Montane Meadows as a Microcosm for Predicting Global Change

The last decade has witnessed intensifying, abrupt global climate change. Despite this impact, we know little about when, what, and how changes occur. Most climate research is limited to studies of the abiotic environment, focusing on atmospheric composition and carbon fluxes. These studies fail to provide adequate indicators of climate changes and their impact on habitats and species. Recent and intensifying ecological changes have generated interest in (Root et al. 2003, Thomas et al. 2004), and the need for tools that can help to prepare for global climate shifts. Changes in ecological (biotic) communities are excellent indicators of climate shifts, providing models to predict changes over time. Montane meadows, defined here as persistently nonÂforested habitats in mountain ecosystems, make up a small percentage of terrestrial habitats, but they are likely to exhibit changes much more rapidly than most other areas. These meadows are arrayed along a hydrological gradient (from hydric to mesic to xeric) and inhabited by short-lived plants and highly mobile animal species that can exhibit quick changes in distribution patterns relative to environmental changes. Thus, they can provide an early warning system for other ecosystems across the globe. Currently, the extent and range of climatic changes that will occur in montane meadows are unknown.

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Quantifying Early Indicators of Global Climate Change

The UW National Parks Service Research Station Annual Reports ◽

10.13001/uwnpsrc.2006.3659 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 30 ◽

pp. 97-99

Author(s):

Diane Debinski

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Global Climate Change ◽

Human Activities ◽

Global Climate ◽

Warning System ◽

Ecological Communities ◽

The North ◽

Ecological Changes ◽

Montane Meadows ◽

Associated Species

One of the more significant voids remaining in our scientific understanding of global climate change is the relationship between climate change and the resulting changes expected in ecological communities. Because a large proportion of the North American landscape has been modified by human activities, it is difficult to assess whether ecological changes are being caused by human activities or climate change. Thus, we must look to landscapes where the modification has been less severe. One of the most pristine landscapes in North America where scientists can study natural processes is that of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Within this system some of the more sensitive habitats are the montane meadows. These habitats exist along a continuum from very dry (xeric) sagebrush meadows, to flowering (mesic) meadows, to wet (hydric) sedge meadows. Because of the relatively short growing season, species in these meadows can exhibit quick changes in distribution and abundance relative to climatic changes. My research uses satellite images and field surveys to evaluate how meadow habitats and their associated species respond to interannual changes in precipitation and soil moisture. I am examining the plant and butterfly communities to measure the response. Over 100 species of butterflies occur in this area and many are closely associated with specific types of meadows. This research is significant because it will provide an early warning system for assessing the effects of climate change. Documenting changes in montane meadows will assist in understanding how climate change may affect more highly managed areas of the globe.

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Epigaeic Ant Communities Along a Soil Moisture Gradient in Grand Teton Montane Meadows

The UW National Parks Service Research Station Annual Reports ◽

10.13001/uwnpsrc.2008.3727 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 31 ◽

pp. 135-140

Author(s):

Wayne Robinson ◽

Diane Debinski

Keyword(s):

Animal Species ◽

Environmental Changes ◽

Warning System ◽

Distribution Patterns ◽

Ecological Monitoring ◽

Moisture Gradient ◽

Ant Communities ◽

Resource Managers ◽

Greater Yellowstone ◽

Montane Meadows

Climate change has become a major concern for scientists and resource managers across the globe. Whilst there is much speculation about the pending magnitude of the changes and their ecological effects, there is an urgent and undeniable need to have sound ecological monitoring programs in place in sensitive areas. Montane meadows in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) are inhabited by short-lived plants and highly mobile animal species that can exhibit quick changes in distribution patterns relative to environmental changes (Debinski et al. 2000, Debinski et al. 2002). Thus, they can provide an early warning system for other ecosystems across the globe. Currently, the extent and range of climatic changes that will occur in montane meadows are unknown.

