The climatic conditions needed by 285 species of land birds in the United States have moved rapidly between 1950 and 2011 as a result of climate change, according to a recent paper published in Global Change Biology.

“Our goal was to look at the climate where these birds were observed breeding over this period and determine where that ‘sweet spot’ was moving as the climate changed in this period,” says first author Brooke Bateman, a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Warming temperatures are the fundamental alteration of climate change, and the researchers saw the expected northward expansion of suitable conditions, Bateman says, but also a considerable expansion to the west. Unexpectedly, the southern borders of suitable conditions did not, in general, move north, perhaps because a remnant population had not yet left that area.

In general, the southern plains and lower Midwest faced the greatest decline in ideal climate conditions, while the Dakotas, mid-Atlantic and Pacific Coast showed the greatest increase.

The study, the largest examination of the velocity of climate change for birds in the United States in the recent past, began by combining detailed weather records for the lower 48 states with data on the location of bird occurrences from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility. The researchers cross-referenced those data, creating a computer model of where the birds nest, in terms of climate factors like average and extreme temperature and precipitation.

In the face of climate change, a suitable climate for birds has been moving, on average, eight tenths of a mile per year—about twice the pace predicted by earlier studies.

The researchers then used the model to predict where the same climate conditions for those birds would be located in 2011, reflecting the ensuing changes in climate. Finally, using data from the 2011 North American Breeding Bird Survey, they checked their work.

The results show that in the face of climate change, a suitable climate for birds has been moving, on average, eight tenths of a mile per year—about twice the pace predicted by earlier studies.

To make sense of their data, the researchers lumped bird species into guilds—groups based on shared factors like diet, foraging location and migration habits. Hospitable climate moved relatively fast for short- or long-distance migrants, carnivores, insect eaters, and birds that foraged in the air or the canopy of trees. Slow-moving guilds included permanent residents, herbivores, omnivores, hummingbirds and birds that forage on tree bark, such as woodpeckers.

The findings are a significant expansion on the notion that climate change, once called “global warming,” would simply force species to the north, or to higher altitudes. In fact, climate change affects wildlife in myriad ways, says Bateman. “People used to think, with global warming, that species would move poleward to beat the heat, but the changes in rainfall and extreme weather events are equally influential, especially in driest part of year. That affects where the birds can live.”

Climate could affect predators, prey, disease or many other factors, Bateman says, but the study did not address the mechanisms behind the shifts in location. And while suitable climate is clearly moving, what is not clear is whether the plants and other animals (such as insects) that birds depend on are moving in the same way.

Bateman acknowledges that because of their mobility, birds are not fully representative of plants and ground-based animals, but they are easier to study due to the wealth of data amassed over decades of amateur observation.

The results emphasize the need for connected habitat that allows plants and animals to move as climate change continues, Bateman says. “The ideal situation would be to secure large amounts land that allows connectivity between current protected areas and areas that will become suitable,” says Bateman. “We need to think together, to make the landscape more hospitable to all of the wildlife that depends on it.”

Bateman’s co-authors included Patricia Heglund, of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and Anna Pidgeon and Volker Radeloff of the UW-Madison Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology.

“Movement of suitable climate is not necessarily a bad thing,” Bateman says, “because the climate in some nearby areas may become more suitable for these species. However, we must consider the widespread agriculture and development in some of those new areas, in combination with the rapid pace of climate change. So even though the climate may become more suitable in those areas, the landscape is already so altered that much of this habitat is useless to the birds.”

Fallen leaves cover Arboretum Drive in Gallistel Woods at the Arboretum during autumn 2012. Photo: Jeff Miller

The University of Wisconsin Arboretum’s position as a world leader in ecological research will be strengthened as recommendations of a review committee are implemented, according to UW-Madison leaders.

The review committee, comprising seven faculty and staff members from across the UW-Madison campus, this past year engaged in a thorough study of the historic 1,200 acre research and education center, which was dedicated in 1934 and has served as a laboratory for generations of field ecologists, including in its earliest days the iconic conservationist Aldo Leopold.

Its final report recommended the formation of a new research committee, representing departments and programs from across campus, to broaden affiliations with UW-Madison faculty and build a larger community of scholars with overlapping interests in ecosystem research and restoration.

David Drake carries a sedated coyote caught in the Arboretum as part of a research effort to study the behavior of growing fox and coyote populations in the city of Madison. Photo: Jeff Miller

“This is a watershed moment in the history of the Arboretum,” says David Drake, a UW-Madison professor of wildlife and forest ecology and chair of the Arboretum Committee. “The UW Arboretum is a resource of international stature in the context of restoration ecology and it’s essential that we preserve and strengthen its program of research for the current as well as future generations of researchers.”

Drake says the recommendations embodied in the report will help focus resources in a time of constrained budgets, make the Arboretum more seamless to researchers across campus, and position UW-Madison to attract a director who can both manage a robust research portfolio and a complex facility with many passionate constituencies.

“This is a watershed moment in the history of the Arboretum.”

David Drake

The review committee also discussed experimentation with new kinds of public access and participation, possibly including private events  and eco-friendly wedding ceremonies. The Arboretum receives an estimated 1 million visitors each year, many of whom explore its miles of trails through restored prairies and forests, tour its gardens, or participate in a spectrum of education and outreach programs. The committee cited the potential to build on that popularity to create more public use and provide support for new programs.

The committee also discussed the value of keeping the Arboretum under the UW-Madison Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education and for building closer ties to campus units with related interests, such as the Department of Botany, the Department of Environmental Engineering and the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies.

Marsha Mailick

The report, says Drake, signals the beginning of a search for an internationally known leader in ecological research and program administration to serve as the Arboretum’s new director.

“We’re very pleased with the committee’s thorough review, which was overwhelmingly positive,” says UW-Madison Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education Marsha Mailick. “It reaffirms the critical importance of the Arboretum’s mission in research, education and outreach, and we look forward to upholding and strengthening its original intent and the Leopold legacy.”

Efforts to revitalize and build cross-campus collaboration in Arboretum research are already underway, and the search for a permanent director will begin soon.

If there is an animal emblematic of the northern winter, it is the snowshoe hare.

A forest dweller, the snowshoe hare is named for its big feet, which allow it to skitter over deep snow to escape lynx, coyotes and other predators. It changes color with the seasons, assuming a snow-white fur coat for winter camouflage.

But a changing climate and reduced snow cover across the north is squeezing the animal out of its historic range, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Writing in the current (March 30, 2016) Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the Wisconsin researchers report that the range of the hare in Wisconsin is creeping north by about five and a half miles per decade, closely tracking the diminishing snow cover the animal requires to be successful.

