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1
Clark, Kristin, and Robert Andrew McLeman. "Maple Sugar Bush Management and Forest Biodiversity Conservation in Eastern Ontario, Canada." Small-scale Forestry 11, no. 2 (October 12, 2011): 263–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11842-011-9183-x.
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Chu, Cindy, Charles K. Minns, Nigel P. Lester, and Nicholas E. Mandrak. "An updated assessment of human activities, the environment, and freshwater fish biodiversity in Canada." Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 72, no. 1 (January 2015): 135–48. http://dx.doi.org/10.1139/cjfas-2013-0609.
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Changes in resource development and expansions of urban centres suggest that the intensity and types of anthropogenic stressors affecting Canada’s watersheds are changing. Chu et al. (2003) integrated indices of freshwater fish biodiversity, environmental conditions, and anthropogenic stress to identify priority watersheds for conservation and management. Here, we update those indices using recent climate and census data to assess changes through time. We also applied different conservation and management scenarios to evaluate the robustness of our prioritization approach. Between time periods, the environmental and stress indices expanded northward because of warmer temperatures at higher latitudes and more intense anthropogenic stress in the northern regions of the provinces. Conservation priorities increased in northern British Columbia, Alberta, and Ontario but decreased in southern British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and south-central Quebec. Under multiple scenarios, conservation priorities were consistently highest in British Columbia, the Maritimes, southern Ontario, and southern Quebec. Future research to refine this assessment should focus on developing a nationwide georeferenced assessment of freshwater fisheries stress, quantifying spatial changes in the stressors, and evaluating the sensitivity of each index to the weighting of the individual variables. This work highlights the necessity for conservation and management strategies in Canada to keep pace with changing patterns in climate and human activities.
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Milne, Robert J., and Lorne P. Bennett. "Biodiversity and ecological value of conservation lands in agricultural landscapes of southern Ontario, Canada." Landscape Ecology 22, no. 5 (January 19, 2007): 657–70. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10980-006-9063-5.
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Wong, Isaac W., William G. Booty, Glenn Benoy, Cathy Nielsen, Phil Fong, and R. Craig McCrimmon. "Integrated Land and Water Scenarios of the Raisin River Watershed Using the SWAT Model." Water Quality Research Journal 44, no. 4 (November 1, 2009): 379–91. http://dx.doi.org/10.2166/wqrj.2009.038.
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Abstract This paper investigates the linkage between Canada's National Agri-Environmental Standards Initiative (NAESI) Biodiversity and Water themes by studying how patterns in terrestrial habitat, generated through land cover scenario modelling, influence water quality and quantity in the Raisin River watershed in southeastern Ontario. NAESI developed nonregulatory performance standards that define ideal and achievable levels of environmental quality. The indicators used to investigate the scenario risks included sediment and nutrient concentrations. The SWAT (Soil and Water Assessment Tool)-2005 model was calibrated and validated from 1985 to 2006 for current land cover and five other scenarios: potential natural vegetation (PNV); high biodiversity conservation (HBC); moderate biodiversity conservation; agricultural intensification with limited application of conservation direction; and agricultural intensification with no consideration of conservation direction (ANC). Scenario comparisons are provided for the average annual flow, and concentrations of total suspended sediment (TSS), total nitrogen, and total phosphorus for five watershed locations. The PNV scenario predicted the lowest total flows, and sediment and nutrient concentrations, and the ANC scenario predicted the highest sediment and nutrient concentrations. The SWAT median values for the HBC, "Current," and ANC scenarios at the outlet all exceeded the Ideal Performance Standards, except for the median TSS concentration of the HBC scenario.
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McMullin, R. Troy, and James C. Lendemer. "Lichen biodiversity and conservation status in the Copeland Forest Resources Management Area: a lichen-rich second-growth forest in southern Ontario." Canadian Field-Naturalist 127, no. 3 (December 3, 2013): 240. http://dx.doi.org/10.22621/cfn.v127i3.1490.
