultaneously. Our proposed framework puts forth a well-defined lexicon for understanding Disturbance across perspectives and scales, thereby increasing the interoperability of research across scientific domains. We also recommend minimum reporting standards that detail the magnitude, duration, and rate of change of driver and response variables, regardless of scale. Importantly, while we address some challenges of Disturbance research here, developments in technology, methodology, and cross-disciplinary approaches are necessary to close knowledge gaps. We therefore propose four future directions to advance our interdisciplinary understanding of Disturbances and their social-ecological impacts: integrating across ecological scales, understanding Disturbance interactions, establishing baselines and trajectories, and developing process-based models and ecological forecasting initiatives. Our experience through this process motivates us to encourage the wider scientific community to continue to explore new approaches for leveraging Open Science principles in generating creative and multidisciplinary ideas.
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Dormancy dynamics and dispersal contribute to soil microbiome resilience.
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 2020Co-Authors: Jackson W. Sorensen, Ashley ShadeAbstract:In Disturbance Ecology, stability is composed of resistance to change and resilience towards recovery after the Disturbance subsides. Two key microbial mechanisms that can support microbiome stabil...
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Dormancy dynamics and dispersal contribute to soil microbiome resilience
bioRxiv, 2019Co-Authors: Jackson W. Sorensen, Ashley ShadeAbstract:In Disturbance Ecology, stability is composed of resistance to change and resilience towards recovery after the Disturbance subsides. Two key microbial mechanisms that can support microbiome stability include dormancy and dispersal. Specifically, microbial populations that are sensitive to Disturbance can be re-seeded by local dormant pools of viable and reactivated cells, or by immigrants dispersed from regional metacommunities. However, it is difficult to quantify the contributions of these mechanisms to stability without, first, distinguishing the active from inactive membership, and, second, distinguishing the populations recovered by local resuscitation from those recovered by dispersed immigrants. Here, we investigate the contributions of dormancy dynamics (activation and inactivation), and dispersal to soil microbial community resistance and resilience. We designed a replicated, 45-week time-series experiment to quantify the responses of the active soil microbial community to a thermal press Disturbance, including control mesocosms, disturbed mesocosms without dispersal, and disturbed mesocosms with dispersal after the release of the stressor. Communities were sensitive within one week of warming. Though the disturbed mesocosms did not fully recover within 29 weeks, resuscitation of thermotolerant taxa was key for community transition during the press, and both resuscitation of opportunistic taxa and immigration contributed to community resilience. Also, mesocosms with dispersal were more resilient than mesocosms without. This work advances the mechanistic understanding of how microbiomes respond to Disturbances in their environment.
Maike Schaefer - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Ecological theory meets soil ecotoxicology: Challenge and chance.
Basic and Applied Ecology, 2008Co-Authors: Juliane Filser, Hartmut Koehler, Andrea Ruf, Joerg Rombke, Andreas Prinzing, Maike SchaeferAbstract:The degradation of soils due to various anthropogenic stress factors is alarming. Although chemicals are a major reason for soil degradation, most ecologists are not interested in studying such effects. We try to wake their interest by addressing a number of unsolved soil ecotoxicological problems that are related to Disturbance Ecology, biodiversity, ecosystem functioning and modelling. Features distinguishing chemical from natural stress render promising new aspects in Disturbance Ecology. Ecotoxicological studies are ideal models of Disturbance, particularly regarding frequency, intensity or multitude of stress. Patterns of secondary succession after a major chemical damage can directly be related to the intermediate Disturbance hypothesis. More knowledge on altered life history patterns following stress could support both evolutionary Ecology and risk assessment. We raise the question if inherent resource competition makes communities more vulnerable to stress. Three aspects of ecotoxicological risk assessment are introduced: (1) exposure and bioavailability, which is directly connected to environmental heterogeneity; (2) tests on ecosystem functioning, suffering from major drawbacks; and (3) modelling. Here, promising approaches exist but need substantial input for being applicable to soils. Ecological modelling should put more emphasis on simulating both natural and chemical Disturbances, including behavioural aspects and environmental variability. Finally, research needs for ecological risk assessment in soils are derived such as a simple system to assess the impact of chemicals on soil biodiversity, the inclusion of behavioural changes of keystone species or the consideration of density-dependent effects. Common research efforts of basic ecologists and soil ecotoxicologists could render a lot of mutual benefits.
Maria A Rodrigo - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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ramp Disturbance ramp response a simple model for wetland Disturbance Ecology
Marine and Freshwater Research, 2004Co-Authors: David G Angeler, Maria A RodrigoAbstract:In the present study, we report on the responses of the picoplanktonic cyanoprokaryote Synechococcus sp. to a summer drawdown in a Mediterranean floodplain wetland, using water level decrease as a measure of the gradual increase of Disturbance over time, defined as a ramp Disturbance. Simulating the gradual confinement of fish biomass during the drought event in an enclosure study, we found that the density of Synechococcus did not change significantly in response to fish-mediated changes in trophic state and food web compared with a fishless control. Instead, we observed a positive correlation of water levels and Synechococcus abundance in all enclosures, indicative of a ramp response to the ramp Disturbance. Planktonic organisms, although largely neglected by wetland scientists, seem to be very useful model organisms for identifying cause–effect mechanisms in wetland Disturbance Ecology.
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Ramp Disturbance–ramp response: a simple model for wetland Disturbance Ecology
Marine and Freshwater Research, 2004Co-Authors: David G Angeler, Maria A RodrigoAbstract:In the present study, we report on the responses of the picoplanktonic cyanoprokaryote Synechococcus sp. to a summer drawdown in a Mediterranean floodplain wetland, using water level decrease as a measure of the gradual increase of Disturbance over time, defined as a ramp Disturbance. Simulating the gradual confinement of fish biomass during the drought event in an enclosure study, we found that the density of Synechococcus did not change significantly in response to fish-mediated changes in trophic state and food web compared with a fishless control. Instead, we observed a positive correlation of water levels and Synechococcus abundance in all enclosures, indicative of a ramp response to the ramp Disturbance. Planktonic organisms, although largely neglected by wetland scientists, seem to be very useful model organisms for identifying cause–effect mechanisms in wetland Disturbance Ecology.