The snowshoe hare is an emblematic species of the north country, adapted to and dependent on a snowy climate. A recent study by UW-Madison researchers shows the southern boundary of the snowshoe hare’s range shifting north as climate warms. Photo: L. Scott Mills

“The snowshoe hare is perfectly modeled for life on snow,” explains Jonathan Pauli, a UW-Madison professor of forest and wildlife ecology and one of the co-authors of the new study. “They’re adapted to glide on top of the snow and to blend in with the historical colors of the landscape.”

As climate warms, northern winters have become shorter and milder. And the annual blanket of snow that many organisms have evolved to depend on is in steady retreat, becoming thinner and less dependable in regions that once experienced snow well into the spring months.

The Wisconsin study is important because it helps illustrate the effects of climate change on a sentinel species for northern ecosystems, showing how the composition of plants and animals on the landscape is gradually shifting in a warming world. The findings also signal that climate change is beginning to eclipse land use as the dominant driver of ecological change.

Ben Zuckerberg

Jonathan Pauli

“This is one of the first studies to really identify how changing climate factors influence a southern range boundary,” notes Ben Zuckerberg, a UW-Madison professor of forest and wildlife ecology and a co-author of the study.

In Wisconsin, a legacy of research on snowshoe hares dates to at least 1945, when famed ecologist Aldo Leopold published some of the first anecdotal data, recording their presence in an arcing trajectory covering roughly half of the state from the Mississippi north of St. Paul to Green Bay. Studies of the hare and its range were continued and expanded by UW-Madison wildlife ecologist Lloyd B. Keith beginning in the 1960s.

The new study, which was led by UW-Madison graduate student Sean M. Sultaire, drew on observations at 148 of 249 historic survey sites where snowshoe hares were documented in the past. Of 126 sites where hares were once reported, the animal was found at only 28. The researchers were unable to document hares at the remaining 98 sites, or 78 percent of the places where hares were once found.

Sean Sultaire

Lack of snow, of course, can pose serious problems for an animal that depends on its coloring to blend into its environment and avoid predation. “Color mismatch — white fur on a brown background — will continue to occur and have a significant impact” on the species, says Pauli. “For a snowshoe hare, being cryptic is a fundamental requirement for making a living. It is a relatively fixed phenotype, so it is pretty clear that snow cover is one of the most important constraints in terms of where the animal can and can’t be.”

“Our winter climate has changed significantly over time,” says Zuckerberg, who, with Pauli, has set out to document how a warmer world is affecting the ecological underpinnings of winter landscapes that were once awash in snow.

According to Pauli, the snowshoe hare at the southern range of its boundary must cope not only with less snow, but also with a steady northward march of carnivores like coyotes. “They’re getting pinched at both ends.”

The ecological consequences of diminished abundance of snowshoe hare will be significant, having both ecological and economic consequences as the animal is both an important game species in Wisconsin and a menu item for many other species of animals and raptors.

With the help of between 4,000 and 5,000 strategically deployed trail cameras, a suite of remote sensing satellites and a global crowd-sourced database, Wisconsin’s wildlife will soon have its prime time moment.

May 17 marks the official start of Snapshot Wisconsin, an unprecedented effort to capture in space and time the deer, bears, elk, coyotes, bobcats, badgers and any other wild animal that lumbers, hops, lopes or slithers across the Badger state. A collaboration of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR), NASA and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Snapshot Wisconsin aims to provide one of the richest and most comprehensive caches of wildlife data for any spot on our planet.

“Something like this has never been done before, not for such a large area,” notes UW-Madison Professor of Forest and Wildlife Ecology Phil Townsend, one of the leaders of the project. “The number of trail cams and the spatial scale we’re working on will make this project unique.”

A tom turkey struts for the ladies. Snapshot Wisconsin

A buck treads cautiously in thick woods. Snapshot Wisconsin

A jockeying bear pair. Snapshot Wisconsin

Something has a pair of wolves’ attention. Snapshot Wisconsin

So far, 500 cameras have been deployed, mostly in Iowa and Sawyer counties, the first two counties in the state to take part in the initiative. Several hundred more will be deployed in the coming months and more will be added over time as other Wisconsin counties become part of the project.

“What Snapshot Wisconsin really adds is a consistent way to monitor all species,” says Jennifer Stenglein, the DNR project leader. “The consistent monitoring will allow for comparisons among wildlife populations and enable us to better track population changes at larger spatial and temporal scales.”

Phil Townsend Courtesy of UW Foundation

In particular, the DNR plans to use Snapshot Wisconsin data to help inform county deer advisory councils on deer and their predators. It will supplement existing programs that now monitor and estimate population sizes for different species. If successful, the project might reduce the need for other more expensive types of wildlife monitoring. For example, the DNR now measures wildlife species like coyotes and deer using airplanes over parts of the state.

From a scientific perspective, says Townsend, the project will give researchers the ability to model Wisconsin’s wildlife populations in ways previously unimagined. “This will be dynamic,” Townsend says. “We’ll see how things change from one season to the next.”

The Snapshot Wisconsin initiative, which is being funded largely by the Wisconsin DNR and NASA, promises a far more comprehensive survey of Wisconsin wildlife than currently exists. Deer and predator surveys, for example, now tend to be limited to a few locales. Snapshot Wisconsin, explains Townsend, changes the game completely as trail cams with GPS locations will be deployed by volunteers statewide.

A groundhog scours the landscape. Snapshot Wisconsin

A porcupine among the pines.

An alert coyote surveys its surroundings. Snapshot Wisconsin

Sandhill cranes at the end of the day. Snapshot Wisconsin

The images captured by the thousands of trail cams will be reconciled with images and data from NASA’s Terra, Aqua and Landsat satellites. The GPS locations from the trail cams will let researchers sync data from any particular trail cam with satellite images of the landscape. The satellite perspective, according to Townsend, gives researchers the ability to fuse camera data with remotely-sensed data on ecosystems, habitat and land use types, such as agricultural and urban development.

The DNR is recruiting volunteer citizen scientists who are trained by UW-Extension to operate and maintain the motion-activated camera traps. Stenglein says the agency plans to roll out the program gradually, county by county, to improve the process for volunteers and assess the program’s effectiveness.

The satellite data, says Townsend, may also be used to match changing snow cover, spring “green up,” or fall’s colors with shifts in the patterns of wildlife presence and density. For instance, bears tend to head into hibernation as the landscape browns in fall and seasonal changes on the landscape can also provide insight into deer births, phenomena that Snapshot Wisconsin can help document.

In a sense, Snapshot Wisconsin is a technological extension and significant amplification of the kind of phenology famously practiced by fabled Wisconsin conservationist Aldo Leopold, who over the years faithfully recorded in a notebook the dates birds, animals and plants appeared on or disappeared from the landscape at his shack on the Wisconsin River.