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Southern Ontario is the most densely populated region in Canada. As a result, ubanization, industrialization, and agriculture are extensive. Few ecosystems in the region have been unaltered, and second-growth forests now dominate the remaining natural landscape. To better understand the lichen diversity in these second-growth forests, we inventoried 24 distinct vegetation communites in the Copeland Forest Resources Management Area (1780 ha) located between Barrie and Orillia in September and October 2011, recording 154 species in 79 genera. One species, Lecidea sarcogynoides, was collected for the first time in Canada and is reported for the first time in North America; one additional species, Micarea micrococca, was collected for the first time in Ontario and is reported for the first time in Canada; three species that have previously been collected in Ontario — Bellemerea cinereorufescens, Phlyctis speirea, and Xanthoparmelia angustiphylla — are reported for the first time in the province; and Candelariella lutella was collected and is reported for the second time in Ontario and the third time in Canada. In addition, six species with a provincial status rank of S1 (critically imperilled) or S2 (imperilled) were located: Arthonia byssacea, Arthonia ruana, Chaenothecopsis pusiola, Cresponea chloroconia, Pachyphiale fagicola, and Placynthiella uliginosa. Our results show that second-growth forests can be important refugia for lichen diversity. The majority of the lichen diversity within the Copeland Forest was contained in a small number of sites (6 of 24). This suggests that management strategies should integrate lichen diversity by targeting species-rich areas. We found that sites with a high variation in: canopy closure, tree species, tree age, moisture, and the presence of snags had the highest lichen diversity. Forest managers in southern Ontario can use our results to identify species-rich areas on their properties.
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Southee, F. Meg, Brie A. Edwards, Cheryl-Lesley B. Chetkiewicz, and Constance M. O’Connor. "Freshwater conservation planning in the far north of Ontario, Canada: identifying priority watersheds for the conservation of fish biodiversity in an intact boreal landscape." FACETS 6, no. 1 (January 1, 2021): 90–117. http://dx.doi.org/10.1139/facets-2020-0015.
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Freshwater ecosystems show more biodiversity loss than terrestrial or marine systems. We present a systematic conservation planning analysis in the Arctic Ocean drainage basin in Ontario, Canada, to identify key watersheds for the conservation of 30 native freshwater fish, including four focal species: lake sturgeon, lake whitefish, brook trout, and walleye. We created species distribution models for 30 native fish species and accounted for anthropogenic impacts. We used the “prioritizr” package in R to select watersheds that maximize species targets, minimize impacts, and meet area-based targets based on the Convention on Biological Diversity commitment to protect 17% of terrestrial and freshwater areas by 2020 and the proposed target to protect 30% by 2030. We found that, on average, 17.4% and 29.8% of predicted species distributions were represented for each of the 30 species in the 17% and 30% area-based solutions, respectively. The outcomes were more efficient when we prioritized for individual species, particularly brook trout, where 24% and 36% of its predicted distribution was represented in the 17% and 30% solutions, respectively. Future conservation planning should consider climate change, culturally significant species and areas, and the importance of First Nations as guardians and stewards of the land in northern Ontario.
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Miller, Gord. "Forest and community sustainability – An Ontario perspective." Forestry Chronicle 79, no. 1 (February 1, 2003): 110–12. http://dx.doi.org/10.5558/tfc79110-1.
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Challenges to the sustainability of communities in northern and central Ontario are both ecological and socio-economic in nature. Ecological challenges include persistent impacts such as acid deposition as well as emerging challenges such as the advance of forestry northward and its impact on wildlife populations. Socio-economic challenges of the communities in this region include a declining population level as well as a workforce that is aging. Despite these challenges, northern communities, and forestry planners in particular, have knowledge and experience of value to community planning throughout Ontario. Examples include the fact that foresters and forestry-based communities know how to plan at the landscape ecosystem level, integrate biodiversity conservation and decide on the long-term disposition of land. This knowledge could make a significant contribution to community sustainability in southern Ontario communities, and inadvertently enhance the credibility and influence of forest planning methods and foresters in urban centres. Key words: sustainability, Environmental Commissioner, land use, forest, caribou, ecology, population
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Puric-Mladenovic, Danijela, and Silvia Strobl. "Designing natural heritage systems in southern Ontario using a systematic conservation planning approach." Forestry Chronicle 88, no. 06 (December 2012): 722–35. http://dx.doi.org/10.5558/tfc2012-138.
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Landscape planning in settled landscapes includes identifying larger areas of natural vegetation to be conserved protected and/or managed for various environmental and public services. These “green backbones” of the landscape, called Natural Heritage Systems (NHS) in the settled landscapes of southern Ontario, Canada, should have appropriate land use planning and natural areas management actions and related policies to protect and enhance biodiversity and ecological functions. As such, an NHS should be derived using a rigorous and defensible methodology while ensuring public involvement and input during this process. This paper describes the methodology for regional NHS design currently being implemented by OMNR in collaboration with numerous conservation partners and municipalities in southern Ontario. The methodology combines the principles and methods of landscape planning, conservation planning, and spatial analysis, while ensuring that the process is adaptable and repeatable over time and different scales. For each landscape, explicit and transparent conservation objectives, features and targets are identified based on stakeholder inputs. Numerous conservation and restoration objectives are translated into explicit quantitative targets for each analysis unit, and a mathematical optimization algorithm is used to represent all the targets at minimal cost (least land area). The methodology is illustrated using examples from a pilot study in Ecodistrict 7E–5 with some references to ongoing NHS implementation projects as well as potential applications of this method.
