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56 results for “ecosystem resilience”
Data archive for: Fire-regime variability and ecosystem resilience over four millennia in a Rocky Mountain subalpine watershed
<p>Wildfires strongly influence forest ecosystem processes, including carbon and nutrient cycling and vegetation dynamics. As fire activity increases under changing climate conditions, the ecological and biogeochemical resilience of many forest ecosystems remains unknown. To investigate the resilience of forest ecosystems to changing climate and wildfire activity over decades to millennia, we developed a 4800-yr high-resolution lake-sediment record from Silver Lake, Montana, USA (47.360° N, 115.566° W). Charcoal particles, pollen grains, element concentrations, and stable isotopes of C and N serve as proxies of past changes in fire, vegetation, and ecosystem processes such as nitrogen cycling and soil erosion, within a small subalpine forest watershed. A published lake-level history from Silver Lake provides a local record of paleohydrology. A trend toward increased effective moisture over the late Holocene coincided with a distinct shift in the pollen assemblage c. 1900 yr BP, resulting from increased subalpine conifer abundance. Fire activity, inferred from peaks in macroscopic charcoal, decreased significantly after 1900 yr BP, from one fire event every 126 yr (83–184 yr, 95% CI) from 4800–1900 yr BP, to one event every 223 yr (175–280 yr) from 1900 yr BP to present. Across the record, individual fire events were followed by two distinct decadal-scale biogeochemical responses, reflecting differences in ecosystem impacts of fires on watershed processes. These distinct biogeochemical responses were interpreted as reflecting fire severity, highlighting (i) erosion, likely from large or high-severity fires, and (ii) nutrient transfers and enhanced within-lake productivity, likely from lower-severity or patchier fires. Biogeochemical and vegetation proxies returned to pre-fire values within decades regardless of the nature of fire effects. Paleo records of fire and ecosystem responses provide a novel view revealing past variability in fire effects, analogous to spatial variability in fire severity observed within contemporary wildfires. Overall, the paleo record highlights ecosystem resilience to fire across long-term variability in climate and fire activity. Higher fire frequencies in past millennia relative to the 20th and 21st centuries suggest that northern Rocky Mountain subalpine ecosystems could remain resilient to future increases in fire activity, provided continued ecosystem recovery within decades.</p>
Intra and interspecific diversity in a tropical plant clade alter herbivory and ecosystem resilience
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Data archive for: Fire-regime variability and ecosystem resilience over four millennia in a Rocky Mountain subalpine watershed
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Data from: navigating uncertainty: managing herbivore communities enhances savanna ecosystem resilience under climate change
<p>Savannas are characterized by water scarcity and degradation, making them highly vulnerable to increased uncertainties in water availability resulting from climate change. This poses a significant threat to ecosystem services and rural livelihoods that depend on them. In addition, the lack of consensus among climate models on precipitation change makes it difficult for land managers to plan for the future. Therefore, savanna rangeland management needs to develop strategies that can sustain savanna resilience and avoid tipping points under an uncertain future climate. Our study aims to analyze the impacts of climate change and rangeland management on degradation in savanna ecosystems of southern Africa, providing insights for the management of semi-arid savannas under uncertain conditions worldwide. To achieve this, we simulated the effects of projected changes in temperature and precipitation, as predicted by ten global climate models, on water resources and vegetation (cover, functional diversity, tipping points (transition from grass-dominated to shrub-dominated vegetation)). We simulated three different rangeland management options (herbivore community dominated by grazers, by browser and by mixed-feeders), each with low and high animal densities using the ecohydrological model EcoHyD. Our results identified intensive grazing as the primary contributor to the increased risk of degradation in response to changing climatic conditions across all climate change scenarios. This degradation encompassed a reduction in available water for plant growth within the context of predicted climate change. It also entails a decline in the overall vegetation cover, the loss of functionally important plant species, and the inefficient utilization of available water resources, leading to earlier tipping points. Our findings underscore that in the face of climate uncertainty, farmers' most effective strategy for securing their livelihoods and ecosystem stability is to integrate browsers and apply management of mixed herbivore communities. This management approach not only significantly delays or averts tipping points but also maintained greater plant functional diversity, fostering a more robust and resilient ecosystem that acts as a vital buffer against adverse climatic conditions.</p>