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A global environmental crisis 42,000 years ago

Science ◽

10.1126/science.abb8677 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 371 (6531) ◽

pp. 811-818

Author(s):

Alan Cooper ◽

Chris S. M. Turney ◽

Jonathan Palmer ◽

Alan Hogg ◽

Matt McGlone ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Environmental Changes ◽

Climate Modeling ◽

Global Climate ◽

Environmental Crisis ◽

Global Environmental ◽

Climate Shifts ◽

Magnetic Inversion ◽

Global Impacts ◽

Extinction Events ◽

Magnetic Poles

Geological archives record multiple reversals of Earth’s magnetic poles, but the global impacts of these events, if any, remain unclear. Uncertain radiocarbon calibration has limited investigation of the potential effects of the last major magnetic inversion, known as the Laschamps Excursion [41 to 42 thousand years ago (ka)]. We use ancient New Zealand kauri trees (Agathis australis) to develop a detailed record of atmospheric radiocarbon levels across the Laschamps Excursion. We precisely characterize the geomagnetic reversal and perform global chemistry-climate modeling and detailed radiocarbon dating of paleoenvironmental records to investigate impacts. We find that geomagnetic field minima ~42 ka, in combination with Grand Solar Minima, caused substantial changes in atmospheric ozone concentration and circulation, driving synchronous global climate shifts that caused major environmental changes, extinction events, and transformations in the archaeological record.

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Mineral Dust Cycle

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Environmental Science ◽

10.1093/acrefore/9780199389414.013.46 ◽

2016 ◽

Author(s):

Irina Sokolik

Keyword(s):

Atmospheric Aerosols ◽

Environmental Changes ◽

Mineral Dust ◽

Global Climate ◽

Dust Emission ◽

Northern China ◽

Dust Storms ◽

Atmospheric Composition ◽

System Response ◽

Beneficial Effects

There is scientific consensus that human activities have been altering the atmospheric composition and are a key driver of global climate and environmental changes since pre-industrial times (IPCC, 2013). It is a pressing priority to understand the Earth system response to atmospheric aerosol input from diverse sources, which so far remain one of the largest uncertainties in climate studies (Boucher et al., 2014; Forster et al., 2007). As the second most abundant component (in terms of mass) of atmospheric aerosols, mineral dust exerts tremendous impacts on Earth’s climate and environment through various interaction and feedback processes. Dust can also have beneficial effects where it deposits: Central and South American rain forests get most of their mineral nutrients from the Sahara; iron-poor ocean regions get iron; and dust in Hawaii increases plantain growth. In northern China as well as the midwestern United States, ancient dust storm deposits known as loess are highly fertile soils, but they are also a significant source of contemporary dust storms when soil-securing vegetation is disturbed. Accurate assessments of dust emission are of great importance to improvements in quantifying the diverse dust impacts.

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A primer to metabarcoding surveys of Antarctic terrestrial biodiversity

Antarctic Science ◽

10.1017/s0954102016000389 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 29 (1) ◽

pp. 3-15 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Paul Czechowski ◽

Laurence J. Clarke ◽

Alan Cooper ◽

Mark I. Stevens

Keyword(s):

High Throughput Sequencing ◽

Environmental Changes ◽

Indigenous Species ◽

Terrestrial Habitats ◽

Cryptic Taxa ◽

Terrestrial Biodiversity ◽

Non Indigenous Species ◽

Changes Over Time ◽

Continental Interior ◽

Highly Uniform

AbstractIce-free regions of Antarctica are concentrated along the coastal margins but are scarce throughout the continental interior. Environmental changes, including the introduction of non-indigenous species, increasingly threaten these unique habitats. At the same time, the unique biotic communities subsisting in isolation across the continent are difficult to survey due to logistical constraints, sampling challenges and problems related to the identification of small and cryptic taxa. Baseline biodiversity data from remote Antarctic habitats are still missing for many parts of the continent but are critical to the detection of community changes over time, including newly introduced species. Here we review the potential of standardized (non-specialist) sampling in the field (e.g. from soil, vegetation or water) combined with high-throughput sequencing (HTS) of bulk DNA as a possible solution to overcome some of these problems. In particular, HTS metabarcoding approaches benefit from being able to process many samples in parallel, while workflow and data structure can stay highly uniform. Such approaches have quickly gained recognition and we show that HTS metabarcoding surveys are likely to play an important role in continent-wide biomonitoring of all Antarctic terrestrial habitats.

