Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment最新文献

In a changing climate, resource management depends on anticipating changes and considering uncertainties. To facilitate effective decision making on public lands, we regionally summarized the magnitude and uncertainty of projected change in management-relevant climate variables for 332 national park units across the contiguous US. Temperature, frequency of extreme precipitation events, and drought exposure are all projected to increase within seven regions delineated in the US National Climate Assessment. In particular, the anticipated collective impacts of droughts and flooding events will lead to unique management challenges, including combinations of management actions that may seem inconsistent. Furthermore, uncertainty in the magnitude of change varied by region and climate variable considered, pointing to specific opportunities for prioritization, transferability, and innovation of climate adaptation regionally and at the park-unit scale.

Disturbances from insect pests threaten ecologically and economically important goods and services supplied by forests, including wood production and carbon sequestration. We highlight the factors that influence these services’ resistance, a term quantifying the initial response to disturbance. Insects inflict damage through a range of mechanisms, prompting distinct plant physiological responses that scale to influence ecosystem processes and, with time, goods and services. The degree and timing of tree mortality and defoliation affect the amount of residual vegetation available to support compensatory wood production and influence carbon sequestration by changing rates of detritus-fueled decomposition. Compounding, or sequential, insect attacks may prime a forest for additional disturbance, further eroding wood production and carbon sequestration. Forest management practices that promote biological and structural diversity, and augment or retain limiting biological and nutrient resources, may buffer against the effects of insect pests on wood production and carbon sequestration.

Finding ways to improve the sustainability of modern agriculture by recovering nature in agricultural landscapes is critical for conserving biodiversity and enhancing human well-being. Rewilding principles could be applied to any type of landscape, which raises the possibility of employing rewilding approaches in agricultural areas while maintaining some degree of food production therein. Moving beyond the simple dichotomy of land sparing versus land sharing, here we propose a multi-scale approach that integrates rewilding principles into agricultural landscapes by combining the creation of wilder ecosystems in separate set-aside recovered areas with the implementation of farming approaches that are more sustainable, such as precision farming, ecologically intensified farming, and extensive farming, in adjacent areas. Adoption of such approaches would allow for more biodiversity elements to persist within the agricultural matrix. We explain how this approach could support the three critical components of rewilded land—dispersal, trophic complexity, and stochastic disturbances—and create agroecological landscapes that are biodiverse, resilient, and functionally connected at multiple scales.

Invasive plants often benefit from a change in eco-evolutionary context, escaping the herbivores, pathogens, and competing plants from their native range. Introduced into naïve native communities, invasive plants can spread rapidly, threatening native plant diversity and ecosystem functioning. Increasingly, studies have shown that native species sometimes adapt in response to the selection pressures imposed by an invasive plant. While researchers have periodically suggested using adapted native species in the management of invasive plants, the idea generally has not found its way to the field. Here, we (1) compare the concept to the more established practices of assisted migration, classic biological control, and microbiome engineering; (2) discuss some of the hurdles to practical implementation; and (3) outline directions for further research that would help expose the role of native adaptations in shaping the trajectory of plant invasions.

Large disturbances to ecosystems can severely impact the stability of a region's natural resources, habitats, and outdoor recreation. Because extreme events can be large and relatively infrequent, they test institutional capacity to support recovery and restoration. When hurricanes and other large-scale disturbances like wildfires occur, much of the impacted landscape receives little to no active management. Ecosystems are often allowed to either recover or transition without much direct intervention, and successional dynamics are sometimes altered by novel invasive species, management history, or other environmental changes.

Recovery and restoration are especially challenging for landscapes with highly fragmented private ownership, such as the forests of the eastern US. Acting alone, non-industrial private forest landowners have little capacity to effectively respond to unexpected forest loss and to oversee forest recovery, as the scale of actions needed after extreme events may require cooperation across ownerships or jurisdictions.

In September 2024, Hurricane Helene exposed these underlying vulnerabilities of southern Appalachian forests. In western North Carolina alone, about 196,000 hectares of forest received major damage from Hurricane Helene, with most impacts occurring on private lands and in unusually large blowdown patches with no known regional precedent. Not since the widespread forest loss of the late 19th and early 20th centuries due to extensive logging and the American chestnut blight have so few trees covered the region's slopes.

This enormous damage to southern Appalachian forests raises concerns about loss of wildlife habitat, increased wildfire risks due to the abundance of fuel, reduced water quality from erosion and sedimentation, and spread of invasive species. Damaged forests are likely to reestablish as novel ecosystems composed of new species assemblages with a suite of interactions and processes that differ from prior conditions. On public and private lands, the duration of forest recovery will take decades or more and will be highly dependent on management choices and market incentives.

Since Hurricane Helene, disaster relief crews continue to work hard to remove fallen trees and debris near structures, roads, trails, and recreation areas as time and funds are available. However, removing downed and damaged wood is more costly and dangerous than typical forest harvesting. Piles of downed, unused wood may be burned, but combustion releases smoke and carbon into the atmosphere. Historically, debris burning and arson are the region's primary sources of wildfire ignitions, and it is hard to control burns when so many of the surrounding forests have high flammability.

A major dilemma is what to do with all this downed wood and debris from Hurricane Helene and how to pay for its removal. There is ongoing timber demand for large intact boles, at least where they can be accessed, but demand i

To meet Kunming-Montreal Target 6 of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), we argue that more comprehensive measures are needed to manage invasive alien species (IAS), which is especially true for China, given that it is undergoing an unprecedented wave of invasions due to its rapid development. Here, we consider the status of IAS in China, evaluate China's ongoing countermeasures against IAS, and provide recommendations for improving management. In total, 802 IAS have been identified in China. Facing the growing threats of IAS, China has made progress in IAS management, but more stringent and thorough measures are still required. In addition to improving legislation and governance, China should strengthen transdisciplinary and proactive research, implement more comprehensive prevention and control actions against IAS, and enhance international cooperation and translational education. By creating a model for IAS management that other countries can follow, China's efforts can contribute substantially to the CBD's Kunming-Montreal 2030 Global Targets.