Insect Community Response Following Wildfire in an Eastern North American Pine Barrens

Ecosystem recovery following wildfire is heavily dependent upon fire severity and frequency, as well as factors such as regional topography and connectivity to unburned patches. Insects are an often-overlooked group of organisms impacted by fire and play crucial roles in many ecosystem services. Flying insects are particularly capable of avoiding fire, returning to burned patches following the initial disturbance, making them an important group to study when assessing wildfire impacts. Following a wildfire in July of 2018 at the Altona Flat Rock jack pine barrens in northeastern New York, insects were collected from an unburned reference site and a post-fire site using malaise traps. Samples were collected in the 2018, 2019, and 2020 field seasons. Insect groups were found to have three main responses to the disturbance event: increased abundance post-fire, unchanged abundance post-fire, or reduced abundance post-fire. Several dipteran families and some non-dipteran groups were present in greater abundance in the post-fire study site, such as Diptera Polleniidae, which increased in abundance immediately following the disturbance in 2018. Other fire-adapted taxa exhibited a more delayed positive response in 2019 and 2020. Diversity, particularly among Diptera, increased with time since the disturbance at the post-fire site. Many taxa declined in response to fire disturbance, including Lepidoptera and several Diptera families, most likely due to habitat, moisture, and organic matter requirements. Future studies could prove beneficial in understanding the recovery of this community and informing land management practices.

Decadal Modeling (2004-2021) Ecosystem Recovery Impacted by Mount Semeru Eruption Volcanic Activities using Vegetation Succession as a Proxy in the Lava Flow Stream

Volcano eruptions undoubtly cause environmental impacts and damages. After the eruption, there will be vast barren land that was previously fertile ground covered by vegetation and tree line. Lava from an eruption will flow to the land via a river stream, destroying everything in its path, including vegetation. While the ecosystem actually has an ability to recover. The natural process of ecosystem recovery is related to the succession of vegetation. Then this study aims to assess and model how the ecosystem can recover and how the vegetation can respond to the damage caused by Semeru, one of the most powerful volcanic eruptions on Java island. The study areas were 2 regions that had been impacted by the Semeru lava flow for the period of 2004–2021. Based on the results, the ecosystem recovery of Semeru post-eruption was achieved within 5 years. During this time, the vegetation succession rate, as measured by vegetation cover, increased nearly ten folds. The post-eruption ecosystem recovery was indicated by the ecosystem transformation from a damaged ecosystem indicated by a lava-dominated surface to one with the presence of vegetation and hardened lava. The recovered ecosystem in Semeru's posteruption was composed of solid lava covers (39%), liquid lava (34%), and vegetation covers (27%).Then, the presence of vegetation and its succession rate can be used as a proxy of ecosystem recovery after a vast volcanic eruption.

Functional recovery of secondary tropical forests

One-third of all Neotropical forests are secondary forests that regrow naturally after agricultural use through secondary succession. We need to understand better how and why succession varies across environmental gradients and broad geographic scales. Here, we analyze functional recovery using community data on seven plant characteristics (traits) of 1,016 forest plots from 30 chronosequence sites across the Neotropics. By analyzing communities in terms of their traits, we enhance understanding of the mechanisms of succession, assess ecosystem recovery, and use these insights to propose successful forest restoration strategies. Wet and dry forests diverged markedly for several traits that increase growth rate in wet forests but come at the expense of reduced drought tolerance, delay, or avoidance, which is important in seasonally dry forests. Dry and wet forests showed different successional pathways for several traits. In dry forests, species turnover is driven by drought tolerance traits that are important early in succession and in wet forests by shade tolerance traits that are important later in succession. In both forests, deciduous and compound-leaved trees decreased with forest age, probably because microclimatic conditions became less hot and dry. Our results suggest that climatic water availability drives functional recovery by influencing the start and trajectory of succession, resulting in a convergence of community trait values with forest age when vegetation cover builds up. Within plots, the range in functional trait values increased with age. Based on the observed successional trait changes, we indicate the consequences for carbon and nutrient cycling and propose an ecologically sound strategy to improve forest restoration success.

Selection of the reference genes for quantitative gene expression by RT-qPCR in the desert plant Stipagrostis pennata

The desert pioneer plant Stipagrostis pennata plays an important role in sand fixation, wind prevention, and desert ecosystem recovery. An absence of reference genes greatly limits investigations into the regulatory mechanism by which S. pennata adapts to adverse desert environments at the molecular and genetic levels. In this study, eight candidate reference genes were identified from rhizosheath development transcriptome data from S. pennata, and their expression stability in the rhizosheaths at different development stages, in a variety of plant tissues, and under drought stress was evaluated using four procedures, including geNorm, NormFinder, BestKeeper, and RefFinder. The results showed that GAPDH and elF were the most stable reference genes under drought stress and in rhizosheath development, and ARP6 and ALDH were relatively stable in all plant tissues. In addition, elF was the most suitable reference gene for all treatments. Analysis of the consistency between the reverse transcription-quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) and RNA sequencing data showed that the identified elF and GAPDH reference genes were stable during rhizosheath development. These results provide reliable reference genes for assuring the accuracy of RT-qPCR and offer a foundation for further investigations into the genetic responses of S. pennata to abiotic stress.

