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Filters: Tags: P2-Changes in Plant and Animal Species Due to Climate Change (X)

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Dendrochronological techniques were used to study white spruce ( Picea glauca [Moech] Voss) dynamics in the altitudinal forest-tundra ecotone in the southwest Yukon Territory. At two sampling sites, all Picea glauca individuals within 9 delineated quadrats in the forest-tundra and forest were sampled to estimate dates of establishment and growth variations using tree-ring chronologies. Regeneration in the forest-tundra ecotone was low from the late 1800s to the mid-1900s, however has increased since the 1920s. Recent peak periods of establishment parallel increased radial growth trends, which may have resulted from the long-term warming trend of the 20 th century. Seedling proximity to pre-established individuals...
Manifold linkages exist between climate change and sustainable development. Although these are starting to receive attention in the climate exchange literature, the focus has typically been on examining sustainable development through a climate change lens, rather than vice versa. And there has been little systematic examination of how these linkages may be fostered in practice. This paper examines climate change through a sustainable development lens. To illustrate how this might change the approach to climate change issues, it reports on the findings of a panel of business, local government, and academic representatives in British Columbia, Canada, who were appointed to advise the provincial government on climate...
Future climate change has been predicted to affect the potential distribution of plant species. However, only few studies have addressed how invasive species may respond to future climate change despite the known effects of plant species invasion on nutrient cycles, ecosystem functions, and agricultural yields. In this study, we predicted the potential distributions of two invasive species, Rumex crispus and Typha latifolia, under current and future (2050) climatic conditions. Future climate scenarios considered in our study include A1B, A2, A2A, B1, and B2A. We found that these two species will lose their habitat under the A1B, A2, A2A, and B1 scenarios. Their distributions will be maintained under future climatic...
This paper examines the risks associated with forest insect outbreaks in a changing climate from biological and forest management perspectives. Two important Canadian insects were considered: western spruce budworm (WSBW; Choristoneura occidentalis Freeman, Lepidoptera: Tortricidae), and spruce bark beetle (SBB; Dendroctonus rufipennis Kirby, Coleoptera: Curculionidae). This paper integrates projections of tree species suitability, pest outbreak risk, and bio-economic modelling. Several methods of estimating pest outbreak risk were investigated. A simple climate envelope method based on empirically derived climate thresholds indicates substantial changes in the distribution of outbreaks in British Columbia for two...
Emulation silviculture is the use of silvicultural techniques that try to imitate natural disturbances such as wildfire. Emulation silviculture is becoming increasingly popular in Canada because it may help circumvent the political and environmental difficulties associated with intensive forest harvesting practices. In this review we summarize empirical evidence that illustrates disparities between forest harvesting and wildfire. As a rule, harvesting and wildfire affect biodiversity in different ways, which vary a great deal among ecosystem types, harvesting practices, and scale of disturbance. The scales of disturbance are different in that patch sizes created by logging are a small subset of the range of those...
I examined the role of habitat quality and climate in the dynamics of occupancy and survival of a population of collared pikas in the Yukon Territory, Canada. Annual surveys of marked individuals over an 11 year period (1999 to 2009) within a geographically isolated metapopulation were used to analyze relationships between pika occupancy dynamics and habitat quality and between recruitment and survival and measures of climate based on Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and downscaled regional climate (Climate WNA). Occupancy dynamics were correlated with the quality of habitat within pika territories in terms of solar radiation and vegetation quality using Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) values derived...
Fungi influence nutrient cycling in terrestrial ecosystems, as they are major regulators of decomposition and soil respiration. However, little is known about the substrate preferences of individual fungal species outside of laboratory culture studies. If active fungi differ in their substrate preferences in situ, then changes in fungal diversity due to global change may dramatically influence nutrient cycling in ecosystems. To test the responses of individual fungal taxa to specific substrates, we used a nucleotide-analogue procedure in the boreal forest of Alaska (USA). Specifically, we added four organic N compounds commonly found in plant litter (arginine, glutamate, lignocellulose, and tannin-protein) to litterbags...
Conservation biologists understand that linking demographic histories of species at risk with causal biotic and abiotic events should help us predict the effects of ongoing biotic and abiotic change. In parallel, researchers have started to use ancient genetic information (aDNA) to explore the demographic histories of a number of species present in the Pleistocene fossil record (see, e.g. Shapiro et al. 2004). However, aDNA studies have primarily focused on identifying long-term population trends, linked to climate variability and the role of early human activity. Population trends over more recent time, e.g. during the Holocene, have been poorly explored, partly owing to analytical limitations. In this issue, Campos...