Deer in the night light. Snapshot Wisconsin

A bobcat finds a bit of shade. Snapshot Wisconsin

A beaver emerges from the water. Snapshot Wisconsin

A whitetail buck on a misty hillside. Snapshot Wisconsin

“Animals will track the seasons. The greening of the landscape in spring is called the ‘green wave,’ and animal activity will actually track the greening vegetation,” Townsend explains. “Remote sensing using satellites shows what the pattern looks like everywhere.”

A critical research goal is uncovering trends and changes from all of the Snapshot Wisconsin data. The study should, for instance, be able to document over time changes in the extent and duration of snow cover, an index of climate, and how wildlife respond to those changes.

The trail cams will produce millions of photos a year and the Snapshot Wisconsin team is depending on volunteer ‘citizen scientists’ to help crowd source analysis of the pictures by making them available through a portal on Zooniverse, a Web platform for citizen science projects around the world. Developers at Chicago’s Adler Planetarium have been working with UW-Madison ecologist Benjamin Zuckerberg to develop the Snapshot Wisconsin page and protocols for users from around the world to identify animals present in a picture. A soft rollout of data saw 35,000 images classified by volunteers in less than a week.

Anyone interested in hosting a camera on their property can get more information on the Snapshot Wisconsin online signup site.

A two-toed sloth transits a plantation in northeastern Costa Rica using a cable ordinarily used to move cacao. A team of UW-Madison scientists recently found why sloths are such deliberate, slow-moving animals. Zach Peery

Although most of the terrestrial world is covered in trees, there are precious few vertebrates that make the canopy their home and subsist solely on a diet of leaves.

Tree sloths are among the most emblematic tree-dwelling mammals. However, they are best known for their pokey demeanor rather than the fact that they spend the majority of their lives in trees munching leaves. But the slow motion lifestyle of tree sloths, according to a new study, is the direct result of the animal’s adaption to its arboreal niche.

“Among vertebrates, this is the rarest of lifestyles,” says Jonathan Pauli, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of forest and wildlife ecology and the senior author of a report to appear in the August 2016 edition of the American Naturalist. “When you picture animals that live off plant leaves, they are almost all big — things like moose, elk and deer. What’s super interesting about arboreal folivores is that they can’t be big.”

Pauli and Wisconsin colleagues M. Zachariah Peery, Emily Fountain and William Karasov set out to measure the energetics of wild two- and three-toed sloths at a field site in in northeastern Costa Rica. The purpose of the study, Pauli says, was to help explain why arboreal folivores are indeed so rare and why more animals have not evolved to take advantage of a widespread ecological niche.

A baby three-toed sloth, part of ongoing studies of the animals at a site in northeastern Costa Rica. Researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison have published a new report on sloth energetics, helping explain why sloths live a slow-motion lifestyle. Zach Peery

“Most of the world is forested, but the energetic constraints of a leafy diet seem to prevent adaptive radiation,” Pauli notes, referencing the canon of evolutionary biology that helps explain the diversity of life on our planet: As organisms evolve and “radiate” from an ancestral group, they take on a variety of specialized forms that enable them to live a certain lifestyle or occupy a particular niche.

The evolutionary logic of living in trees on a diet solely of leaves, it seems, is less than robust.

“Think about it,” says Pauli. “The food sucks. It’s only plant leaves. You have to exploit a very constrained niche.”

To do so, tree sloths require specialized limb adaption, reduced body mass, a slow metabolic rate and claws that act like fulcrums — hooks to accommodate the animals’ need to hang in and traverse the treetops.

“This study explains why eating leaves in the canopies of trees leads to life in the slow lane, why fast-moving animals like birds tend not to eat leaves, and why animals like deer that eat a lot of leaves tend to be big and live on the ground,” says Doug Levey, program director in the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Division of Environmental Biology, which funded the research.

The Wisconsin group, which began the NSF-supported study in 2009, used isotopically labeled water to measure the daily energy expenditure of both two- and three-toed sloths, animals that coexist in the tropical forest canopies of Central and South America.

“It takes a suite of extraordinary adaptations to survive in forest canopies, and this may help explain the lack of species diversification among arboreal folivores.”

Jonathan Pauli

Astonishingly, three-toed sloths, which are more specialized to their environment, expend as little as 460 kilojoules of energy a day, the equivalent of burning a mere 110 calories — roughly the same number of calories found in a baked potato. It is the lowest measured energetic output for any mammal.

“The measurement was intended to find out what it cost the sloth to live over a day,” says Pauli, who explains that a diet of plant leaves has little nutritional value and the animal’s gut size limits it to small amounts per day, so the animals need to find ways to make the most of their skimpy diet. For sloths, that means expending minimal amounts of energy through a reduced metabolic rate, dramatic regulation of body temperature and navigating the world in slow motion.

The group then compared its results with similar studies of wild arboreal folivores from other corners of the globe. The take-home message, says Pauli, is that the more specialized the tree-dwelling animal, the lower the daily energy expenditure.

“The findings reinforce the concept that arboreal folivores are tightly constrained by nutritional energetics,” Pauli notes. “It takes a suite of extraordinary adaptations to survive in forest canopies, and this may help explain the lack of species diversification among arboreal folivores.”

An adult female California spotted owl and owlet on the nest. A UW-Madison research group has documented an exodus of owls following the fierce, 99,000 acre King Fire in California in 2015. Photo: Sheila Whitmore

As climate changes and wildfires get larger, hotter and more frequent, how should public lands in the American West be managed to protect endangered creatures that, like the spotted owl, rely on fire-prone old-growth forests?

Could periodic forest thinning and prescribed burns intended to prevent dangerous “megafires” help conserve owls in the long run? Or are those benefits outweighed by their short-term harm to owls? The answer depends in part on just how big and bad the fires are, according to a new study.

Zach Peery

In a report published Aug. 1 that may help quiet a long-simmering dispute about the wisdom of using forest thinning and prescribed burns to reduce the “fuel load” and intensity of subsequent fires, a University of Wisconsin-Madison research group has documented an exodus of owls following the fierce, 99,000 acre King Fire in California in 2014.

The California spotted owl is a close relative of the northern spotted owl, which became the centerpiece of forest conservation battles in the Northwest in the 1990s. Both owls are indicator species whose presence is said to signify the ecological health of their required, old-growth forest habitat.

As the federal government moves ahead with master plans for 11 national forests in the West, environmental organizations and scientists have been drawn into the dispute, says Zach Peery, principal investigator of the new study, which is now online in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. “Proponents of fuel reduction say it’s going to benefit the owl by reducing the frequency and size of megafires,” says Peery, an associate professor of forest and wildlife ecology, “but there is this body of literature that says the California spotted owl does just fine following severe fires, even when they are large.”

