Projecting current and future location, quality, and connectivity of habitat for breeding birds in the Great Basin

Fleishman, Erica; Thomson, James Robertson; Kalies, Elizabeth L.; Dickson, Brett G.; Dobkin, David S.; Leu, Matthias

doi:10.1890/es13-00387.1

Cited by 26 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 44 publications

(36 reference statements)

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“…The persistence of a species is related to its local abundance, population growth, and their geographic distributions (Zuckerberg et al 2009;Fleishman et al 2014), thus continued monitoring and more detailed data collection is likely necessary for black rails and other marsh birds in this dynamic ecosystem.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Managed Habitats Increase Occupancy of Black Rails (Laterallus jamaicensis) and May Buffer Impacts from Sea Level Rise

Roach

Barrett

2015

Wetlands

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Global wetland degradation and loss are occurring at a rapid rate, and in the United States over 50 % of wetlands in the lower 48 states have been altered since European settlement. In some cases, wetlands that were historically transformed for agriculture are now managed as wetland habitat. We conducted occupancy surveys for black rails (Laterallus jamaicensis) in managed and unmanaged areas of coastal South Carolina. We modeled landscape and local variables potentially influencing black rail occupancy and we assessed whether these habitat associations indicated vulnerability following expected alterations from sea level rise. Black rails occupied 17 of 344 surveyed sites. Landscape factors had the strongest influence on black rail occupancy. Occupancy was associated with impounded marshes, decreasing distance to forest, and greater proportion of marsh landscape within a 200 m buffer. We mapped parameters from our top model to predict the amount of current and future suitable habitat under various sea level rise scenarios at Bear Island Wildlife Management Area, a black rail hotspot. Suitable habitat decreases in tidal marshes but increases in impounded areas. The current use of impoundments by black rails could represent a new management strategy for mitigating the loss of black rail habitat.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Managed Habitats Increase Occupancy of Black Rails (Laterallus jamaicensis) and May Buffer Impacts from Sea Level Rise

Roach

Barrett

2015

Wetlands

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“…Finally, model inferences and predictions could be biased as a result of our inability to account for imperfect detection (Lahoz-Monfort et al 2014). Boosted regression trees have been shown to outperform modeling frameworks that account for imperfect detection (e.g., hierarchical Bayesian models; Fleishman et al 2014). Brook trout detection has also been shown to be generally high and consistent throughout the study region at the reach scale (i.e., 100-1000 km: DeWeber and Wagner 2015).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conservation planning at the intersection of landscape and climate change: brook trout in the Chesapeake Bay watershed

2019

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We developed a multi‐scale conservation planning framework for brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis) within the Chesapeake Bay watershed that incorporates both land use and climate stressors. Our specific objectives were to (1) construct a continuous spatial model of brook trout distribution and habitat quality at the stream reach scale; (2) characterize brook trout vulnerability to climate change under a range of future climate scenarios; and (3) identify multi‐scale restoration and protection priorities for brook trout across the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Boosted regression tree analysis predicted brook trout occurrence at the stream reach scale with a high degree of accuracy (CV AUC = 0.92) as a function of both natural (e.g., water temperature and precipitation) and anthropogenic (e.g., agriculture and urban development) landscape and climatic attributes. Current land use activities result in a predicted loss of occurrence in over 11,000 stream segments (40% of suitable habitat) and account for over 15,000 km (45% of current value) of lost functional brook trout fishery value (i.e., length‐weighted occurrence probability) in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Climate change (increased ambient temperatures and altered precipitation) is projected to result in a loss of occurrence in at least 3000 additional segments (19% of current value) and at least 3000 km of functional fishery value (9% of current value) by 2062. Model outcomes were used to identify low‐ and high‐quality stream segments within relatively intact and degraded sub‐watersheds as restoration and protection priorities, respectively, and conservation priorities were targeted in watersheds with high projected resilience to climate change. Our results suggest that traditional restoration activities, such as habitat enhancement, riparian management, and barrier removal, may be able to recover a substantial amount of brook trout habitat lost to historic landscape change. However, restoration efforts must be designed within the context of expected impacts from climate change or those efforts may not produce long‐term benefits to brook trout in this region.

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“…Bird data were collected from montane canyons in the Great Basin in the western United States (Fleishman et al 2014, Fleishman 2015a and from woodlands and forests in the box-ironbark region in southeastern Australia (Mac Nally et al 2000, Radford et al 2005, Bennett et al 2014. Great Basin birds were surveyed annually from 2001 to 2014 at 472 points in 47 canyons in the central and western Great Basin (Supplementary material Appendix 1).…”

Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Linking species richness and size diversity in birds and fishes

et al. 2018

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The rapid development of mechanistic, trait‐based models has resulted in increasingly reliable predictions of the functional diversity of individuals in populations and communities. However, a focus on individuals’ traits differs from the prevailing focus on species in much of community ecology. We sought to identify correlative links between species richness and size diversity, focusing on size diversity as one component of functional diversity. These links could be used to extend individual, size‐based models to predict patterns of species richness. We used the distribution of the sizes of individuals in a community – the individual–size distribution (ISD) – as a measure of size diversity, and constructed Bayesian regression models with species richness as the response variable and ISDs as the predictor variables. We used two methods to include ISDs in our analyses. First, we summarized the ISD with five common diversity indices and used these indices as predictor variables in our analyses. Second, we used functional data analysis to include the entire ISD (a continuous function) as a predictor variable in our analyses. Analyses of diversity indices identified consistent, positive associations between species richness and size diversity. Analyses of entire ISDs revealed that these associations were driven by numbers of small‐ and medium‐sized individuals. In general, a combination of diversity indices predicted species richness as well as or better than continuous ISDs. However, models with ISDs as predictor variables were less sensitive to technical details of model fitting (e.g. discretization method) than those based on diversity indices, and the use of ISDs avoids the arbitrary selection of one or several diversity indices. Our use of functional data analysis allows any trait distribution to be included as a variable in statistical analyses, and has the potential to reveal new diversity patterns in ecology.

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Projecting current and future location, quality, and connectivity of habitat for breeding birds in the Great Basin

Cited by 26 publications

References 44 publications

Managed Habitats Increase Occupancy of Black Rails (Laterallus jamaicensis) and May Buffer Impacts from Sea Level Rise

Managed Habitats Increase Occupancy of Black Rails (Laterallus jamaicensis) and May Buffer Impacts from Sea Level Rise

Conservation planning at the intersection of landscape and climate change: brook trout in the Chesapeake Bay watershed

Linking species richness and size diversity in birds and fishes

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