Data from: Advancing transdisciplinary research on grassy biomes to support resilience in tropical ecosystems and livelihoods
<p>Madagascar-wide metadata relating to Malagasy Grassy Biomes. The understanding of vegetation dynamics in tropical grassy biomes is severely limited across spatio-temporal scales, limiting effective management and support for livelihoods and biodiversity. Despite their extent, utility, and central importance to people and ecosystem function, grassy biomes are often uncritically regarded as degraded, valueless landscapes that result primarily from destructive anthropogenic forces. Moreover, this characterization is often presented without investigation of their history, biodiversity, or ecological complexity. Iconically, Madagascar's grassy biomes cover approximately 80% of the island's land surface today and exemplify core challenges to understanding tropical grassy ecosystems and their interactions with anthropogenic activities across spatio-temporal scales. Intersections between human history and environmental change have sparked debates about the role of land use in shaping grassy biomes (e.g., pastoralism, cultivation, fire use), echoing land use debates globally, and highlighting obstacles to ecosystem and livelihood resilience. Like many tropical biodiversity hotspots, Madagascar faces converging challenges that can be aided by an improved understanding of grassy ecosystems and the livelihoods they support, including food and health insecurity, economic inequities, biodiversity loss, climate change, land conversion, and limited resource access. Centered on improved understanding and management of grassy biomes, we present a framework to guide transdisciplinary research across the tropics by: (1) establishing a common terminology; (2) summarising data contributions and knowledge gaps that reflect those in other tropical regions; (3) identifying priority research questions; and (4) highlighting transdisciplinary and inclusive approaches to resolve knowledge gaps and co-benefit ecosystems and livelihoods. </p>
Resilient consumers accelerate the plant decomposition in a naturally acidified seagrass ecosystem
<p>Anthropogenic stressors are predicted to alter biodiversity and ecosystem functioning worldwide. However, scaling up from species to ecosystem responses poses a challenge, as species and functional groups can exhibit different capacities to adapt, acclimate, and compensate under changing environments. We used a naturally acidified seagrass ecosystem (the endemic <em>Mediterranean Posidonia oceanica</em>) as a model system to examine how ocean acidification (OA) modifies the community structure and functioning of plant detritivores, which play vital roles in the coastal nutrient cycling and food web dynamics. In seagrass beds associated with volcanic CO2 vents (Ischia, Italy), we quantified the effects of OA on seagrass decomposition by deploying litterbags in three distinct pH zones (i.e., ambient, low, extreme low pH), which differed in the mean and variability of seawater pH. We replicated the study in two discrete vents for 117 days (litterbags sampled on day 5, 10, 28, 55, and 117). Acidification reduced seagrass detritivore richness and diversity through the loss of less abundant, pH-sensitive species but increased the abundance of the dominant detritivore (amphipod <em>Gammarella fucicola</em>). Such compensatory shifts in species abundance caused more than a three-fold increase in the total detritivore abundance in lower pH zones. These community changes were associated with increased consumption (52-112%) and decay of seagrass detritus (up to 67% faster decomposition rate for the slow-decaying, refractory detrital pool) under acidification. Seagrass detritus deployed in acidified zones showed increased N content and decreased C:N ratio, indicating that altered microbial activities under OA may have affected the decay process. The findings suggest that OA could restructure consumer assemblages and modify plant decomposition in blue carbon ecosystems, which may have important implications for carbon sequestration, nutrient recycling, and trophic transfer. Our study highlights the importance of within-community response variability and compensatory processes in modulating ecosystem functions under extreme global change scenarios.</p>
Ecosystem_resilience_study_vegetation_images
<p>Processed and cropped satellite images of vegetation patterns in the Sahel.</p>
Figure 1 in Parasites of Moroccan desert Coptodon guineensis (Pisces, Cichlidae): transition and resilience in a simplified hypersaline ecosystem
Figure 1. Map of Morocco indicating the sampling sites.