The study’s lead author, UW-Madison graduate student Gavin Jones, prepares to release an adult spotted owl after removing a mini-GPS backpack that tracked the owl’s movements throughout the 2015 breeding season. Photo: Sheila Whitmore

According to that line of thinking, the cure — forest thinning and prescribed burning — was worse than the disease.

Megafires are defined as fires that severely burn at least 25,000 acres.

“There is new literature suggesting that even megafires are okay for spotted owls,” says lead author Gavin Jones, a graduate student studying with Peery, “but previous studies were limited because they lacked pre-fire data and had a small sample size of severely burned owl sites, among other reasons. This was a controversy waiting for good data.”

Pre-fire data is a strong point for the new report on the King Fire, which burned in September and October 2014 in the Eldorado National Forest in the Sierra Nevada mountains. The fire, considered one of the largest and most severe in California’s recorded history, burned at the site of a 23 year owl population study. Colored bands on owls’ legs allowed them to be identified from a distance.

The fire touched 30 of 45 owl sites that the researchers have monitored since 1993, and birds were absent from almost every one of the sites that burned most intensely, Jones says. “If a site got torched, and was occupied the previous year, it’s empty now.”

Spotted owls typically nest in forest stands dominated by large diameter trees with relatively high canopy cover and complex understory structure. Photo: Sheila Whitmore

A former spotted owl nesting site in the aftermath of the 2014 King Fire. This site had been occupied by a pair of owls for 21 of 22 years prior to the fire. Photo: Sheila Whitmore

The problem of fire in the West is growing more severe for many reasons, but decades of fire suppression intended to protect communities and timber resources, and climate change are likely the ultimate drivers, says Jones. “It’s amazing. On the study area there were several giant holes in the ground where nesting trees were the year before — enormous old-growth Douglas firs or something like that. A spotted owl used the tree the year before and now it’s a crater. The tree got so hot, it exploded.”

The recent losses come on top of a steady decline in the area’s owl population since the study began, Jones says. Habitat change may explain those losses, but it’s complicated. For example, although clear-cutting has abated on the public lands in the study area over recent decades, it continues on private land, and lasting effects from historical clear-cutting could explain some of the decline.

“In ecology, we mostly observe. But this was a before-after-control-impact design that’s statistically very powerful.”

Gavin Jones

The new study is nearly an ideal natural experiment, Jones says. “In ecology, we mostly observe. But this was a before-after-control-impact design that’s statistically very powerful.”

“We had this long-term demographic study, we knew all the owls in the 137 square mile study area,” says Peery. “The fire burned almost half the study area. On one side was the treatment, a large, high severity fire, and on the other side was the control, with little or no fire. Almost all the owl territories within the megafire went from occupied to unoccupied. We can now say that megafires have a significant impact on the spotted owl, and so we think that forest restoration through fuel reduction benefits both the forest ecosystem and the spotted owl.”

The 2016 Maple Fire in Yellowstone National Park. Photo: National Park Service

In 1988, fires consumed more than a million acres of Yellowstone National Park and its surrounding lands. But for the past three decades, Yellowstone’s forests — resilient ecosystems composed of species adapted to periodic severe fire — have embarked on their recovery.

However, this year, several new fires — including the Maple, Buffalo and Berry fires — are burning through those young pine forests. Typically, a century or more separates severe wildfires there, says Monica Turner, professor of zoology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, so how the forest will recover from more fire just 28 years later is unknown.

Turner paired with Jill Johnstone, professor of biology at the University of Saskatchewan, to outline a framework this month in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment to help scientists better test, understand and predict when forests are resilient enough to recover or when a combination of conditions could tip the scales, drastically altering forest landscapes.

In 2012, the Cygnet fire in Yellowstone National Park burned young lodgepole pines that had regenerated following the park’s large 1988 fires. Photo: Monica Turner

One year later, few new trees had begun to replace them because the 24-year-old trees had not yet produced enough cones with seeds, particularly those that survive fire, to start anew. Photo: Monica Turner

“This is a new normal. We have to anticipate how things are going to change,” says Turner.

Turner and Johnstone, who studies the boreal forests of Alaska and Canada, view the framework as a tool for ecologists to better accomplish this because how the forests of the future will be affected by traditional disturbances like fire in the context of changing conditions — from a warmer, drier climate to destruction by invasive species — remains a challenge to predict.

“We have to look at disturbances today and try to understand their effects because we can’t afford to wait 30, 40, 50 years to see what’s going to happen,” says Turner, who has studied the forests of Yellowstone since the last of the 1988 flames fizzled. She’s been fascinated with their recovery and how they have also been resilient to outbreaks of mountain pine beetles. However, she has also learned that warming climate and drought may be changing the rules of the game. “Having all the answers will take decades and we want to find creative ways to get answers sooner.”

Especially since hot and dry conditions have fueled wildfires in populous portions of California this summer, destroying homes and forcing tens of thousands of people to evacuate. And some of the largest fires of the season continue to burn in Idaho and Washington.

Johnstone and Turner, co-lead authors of the framework, assembled a team of leading forest ecologists — including three UW–Madison alumni — to develop it. In their analysis, they highlight the notion of ecological memory, which refers to the evolved adaptations of forests to fire, such as the presence of pine cones (serotinous cones) that only open in response to fire (what the researchers call “information legacies”), to what is left after disturbances, like the dead trees that remain standing after a blaze (“material legacies”).

Ecological memory confers forests with resilience to fire by providing them the building blocks for recovery, even under a wide range of conditions.

Monica Turner

Jill Johnstone

By definition, disturbances are almost always unpredictable but “what we and many others want to know is whether there are situations where forests may be stressed beyond their ability to be resilient, where a double or triple whammy will have a big effect,” says Turner.

For instance, she will continue to study Yellowstone in the wake of this year’s fires, to see if burned forest areas can recover after a growth period of just 28 years. Other studies by her research group have shown that years of hot, dry climate immediately following fires significantly impede forest recovery.

Johnstone has shown that areas of boreal forest once occupied by white spruce have been invaded by flammable black spruce, increasing fire frequency in areas unaccustomed to flames, while some severely burned areas have been repopulated by less flammable species, reducing fires there.

In Minnesota, severe wind storms that knock serotinous cones to the forest floor can prevent forests from recovering if a fire follows. And in New Zealand, some forests are seeing fires for the first time due to human impact; the species there have not had the opportunity or time to adapt to fire.

“If the new normal is outside of the conditions they are adapted to, forests may no longer be resilient,” says Turner, because it results in a mismatch between ecological memory and the disturbances forests endure.