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Cole, Heather A., Steven G. Newmaster, F. Wayne Bell, Doug Pitt, and Al Stinson. "Influence of microhabitat on bryophyte diversity in Ontario mixedwood boreal forest." Canadian Journal of Forest Research 38, no. 7 (July 2008): 1867–76. http://dx.doi.org/10.1139/x08-036.
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As forest management intensifies, the conservation of forest biodiversity is a growing concern. Bryophytes are known to represent a considerable portion of plant diversity within northern forests. This is because bryophyte diversity is closely associated with microhabitat diversity. In this study, the influence of microhabitats on bryophyte diversity was investigated by comparing eight different boreal mixedwood microhabitats. The results indicate that bryophyte diversity (species richness, abundance, and evenness) is quite variable among microhabitats. The accumulation of species richness with microhabitat quantity within a forest stand also varies among microhabitats. β-diversity analyses indicate that the variety of microhabitats has considerable influence on community structure. Frequency analysis identified bryophytes that are restricted to or prefer particular microhabitats. Although all microhabitats are important to bryophyte diversity, decayed logs and rocks supported the greatest number of microhabitat-specific species, and rock microhabitats supported the largest total number of species. Recommendations for forest management, one of which emphasizes the need to recognize and manage the natural variety of microhabitats, such as downed woody material, found within the forests to conserve or restore bryophyte diversity are provided.
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Chu, Cindy, Charles K. Minns, and Nicholas E. Mandrak. "Comparative regional assessment of factors impacting freshwater fish biodiversity in Canada." Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 60, no. 5 (May 1, 2003): 624–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.1139/f03-048.
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This study presents a broad analysis of freshwater fish species biodiversity in relation to environmental and stress metrics throughout Canada. Species presenceabsence data were used to calculate richness and rarity indices by tertiary watershed. Richness is higher in the southern parts of Canada, whereas rarity is concentrated in a "ring of rarity" around the periphery of the country. Environmental and stress indices were developed for each watershed using readily available mapped information. The environmental index was estimated using growing degree-days above 5°C, elevation range (m) within the watershed, mean annual sunshine hours, and mean annual vapour pressure (kPa). The number of crop farms, forestry, waste management, and petroleum refining facilities, road density (km·1000 km2), dwelling density, and discharge sites (chimneys and laundry outlets) per 1000 km2 described the human stresses in each watershed. Conservation priority rankings were developed for the watersheds using an integrative index of the three indices. Watersheds in southern Ontario and British Columbia were ranked high because they contain the greatest biodiversity and the most stress. This study indicates how regional analyses can guide fisheries and watershed management.
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Cray, Heather, Justin Gaudon, and Stephen Murphy. "Introduced earthworms (Lumbricidae) in restored and remnant tallgrass prairies of southern Ontario." Canadian Field-Naturalist 135, no. 3 (January 21, 2022): 234–44. http://dx.doi.org/10.22621/cfn.v135i3.2721.
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Introduced earthworms alter the trajectory and composition of plant communities, for example, through their feeding, burrowing behaviour, and interactions with seeds. High densities of several earthworm species may decrease native biodiversity and disrupt restoration efforts in tallgrass prairies. This affects efforts to conserve and restore such habitat, which is of high conservation and restoration priority in eastern North America and typically restored through seeding events. To date, Lumbricus terrestris (Lumbricidae) and other species have remained largely undocumented in tallgrass prairies. We surveyed 22 tallgrass prairie sites in southern Ontario, Canada, to document earthworm density and species. Lumbricus terrestris was found at all sites. The average density was 66 ± 91 (SD) earthworms/m2 across our sampling plots, mostly juveniles (~94%). The number of all earthworms per plot significantly increased with the number of earthworm middens in each plot (χ21 = 4.50, P = 0.034). Prairies with a large number of middens had high earthworm density, but middens alone appear to explain little variation in our data (linear mixed-effects model, marginal R2 = 0.12) meaning there are other biologically important factors that affect their density. However, we found no effects of soil pH, organic matter content, or texture on the number earthworms per plot suggesting that earthworms can invade a range of tallgrass prairie soils with pH values between 5.27 and 7.67.
