With the accelerating pace of global change, it is imperative that we obtain rapid inventories of the status and distribution of wildlife for ecological inferences and conservation planning. To address this challenge, we launched the SNAPSHOT USA project, a collaborative survey of terrestrial wildlife populations using camera traps across the United States. For our first annual survey, we compiled data across all 50 states during a 14‐week period (17 August–24 November of 2019). We sampled wildlife at 1,509 camera trap sites from 110 camera trap arrays covering 12 different ecoregions across four development zones. This effort resulted in 166,036 unique detections of 83 species of mammals and 17 species of birds. All images were processed through the Smithsonian’s eMammal camera trap data repository and included an expert review phase to ensure taxonomic accuracy of data, resulting in each picture being reviewed at least twice. The results represent a timely and standardized camera trap survey of the United States. All of the 2019 survey data are made available herein. We are currently repeating surveys in fall 2020, opening up the opportunity to other institutions and cooperators to expand coverage of all the urban–wild gradients and ecophysiographic regions of the country. Future data will be available as the database is updated at eMammal.si.edu/snapshot‐usa, as will future data paper submissions. These data will be useful for local and macroecological research including the examination of community assembly, effects of environmental and anthropogenic landscape variables, effects of fragmentation and extinction debt dynamics, as well as species‐specific population dynamics and conservation action plans. There are no copyright restrictions; please cite this paper when using the data for publication.
Well-managed and connected protected area networks are needed to combat the 6th mass extinction, yet the implementation of plans intended to secure landscape connectivity remains insufficient. The failure to translate planning efforts into effective action (i.e., the research-implementation gap) hinders our ability to conserve biodiversity threatened by ongoing climate change and habitat fragmentation. Sustained collaboration between researchers and practitioners to co-produce conservation strategies can bridge this gap by providing end-users with implementation guidance based on legitimate, relevant, and trusted information. However, few case studies capture methods for the co-production and use of climate-wise connectivity knowledge. Here we describe the framework for sustained engagement used by a multi-jurisdictional practitioner network to co-produce climate-wise linkages for the interior coastal ranges in Northern California. We found iterative co-production shaped ecological objectives, input data, analytical methods, and implementation priorities. Stakeholders used both co-produced and local socio-ecological (e.g., development threat, management priorities) knowledge to finalize corridor implementation plans. Priority corridors afforded greater climate benefit and were more likely to connect lands managed by participant organizations. Our results demonstrate how collaborative partnerships can bridge the gap between connectivity research and implementation. Lessons learned, outcomes, and future plans provide insights to advance landscape-scale resilience to climate change.
Climate-wise connectivity is essential to provide species access to suitable habitats in the future, yet we lack a consistent means of quantifying climate adaptation benefits of habitat linkages. Species range shifts to cooler climates have been widely observed, suggesting we should protect pathways providing access to cooler locations. However, in topographically diverse regions, the effects of elevation, seasonality, and proximity to large water bodies are complex drivers of biologically relevant temperature gradients. Here, we identify potential terrestrial and riparian linkages and their cooling benefit using mid-century summer and winter temperature extremes for interior coastal ranges in Northern California. It is rare for the same area to possess both terrestrial and riparian connectivity value. Our analysis reveals distinct differences in the magnitude and orientation of cooling benefits between the summer maximum and winter minimum temperatures provided by the linkages we delineated for the area. The cooling benefits for both linkage types were maximized to the west during summer, but upslope and to the northeast during winter. The approach we employ here provides an improved method to prioritize climate-wise connectivity and promote landscape resilience for topographically diverse regions.
Species reside in dynamic environments, simultaneously experiencing variations in climatic conditions, habitat availability and quality, interspecific interactions, and anthropogenic pressures. We investigated variation in foraging ecology of the small mammal community between land-use classifications (i.e., protected national parks and unprotected lands abutting them) in Mole National Park (MNP) and Digya National Park (DNP), representing distinct ecoregions of Ghana. In 5,064 trap nights, we sampled 153 individuals of 23 species within the 2 national parks and adjacent lands outside protected boundaries to describe variation in community composition. We also used δ13 C and δ15 N isotopic ratios from fresh feces to determine main effects and interactions between land use and ecoregion on trophic structure in species and communities of small mammals. Small mammals exhibited distinct community assemblages between ecoregions (i.e., national parks): Gerbilliscus guineae, Hybomys trivirgatus, Malacomys edwardsi, Lemniscomys bellieri, L. zebra, and Taterillus gracilis were only captured in the dry savanna ecoregion of MNP. Additionally, isotopic signatures for nitrogen were significantly lower in MNP (2.83 ± 0.17‰) compared to DNP (4.97 ± 0.33‰), indicating that small mammals occupied different trophic levels between ecoregions. The most common species, Praomys daltoni exhibited variation in isotopic signatures between ecoregions and land use, with higher δ15 N found within MNP boundaries. We found no distinction in δ13 C at the community or species level within or across protected areas. Ultimately, understanding shifts in the ecology of species can inform predictions about community structure and ecosystem function under future environmental and anthropogenic scenarios.
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