Color-enhanced satellite image of the Maple Fire in Wyoming, Aug. 21, 2016.

This mismatch can lead to what Turner and her co-authors dub “resilience debt,” which becomes apparent only after a disturbance occurs. Ecological processes happen slowly, so the impact of disturbances, though they happen fast, could take years or even decades to manifest.

By examining different mechanisms that have diminished the ability of forests to recover — from a change in disturbance frequency, size or severity to changing climate — Turner and her colleagues were able to define particular sets of conditions that may allow ecologists to predict when forests will be resilient or when they will be fundamentally altered.

“I am excited because we have been working out these ideas for the last five years or so and it’s nice to have a framework to test a lot of these ideas for how generalizable they are,” Turner says. “Ultimately, it’s the data that will tell us.”

Thanks to support from the federal Joint Fire Science Program, Turner has new funding to test some of these ideas about resilience in the Rocky Mountains.

“We want to assess the possibility of fast changes in forests, lakes and agriculture to help us anticipate the effects on wildlife, carbon storage, water quality, and future timber resources. These things matter a lot.”

She and colleagues at UW–Madison, including Jack Williams, director of the Center for Climatic Research and a professor of geography; Stephen Carpenter, director of the Center for Limnology and professor of zoology; Anthony Ives, professor of zoology; and Chris Kucharik, professor of agronomy at the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, are also leading a new effort with support from the UW2020: WARF Discovery Initiative to focus on abrupt changes in ecological systems of the U.S. They refer to their project as ACES.

“It’s not only western forests where these things matter, where disturbances and changing environments shape regional landscapes,” Turner adds. “With ACES, we want to assess the possibility of fast changes in forests, lakes and agriculture to help us anticipate the effects on wildlife, carbon storage, water quality, and future timber resources. These things matter a lot.”

Asian jumping worms in the UW-Madison Arboretum. Video by Chris Barncard

Gardeners tend to look at earthworms as good helpers that break down fallen leaves and other organic matter into nutrients plants can use.

But not all earthworms do the same work in the soil. New research from the University of Wisconsin–Madison shows that Asian jumping worms, an invasive species first found in Wisconsin in 2013, may do their work too well, speeding up the exit of nutrients from the soil before plants can process them.

“Earthworms are the kind of organisms we call ecosystem engineers. They change the physical and chemical properties of the ecosystem as they dig and feed,” says Monica Turner, a UW–Madison professor of zoology. “But nobody really understood if these Asian worms would have the same effect as the European worms we have had here for many years.”

Monica Turner

Jiangxiao Qiu

Jiangxiao Qiu, a former graduate student in Turner’s laboratory and now a postdoctoral researcher with The Nature Conservancy, studied the impact the Asian worms — of the species Amynthas agrestis and Amynthas tokioensis — from July through October of 2014 in the forest at the UW Arboretum, and conducted an experiment on soil samples taken from around southern Wisconsin. Qiu’s work was published this week in the journal Biological Invasions.

Unlike deep-dwelling European earthworms, the Asian jumping worms — named for the way they flop and wriggle when held or disturbed — prefer to live and eat within a few centimeters of the soil surface.

“What most interested me was how these earthworms would change the forest floor, especially the litter layer on top of the soil — dead leaves and twigs and other materials,” says Qiu. “And we could see the difference they made in the physical structure of the soil and the amount of leaf litter.”

Leaf litter declined by 95 percent in forested study areas, and the Asian worms left behind residue that was almost pebbly in consistency — grainy little balls of dirt that may make it hard for the seeds of native plants to germinate.

“Some plants need that leaf litter layer to get established at all,” Turner says. “If the litter layer is gone, and the soil is bare and clumpy, the earthworms may help weedy plants come in along with other invasive plants that we don’t want.”

Jiangxiao Qiu measures soil conditions in samples containing invasive Asian jumping worms. The worms eat faster than European species, clearing leaf litter from the forest floor.

Through their flexible diets and high numbers, the Asian invaders make quick work of whatever food they find.

“These earthworms live in much higher density than European earthworms, and that leads to a much faster transformation from litter to available nutrients,” Qiu says. “This increases the nutrients — such as carbon, nitrogen and available phosphorus— in the top soil.”

Concentrations in the soil of some minerals released from the leaf litter as the worms eat increased down to a depth of 25 centimeters, and spiked later in the growing season when the worms are largest and most active.

“The fact that they take nutrients that are not available to plants — because they’re tied up in the dead leaves — and make them available to plants is something you might like to have happen in your garden,” Turner says. “But from our numbers, these worms make that natural process happen roughly twice as fast. It’s like a fast-release fertilizer instead of slow-release, and that changes where the nutrients end up.”

They may end up washing away before they can benefit many plants that count on a slower release, and then turn up where they’re not wanted.

“Nitrate dissolves readily in water, and it moves with water. It’s disappearing with the rain,” says Turner. “And nitrate is a groundwater contaminant in many wells in Wisconsin, so it’s not just the plants that benefit if the nitrate does not infiltrate deeper and deeper into the ground.”

While Qiu noted the biggest changes in forest soils, samples from prairie soils showed changes, too. And grasslands are the choice habitat for the worms in their native ranges in East Asia.

“This suggests the prairie ecosystems might also be susceptible to future invasions,” says Qiu, whose research was supported by the National Science Foundation.

Turner and other UW–Madison researchers are working on new studies exploring the invasive worms’ range, how plants may deal with the changing soil chemistry, and the interaction between the Asian jumping worms and invasive plants like buckthorn.

“It’s the balance between a lot of competing plant, animal and microbial processes that will determine the long-term effect of these earthworms,” Turner says.

A new study shows how and where changing climate conditions could affect the communities of species in any given area. In the Rocky Mountains, changes in temperature and precipitation could push species up or down slope. Photo: National Park Service/Charles M. Sauer

Like a casino dealer shuffling the deck, climate change is starting to reorder species from the grasslands of Argentina to ice-free areas of Greenland.

New research published Monday (Sept. 19) in the journal Nature Climate Change by researchers at Aarhus University in Denmark and the University of Wisconsin–Madison illuminates where and why novel species combinations are likely to emerge due to recent changes in temperature and precipitation. The study includes global maps of novelty that offer testable predictions and carry important implications for conservation and land management planning.

For instance, the findings suggest that novel species associations are likely to form in the North American Great Plains and temperate forests, the Amazon, South American grasslands, Africa and boreal Asia due to recent climate change, and will likely expand as climate novelty increases.

Jack Williams

With global temperatures expected to increase by 2.5-8 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of this century — compared to the roughly 1.5 degrees of global warming experienced over the last century — the authors predict the widespread reshuffling of species into new communities, as species abundances and distributions change.