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McMULLIN, Richard Troy, Lindsay L. BENNETT, Owen J. BJORGAN, Danielle A. BOURQUE, Charlotte J. BURKE, Mackenzie A. CLARKE, Marie K. GUTGESELL, et al. "Relationships between air pollution, population density, and lichen biodiversity in the Niagara Escarpment World Biosphere Reserve." Lichenologist 48, no. 5 (September 2016): 593–605. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0024282916000402.
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AbstractThe fragmented ecosystems along the Niagara Escarpment World Biosphere Reserve provide important habitats for biota including lichens. Nonetheless, the Reserve is disturbed by dense human populations and associated air pollution. Here we investigated patterns of lichen diversity within urban and rural sites at three different locations (Niagara, Hamilton, and Owen Sound) along the Niagara Escarpment in Ontario, Canada. Our results indicate that both lichen species richness and community composition are negatively correlated with increasing human population density and air pollution. However, our quantitative analysis of community composition using canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) indicates that human population density and air pollution is more independent than might be assumed. The CCA analysis suggests that the strongest environmental gradient (CCA1) associated with lichen community composition includes regional pollution load and climatic variables; the second gradient (CCA2) is associated with local pollution load and human population density factors. These results increase the knowledge of lichen biodiversity for the Niagara Escarpment and urban and rural fragmented ecosystems as well as along gradients of human population density and air pollution; they suggest a differential influence of regional and local pollution loads and population density factors. This study provides baseline knowledge for further research and conservation initiatives along the Niagara Escarpment World Biosphere Reserve.
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Francis, A., P. B. Cavers, and S. I. Warwick. "The Biology of Canadian Weeds. 140. Hesperis matronalis L." Canadian Journal of Plant Science 89, no. 1 (January 1, 2009): 191–206. http://dx.doi.org/10.4141/cjps08094.
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The cruciferous weed Hesperis matronalis, dame's rocket (Brassicaceae), is an introduced Eurasian garden plant that began to escape shortly after its introduction to North America in the 19th century. It has gradually become naturalized across Canada and the United States, and has become invasive. It is not a major weed of crops, but is widespread in natural and conservation areas, particularly in thickets, open woodlands, forest margins and along streambanks, in parts of eastern and southern Ontario and western Quebec in Canada, and in New England and the midwest in the United States. In these habitats it can crowd out native vegetation and subsequently reduce biodiversity. Serving as an alternate host to a number of viruses, the species has the potential to infect cruciferous vegetable crops and garden plants. Despite its invasive potential, it continues to be sold at garden centres in both Canada and the United States. Key words: Hesperis matronalis, dame's-rocket, julienne des dames, weed biology, invasive alien, HEVMA
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Bowman, Michelle F., Ron Ingram, Ron A. Reid, Keith M. Somers, Norman D. Yan, Andrew M. Paterson, George E. Morgan, and John M. Gunn. "Temporal and spatial concordance in community composition of phytoplankton, zooplankton, macroinvertebrate, crayfish, and fish on the Precambrian Shield." Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 65, no. 5 (May 1, 2008): 919–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.1139/f08-034.
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Concordance among communities dictates how broadly we can extrapolate results derived from a set of ecosystems. We used Mantel tests to evaluate the degree of concordance in community composition among phytoplankton, zooplankton, benthic macroinvertebrate, crayfish, and fish in eight lakes near Dorset, Ontario, Canada. Spatial concordance across lakes at the decadal scale was stronger (mean Mantel r = 0.51, standard deviation (SD) = 0.20) than both intra-annual agreement (mean Mantel r = 0.38, SD = 0.20) and temporal concordance within a single lake (mean Mantel r = 0.20, SD = 0.15). The degree of temporal concordance was not related to climatic fluctuations, with the exception of increased spatial synchrony in phytoplankton communities in 1997. Strength of overall spatial concordance was most commonly related to variability in chemical attributes of the study lakes. An understanding of the determinants of concordance among taxon groups is germane to the advancement of ecology in general, as well as biodiversity conservation strategies, ecosystem monitoring, and impact diagnosis.
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Cyr, D., S. Gauthier, D. A. Etheridge, G. J. Kayahara, and Y. Bergeron. "A simple Bayesian Belief Network for estimating the proportion of old-forest stands in the Clay Belt of Ontario using the provincial forest inventory." Canadian Journal of Forest Research 40, no. 3 (March 2010): 573–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.1139/x10-025.