Wildfire disturbance reveals evidence of ecosystem resilience and precariousness in a forest-grassland mosaic
<p>Forest and grassland ecosystems are sometimes located adjacently within the same climate. In interior British Columbia, Canada, there are complex forest-grassland mosaics within the Interior Douglas-fir biogeoclimatic zone. Historically, both grassland and forest ecosystems experienced high-frequency, low-severity fire regimes. Since European settlement and introduction of livestock grazing and fire exclusion, trees have encroached on grasslands, and tree densities in forests have increased. In this study, we characterize plant communities and near-surface soil moisture in forest and grassland sites, and in historical grassland sites affected by tree encroachment. We hypothesized that spatial and temporal patterns of near-surface soil moisture are reflected in above-ground plant community composition and structure. After initial sampling of soil moisture and plant communities, the study area was burned in a wildfire. Applying a multifactorial approach to comparing adjacent grassland and forest sites, we treated the wildfire event as a natural experiment, sampling post-wildfire plant species composition and soil moisture, and measuring the severity and spatial heterogeneity of surface burn conditions. Evidence supports the concept of mutually exclusive fire-reinforced bi-stable grassland and forest states, with greater spatial heterogeneity of soil moisture and burn severity in forests, and highly uniform patterns of soil moisture, vegetation, and burn severity in grasslands. Areas of forest encroachment on grasslands had understory plant communities dominated by exotic species, while restored grasslands had native bunchgrass cover like typical grasslands of the region. Additionally, there was post-wildfire divergence of forest- and grassland- associated plant communities. Viewed through a resilience theory conceptual framework, we suggest that ecosystem legacies are reinforcing post-wildfire ecosystem identity and associated native plant communities. External factors - particularly past heavy livestock grazing and fire suppression - have caused ecosystem precariousness that can be addressed with management actions.</p>
Restoration temporarily supports the resilience of sagebrush-steppe ecosystems subjected to repeated fires
<p>Many ecosystems are experiencing increased fire frequencies and species invasions that can erode their resilience and cause a shift to alternative states. In the sagebrush-steppe, a semi-arid shrubland ecosystem in North America, restoration treatments are often implemented following wildfire to enhance their resilience to invasion. However, little is known about the long-term effectiveness of these treatments. We investigated whether repeated restoration efforts provide greater resilience in sagebrush-steppe communities initially dominated by species with different post-fire regeneration traits and subjected to compounding wildfires and invasion by <em>Bromus tectorum</em> over 25 years.</p> <p>We studied 37 permanent transects (Columbia Basin, Washington, USA) in which species abundance was recorded multiple times from 1992 to 2017. We quantified community change and its relationship with fire, restoration, and moisture availability. Resilience was evaluated by quantifying community resistance and stability indices.</p> <p>The greatest change occurred in communities where the obligate seeding shrub <em>Artemisia tridentata</em> was initially common. Repeated fires led to the extirpation of this shrub and eventual dominance of <em>B. tectorum</em>. Herbicide applications temporarily suppressed <em>B. tectorum</em> post-fire. Seeding treatments and above average precipitation initially increased native cover. Although communities where resprouting species were common showed the least change, repeated fires did lead to a gradual but substantial decline (86%) in resprouting shrubs.</p> <p><em>Synthesis and applications:</em> Our findings show that repeated restoration efforts, together with elevated precipitation, can support native species re-establishment in systems experiencing altered disturbance regimes and species invasions. Our unique long-term dataset demonstrates, however, that many such interventions have short-lived effects due to the strong "unhelpful resilience" of highly invaded systems. This implicitly suggests that many such systems have experienced fundamental shifts in ecosystem state. The likelihood of this occurring is strongly associated with the dominant species post-fire regeneration traits. We predict that community composition and resilience will continue to degrade in the sagebrush-steppe unless management prioritizes fire suppression and an adaptive restoration approach that considers resource availability.</p>
Wildfire disturbance reveals evidence of ecosystem resilience and precariousness in a forest-grassland mosaic
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Data from: Advancing transdisciplinary research on Madagascar's grassy biomes to support resilience in ecosystems and livelihoods
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Resilient consumers accelerate the plant decomposition in a naturally acidified seagrass ecosystem
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Restoration temporarily supports the resilience of sagebrush-steppe ecosystems subjected to repeated fires
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Parasites disrupt a keystone mutualism that underpins the structure, functioning, and resilience of a coastal ecosystem
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Code from: Metrics for conservation success: using the bird‐friendliness index to evaluate grassland and aridland bird community resilience across the Northern Great Plains ecosystem
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Data from: navigating uncertainty: managing herbivore communities enhances savanna ecosystem resilience under climate change
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Data from: Structure and function of restored and natural salt marshes: Implications for ecosystem resilience and adaptive potential
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Using proxies of microbial community‐weighted means traits to explain the cascading effect of management intensity, soil and plant traits on ecosystem resilience in mountain grasslands