“We’re identifying three distinct ways that climate change can lead to community reshuffling,” says study co-author John “Jack” Williams, a UW-Madison professor of geography and director of the Nelson Institute Center for Climatic Research.

One mechanism is climate novelty, in which new climates emerge with no historic equivalent. Some species are already adapted to these new climates while others are not.

Another is the speed of climate change, which may cause shuffling among species that vary in their ability to track with the pace of change.

Finally, climate divergence — the differences among climate variables in their spatial direction of change — may pull species ranges in varying directions.

For instance, in the Rocky Mountains, species in the upper treeline appear to be influenced by temperature-related variables such as growing-season length and winter severity, while lower treeline species are more sensitive to moisture availability. As temperatures warm, upper treeline species may migrate to cooler areas upslope, while the lower-elevation treeline species could be pulled in the opposite direction, depending on whether the region gets wetter or drier.

The three mechanisms were mapped together and separately using climate data spanning 1901-2013, showing that each has a distinct spatial pattern.

In so doing, the study clarifies the places where novel communities are expected to emerge in response to climate change, provides a more comprehensive view of how temperature and precipitation variations could pull species in different directions, and could help scientists determine where mismatches between rapid climate shifts and slow species responses could result in the reduction or even extinction of species.

The authors predict the widespread reshuffling of species into new communities, as species abundances and distributions change.

Its holistic view also adds specificity to conversations happening now in conservation groups and boardrooms around the world about how to manage wilderness in an era of changing climates.

“We know from the past that species are going to move in response to climate change, we know that species are going to probably move in different directions, but the challenge is we don’t know which species can do well in novel climate spaces and which ones can’t,” Williams explains. “And probably some will do better than others.”

For example, in the face of rapid climate change, many birds or mammals may be able to migrate quickly and stay in their favorable climates. However, species like amphibians, which move more slowly and are often tied to a specific microhabitat, and trees, which are limited by seed dispersal distance and long generation times, could be left behind and struggle.

The study was led by Alejandro Ordonez, now at Aarhus University, who built on research he began as a Climate, People and the Environment Program (CPEP) postdoctoral fellow at UW-Madison from 2010-13.

In Wisconsin, species like trillium (above), red raspberry and white baneberry are experiencing the largest shifts in plant species distribution. Photo: Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources

While at the UW, Ordonez developed new methods for measuring climate novelty, rates of climate change and the interplay among these factors. He and Williams published research applying these analyses first in Wisconsin and then globally. In 2014, they assessed the combined speeds of climate and land-use change across the United States with Volker Radeloff, a UW-Madison professor of forest and wildlife ecology.

But unanswered questions lingered for Ordonez, spurring this latest collaboration.

“So far, my work with Jack and others at UW focused on the ‘how much’ question, but I had no clear idea of the ‘where to’ aspect of these changes,” Ordonez explains. He saw the need to develop an integrated assessment framework, incorporating his and others’ concepts and recent work in the field, that allowed for the testing of where and how novelty could emerge.

“Such an assessment allows us to develop hypotheses regarding what will be the principal mechanism that could push a region, a protected area, or a particular community to a novel environmental playing field,” Ordonez says.

Because the study used historic climate change data, the maps provide researchers the opportunity to test predictions, Williams adds. “In principle, these are places where we can go out now and look for novel communities emerging in response to climate changes of the 20th and early 21st century.”

Regional changes in climate – as temperatures warm and precipitation changes – affect where plants such as red raspberries will grow. Overall, plant species distribution in Wisconsin is shifting northwest. Photo: Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources

In Wisconsin and the Upper Midwest, regional climate gradients include a strong north-south temperature gradient and a moisture gradient from west to east, being generally drier to the west. Hence, as temperatures warm, species are expected to move north, while other species may shift east or west in response to precipitation changes.

For example, in research separate from this study, UW-Madison doctoral candidate Jeremy Ash and professors Tom Givnish and Don Waller, all of the botany department, have found in resurveying hundreds of sites throughout Wisconsin — first sampled in the 1940s and ’50s by UW’s John Curtis — that the distribution of plant species is shifting northwest in the state.

The current study adds to a growing body of research known as climate metrics, aimed at summarizing the ecological risks of climate change in ways that are useful to conservationists and land managers. The findings carry on-the-ground applications for management decisions and, the authors note, highlight the need for unique, localized management and adaptation planning.

For instance, if high rates of climate change are forecast for a particular location, conservation biologists may need to manage species dispersal or consider assisting in the relocation of slow-dispersing or vulnerable species. Indications of climate novelty may require a different management response — one prepared for ecological surprises.

“That may be more of a monitor-and-watch kind of situation in the sense of it’s a bit hard to know what will happen, so you really want to see what’s happening on the ground,” Williams says.

A rusty-patched bumblebee on Culver’s root in the UW-Madison Arboretum. The Arboretum’s insecticide-free prairies, woodlands and gardens are a paradise for the rusty-patched and at least a dozen other bumblebee species. Photo: Susan Day/UW-Madison Arboretum

A proposal by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to seek endangered status for the rusty-patched bumblebee has focused renewed attention on bumblebees living at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum. This 1,200-acre natural area in Madison still has wild populations of the rare insect, which was fairly common until about 20 years ago.

The proposal cited habitat loss, insecticide use and climate change as the primary causes of the bee’s decline.

By 2010, when the rusty-patched bumblebee was first identified at the Arboretum, it had already disappeared from at least 90 percent of its original range, says Susan Carpenter, the Arboretum’s native plant gardener and bumblebee expert. Although she had seen rusty-patched bumblebees early in September, a search for them later in the month was unsuccessful.

Susan Carpenter

The reason was their seasonal cycle: This year’s colonies are no longer living and the queens for next season are already overwintering underground.

Unlike the better-known honeybees, bumblebees live in small colonies and store little nectar, so they must nest within flying distance of flowers. The Arboretum’s insecticide-free prairies, woodlands and gardens — with varied, abundant flowers that bloom from spring until fall — are a paradise for the rusty-patched and at least a dozen other bumblebee species.

Bumblebees nest in hollow logs, root cavities or underground. After they emerge from nests, generally in April, they immediately need to find nectar from flowering trees and woodland wildflowers. The procession of flowers concludes in October with the goldenrods and asters.

After discovering the rusty-patched bumblebee in 2010, the Arboretum initiated a pollinator monitoring project, now affiliated with the Wisconsin Citizen-based Monitoring Network.

Arboretum data were used in the Xerces Society’s 2013 petition for endangered status, and in the recent Fish and Wildlife Service species status assessment. The society promotes the study and conservation of invertebrate species and their habitats.