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The differences between boreal forest landscapes produced by natural disturbance regimes and landscapes produced by harvesting are important and increasingly well documented. To continue harvesting operations while maintaining biodiversity and other ecosystem services, government policies and certification processes are pushing for practices that preserve landscape features within their range of natural variability. One major shortcoming in the implementation of such a strategy is the lack of complete spatial or temporal information about these landscape features, such as the proportion of old stands, which are believed to act as a coarse filter for conservation if they remain representative enough of natural conditions. The objective of this study was to quantify the proportion of old stands in a very large landscape by combining fragmentary knowledge from two different sources, i.e., a provincial forest inventory and existing fire history reconstructions using a Bayesian Belief Network. This study was conducted over a 6.5 Mha landscape located within the Clay Belt of the province of Ontario, Canada, and suggests that more than 72.4% of this area is occupied by stands where no fire occurred during the last 150 years. The implications for management and potential for future research are discussed.
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Tremblay, Maude E. M., Todd J. Morris, and Josef D. Ackerman. "Loss of reproductive output caused by an invasive species." Royal Society Open Science 3, no. 4 (April 2016): 150481. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.150481.
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We investigated whether Neogobius melanostomus , an invader of biodiversity ‘hot-spots’ in the Laurentian Great Lakes region, facilitates or inhibits unionid mussel recruitment by serving as a host or sink for their parasitic larvae (glochidia). Infestation and metamorphosis rates of four mussel species with at-risk (conservation) status ( Epioblasma torulosa rangiana , Epioblasma triquetra , Lampsilis fasciola and Villosa iris ) and one common species ( Actinonaias ligamentina ) on N. melanostomus were compared with rates on known primary and marginal hosts in the laboratory. All species successfully infested N. melanostomus, but only E. triquetra, V. iris and A. ligamentina successfully metamorphosed into juveniles, albeit at very low rates well below those seen on even the marginal hosts. Neogobius melanostomus collected from areas of unionid occurrence in the Grand and Sydenham rivers (Ontario, Canada) exhibited glochidial infection rates of 39.4% and 5.1%, respectively, with up to 30 glochidia representing as many as six unionid species per fish. A mathematical model suggests that N. melanostomus serve more as a sink for glochidia than as a host for unionids, thereby limiting recruitment success. This represents a novel method by which an invasive species affects a native species.
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Ciotir, Claudia, Chris Yesson, and Joanna Freeland. "The evolutionary history and conservation value of disjunct Bartonia paniculata subsp. paniculata (Branched Bartonia) populations in Canada." Botany 91, no. 9 (September 2013): 605–13. http://dx.doi.org/10.1139/cjb-2013-0063.
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Understanding the spatial distribution of genetic diversity and its evolutionary history is an essential part of developing effective biodiversity management plans. This may be particularly true when considering the value of peripheral or disjunct populations. Although conservation decisions are often made with reference to geopolitical boundaries, many policy-makers also consider global distributions, and therefore a species’ global status may temper its regional status. Many disjunct populations can be found in the Great Lakes region of North America, including those of Bartonia paniculata subsp. paniculata, a species that has been designated as threatened in Canada but globally secure. We compared chloroplast sequences between disjunct (Canada) and core (USA) populations of B. paniculata subsp. paniculata separated by 600 km, which is the minimum distance between disjunct and core populations in this subspecies. We found that although lineages within the disjunct populations shared a relatively recent common ancestor, the genetic divergence between plants from Ontario and New Jersey was substantially greater than expected for a consubspecific comparison. A coalescence-based analysis dated the most recent common ancestor of the Canadian and US populations at approximately 534 000 years ago with the lower confidence estimate at 226 000 years ago. This substantially predates the Last Glacial Maximum and suggests that disjunct and core populations have followed independent evolutionary trajectories throughout multiple glacial–interglacial cycles. Our findings provide important insight into the diverse processes that have resulted in numerous disjunct species in the Great Lakes region and highlight a need for additional work on Canadian B. paniculata subsp. paniculata taxonomy prior to a reevaluation of its conservation value.
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Moore, Jean-David, Josef H. Görres, and John W. Reynolds. "Exotic Asian pheretimoid earthworms (Amynthas spp., Metaphire spp.): Potential for colonisation of south-eastern Canada and effects on forest ecosystems." Environmental Reviews 26, no. 2 (June 2018): 113–20. http://dx.doi.org/10.1139/er-2017-0066.