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Diatoms in Saline Lakes Paleoclimate and Paleoecology Interpretations

The Paleontological Society Papers ◽

10.1017/s1089332600001510 ◽

2007 ◽

Vol 13 ◽

pp. 149-168 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Erik J. Ekdahl

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Global Warming ◽

Global Climate Change ◽

Water Conservation ◽

Environmental Changes ◽

Global Climate ◽

Light Availability ◽

Ionic Concentration ◽

Mitigation Strategies ◽

Environmental Response

Average global temperatures are predicted to rise over the next century and changes in precipitation, humidity, and drought frequency will likely accompany this global warming. Understanding associated changes in continental precipitation and temperature patterns in response to global change is an important component of long-range environmental planning. For example, agricultural management plans that account for decreased precipitation over time will be less susceptible to the effects of drought through implementation of water conservation techniques.A detailed understanding of environmental response to past climate change is key to understanding environmental changes associated with global climate change. To this end, diatoms are sensitive to a variety of limnologic parameters, including nutrient concentration, light availability, and the ionic concentration and composition of the waters that they live in (e.g. salinity). Diatoms from numerous environments have been used to reconstruct paleosalinity levels, which in turn have been used as a proxy records for regional and local paleoprecipitation. Long-term records of salinity or paleoprecipitation are valuable in reconstructing Quaternary paleoclimate, and are important in terms of developing mitigation strategies for future global climate change. High-resolution paleoclimate records are also important in groundtruthing global climate simulations, especially in regions where the consequences of global warming may be severe.

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HUMAN MOBILITY UNDER THE IMPACT OF ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGES

Scientific Annals of the “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University, Iaşi. New Series SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIAL WORK Section ◽

10.47743/asas-2020-1-595 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 13 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Mariana BĂLAN ◽

Simona Maria STĂNESCU

Keyword(s):

Environmental Changes ◽

Global Climate ◽

Human Mobility ◽

Human Beings ◽

Joint Effort ◽

Sustainable Resources ◽

International Regulations ◽

Droughts And Floods ◽

And Migration ◽

The Impact

The movement of people due to environment changes is not a new phenomenon. Despite this, only in the most recent 20 years, the international community has begun to acknowledge it as an unprecedented challenge in terms of sustainable resources involved. All over the world, the number of storms, droughts and floods has tripled in the last 30 years, with devastating effects on communities. The paper presents a brief analysis of global climate change in recent years and human mobility due to this phenomenon. The research is based on international regulations addressing the interdependencies between environmental change and migration. The climate risk management with impact on human mobility involves economic, political, cultural, and demographic factors. It also shows how a devastating natural disaster shapes people's mobility towards a more friendly environment protected shelter. The development of resilience community strategies implies a joint effort of communities and stakeholders in protecting human beings against effects of natural disasters.

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Distribution Patterns of Odonate Assemblages in Relation to Environmental Variables in Streams of South Korea

Insects ◽

10.3390/insects9040152 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 9 (4) ◽

pp. 152 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Da-Yeong Lee ◽

Dae-Seong Lee ◽

Mi-Jung Bae ◽

Soon-Jin Hwang ◽

Seong-Yu Noh ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Land Use ◽

Ecosystem Services ◽

Environmental Factors ◽

South Korea ◽

Habitat Heterogeneity ◽

Environmental Variables ◽

Environmental Changes ◽

Distribution Patterns ◽

Self Organizing Map ◽

Factors Affecting

Odonata species are sensitive to environmental changes, particularly those caused by humans, and provide valuable ecosystem services as intermediate predators in food webs. We aimed: (i) to investigate the distribution patterns of Odonata in streams on a nationwide scale across South Korea; (ii) to evaluate the relationships between the distribution patterns of odonates and their environmental conditions; and (iii) to identify indicator species and the most significant environmental factors affecting their distributions. Samples were collected from 965 sampling sites in streams across South Korea. We also measured 34 environmental variables grouped into six categories: geography, meteorology, land use, substrate composition, hydrology, and physicochemistry. A total of 83 taxa belonging to 10 families of Odonata were recorded in the dataset. Among them, eight species displayed high abundances and incidences. Self-organizing map (SOM) classified sampling sites into seven clusters (A–G) which could be divided into two distinct groups (A–C and D–G) according to the similarities of their odonate assemblages. Clusters A–C were characterized by members of the suborder Anisoptera, whereas clusters D–G were characterized by the suborder Zygoptera. Non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) identified forest (%), altitude, and cobble (%) in substrata as the most influential environmental factors determining odonate assemblage compositions. Our results emphasize the importance of habitat heterogeneity by demonstrating its effect on odonate assemblages.