The rarity of the rusty-patched bumblebee was emphasized in 2014 when a conservation photographer set out to make a documentary about its decline. After visiting locations around the country and talking to several bumblebee experts, he and the filmmakers finally found and filmed the bee in Madison at the UW Arboretum.

The Arboretum is a research and teaching center devoted to restoring landscapes of Southern Wisconsin. Pollinator protection is one benefit of its habitat restoration efforts, which date to the 1930s. The center also promotes native habitat on public and private land.

Dozens of crops, including important ones like tomatoes, cranberries, apples and cherries, rely on pollinators — including domesticated honeybees, wild bees and other wild insects. For some of these crops, bumblebees are unique in their ability to use wing buzzing to release pollen from the flower. A 2012 study found that the total value of pollinators to farmers was $29 billion in 2010.

We know very little about most wild bees, but I think we need to be paying more attention.

Susan Carpenter

More broadly, the disappearance of the rusty-patched is part of a larger picture of pollinator decline that has ecological, aesthetic and economic impacts.

“The rusty-patched bumblebee is an indication of what is happening to other wild pollinator species,” says Carpenter. “We know very little about most wild bees, but I think we need to be paying more attention. By studying the rusty-patched bumblebee, not only can we learn more about them, but by extension we can learn about other pollinators that rely on the same resources. Habitat that is suitable for the rusty-patched bumblebee is also suitable for other pollinators, and for many other essential components of the food web.”

Every startup should have an origin story. Apple and its essential garage. The Wright brothers: two bicycle mechanics who invented one incredible flying machine.

The genesis of the nontoxic Buckthorn Baggie starts with trees that refused to die. The common buckthorn, one of the most troublesome invasive trees in the Midwest, forms a dense thicket that crowds out native plants. Cut to the ground, it springs back, Hydra-like, with up to a dozen eager offshoots that form an equally appalling forest monoculture.

Herbicide kills buckthorn, as does uprooting. But many people disdain herbicide, and uprooting fails on trees above an inch or so in diameter.

Members of UW-Madison’s Forest and Wildlife Ecology 551 class gaze at resprouted buckthorn trees. Matthew Hamilton (in red cap) explains how his invention, the Buckthorn Baggie, can kill this invasive species and prevent resprouting. Photo: David Tenenbaum

Enter Buckthorn Baggies, an invention that University of Wisconsin-Madison engineering senior Matthew Hamilton cooked up as a high school student in Woodbury, Minnesota.

The problem was simple: Buckthorn kept resprouting after Hamilton cut it back in his backyard.

The solution was equally simple: a heavy, black plastic bag to cover the stump that was held in place by a cable tie. Within a few months, this patent-pending cure would annihilate the weed tree once and for all.

The Baggie deprives buckthorn of light, preventing those nasty resprouts with neither chemicals nor heavy lifting.

So, as Hamilton enrolled at UW-Madison and worked toward a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, he was also perfecting the Buckthorn Baggie and starting his business. “I’ve done this from the beginning to the end, and saw the entire process of getting the product ready to market,” he says. “You think you can just come up with something and put it on the web and sell it, but I realized there was a lot more to it than I expected.”

Invasive buckthorn before, during and after use of the Buckthorn Baggie. Photos courtesy of Buckthorn Baggies

For example, since the bags need to remain in place for months, they needed a sticker to distinguish them from trash. But the stickers peeled right off, so he had to find a coating that improved adhesion.

Invasive species are increasingly recognized as a major cause of environmental upheaval, and their removal is generally a key to ecological restoration. In the Midwest, common buckthorn is one of the worst invaders. The tree, apparently introduced to North America as an ornamental more than a century ago, quickly grows in a variety of habitats to 40 feet tall, with all the characteristics of an invasive nuisance. It tolerates the intense shade it creates. Its dense foliage emerges very early in spring, and lasts late into the fall, so it stunts the competition through sunlight deprivation.

And when cut back to the stump, buckthorn produces half a dozen or more new stems. Far from solving the problem, cutting exacerbates it by leaving a phenomenally dense thicket.

Although the stump can be killed by dabbing it with herbicide, many volunteer projects — and volunteers themselves — either cannot or will not use herbicide. And that’s a market opening for the Buckthorn Baggie.

In the middle of October, the Baggies are solving that problem in a UW–Madison forest ecology class taught by Phil Townsend. The students are learning to measure tree biomass — an essential part of understanding the trees’ role in the environment, the carbon cycle and global warming.

After past classes cut buckthorn from a section of Picnic Point, resprouts ran rampant. “It was frustrating for me,” says instructor Autumn Sabo. “We knew that after we cut them down, they would resprout with a vengeance. I complained to Alex (Brito, the class teaching assistant), and he found the Buckthorn Baggies.”

Sabo learned that the inventor was on campus, so Hamilton was invited to demonstrate how to place and secure the bags to deprive the stump of essential sunlight.

Hamilton says sales have already justified a reorder of bags. More broadly, “being in the bag business reassured me that I wanted to be in mechanical engineering, but was also interested in the sales side of things. It’s been a good experience.”

Do severe wildfires make forests in the western United States more susceptible to future bark beetle outbreaks?

The answer, in a study published Monday (Nov. 7, 2016) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is no. By leading to variability in the density and size of trees that grow during recovery, large fires reduce the future vulnerability of forests to synchronous bark beetle attacks and broad-scale outbreaks.

Douglas fir beetle. The researchers measured how susceptible the forests would be to bark beetle outbreaks based on the characteristics of the lodgepole pine and Douglas fir. Joseph Benzel

“Fire creates a very heterogeneous landscape,” says study co-author Kenneth Raffa, professor of entomology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “Beetles can only reproduce in an individual tree once, so they take advantage of this patch of trees and that patch of trees as they become available, but when the number and size of trees vary a lot, it’s hard for a large outbreak to develop.”

Bark beetles attack trees in order to reproduce, and outbreaks occur primarily in forests in which the beetle’s host trees are large and abundant. It can take decades for young, post-fire trees to reach the size they prefer. But the researchers, including UW–Madison Professor of Zoology Monica Turner, surmised that if large numbers of suitable trees became available at the same time, post-fire forests could become more susceptible to outbreaks.

However, the researchers also considered another possibility: If forests regenerate as mosaics of suitable trees on the landscape (based on size and density), though individual trees may come under attack by bark beetles, this variability might also protect the forest from broad-scale outbreaks.

Raffa

Turner

The study team also includes lead author Rupert Seidl of the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna (who spent his sabbatical at UW-Madison in 2015) and Daniel Donato at the Washington State Department of Natural Resources, a former postdoctoral researcher in Turner’s lab.

To test their questions, the team used long-term data from large and severe fires that burned 36 percent of Yellowstone National Park in 1988.

