NC CASC 2024 Consortium & Partners Meeting Ecology Section by Ulyana Horodyskyj

chelseanagy — 2024-08-12 20:21:57 UTC

The combined, interactive effects of climate change and invasive species are drastically altering ecosystem structure and function. Grass invasion in shrublands and forests adds fine fuel, leading to more frequent fires. Fires are also made more frequent by hotter temperatures and prolonged drought from a changing climate. After a fire, invasive grasses can grow back quickly and outcompete native plants, thereby perpetuating the cycle. The result can be the elimination of key native species (e.g., sagebrush) and transformation of critical ecosystems. Non-native species spread much faster and are better able to adapt to a changing climate, suggesting further transformation is possible in the future.

chelseanagy — 2024-08-12 20:27:56 UTC

Natural resource managers should plan for invasive grasses, fire, and climate change to interact. Creating cross-community connections and working with others in complementary areas - climate adaptation, invasive species, fire management, and emergency response - is needed to address this complex problem.

chelseanagy — 2024-08-12 20:33:16 UTC

There is a lot of research about post-fire recovery but less about fire prevention. We need more information about invasive grass fuel loads and moisture along with fire risk to help direct management actions and prevent costly fires. The use of species projections and other tools (EDDMapS, INHABIT, Grass-Cast, and Fuelcast) can help predict range shifts and fuel abundance to better understand which areas are vulnerable to transformation given the interacting drivers of invasive species, wildfire, and climate change.

chelseanagy — 2024-08-12 20:37:18 UTC

The NC RISCC (https://nc-riscc.org/) is studying ecological transformation and the effects on carbon storage. We are particularly interested in identifying management practices that enhance carbon storage and native biodiversity and promote ecosystem resilience. We are connecting with managers working on these topics to understand management outcomes and create a menu of management options for the North Central region.

mahlering — 2024-08-16 20:20:14 UTC

I don’t know that it is entirely climate driven but certainly we are seeing an increasing dominance of non-local cool season grasses across the central and eastern Dakotas and an increasing trend of woody vegetation in our grasslands in southern parts of the northern plains. There is a lot of concern about woody encroachment trends increasing in the Dakotas similar to what is happening in Kansas and Nebraska. One thing the recent National Climate Assessment highlighted for the northern plains is that the eastern part of the region is actually getting wetter, and wetter springs are also causing a lot more tile drainage of wetlands in the eastern Dakotas to increase access to farmable acres.

mahlering — 2024-08-16 20:22:03 UTC

This is so challenging, especially if you are trying to steward lands for overall biodiversity outcomes and not particular species or taxa. I think one of the best things we can do as a science community is get better at supporting managers in implementing adaptive management in a more rigorous way. What I mean by that is helping to set up monitoring protocols, data analysis, and reporting mechanisms that can feed back information to them about how the systems they are managing are responding to their actions, whether that be effectiveness of a particular treatment type or implementing a suite of actions.

mahlering — 2024-08-16 20:22:18 UTC

I think helping people to think in an evolutionary process and change context about the systems they manage is needed. How do we manage systems so they can adapt and change without losing important diversity or ecological function? We need to better understand where the tipping points of our ecosystems are and when to make decisions to accept change instead of resist or to direct change instead of accept, and to think about how this might vary spatially and temporally across our landscapes.

mahlering — 2024-08-16 20:22:28 UTC

I think there are a lot of human dimension issues embedded in how to adapt natural resource management for climate change, and I cannot begin to articulate them all very well. But I think there are likely some organizational barriers to making sure managers have the decisional latitude they need and the long-term commitment of funding resources to implement the work and evaluate effectiveness.

Managing for historical objectives or baselines may no longer be feasible under climate change. Climate change is creating both novel conditions and more uncertainty for decision makers and managers. We need approaches that aid decision making in the face of uncertainty and risk.

lauradee1 — 2024-08-20 17:45:27 UTC

We need to embrace a more multiple-objective perspective that can be aided by assessments of trade-offs and risk. When we take management actions to resist, accept, or direct , we may be creating trade-offs so that there are winners or losers in terms of the ecosystem services provided, biodiversity/species, and communities affected. This multi-objective and risk perspective and tools to manage in this setting has not been fully embraced.

lauradee1 — 2024-08-20 17:45:52 UTC

Managing for historical objectives or baselines may no longer be feasible under climate change. Climate change is creating both novel conditions and more uncertainty for decision makers and managers.

lauradee1 — 2024-08-20 17:47:12 UTC

We need approaches that aid decision making in the face of uncertainty and risk. RAD is one framework - but the details of how to use RAD in the context of explicitly deciding on interventions with constraints and conflicting values remains lacking, as does its consideration of uncertainty. Adaptive management and maxi-min (or mini-max) thinking can help.

lauradee1 — 2024-08-20 17:50:45 UTC

Climate change is changing the disturbance regimes (e.g. fire, pest outbreaks) in the region that can lead to abrupt shifts in dominant vegetation. These changes in disturbance regimes are interacting with invasion. I expect to see more transitions from forest to shrublands (due to high severity fire) and woody encroachment, and changes in the associated biodiversity

lauradee1 — 2024-08-20 17:52:24 UTC

I agree with the need for more coordination across sectors -- and also the need for more consideration of multiple management objectives and tradeoffs (see my related, lengthy responses to the third questions)

lauradee1 — 2024-08-20 17:53:23 UTC

A hypothesis

2024-08-22 17:33:19 UTC

Hypothesis: “Accept” will always lag behind “Resist” in terms that ecologists or economists would assess as optimal or even roughly efficient.

Wildfires

charlestruettner — 2024-08-22 17:35:58 UTC

Wildfires do not know boundaries, but they may burn differently depending on the management. There is a balance between value-added and risk for management strategies surrounding wildfires. For instance, private timber companies want to shorten their harvest cycles because of the risk of fire, while climate practitioners would rather see the harvest cycles to be extended for a greater carbon sink. How do you approach this?

2024-08-22 18:17:52 UTC

What is the intersection with risk management, conservation, and disaster assistance incentives/insurance/financial offerings with respect to ecological transformation on the landscape?