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Pine Forests
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Resources
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Pine health issues in the southeastern U.S.
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Several biotic and abiotic stressors, including insects, pathogens, and weather, can impact pine growth in the Southeast. Dr. David Coyle (Clemson University) will provide a general overview of identification, impact, and management strategies for pine health in the region.
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Training
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Videos and Webinars
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Pinyon Jay Work Group (CWPRI)
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CWPRI members created this workgroup to generate sharing and innovative discussions. Group leader is Rich Fischer.
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LP Members
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Workspaces
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Collaborative Wildlife Protection and Recovery Initiative (CWPRI)
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Pitts, Patrick A
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Expertise Search
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Planetary boundaries- Guidi.pdf
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Resources
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Climate Science Documents
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Planning Training Events
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Training
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Planning Training Events
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If you are planning a training event, the following resources may be helpful to ensure your event is successful.
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Training
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Plant Species Richness and Ecosystem Multifunctionality in Global Drylands
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Experiments suggest that biodiversity enhances the ability of ecosystems to maintain multiple
functions, such as carbon storage, productivity, and the buildup of nutrient pools (multifunctionality).
However, the relationship between biodiversity and multifunctionality has never been assessed globally
in natural ecosystems. We report here on a global empirical study relating plant species richness and
abiotic factors to multifunctionality in drylands, which collectively cover 41% of Earth’s land surface
and support over 38% of the human population. Multifunctionality was positively and significantly
related to species richness. The best-fitting models accounted for over 55% of the variation in
multifunctionality and always included species richness as a predictor variable. Our results suggest
that the preservation of plant biodiversity is crucial to buffer negative effects of climate change and
desertification in drylands.
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Climate Science Documents
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Plant species richness: the world records
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Questions: The co-existence of high numbers of species has always fascinated ecologists, but what and where are the communities with the world records for plant species richness? The species–area relationship is among the best-known patterns in community ecology, but does it give a consistent global pattern for the most saturated communities, the global maxima?
Location: The world. Methods: We assembled the maximum values recorded for vascular plant species richness for contiguous areas from 1 mm2 up to 1 ha. We applied the power function to relate maximal richness to area and to make extrapolations to the whole Earth.
Results: Only two community types contain global plant species maxima. The maxima at smaller spatial grain were from oligotrophic to mesotrophic, managed, semi-natural, temperate grasslands (e.g. 89 species on 1 m2), those at larger grains were from tropical rain forests (e.g. 942 species on 1 ha). The maximum richness values closely followed a power function with z = 0.250: close to Pres- ton’s ‘canonical’ value of 0.262. There was no discernable difference between maxima using rooted presence (i.e. including only plants rooted in the plot) vs shoot presence (i.e. including any plant with physical cover over the plot). How- ever, shoot presence values must logically be greater, with the curves flattening out at very small grain, and there is evidence of this from point quadrats. Extrap- olating the curve to the terrestrial surface of the Earth gave a prediction of 219 204 vascular plant species, surprisingly close to a recent estimate of 275 000 actual species.
Conclusions: Very high richness at any spatial grain is found only in two particular habitat/community types. Nevertheless, these high richness values form a very strong, consistent pattern, not greatly affected by the method of sampling, and this pattern extrapolates amazingly well. The records challenge ecologists to consider mechanisms of species co-existence, answers to the ‘Paradox of the Plankton’. Biodiversity; Canonical hypothesis; Macroecology; Oligo- to mesotrophic grassland; Paradox of the Plankton; Power function; Rooted presence; Scale dependence; Shoot presence; Spatial grain; Spatial scale; Species–area relation; Tropical rain forest;
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Resources
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Climate Science Documents
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Plant-Pollinator Interactions over 120 Years: Loss of Species, Co-Occurrence, and Function
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Using historic data sets, we quantified the degree to which global change over 120 years disrupted plant-pollinator interactions in a temperate forest understory community in Illinois, USA. We found degradation of interaction network structure and function and extirpation of 50% of bee species. Network changes can be attributed to shifts in forb and bee phenologies resulting in temporal mismatches, nonrandom species extinctions, and loss of spatial co-occurrences between extant species in modified landscapes. Quantity and quality of pollination services have declined through time. The historic network showed flexibility in response to disturbance; however, our data suggest that networks will be less resilient to future changes.
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Climate Science Documents