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Exotic species invasions are among the most significant global-scale problems caused by human activities. They can seriously threaten the conservation of biological diversity and of natural resources. Exotic European earthworms have been colonizing forest ecosystems in northeastern United States and southern Canada since the European settlement. By comparison, Asian earthworms began colonizing forests in the northeastern United States more recently. Since Asian species have biological traits compatible with a greater potential for colonization and disturbance than some European species, apprehension is growing about their dispersal into new territories. Here we review the extent of the current northern range of Asian earthworms in northeastern North America, the factors facilitating or limiting their propagation and colonization, and the potential effects of their invasion on forest ecosystems. Data compilation shows that Asian earthworms are present in all northeastern American states. So far, only one mention has been reported in Canada. Data confirm that their distribution has now reached the Canadian border, particularly along the Michigan–Ontario, New York–Ontario, Maine–New Brunswick, and Vermont–Québec frontiers. Studies report that the presence of Asian earthworms is strongly associated with human activities such as horticulture, vermicomposting, and the use of worms as fish bait. Some climatic (temperature, soil moisture) and edaphic (soil pH) factors may also influence their distribution. Controlling their dispersal at the source is essential to limiting their spread, as there is currently no effective way to eradicate established earthworm populations without unacceptable nontarget effects. Proposed management options in the United States include the prohibition of fish bait disposal and better management of the international trade of horticultural goods, commercial nurseries, and vermicomposting industries. We conclude that although regulations and awareness may delay their expansion, Asian earthworms are likely to spread further north into Canada. They are expected to cause important changes to biodiversity and dynamics of the newly invaded forest ecosystems.
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Persaud, Sadhna Fiona, Karl Cottenie, and Jennifer Erin Gleason. "Ethanol eDNA Reveals Unique Community Composition of Aquatic Macroinvertebrates Compared to Bulk Tissue Metabarcoding in a Biomonitoring Sampling Scheme." Diversity 13, no. 1 (January 17, 2021): 34. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/d13010034.
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Freshwater ecosystems provide essential ecosystem services and support biodiversity; however, their water quality and biological communities are influenced by adjacent agricultural land use. Aquatic macroinvertebrates are commonly used as bioindicators of stream conditions in freshwater biomonitoring programs. Sorting benthic samples for molecular identification is a time-consuming process, and this study investigates the potential of ethanol-collected environmental DNA (eDNA) for metabarcoding macroinvertebrates, especially for common bioindicator groups. The objective of this study was to compare macroinvertebrate composition between paired bulk tissue and ethanol eDNA samples, as eDNA could provide a less time-consuming and non-destructive method of sampling macroinvertebrates. We collected benthic samples from streams in Ontario, Canada, and found that community composition varied greatly between sampling methods and that few taxa were shared between paired tissue and ethanol samples, suggesting that ethanol eDNA is not an acceptable substitute. It is unclear why we did not detect all the organisms that were preserved in the ethanol, or the origin of the DNA we did detect. Furthermore, we also detected no difference in community composition for bioindicator taxa due to surrounding land use or water chemistry, suggesting sites were similar in ecological condition.
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Ferguson, Steven H., and Philip C. Elkie. "Snag abundance 20, 30, and 40 years following fire and harvesting in boreal forests." Forestry Chronicle 79, no. 3 (June 1, 2003): 541–49. http://dx.doi.org/10.5558/tfc79541-3.
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The retention of standing dead trees (snags) has become an important conservation concern, especially when forest management efforts attempt to emulate natural disturbance. We investigate the abundance of snags within Ontario's boreal forest following 10–20, 21–30, and 31–40 years of both fire and forest harvest disturbance over a 24 000-km2 area. Fire frequency varied considerably, with 90% of the fires in the study area occurring in the 1970s. We did not detect differences in basal area of snags (m2/km2) between burned and harvested stands. However, differences occurred in dead-stem density (number/km2); the burned stands produced more snags in the 21- to 30-year post-disturbance class and the harvested stands produced more snags in the 31- to 40-year post-disturbance class. Similarly, the distribution of diameter classes of snags differed between the burned and harvested stands. In size classes greater than 32 cm (diameter at breast height), we found more snags in the harvested forests 21–40 years following disturbance. We did not find differences in the basal area of snags between disturbance types, whether they were hardwood or softwood. However, hardwood snags occurred in greater abundance in the larger diameter classes. Our findings are limited by the changing timber harvest treatments (selective harvest, clearcut, and ecological cut), the small number of disturbance events, and the variety of stand compositions. More research is required on the ecological factors influencing snag abundance to improve development of local forest management plans and to design landscapes that conserve forest structure and biodiversity. Key words: biodiversity, clearcut, conservation, coarse woody debris, dead trees, forest management, landscape, snags, wildlife
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Alyssa Oppedisano. "Conservation and Taxonomic Assessment of an Undescribed Crayfish in Coastal Virginia." Proceedings of the West Virginia Academy of Science 94, no. 1 (April 22, 2022). http://dx.doi.org/10.55632/pwvas.v94i1.930.