Serial invasions can disrupt the time course of ecosystem recovery

The impacts of species invasions can subside or amplify over time as ecosystems "adapt" or additional invaders arrive. These long-term changes provide important insights into ecosystem dynamics. Yet studies of long-term dynamics are rare, system-specific, and often confound species impacts with coincident environmental change. We track post-invasion changes shared across ecosystems and multiple decades, quantifying the response of seven key features to quagga and zebra mussels congeners that re-engineer and increasingly co-invade freshwaters. Six polymictic shallow lakes with long-term data sets reveal remarkably similar trends, with the strongest ecosystem impacts occurring within 5-10 years of zebra mussel invasion. Surprisingly, plankton communities then exhibited a partial, significant recovery. This recovery was absent, and impacts of initial invasion amplified, in lakes where quagga mussels outcompeted zebra mussels and more completely depleted phytoplankton. Thus, invasion impacts subside over time but can amplify with serial introductions of competing, even closely similar, taxa.

How far to build it before they come? Analyzing the use of the Field of Dreams hypothesis in bull kelp restoration

In restoration ecology, the Field of Dreams Hypothesis posits that restoration efforts that create a suitable environment could lead to eventual recovery of the remaining aspects of the ecosystem through natural processes. Natural processes following partial restoration has lead to ecosystem recovery in both terrestrial and aquatic systems. However, understanding the efficacy of a "field of dreams" approach requires comparison of different approaches to partial restoration in terms of spatial, temporal, and ecological scale to what would happen with more comprehensive restoration efforts. We explore the relative effect of partial restoration and ongoing recovery on restoration efficacy with a dynamical model based on temperate rocky reefs in Northern California. We analyze our model for both the ability and rate of bull kelp forest recovery under different restoration strategies. We compare the efficacy of a partial restoration approach with a more comprehensive restoration effort by exploring how kelp recovery likelihood and rate change with varying intensities of urchin removal and kelp outplanting over different time periods and spatial scales. We find that, for the case of bull kelp forests, setting more favorable initial conditions for kelp recovery through implementing both urchin harvesting and kelp outplanting at the start of the restoration project has a bigger impact on the kelp recovery rate than applying restoration efforts through a longer period of time. Therefore partial restoration efforts, in terms of spatial and temporal scale, can be significantly more effective when applied across multiple ecological scales in terms of both the capacity and rate of achieving the target outcomes.

Soil Mesofauna Responses to Fire Severity in a Sclerophyllous Forest in Central Chile

Forest fires may have severe impacts on the aboveground biodiversity and soil chemical and biological properties. Edaphic organisms are highly sensitive to disturbances and are typically used to measure the magnitude of these events. Overall, little is known about the responses of these organisms to fires differing in their severity levels. This study aimed to assess the effect of fire severity on the soil mesofauna community diversity and structure in a site located in a Mediterranean zone of central Chile. In postfire conditions, we use spectral indexes from satellite images to map fire severity at four levels (non-damage (ND), low damage (L), medium damage (M), high damage (H)). Soil samples were collected at each severity level, and the mesofauna abundance was quantified. Although the metrics describing species diversity and dominance were similar among fire severity levels, the abundance and composition of the mesofauna were specifically altered at the high severity level. The edaphic mesofauna can be considered suitable bioindicators to evaluate the postfire ecosystem recovery, especially in the areas highly damaged by fire.

Environmental remediation in foreign countries: experience of legal regulation

Background. Environmental remediation plays an important role in mitigating or eliminating environmental damage. The worldwide experience in organising and regulating ecosystem recovery activity is of interest.Aim. An extensive comparative analysis of the particularities of legal regulation in the sphere of environmental remediation in foreign countries.Materials and methods. The study was based on three major criteria: the environmental remediation enshrined in law; the provision of the term “remediation” or its equivalent; identifying the objects of remediation. The analysis was based on the examination of the legal information registers and official government and parliament resources of over 20 countries worldwide. The study covers the period from 1970 to 2019, because since the 1970s, one can speak about the widespread implementation of environmental laws. In individual cases, the first mentioning of the current environmental law was taken as a starting point.Results. Based on the results of the study, the countries were divided into two categories. The first group was dominated by the vertical environmental legislation system and the second — by the horizontal one. The authors described the features of each group and identified the characteristic features of environmental remediation management. These features include the requirements for remediation plans, action plans enshrined in the law, introduction of special cadastre, importance ranking of remediation objects, etc. Formulating a universal interpretation of the “environmental remediation” term is another significant result of this study.Conclusions. The study showed that the need for and importance of environmental remediation is recognised worldwide. In the meantime, it is necessary to identify the principles of environmental remediation and to systematise approaches to ecosystem restoration.