Key Listener – Deborah Finch
Note taker – Susan Frankel
1. What are the critical scientific issues?
Climate change!
Impacts on native ecosystems
Changes on invasion patterns
Indirect effects – tree stress
Fire frequency, changes in fire behavior, fire occurrence patterns
Need – Profiles for key invaders. Bioclimate models, experimental studies over environmental gradients.
Climate niche in native vs invaded country. Hard what you can actually occupy.
Define climate niche!
Selective pressure – for species may change. Evolution of pests and habitats will change?
Interactions between a variety of invasives in one ecosystems (example HWA, understory exposed to
light, makes weeds grow and changes the successional path of the stand.
Secondary invaders
Fire risk, fuels accumulation, altered disturbance regimes, fragmentation, flooding
CO2 increase
- Response of plants (and their predators)
- change in competiveness of inv. Spec.
- change in chemistry of native plants
--effects on invasive herbivores
-changes in chemistry of invasive plants
-- effects on biocontrol
- changes in composition of native plant communities
-- changes in susceptibility to invasion
Drought! Changed in precipitation patterns.
Reduced habitat for wildlife, aquatics species, may magnify invasive species issues.
Nitrogen deposition. Predisposes systems to invasion. Toxic to species which will increase habitat for
invasives.
Increases development and land use change.
Increased pathways.
More people – more commerce.
Complexity of all these interactions!
Extreme weather events. Storms, hurricanes – providing opportunity for invasions.
Other stressors.
Ecosystem simplification.
Pollution.
Management – harvesting, timber stand improvement, restoration
Fragmentation
Demography and movement of people
Recreation – Eco-tourism
Synergistic effects.
Any change in niches will set off a new set of ecosystem processes. (Potential habitat of hosts and pests
in new climate.)
Host range expansions are important link between climate change and invasive species.
Trade
Globalization
Native insect outbreaks could lead to secondary invasions of invasive species.
Development and expansion of the WUI. Human disturbance.
Hybridization.
Pollution – pharmaceutical pollution
TEK – tribal issues
***Drivers vs passengers. Interactions! Will there be changes in roles given climate change and
invasive species invasions. (McDoughel and Terrington. 2005) Dean can correct!
2. What are the critical management and policy issues?
Secondary invasions
Where does invasive plants fit into disturbances issues. Invasive species needs to be integrated into
other topics!
Also invasive species incentivized by use to address other issues. (i.e. Bioenergy plants)
Increasing capacity to prioritize conduct mgt activities! Funding!! Develop public trust!
***For first chapter! Consensus as to ultimate management goals! What is the overall objective.
Restore? Protect?
How can we be relevant to “stakeholders”?
Increasing effectiveness with interagency and intra-agency collaborations.
Increased funding management for pests that will be respond to climate change
Tie changes in ecosystems to impacts to humans – social impacts. Quantify the social impacts.
Testing the efficacy of mgt action!
Climate change is a distraction from invasives species issue!
Effects of agriculture – ie. eutrotrophocation. Magnifies issues with filter feeders.
Grazing mgt, fire – management actions create stress!
Fertilizer – nitrogen deposition
Firefighting can spread invasives.
Lack of clarity for restoration goals. What are your objectives?
Decline in genetic diversity?!! Need management and policies that promote genetic diversity along
with managing species and adapting to climate change. Genetic resistance can narrow populations to
increase pathogen and insect attack success.
Link climate change with invasive species at the policy level.
Tribal treaty rights & tribal concerns
Policy to support sharing if agency “corporate” databases – i.e. APHIS & collaboration
What can we manipulate and what we can’t. Need to focus on how to optimize that.
3. Which scientific data, models, and syntheses (especially new results and knowledge in the past 5
years) are available to inform this topic?
How good are current climate models? And interface with species distribution models. Climate models
are getting better and better. Scale issues.
County presence of invasive insects.
For forests – FIA inv. Beyond the forest – patchy.
Risk maps – USFS FHP
GSM, PRISM
Inventories
Climate wizard.
Use of conceptual resilience and resistance models
Eastern Threat Center and WWETAC! Data sets. Vegetation typing! Big data sets that comprehensively
address issues. Fires. Where the WUI is, Transportation models.
Climate Change Resource Center.
USGS Resource for Advanced Modeling (RAM), Ft. Collins
NEON data – Boulder, CO
LTER
BISON database
USDA Plants Database, USDA Mycology Database
National Atmospheric Deposition Program
COCO Ross – Rain, Hail and Snow (Citizen Science databases)
CIRMOUNT
GLEON - Lake ecological Network
Breeding birds survey, ebird, Christmas
EPA – National Water Quality Assessment and Lake Habitats, EPA EMAP
New global plant alien invasive database – van Klueden
F&W & T&E database
State, regional, local invasive species councils
Noxious weed lists – states
University herbaria
GAP
LANDFIRE Reference database
Southern pine beetle data portal - FHTET
Bugwood, EDD – Univ. of Georgia
4. Which issues are likely to become increasingly important by 2040 and beyond?
See sheet 1.
2 billion more people!
Need to prevent imports.
How to deal with uncertainty.
Increasing human diversity?
Chance for human population decline.
Human disturbance will increase.
Trade and globalization will increase and geographic interactions will change.
Go beyond studying individual species abstract analyses.
Need increased international collaboration.
- Change in FS Research expertise capacity!! Science gap for long-term research
Marijuana growing will have a cascade of effects – introduces pesticides, etc.
Emergence of new technologies and better understanding of climate change and CO2 reduction.
Increased use of remote sensing.
Changes in insurance availability and cost.
Ecosystem services changes in knowledge, increases, decreases
Large changes in estuaries, wetlands.
Shortage of human water supply leading to changes in forest water availability.
5. How does this topic potentially connect with other topics in the chapter outline?
Cuts across all topics. Cross-cutting.
Links with mgt. and ecosystem processes chpt.
Uncertainty multiplier for all the other chapters.
???To what extent will people focus on climate change and not invasives? But also could be an
opportunity.
6. What are the gaps in knowledge and current research?
Gap. Model population spread and state transitions models!! Model
Gap. How to calibrate these types of models? Model
Gap. Need urban canopy data! Data
Urban population land use models.
Gap. Human mediated spread. Short and long distance.
How to deal with uncertainty?! Understand and assess! Creates incentives to delay.
Decision-maker need to know whether good or bad and effects of personal career.
How do decisions-makers respond to uncertainty averse?
Need to apply concepts from financial market risk, defense dept., FEMA?
Vast majority of models are status. They show intro or establish but they are not dynamic, spactial
temporal models beyond climate envelope models. Move from static to dynamic models.
None of the models account for CO2 increases!
Opportunity for funding! Climate change.
Models don’t take into account for management strategies nor do they model management.
Little forecasting ability!
Gap. Agriculture influence on invasive species establishment, spread, development
Gap. Improving interactions with homeowners.
Gap. Improving awareness of invasive species for homeowners
Gap. Understand the reasons for these invasions - Why are invasive species invasive. Need to know for
management.
***Gap. Habitat invisibility, invasiveness? Invasion paradox? Arrival, establishment & spread.
Gap. Need better vegetation layers.
Gap. Land use databases , road network
Gap. Spread models.
Gap. Need dynamic spread models.
Knowledge of distribution and impacts of native & invasive species to serve as a baseline so we can
understand how stressors are causing change.
Problem. Databases are silos. Integrated databases.
More user friendly databases!
Ecosystem level studies! How will invaded systems respond. Need larger scale studies.