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Creaserinus fodiens (Cottle 1863), commonly known as the digger crayfish, is a primary burrower that inhabits complex burrows in wetlands, seasonal pools, wooded floodplains, and roadside ditches. Historically, C. fodiens have been found from Ontario, Canada following the United States down to Texas and across four Atlantic slope states including Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, and South Carolina. The Atlantic slope clades are geographically isolated from other C. fodiens populations by the continental shelf on the East coast and by the Blue Ridge Mountains. Despite having a wide geographical range, little research has been done on the Atlantic slope clades of Creaserinus spp. Recent genetic and morphological data suggests that the Virginia population of C. fodiens could be described as a different species. Additional morphological and genetic data from gill samples will lead to a better understanding of where the separation in classification lies among the Virginia population. A conservation and taxonomic assessment for Creaserinus fodiens along the Virginia Atlantic slope will be constructed from the results. These assessments will contribute to our understanding of global crayfish biodiversity and provide important biological insight to the management and conservation of these species.
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Lawley, Christopher J. M., Matthew G. E. Mitchell, Diana Stralberg, Richard Schuster, Eliot McIntire, and Joseph R. Bennett. "Mapping Canada’s Green Economic Pathways for Battery Minerals: Balancing Prospectivity Modelling With Conservation and Biodiversity Values." Earth Science, Systems and Society 2 (December 6, 2022). http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/esss.2022.10064.
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Electrification of Canada’s energy and transport sectors is essential to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 and will require a vast amount of raw materials. A large proportion of these critical raw materials are expected to be sourced from as yet undiscovered mineral deposits, which has the potential to accelerate environmental pressures on natural ecosystems. Herein we overlay new prospectivity model results for a major source of Canada’s battery minerals (i.e., magmatic Ni ± Cu ± Co ± PGE mineral systems) with five ecosystem services (i.e., freshwater resources, carbon, nature-based recreation, species at risk, climate-change refugia) and gaps in the current protected-area network to identify areas of high geological potential with lower ecological risk. New prospectivity models were trained on high-resolution geological and geophysical survey compilations using spatial cross-validation methods. The area under the curve for the receive operating characteristics (ROC) plot and the preferred gradient boosting machines model is 0.972, reducing the search space for more than 90% of deposits in the test set by 89%. Using the inflection point on the ROC plot as a threshold, we demonstrate that 16% of the most prospective model cells partially overlap with the current network of protected and other conserved areas, further reducing the search space for new critical mineral deposits. The vast majority of the remaining high prospectivity cells correspond to ecoregions with less than half of the protected areas required to meet national conservation targets. Poorly protected ecoregions with one or more of the five ecosystem services are interpreted as hotspots with the highest potential for conflicting land-use priorities in the future, including parts of southern Ontario and Québec, western Labrador, and northern Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Managing hotspots with multiple land-use priorities would necessarily involve partnerships with both Indigenous peoples whose traditional lands are affected, and other impacted communities. We suggest that prospectivity models and other machine learning methods can be used as part of natural resources management strategies to balance critical mineral development with conservation and biodiversity values.
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Drescher, Michael, and G. Keith Warriner. "Environmental Concerns and Stewardship Behaviors Among Rural Landowners: What Supports Farmers and Non-farmers in Being Good Stewards?" Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems 6 (February 21, 2022). http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fsufs.2022.758426.
Full textAbstract:
Intensive agriculture is a main factor of biodiversity and ecosystem services loss globally. It is therefore of great importance to understand how rural landowners are managing their lands and how environmental stewardship behaviors could be strengthened. Farming and non-farming rural landowners are often considered a homogenous group. In reality, however, they vary by their histories, attitudes, interests, and resources. While many rural landowners manage their lands with environmental values in mind, others may struggle to do so. Ignoring this diversity poses the risk that planning and policy for sustainable agriculture are less effective than they could be. Hence, it is of interest to understand the variety of environmental perceptions and stewardship behaviors across these varied groups. To help addressing this knowledge gap, we conducted a survey of 1,200 farming and non-farming rural landowners, using Ontario as a case study. We specifically investigated whether farming landowners differed from non-farming landowners in expressed environmental concerns and stewardship behaviors, as well as what the roles are of participation in conservation incentive programs, demographic factors, and landholding characteristics. We analyzed survey answers with logistic regression and text analysis. Our results suggest that farming landowners are generally less environmentally concerned than non-farming landowners. However, it appears that this difference may be less driven by farm ownership than by contextual factors, such as landowner age and participation in conservation programs. Participation in conservation programs was more pronounced for non-farming landowners and was associated with higher likelihood of environmental concerns and engaging with stewardship behaviors. In contrast, higher age emerged as predictor of lower environmental concerns. In addition, we found that cost factors and knowledge needs were important barriers for stewardship behaviors across farming and non-farming rural landowners. Based on our results, we are making recommendations for increasing the effectiveness of agricultural sustainability planning and policy in Ontario, focusing on reducing financial and knowledge barriers to pro-environmental land management behaviors.
