Download Group A: Impacts on Organisms, Communities and Landscapes

Group A: Impacts on Organisms,
Communities and Landscapes
Q5:
How This Topic can Potentially Connect With Other Topics in Chapter Outline
Chapter 3: Impacts of Invasive
Species on Ecosystem
Processes and Structures
It focuses on the impacts of an invading species or species complex on the biological and
physical components of a forest ecosystem, whereas Ch. 3 focuses on the impacts of the
same on the processes of that forest ecosystem. Understanding the impacts on the
components is linked to an understanding of the impacts on the process.
Chapter 4: Climate Change and
Invasive Species &
Chapter 5: Influence of Natural
Disturbances on Invasive
Species
The presence and degree of impact is modulated by the external stressors on the
ecosystem.
Chapter 6: Management and
Prevention &
Chapter 7: Risk Assessment
Impacts can be divided into:
1) impacts of the invader itself on ecosystem components
2) impacts of the management actions directed at the invader on the ecosystem
components. The decision to manage is often predicated on the level/severity of
impact or perceived impact.
Group A: Impacts on Organisms,
Communities and Landscapes
Q5:
How This Topic can Potentially Connect With Other Topics in Chapter Outline
Chapter 9: Changing the
Culture of Invasive Species
Science and Management
The sociological and cultural attributes of invasive species pathways; the impact of the
invaders on ecosystem services of humans (e.g., water, shade, recreation); and the
generally direct relationship of degree of impact on human concern leading to funding
and policy implementation.
Chapter 11: Economic
Consequences of Invasive
Species
Valuation can be a key metric of impact, particularly impacts at secondary levels of
ecosystem components.
Chapter 8: Tools and
Technologies &
Chapter 10: International
Perspectives
Linked to Ch. 2 through the questions on “Scientific Data, Models and Syntheses” and
“Critical Management and Policy Issues,” respectively.
Group A: Impacts on Organisms,
Communities and Landscapes
Q1: Critical Scientific Issues
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Cryptic or delayed impacts of invasive species: These organisms may have
unexpected impacts in space and over time. Need to quantify.
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Invasional Meltdown: Combinatorial or potential synergistic effects of multiple
invaders on multiple hosts have unquantified impacts on ecosystem components.
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Ecosystem resilience/resistance to IS needs to be evaluated experimentally in FACEtype simulated ecosystems to determine how systems/system components behave in
general to invasions.
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Scaling-spatial and temporal: We need to learn how to scale up impacts from the
experimental level to the landscape level and scale down the risk from the continental
level to the local level.
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When (how frequently) do natural regulatory factors engage to control an IS.
Group A: Impacts on Organisms,
Communities and Landscapes
Q6: What are the Gaps in Knowledge and Current Research
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Cascading impacts of IS (insects on vertebrates through plants)
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Improving, re-targeting monitoring of presence and impact
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Mechanisms: How do IS (insects/pathogens) kill trees? How do IS disperse? How
do impacts happen? How do we elucidate and quantify networks of impact?
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Do we overestimate impacts?
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Can we do more multivariate experiments involving environmental gradients to
test ecosystem responses (linkage to climate change)?
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We need a datahub for IS (the IS GenBank).
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Do we know enough about elevational (vertical) spread of IS.
Group A: Impacts on Organisms,
Communities and Landscapes
Q3: Scientific Data, Models Available to Inform This Topic
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FIA data
Climate predictive models
Risk mapping/assessment
Citizen Science sets
NCEAS syntheses
IUFRO synthesis
Gary Lovett paper on ecological and
economic impacts
USGS Powell Center
USDA plant database
USDA NCGR
USGS Fish database
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NEON data on climate change and invasives
NPS long term data on vegetation
Long term ecological research sites
LANDIS-2
Landscape simulations models
Geovisualization
MODIS
Decision support tools e.g. Expert system
software
• PIERS database
• Documents trade manifests
• Sea-web database to track transports
Group A: Impacts on Organisms,
Communities and Landscapes
Q4: Issues Likely to Become Important by 2040
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Security and IS: National security, especially food and water security
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Demise of biological expertise: Will we have enough taxonomists, entomologists, pathologists, plant
scientists, geneticists in 2040 and beyond?
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IS Pathways of the future: Will we shut them down or will more and leakier pathways from
understudied source populations of IS open? Consensus was strongly negative.
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The Godzilla Effect: Hybridization of invaders with native species.
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What will be the trajectories of novel ecosystems and who will decide the composition and restoration
goals for the “designer” ecosystems?
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What will the human population density and climate look like in 25 years?
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The necessity of a continual investment in new detection techniques and controls for IS.
Group A: Impacts on Organisms,
Communities and Landscapes
Q2: Critical Management and Policy Issues
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Grassroots (Community) level development and delivery of lists of IS impacts to Congress
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Can we develop politically meaningful metrics for IS impact (the “Carbon tax” for invasive
species).
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IS Impacts as a justification for executing ecosystem management and recovery.
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Develop a procedure to resolve when IS management is at odds with T&E management.
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Looking across the border: What are the challenges and opportunities of international
management and policy issues?
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Human emotions: As impacts increase in magnitude the human response is to get on the hot
line and call politicians’ offices.
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Location, location, location: proximity of impacts and human responses.