Adapting to Climate Change:

Why Places Matter: Ensuring Ecological Resiliency

Dr. Mark AndersonDir of Conservation ScienceEastern US Conservation Region

Rose PaulDirector of Science and StewardshipVermont Chapter, Nature Conservancy

Two Countries, One ForestTwo Countries, One Forest

October 22, 2008October 22, 2008

Main Points

• Conserve the Stage, not the Actors – Understand the geophysical template

• Rebuild Site Resilience– Increasing resilience vs. abating threats

• Design Resilient Networks

Facing the Truth

• Multiple severe and unpredictable threats

• Shepherding ecosystems through a changing environment

• “maintaining a capacity for renewal in a dynamic environment provides an ecological buffer that protects the system from the failure of management actions that are taken based upon incomplete understanding, and it allows managers to affordably learn and change.” Definition of resiliency from Gunderson 2000

The Eastern US Conservation Region: 14 States, 3 Provinces,13,530 Species:

8,223 plants,5,307 animals,523 vulnerable

-functional extinction: chestnut, wolf, cougar, woodland caribou

-presently 31% of flora and 10% of vertebrate fauna are exotic

-hundreds of species range shifts

Overlay of Secured Areas on the Biophysical Settings

Collected 41 variables for each state: geology, landforms, elevation, temperature, precipitation, shoreline etc.

Species Richness: Actual vs. Predicted# of Geology Types + # of Elevation Zones + Amount of Calcareous Bedrock + Maximum Hardiness

Zone - Degree Longitude

CTDE

MA

MD

ME

NB NH

NJ

NS

NY

OH

PA

PE

RI

VA

VT

WV

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

6000

7000

8000

9000

1,000 2,000 3,000 4,000 5,000 6,000 7,000 8,000

Predicted

Act

ual

All Species R2 = 0.953

Species Richness# of Bedrock types, Latitude, Elevation range and Amount of

calcareous substrate

A

ctua

l Ric

hnes

s

Predicted Species Richness

Anderson 2008 in prep, Based on the best-fit a stepwise regression of 42 variables

R2 = 0.94* P = 0.0000008

Ecosystems in the Northeast Portfolios

Forests

Riparian

Tidal marsh & Beach

Steep slopes \ Cliffs

Rivers & Stream

Coves

Summits

Freshwater wetlands

These aren’t going to move.How do we facilitate their change?

Geology: example

Focus on Ecosystems types based on setting and structure

Create arenas for evolution not museums of the past.

-At any one place the exact composition is going to change but the feature is not going to move and its significance to biodiversity will remain.

OLD: Cattail (Typha latifolia) – Marsh Marigold (Caltha palustris) marshCattail (Typha angustifolia, latifolia) – Bullrusch (Shoenoplectus spp.) marsh

NEW:Freshwater marsh ecosystem on shale at low elevation. Freshwater marsh ecosystem on granite at high elevation

Summits in the Northeast Portfolios

Sedimentary

Intermediate (mafic)Sedimentary

Mafic -low

Granite

Mixed

Granite

Rebuilding Site Resilience

• Allowing for Dynamics– Protect adequate space

• Nurturing sources of Renewal – How does the ecosystem recover?

• Preserving Options: the role of diversity– Many species confer resilience

Increasing Resiliency vs. Abating Threats

Bubble Boy = no resilience, no capacity to recover, no immune system, fragile

Strategy = permanent threat abatement • Requires anticipating and abating each and

every threat

Wolverine = infinite resilience, Cells regrow instantly, Absorbs all threats and recovers instantly

(albeit painfully)

How do we convert bubble boy into wolverine?

Building Resiliency into Sites: Size

Nurture Sources of Renewal

• Accumulated capital that provide sources for recovery – (soils, structures, seed banks, legacies)

• Key science questions that need research

Tip-up mounds

Snags

Multiple layers of coarse woody debris

Mixed canopy & understory

Full Biodiversityfungi, inverts, etc

Seed Banks

Legacies and Aquatics: dissipates energy, traps litter, creates pools, releases nutrients. higher diversity & higher quality spawning habitat.

BOGS: Small but resilient! Depth of peat accumulation is key

The Role of Biodiversity

• Functional groups – species combine to form an overlapping set of

reinforcing influences– Diverse system spread risk and retain over all

consistency in performance independent of wide fluctuations in individual species

– Exact composition and abundance is going to change - it has to.

Main Points

• Increase Resilience vs. Abate Threats

• Conserve the Stage, not the Actors – understanding the geophysical template

• Rebuild Site Resilience

• Design Resilient Networks – Redundancy, Dispersed Replicates

HighResiliency

Low Resiliency