Treesearch

In this study, a North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR)-based climate dataset of wind and Pasquill stability class is developed for the North American Great Lakes region. Motivated by the need to update the limited wind and Pasquill stability class climatology previously incorporated into a livestock odour nuisance-mitigation application used in Michigan, this study is motivated more generally by the lack of a long-term climate dataset suitable for studies of atmospheric dispersion in the Great Lakes region. As a preliminary step, NARR 10-m wind speed, 10-m wind direction, and 2-m...

In temperate and northern ecosystems where there are pronounced seasonal patterns in weather and available energy, there are corresponding patterns of body condition among white‐tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus). Body condition of white‐tailed deer can affect survival and reproduction, which has large repercussions for state‐level natural resource agencies that allocate hunting permits. In this study, we investigated how variation in winter weather, spring phenology, habitat composition, and browse quantity affected white‐tailed deer body condition across a large spatial scale. Several...

Trout and salmon commonly coexist in stream networks. Exploring similarities and differences among species can help explain coexistence and invasive ability. Here, we describe spatial distribution, cohort strengths and size-at-age of three co-occurring species in a small stream network. Spatial distributions varied dramatically among species; native brook trout (Salvellinus fontinalis) occupied all stream reaches, naturalized brown trout (Salmo trutta) were found in the mainstem and lower portions of tributaries and fry-stocked Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) were limited to the mainstem....

Nitrogen export from catchments provides insight into the functioning of forested ecosystems. In this study, we evaluated where in the forest streamwater nitrate comes from, and how it gets to the stream. Because of the intensive instrumentation at our long-term ecological study site, the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest, we were able to record differences in nitrogen production based on the topography. Compared to the soils near the stream, the soils below bedrock outcrops, higher uphill in the forest, produced more nitrate and were thus considered “hotspots” for nitrate production. Our...

Feedbacks between the ecosystem and the economy are important to consider when measuring impacts from a disturbance but are often omitted from general equilibrium bioeconomic models. These models usually focus on how humans respond to ecological change, but do not consider that in adapting to changed conditions, humans can further affect the ecosystem. We present a framework that couples a regional computable general equilibrium model with an Ecopath with Ecosim food web model with bidirectional feedbacks between the two systems. Our bioeconomic model uniquely represents a comprehensive...

Roads fragment animal populations, vehicles kill and injure animals, and traffic may affect animal behavior. Mitigation efforts (e.g., wildlife underpasses) are constructed to prevent fragmentation and reduce wildlife-vehicle collisions. However, little is known about traffic’s proximal effects on wildlife behavior and use of mitigation measures. We quantified the time that elk (Cervus elaphus) and white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) allocated to foraging, vigilance, and flight behavior before and after vehicle passage. Both species increased vigilance and flight behaviors and...

Climate warming and altered disturbance regimes are changing forest composition and structure worldwide. Given that species often exhibit individualistic responses to change, making predictions about the cumulative effects of multiple stressors across environmental gradients is challenging, especially in diverse communities. For example, warming temperatures are predicted to drive species upslope, whereas fire exclusion promotes the expansion of species at lower elevations where fire was historically frequent. We resampled 148 vegetation plots to assess 46 years (1969–2015) of species and...

Quantifying historical patterns of fire regimes in peatlands can help contextualise current fire behaviour and aid in planning on ecosystem and landscape scales. However, current methods for detecting the evidence of past fires in peat soils are laborious or expensive. Our goal was to develop an effective and inexpensive method for detecting pyrogenic carbon (PyC) concentration in peat which could be used to estimate the occurrence of fires by analysis of discrete soil samples. We correlated diffuse reflectance Fourier-transform infrared spectrometry (FTIR) measurements of peat, and...

Eastern Red-backed Salamanders are a woodland species found primarily in northern Wisconsin, with isolated records from southeastern counties. This small slender salamander typically has a reddish dorsal stripe that extends from the head to the tail over a generally dark body, with light flecks on the belly, and five toes on the hind feet.