Mapping habitat suitability for at‐risk plant species and its implications for restoration and reintroduction

Questad, Erin J.; Kellner, James R.; Kinney, Kealoha M.; Cordell, Susan; Asner, Gregory P.; Thaxton, Jarrod M.; Diep, Jennifer; Uowolo, Amanda; Brooks, Sam; Inman-Narahari, Nikhil; Evans, Steven A.; Tucker, Brian

doi:10.1890/13-0775.1

Cited by 47 publications

(63 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…These studies show positive effects of biotic interactions with facilitation (Perea and Gil 2014;Soliveres et al 2014), habitat complexity associated with biological legacies (Stanturf et al 2014), or micro-topography (Questad et al 2014). This knowledge is essential to design more efficient restoration projects with reduced inputs.…”

Section: Producing Plant Materials To Resist Stress Drivers Of Seedlmentioning

confidence: 98%

Restoring forests: What constitutes success in the twenty-first century?

et al. 2015

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Forest loss and degradation is occurring at high rates but humankind is experiencing historical momentum that favors forest restoration. Approaches to restoration may follow various paradigms depending on stakeholder objectives, regional climate, or the degree of site degradation. The vast amount of land requiring restoration implies the need for spatial prioritization of restoration efforts according to cost-benefit analyses that include ecological risks. To design resistant and resilient ecosystems that can adapt to emerging circumstances, an adaptive management approach is needed. Global change, in particular, imparts a high degree of uncertainty about the future ecological and societal conditions of forest ecosystems to be restored, as well as their desired goods and services. We must also reconsider the suite of species incorporated into restoration with the aim of & Douglass F. Jacobs

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Section: Producing Plant Materials To Resist Stress Drivers Of Seedlmentioning

confidence: 98%

Restoring forests: What constitutes success in the twenty-first century?

et al. 2015

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“…While the datasets required to study occupancy at large spatial scales are readily available through remote sensing, the environment experienced by individual plants and animals is usually quite localized and may depend on idiosyncratic features not apparent in remotely sensed imagery [16]. Species may occupy sites that at a landscape scale appear unsuitable, but at fine scales contain topographic features that produce microclimates vastly different from the regional average and fall well within physiological requirements.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While the software used in this study (Photoscan) is a commercial product, with the use of free software, such as visualSfM, it is now feasible to completely integrate organism and habitat mapping for the price of a suitable camera. Data collected at this resolution are much closer to the scale that is relevant to behavioral choices or dispersal limitations of individual organisms than most datasets currently being used in either habitat suitability or range modeling [16]. The ability to characterize micro-habitat, which can be highly heterogeneous at very small spatial scales, will provide ecologists a much better understanding of the niche requirements of a species.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…LiDAR technology is capable of recording high-resolution 3D landscape structure [15] and it has been shown that such high resolution information on vertical structure can improve habitat suitability modeling studies [12,16,17], but LiDAR surveys entail equipment costs and often flight times that can be economically or logistically prohibitive. Structure-from-Motion (SfM), a computer vision technique, can be used to rapidly and economically produce detailed 3D information on the structure of the landscape [18] and simultaneously record the location of organisms within that landscape.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Ultra-Fine Scale Spatially-Integrated Mapping of Habitat and Occupancy Using Structure-From-Motion

McDowall

Lynch

2017

PLoS ONE

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Organisms respond to and often simultaneously modify their environment. While these interactions are apparent at the landscape extent, the driving mechanisms often occur at very fine spatial scales. Structure-from-Motion (SfM), a computer vision technique, allows the simultaneous mapping of organisms and fine scale habitat, and will greatly improve our understanding of habitat suitability, ecophysiology, and the bi-directional relationship between geomorphology and habitat use. SfM can be used to create high-resolution (centimeter-scale) three-dimensional (3D) habitat models at low cost. These models can capture the abiotic conditions formed by terrain and simultaneously record the position of individual organisms within that terrain. While coloniality is common in seabird species, we have a poor understanding of the extent to which dense breeding aggregations are driven by fine-scale active aggregation or limited suitable habitat. We demonstrate the use of SfM for fine-scale habitat suitability by reconstructing the locations of nests in a gentoo penguin colony and fitting models that explicitly account for conspecific attraction. The resulting digital elevation models (DEMs) are used as covariates in an inhomogeneous hybrid point process model. We find that gentoo penguin nest site selection is a function of the topography of the landscape, but that nests are far more aggregated than would be expected based on terrain alone, suggesting a strong role of behavioral aggregation in driving coloniality in this species. This integrated mapping of organisms and fine scale habitat will greatly improve our understanding of fine-scale habitat suitability, ecophysiology, and the complex bi-directional relationship between geomorphology and habitat use.

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“…This process of using a biophysical perspective afforded by high-resolution remote sensing can contribute to immediate and long term restoration planning. Questad et al (2014) developed a technique to use remote sensing to identify areas of high suitability in a dry ecosystem where water is limiting to growth and desiccating winds reduce plant productivity and survival. In a subalpine dry site (\400 mm annual precipitation) on Hawai'i Island, they found that environmental growing conditions were superior on lee and toe slopes and that common and some at-risk native plants had higher biomass and were more abundant on these sheltered sites.…”

Section: Use Of Remote Sensing To Select Favorable Restoration Sitesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Future directions for forest restoration in Hawai‘i

et al. 2015

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Hawai'i has served as a model system for studies of nutrient cycling and conservation biology. The islands may also become a laboratory for exploring new approaches to forest restoration because of a common history of degradation and the growing number of restoration projects undertaken. Approximately half of the native ecosystems of Hawai'i have been converted to non-native conditions. Many restoration projects have focused on intensively managed out plantings of native plants with emphasis on threatened and endangered species. While these projects have been effective in stabilizing plant populations, this model is often prohibitively expensive for restoration at the scale needed to protect watersheds and provide habitat for rare bird species. Here we suggest ways of rethinking ecological restoration that are applicable across the tropics, particularly on islands and fire-prone grasslands. First, we suggest making use of nonnative, non-invasive species to help reclaim degraded or invaded sites or as long-term components of planned restoration outcomes. Second, we suggest incorporating remote sensing techniques to refine where restoration is carried out. Finally, we suggest borrowing technologies in plant production, weed control, and site preparation from industrial forestry to lower restoration costs. These suggestions would result in ecosystems that differ from native reference systems in some cases but which could be applied to much larger areas than most current restoration efforts while providing important ecosystem services. We also stress that community involvement is key to successful restoration, as a major goal of almost all restoration projects is to re-connect the community with the forest.

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Mapping habitat suitability for at‐risk plant species and its implications for restoration and reintroduction

Cited by 47 publications

References 43 publications

Restoring forests: What constitutes success in the twenty-first century?

Restoring forests: What constitutes success in the twenty-first century?

Ultra-Fine Scale Spatially-Integrated Mapping of Habitat and Occupancy Using Structure-From-Motion

Future directions for forest restoration in Hawai‘i

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