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Paleotemperature and paleosalinity evolution across Eocene-Oligocene Transition in North Atlantic Ocean: Insights from geochemical analysis of bivalve shells.

10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-18358 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Justine Briard ◽

Marc de Rafélis ◽

Emmanuelle Vennin ◽

Mathieu Daëron ◽

Valérie Chavagnac ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Atlantic Ocean ◽

Sea Level ◽

Environmental Changes ◽

North Atlantic Ocean ◽

Global Climate ◽

Ice Sheet ◽

Major Step ◽

Mode Identification ◽

Global Climate Changes ◽

Bivalve Shells

The Cenozoic period encompasses the last transition from the &#8220;greenhouse&#8221; climate of the late Early Eocene (~50 Ma) to our modern &#8220;icehouse&#8221; climate with its much lower CO2 levels, significant polar glaciation and major sea level drop. The Eocene-Oligocene transition (EOT), that marks the first major ice-sheet build-up on Antarctica, has been extensively studied as it represents the entrance into an icehouse mode. Identification of this major step of Antarctic ice-sheet build-up strongly relies on &#948;18O and Mg/Ca benthic foraminifera records from ODP / DSDP sites. By contrast, few records currently exist from coastal environments despite the presence of abundant fossil archives, like bivalve shells. Yet palaeoenvironmental records from these peculiar coastal sites could bring information on how they react to global climate changes and help to further understand the behavior of our climate system. In this study, we applied a multi-proxy strategy coupling &#948;18O, &#948;13C, clumped isotopes (&#916;47), strontium isotopes (87Sr/86Sr) analyses on aragonitic and calcitic bivalves and sediments recovered from the Isle of Wight (London-Paris Basin, Northeastern Atlantic Ocean) to provide additional constrain on environmental changes in this region across the Eocene-Oligocene Transition (~37.8&#8211;33 Ma).Our new coupled &#948;18O and &#916;47 dataset highlights a marked decrease in local seawater temperatures (~ 8&#176;C) coupled to a drop in local seawater &#948;18O, likely linked to the sea level drop associated with ice-cap formation and an evolution toward more proximal, brackish environment in this region (that is apparent from sediment facies evolution). We estimate the salinity decrease recorded at the local scale from the Eocene to the Oligocene as reaching about 6 PSU, from 31 to 25 PSU. Strontium isotope analyses of the bivalves support this interpretation, showing values close to that of seawater up to the EOT but a marked deviation from contemporaneous global seawater 87Sr/86Sr values toward more radiogenic values afterward. This positive deviation is in agreement with an evolution toward more proximal environments, subjected to larger freshwater inputs.

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Mineral protection regulates the long-term global preservation of natural organic carbon

10.5194/egusphere-egu21-627 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Jordon Hemingway ◽

Daniel Rothman ◽

Katherine Grant ◽

Sarah Rosengard ◽

Timothy Eglinton ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Organic Carbon ◽

Redox State ◽

Global Climate ◽

Atmospheric Oxygen ◽

Atmospheric Composition ◽

Earth Surface ◽

Mountain Ranges ◽

Surface Redox ◽

Carbon Erosion

The vast majority of organic carbon (OC) produced by life is respired back to carbon dioxide (CO2), but roughly 0.1% escapes and is preserved over geologic timescales. By sequestering reduced carbon from Earth&#8217;s surface, this &#8220;slow OC leak&#8221; contributes to CO2 removal and promotes the accumulation of atmospheric oxygen and oxidized minerals. Countering this, OC contained within sedimentary rocks is oxidized during exhumation and erosion of mountain ranges. By respiring previously sequestered reduced carbon, erosion consumes atmospheric oxygen and produces CO2. The balance between these two processes&#8212;preservation and respiration&#8212;regulates atmospheric composition, Earth-surface redox state, and global climate. Despite this importance, the governing mechanisms remain poorly constrained. To provide new insight, we developed a method that investigates OC composition using bond-strength distributions coupled with radiocarbon ages. Here I highlight a suite of recent results using this approach, and I show that biospheric OC interacts with particles and becomes physiochemically protected during aging, thus promoting preservation. I will discuss how this mechanistic framework can help elucidate why OC preservation&#8212;and thus atmospheric composition, Earth-surface redox state, and climate&#8212;has varied throughout Earth history.

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