Paleoclimate-induced stress on polar forested ecosystems prior to the Permian–Triassic mass extinction

The end Permian extinction (EPE) has been considered to be contemporaneous on land and in the oceans. However, re-examined floristic records and new radiometric ages from Gondwana indicate a nuanced terrestrial ecosystem response to EPE global change. Paleosol geochemistry and climate simulations indicate paleoclimate change likely caused the demise of the widespread glossopterid ecosystems on Gondwana. Here, we evaluate the climate response of plants to the EPE via dendrochronology to produce annual-resolution records of tree ring growth for a succession of Late Permian and early Middle Triassic fossil forests from Antarctica. Paleosol geochemistry provides a broader context paleoclimate history. The plant responses to this paleoclimate change were accompanied by enhanced stress during the latest Permian. These results suggest that paleoclimate change during the Late Permian exerted significant stress on high-latitude forests, consistent with the hypothesis that climate change was likely the primary driver of the extinction of the glossopterid ecosystems.

A synthesis and future research directions for tropical mountain ecosystem restoration

Many tropical mountain ecosystems (TME) are severely disturbed, requiring ecological restoration to recover biodiversity and ecosystem functions. However, the extent of restoration efforts across TMEs is not known due to the lack of syntheses on ecological restoration research. Here, based on a systematic review, we identify geographical and thematic research gaps, compare restoration interventions, and consolidate enabling factors and barriers of restoration success. We find that restoration research outside Latin-America, in non-forested ecosystems, and on socio-ecological questions is scarce. For most restoration interventions success is mixed and generally limited by dispersal and microhabitat conditions. Finally, we propose five directions for future research on tropical mountain restoration in the UN decade of restoration, ranging from scaling up restoration across mountain ranges, investigating restoration in mountain grasslands, to incorporating socio-economic and technological dimensions.

Smartforests Canada: A Network of Monitoring Plots for Forest Management Under Environmental Change

Monitoring of forest response to gradual environmental changes or abrupt disturbances provides insights into how forested ecosystems operate and allows for quantification of forest health. In this chapter, we provide an overview of Smartforests Canada, a national-scale research network consisting of regional investigators who support a wealth of existing and new monitoring sites. The objectives of Smartforests are threefold: (1) establish and coordinate a network of high-precision monitoring plots across a 4400 km gradient of environmental and forest conditions, (2) synthesize the collected multivariate observations to examine the effects of global changes on complex above- and belowground forest dynamics and resilience, and (3) analyze the collected data to guide the development of the next-generation forest growth models and inform policy-makers on best forest management and adaptation strategies. We present the methodological framework implemented in Smartforests to fulfill the aforementioned objectives. We then use an example from a temperate hardwood Smartforests site in Quebec to illustrate our approach for climate-smart forestry. We conclude by discussing how information from the Smartforests network can be integrated with existing data streams, from within Canada and abroad, guiding forest management and the development of climate change adaptation strategies.

Supervised continuous land cover change detection in a critically endangered shrubland ecosystem

Existing efforts to rapidly detect land cover change in satellite image time-series have mostly focused on forested ecosystems in the tropics and northern hemisphere. The notable difference in reflectance that occurs following deforestation allow for unsupervised methods, often with manually determined thresholds, to detect land cover change with relative accuracy. Less progress has been made in detecting change in low productivity, disturbance-prone vegetation such as grasslands and shrublands, where natural dynamics can be difficult to distinguish from habitat loss. Renosterveld is a hyperdiverse, critically endangered shrubland ecosystem in South Africa with less than 5-10% of its original extent remaining in small, highly fragmented patches. I demonstrate that supervised classification of satellite image time series using neural networks can accurately detect the transformation of Renosterveld within a few days of its occurrence, and that trained models are suitable for operational continuous monitoring. A training dataset of precisely dated vegetation change events between 2016 and 2020 was obtained from daily, high resolution Planet labs satellite data. This dataset was then used to train 1D convolutional neural networks and Transformers to continuously classify land cover change events in multivariate time-series of vegetation activity from Sentinel 2 satellites as new data becomes available. These models reached a f-score of 0.93, a 61% improvement over the f-score of 0.57 achieved using an unsupervised method designed for forested ecosystems. Models have been deployed to operational use and are producing updated detections of habitat loss every 10 days. There is great potential for supervised approaches to continuous monitoring of habitat loss in ecosystems with complex natural dynamics. A key limiting step is the development of accurately dated labelled datasets of land cover change events with which to train machine learning classifiers.

A Synthesis and Future Research Directions for Tropical Mountain Ecosystem Restoration

Many tropical mountain ecosystems (TME) are severely disturbed, requiring ecological restoration to recover biodiversity and ecosystem functions. However, the extent of restoration efforts across TMEs is not known due to the lack of syntheses on ecological restoration research. Here, based on a systematic review, we identify geographical and thematic research gaps, compare restoration interventions, and consolidate enabling factors and barriers of restoration success. We find that restoration research outside Latin-America, in non-forested ecosystems, and on socio-ecological questions is scarce. For most restoration interventions success is mixed and generally limited by dispersal and microhabitat conditions. Finally, we propose five directions for future research on tropical mountain restoration in the UN decade of restoration, ranging from scaling up restoration across mountain ranges, investigating restoration in mountain grasslands, to incorporating socio-economic and technological dimensions.

Technical Report on Assembling Indicators to Monitor Climate-Driven Change in Northeastern Forests

Forest ecosystems are experiencing the impacts of climate change in many forms, however, comprehensive monitoring efforts are not always available to identify changing baselines. In order to improve our understanding of the impacts of climate change on ecosystem processes, the FEMC developed the Forest Impacts of Climate Change: Monitoring Indicators tool (Version 1.0). The Forest Impacts of Climate Change: Monitoring Indicators tool was developed for use by researchers and professionals to be able to easily access protocols used to monitor high priority indicators of the impacts of climate change in New England and New York. The monitoring protocols provide information for landowners and managers to implement their own monitoring programs that will be comparable to other studies being conducted across the region. By centralizing information about this network of monitoring sites, more data will become available to the community to help discern how forest ecosystems are changing. This report describes the methods and implementation used to build this tool. To develop the Forest Impacts of Climate Change: Monitoring Indicators tool, FEMC formed a committee of partners to select indicators and provide guidance about the literature review and eventual tool. The committee identified four ecological categories as important for monitoring climate change in the Northeast: Wildlife, Forest Systems, Trees, and Aquatic Systems. FEMC identified who is currently conducting monitoring efforts, what monitoring protocols are available for replication, gaps in monitoring data, and how we can make data and monitoring information easily available so that land managers can have the most up-to -date information possible. The developed tool compiles over 350 studies across 24 different indicators of the impacts of climate change. Through a filterable webtool users can find these studies, as well as 168 replicable protocols to direct implementation. The tool helps to identify gaps in monitoring efforts and provides a platform for users to contribute to regionally cohesive datasets. Monitoring of indicators across systems is critical for tracking and understanding climate change impacts. The Forest Impacts of Climate Change: Monitoring Indicators tool, developed for use by researchers, professionals, and land managers across the region, lets users find methods and protocols for monitoring climate change impacts and see where these monitoring efforts are already being conducted in our region. In addition, you can quickly visualize where there are gaps in our monitoring. As contributors in the Cooperative region share more information about their own monitoring efforts, this will become available to the community through this tool, increasing our ability to track and identify change in our forested ecosystems.