Ecologist developing new tool to aid cities and towns in land-use decisions
In a new project funded by the Commonwealth, Timothy Randhir, environmental conservation is developing a planning tool to support and improve community and agency decisions in the Connecticut River watershed. Randhir is developing a new decision tool for cities, towns, farms and landowners to help assess climate impacts on urban and rural areas that include storm water flooding, drought, disrupted water supply, heat waves, soil erosion and loss, groundwater depletion, soil deterioration, and variable rainfall and temperature patterns.
"There is a need for developing scientific information on landscapes that can help in land use and water use decisions.” — Timothy Randhir
It will provide a broad look at possible future effects of climate change on water resources and other ecosystem services like soil health, and the “heat island” effect. The work is supported by an 18-month, $82,000 grant from the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation; Randhir hopes to deliver a prototype of the decision tool in the fall.
He says,...
UMass ecologist will lead study using new methods to follow green sea turtles
The National Science Foundation this month announced that Lisa Komoroske, environmental conservation, will co-lead a four-year, $1.4 million, multi-institution grant to study how reproductive behaviors will influence the effects of climate change on green sea turtles (Chelonia mydas).
Her team will spend months in the field at turtle nesting beaches on Fernando de Noronha, a marine reserve and UNESCO World Heritage Site composed of an archipelago of 21 islands about 220 miles off the coast of Brazil. She and collaborators at Florida State and Oregon State universities will also work with the Brazil-based non-profit conservation organization PROJECTO TAMAR on the project.
Komoroske and her colleagues believe this work will be the first comprehensive examination of resilience to environmental change among these turtles and will provide insights relevant to other temperature sex-determined species.
Komoroske, an expert in the use of genomic tools to study wildlife populations, will use genetic samples from turtle mothers and hatchlings to estimate sex ratios in a breeding population....
New England syrup production to dwindle with climate change
Maple syrup production, one of New England’s cultural icons and a key economic component of the region, will shift northward during the next century due to rising temperatures that will drastically change the tapping season and reduce the quality of the sap, a new study says. The report, from researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the U.S. Geological Survey and colleagues in New Hampshire, Virginia, Indiana, Montana and Canada, finds that, by 2100, the region of maximum maple syrup flow will shift northward by hundreds of miles benefiting producers in Canada and lowering production and quality in the Eastern United States.
The paper also says the maple syrup industry in most of New England, except for Northern Maine, is likely to drop by half by the end of this century due to changes in the climate. The industry supports thousands of producers and provides permanent and seasonal income streams to local farmsteads and indigenous communities who...
UMass wildlife ecologists who are studying different conservation practices in the forests of Costa Rica recently made a startling discovery on a wildlife camera trap – wild bush dogs documented farther north than ever before and at the highest elevation.
Doctoral student Carolina Saenz-Bolaños is in Costa Rica comparing land use, management techniques, their effects on species presence and abundance, and human attitudes in four different areas in the rugged Talamanca Mountains: a national park, an adjacent forest reserve, an indigenous territory and nearby unprotected areas.
She and her advisor, professor of environmental conservation Todd Fuller at UMass Amherst, with others, report in an article in Tropical Conservation Science the new, repeated sightings of bush dogs (Speothos venaticus) on trailcams well outside the limit of their previously known range on the Costa Rica-Panama border. The dogs are native to South America but are considered rare and are very seldom seen even there, the two ecologists point out.
Fuller says, “They aren’t supposed to be there, but Carolina’s work shows they really are, and they seem...
Early detection, rapid response key for saving native species down the food chain
An international research team led by invasion ecologist Bethany Bradley, environmental conservation, has conducted the first global meta-analysis of the characteristics and size of invasive alien species’ impacts on native species as invaders become more abundant.
For example, as alien garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata) invades forest understory in New England, the number of native sugar maple seedlings declines. Invasive purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria) in New England wetlands is linked to a decline in the abundance of native red-winged blackbirds and song sparrows, Bradley says. Elsewhere, predatory invasive lionfish (Pterois volitans) introduced in Caribbean waters leads to a rapid decline in the abundance of native coral reef fish, and invading Burmese python (Python bivittatus) in the Everglades has caused dramatic losses of natives such as opossum, fox and bobcats.
“On average, invasive pests will cut the populations of native species in half if we don’t prevent or control those invasions.”
Bradley says, “What surprised me most was...