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Hobern, Donald, and Paul Hebert. "BIOSCAN - Revealing Eukaryote Diversity, Dynamics, and Interactions." Biodiversity Information Science and Standards 3 (June 21, 2019). http://dx.doi.org/10.3897/biss.3.37333.
Full textAbstract:
Between 2010 and 2015, the International Barcode of Life (iBOL) consortium successfully completed the BARCODE 500K project, a $125 million effort that delivered DNA barcode coverage for 500,000 species. BIOSCAN is a seven-year program (2019-2025) that builds on this foundation, expanding coverage of the barcode reference library to two million species and operationalising metabarcoding for eukaryote communities globally. BIOSCAN will scan species assemblages from at least 2,500 ecosystems and will codify species interactions for at least 2,500 sites. DNA barcoding is a well-established approach for rapid, cost-effective species diagnosis, with many applications in support of taxonomy, biosecurity, conservation, and monitoring. Uptake has been particularly significant in hyperdiverse invertebrate groups where morphological approaches to species identification are often limiting (because of the scale of diversity and the small number of expert taxonomists) or inapplicable (for example in associating individuals from different life stages). The barcode reference library maintained as BOLD Systems by the Centre for Biodiversity Genomics in Guelph, Ontario is a significant biodiversity informatics infrastructure for bridging genomics and classical taxonomy, collections research, and field surveys. Effort across multiple years in Canada has delivered a library of reference sequences for the COI mitochondrial barcode that covers most of the known insect fauna for the country, enabling a comprehensive assessment of Canadian arthropod diversity (Hebert et al. 2016, Langor and Sheffield 2019). The Global Malaise Trap Program is expanding lessons learned in Canada to support species inventories in new regions such as Kruger National Park in South Africa. As DNA barcode libraries approach completeness for any site, analysis can employ metabarcoding to lower costs significantly for monitoring programs that track changes in species composition. Data from this program, and from barcode-based exploration in other regions, will greatly expand the fraction of biodiversity that can be monitored and compared over time and space. GBIF has collected more than one billion species records, but around 60% of these are for birds, with another 25% for vascular plants. Metabarcoding offers the opportunity for a wider selection of taxa to be included in global data sets and in support of local conservation and planning. The BIOSCAN program, launched by iBOL in 2019, seeks to operationalise DNA barcoding at the global scale for development of species inventories and preliminary exploration of undescribed diversity, for surveying community composition across the world's ecosystems, and codifying species interactions (the symbiome). BIOSCAN will exploit the latest advances in sequencing platforms to lower costs, increase precision, and accelerate processing of samples, to speed the uptake of DNA barcoding for protecting life on Earth.
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Zugic, Jessica I., Michael F. J. Pisaric, Shawn M. McKenzie, William C. Parker, Ken A. Elliott, and M. Altaf Arain. "The Impact of Variable Retention Harvesting on Growth and Carbon Sequestration of a Red Pine (Pinus resinosa Ait.) Plantation Forest in Southern Ontario, Canada." Frontiers in Forests and Global Change 4 (December 3, 2021). http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/ffgc.2021.725890.
Full textAbstract:
As atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations continue to rise and global temperatures increase, there is growing concern about the sustainability, health, and carbon sequestration potential of forest ecosystems. Variable retention harvesting (VRH) has been suggested to be a potential method to increase forest biodiversity, growth, and carbon (C) sequestration. A field trial was established in an 88-year-old red pine (Pinus resinosa Ait.) plantation in southern Ontario, Canada, using a completely randomized design to examine the response of tree productivity and other forest values to five harvesting treatments: 33% aggregate retention (33A), 55% aggregate retention (55A), 33% dispersed retention (33D), and 55% dispersed retention (55D) in comparison to an unharvested control (CN). In this study, we explored the impacts of VRH on aboveground stem radial growth and annual C increment. Standard dendrochronological methods and allometric equations were used to quantify tree- and stand-level treatment effects during a five-year pre-harvest (2009–2013) and post-harvest (2014–2018) period. Tree-level growth and C increment were increased by the dispersed retention pattern regardless of retention level. At the stand level, the total C increment was highest at greater retention levels and did not vary with retention pattern. These results suggest that the choice of retention level and pattern can have a large influence on management objectives as they relate to timber production, climate change adaptation, and/or climate change mitigation.