<p>1. Trait-based approaches provide a framework to understand the role of functional biodiversity on ecosystem functioning under global change. While plant traits have been reported as potential drivers of soil microbial community composition and resilience, studies directly assessing microbial traits are scarce, limiting our mechanistic understanding of ecosystem functioning.</p> <p>2. We used microbial biomass and enzyme stoichiometry, and mass-specific enzymes activity as proxies of microbial community-weighted mean (CWM) traits, to infer trade-offs in microbial strategies of resource use with cascading effects on ecosystem resilience. We simulated a drought event on intact plant-soil mesocosms extracted from mountain grasslands along a management intensity gradient. Ecosystem processes and properties related to nitrogen cycling were quantified before, during and after drought to characterize ecosystem resilience.</p> <p>3. Soil microbial CWM traits and ecosystem resilience to drought were strongly influenced by grassland type. Structural equation modelling revealed a cascading effect from management to ecosystem resilience through modifications in soil nutrients, and plant and microbial CWM traits. Overall, our results depict a shift from high investment in extracellular enzymes in nutrient poor soils (oligotrophic strategy), to a copiotrophic strategy with low microbial biomass N:P and low investment in extracellular enzymes associated with exploitative plant traits in nutrient rich soils.</p> <p>4. Microbial CWM traits responses to management intensity were highly related to ecosystem resilience. Microbial communities with a copiotrophic strategy had lower resistance but higher recovery to drought, while microbial communities with an oligotrophic strategy showed the opposite responses. The unexpected trade-off between plant and microbial resistance suggested that the lower resistance of copiotrophic microbial communities enabled plant resistance to drought.</p> <p>5. Synthesis Grassland management has cascading effects on ecosystem resilience through its combined effects on soil nutrients and plant traits propagating to microbial traits and resilience. We suggest that intensification of permanent grassland management and associated increases in soil nutrient availability decreased plant-microbe competition for N under drought through the selection of drought-sensitive microbial communities with a copiotrophic strategy that promoted plant resistance. Including proxies of microbial CWM traits into the functional trait framework will strengthen our understanding of soil ecosystem functioning under global change.</p>
Data from: Resilience and regime change in a southern Rocky Mountain ecosystem during the past 17000 years
Paleoecological records indicate that subalpine forests in western North America have been resilient in response to multiple influences, including severe droughts, insect outbreaks, and widely varying fire regimes, over many millennia. One hypothesis for explaining this ecosystem resilience centers on the disruption of forest dynamics by frequent disturbance and climatic variability, and the resulting development of non- steady-state regimes dominated by early-succession conifers with broad climatic tolerances, such as lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta var. latifolia Engelm. ex Wats.). To evaluate this hypothesis, we independently reconstructed the vegetation, fire, and effective-moisture histories of a small, forested watershed at 2890-m elevation in southeastern Wyoming, using sedimentary pollen and charcoal counts in conjunction with sedimentary lake-level indicators. The data indicate that prominent vegetation shifts (from sagebrush steppe to spruce-fir parkland at ca. 10.7 ka and spruce-fir parkland to pine-dominated forest at ca. 8.5 ka) coincided with changes in effective moisture. However, after lodgepole pine forests established at ca. 8.5 ka, similar hydroclimatic changes did not produce detectable vegetation responses. Fire history data show that other aspects of the ecosystem were responsive to changes in effective moisture at centennial timescales with prolonged fire-free episodes coinciding with periods of low effective moisture ca. 7.2-5.6 and 3.7-1.6 ka. Throughout our record, the ratio of ecosystem perturbation time (i.e., fire frequency and changes in effective moisture) to recovery time (assuming 200-600 year successional processes) falls within estimates of the ratio for non-steady state ecosystems. Frequent perturbations, therefore, may have prevented this ecosystem from reaching compositional equilibrium with the varied climatic conditions over the past 8.5 ka. Equilibrium states could have included more abundant spruce (Picea spp.) and fir (Abies spp.) than presently observed based on brief increases in pollen abundances of these taxa during prolonged dry, fire-free intervals. Our results show that although current climate changes favor widespread disturbance in Rocky Mountain forests, the composition of these ecosystems could be highly resilient and recover through successional dynamics over the next few decades to centuries.
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Allen Brain Atlas
Allen Brain Atlas is an Allen Institute collection of brain map atlases, datasets, APIs, and analysis tools covering mouse, human, and non-human primate brain resources.
Annotated Behaviour and Observability Dataset (ABODe)
ABODe is a University of Edinburgh DataShare dataset for behavior classification in group-housed mice using home-cage video, identities, bounding boxes, ground-plate positions, and annotator labels.
DANDI Archive for NWB datasets
DANDI is a BRAIN Initiative archive for publishing and sharing neurophysiology data, including electrophysiology, optophysiology, and behavioral data packaged as NWB and related standards.
International Brain Laboratory public data
The International Brain Laboratory public data releases expose standardized mouse decision-making experiments, including Neuropixels recordings, widefield calcium imaging, behavior, and session metadata accessed through the ONE API.
OpenNeuro
OpenNeuro is a free, open platform for sharing neuroimaging datasets, with public search, dataset pages, and download paths for web, S3, DataLad, and the OpenNeuro CLI.