“The Yellowstone Fires are often considered to have ushered in the new era of fire activity in the west,” Turner says, and she, her students and her colleagues have studied the recovery of those forests ever since.

With the data they simulated 130 years of growth following the Yellowstone Fires using a computer model calibrated to the study area and used by forest and land managers around the U.S., called the Forest Vegetation Simulator.

The researchers simulated 130 years of growth following the Yellowstone Fires using a computer model. Courtesy of Monica Turner

“We use models because trees grow slowly, from a human perspective, and we won’t be able to observe these changes over 100 years,” Turner says.

They measured how susceptible the forests would be to bark beetle outbreaks each year following fire based on the characteristics of the dominant tree species in Greater Yellowstone: lodgepole pine and Douglas fir. They compared this to the susceptibility to outbreak assuming the forests regenerated homogenously — in other words, if tree density and size did not vary.

For lodgepole pine, the model showed it would take 79 years for the first post-fire stands to become highly susceptible to bark beetle outbreaks, and 115 years for half of the stands to reach vulnerability. By 130 years, 89 percent of the stands would be at risk of an outbreak.

For Douglas fir, the first stand became vulnerable to bark beetle outbreak after 99 years following the start of post-fire regeneration, according to the model. At 130 years, still just half of the stands were susceptible.

“This variation persists over 130 years,” Turner says. “In contrast, the homogenous stands become vulnerable early and at the same time.”

The researchers documented enormous variability in the tree density, size and growth rates among areas that burned in 1988.

A lodgepole pine stand showing large trees that were attacked by mountain pine beetle. Courtesy of Monica Turner

Turner and Raffa say land and forest managers may want to consider promoting and maintaining this natural variability to help protect forests from bark beetle outbreaks. When large numbers of trees are relatively uniform on the landscape, a sudden or even a chronic stress such as old age can make a sizeable forest resource available to beetle populations all at once.

Following fire, managers sometimes thin recovering forests, which can encourage growth of large trees and can even decrease the susceptibility of particular stands to beetle attacks. However, Raffa and Turner say that thinning employed uniformly over large areas might inadvertently increase the risk of outbreak if trees become susceptible all at once. Dense “dog-hair” stands (so-called because of the large number of short trees growing closely together, like the fur of a dog) are not usually valued, but they may play an important ecological role not previously recognized, Turner adds.

In the American west, beetles and their well-adapted host trees are locked in an ever-changing arms race. Bark beetles attack a tree and the tree exudes a resin to thwart the beetle. Beetles use chemical pheromones to call in other beetles as reinforcements when they’ve found a good tree, but the tree subsequently changes its chemical composition to make itself less attractive and more toxic, killing some of its own tissue in the process.

“The tree launches a scorched-earth defense against the beetle, but the beetle converts the tree’s toxins into attractants, like an early version of jiujitsu,” says Raffa.

Turner and Raffa say land and forest managers may want to consider promoting and maintaining this natural variability to help protect forests from bark beetle outbreaks.

Trees that are stressed — through drought, age, defoliation and more — are at increased risk of attack by bark beetles, and subsequently, death. As the climate has warmed, western forests have suffered both an increase in stress and increased beetle overwintering survival, which gives advantage to the bark beetles. The forests have also experienced more frequent and severe fires.

“Climate change is creating more opportunity for beetles,” Turner says. “Because temperatures are warmer, the beetles don’t die off in the winter, and beetles are able to expand their range, impacting trees that are less well-adapted to defending themselves from attack.”

For instance, Raffa says bark beetles have “breached a historical barrier,” showing up in typically cooler places like Alberta, Canada. “The boreal forest now provides a connection between the mountain pine beetle and Midwestern forests for the first time, and no one knows how quickly the beetle will advance or how big a problem it will be,” he says.

Native bark beetles can present problems in Wisconsin, too. Raffa works with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources to refine guidelines and perform ongoing research on bark beetles in the state. Some species have long existed here, he says, but they are less aggressive than the species found out west.

Forest understory differences inside and outside of a fence designed to exclude deer at UW-Madison’s Kemp Research Station in Vilas County. The forest on the left is outside the exclosure and shows the dramatic effects of deer on forest understory. Photo: Katie Frerker

It is widely known that the white-tailed deer is a nonstop eater. Unless it is sleeping or fleeing from a predator, the keystone North American herbivore is nearly always nibbling.

Ecologically, deer herbivory is a fairly well understood phenomenon. The presence, abundance and reproductive success of many plant species are directly affected by deer, whose populations are orders of magnitude greater in some regions than they were before European settlement.

Now, scientists are looking beyond herbivory to better understand the indirect effects of deer on eastern North American forest landscapes. In particular, scientists are interested in how the animal’s presence and behaviors affect the composition and overall health of the wildflowers and other herbs — what scientists call understory communities — that blanket the forest floor.

A sugar maple sapling nipped off by white-tailed deer, one of North America’s emblematic keystone herbivores. Photo: Autumn Sabo

“Deer are affecting understory communities in many different ways,” explains Autumn Sabo, a University of Wisconsin-Madison plant ecologist and the lead author of a new study that teases out some of the secondary impacts of white-tailed deer on forest ecosystems. “It is only in recent years that scientists have started to look at factors beyond herbivory.”

Writing this week (Feb. 6, 2017) in the Journal of Ecology, Sabo and her colleagues detail how deer affect forest plant composition by altering facets of the forest environment, including light availability, soil compaction, and the thickness of a particular layer of soil.

The study focused on 17 deer exclosures, patches of forest ranging in size from a hundred square meters to eight hectares, where 2- to 3-meter high fences have been installed to keep deer out. The exclosures, some of which have been in place for decades, are located in the temperate hardwood forests of northern Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

Archaeological evidence suggests that deer were once far less abundant in eastern North America, perhaps as few as two to four deer per square kilometer. Today, on average, there are about seven deer per square kilometer in the areas studied by Sabo and her colleagues.

“In northern Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, we found little herbivory damage on forest herbs,” says Sabo, who conducted the study with Katie Frerker of the U.S. Forest Service, and Don Waller and Eric Kruger of UW-Madison. “Deer seem to be eating primarily young trees.”

UW-Madison plant ecologist Autumn Sabo (left) and U.S. Forest Service ecologist Katie Frerker examine foliage near a deer exclosure in Door County’s Peninsula State Park. Photo: Andy Jandl

Findings from the new study suggest scientists need to revisit their thinking about the effects of deer as, previously, most ecologists believed the biggest impact of deer on understory species was herbivory. That idea may be true in places like the northeastern U.S. where a lot of direct browsing damage has been observed on wildflowers, says Sabo. But for northern forests in the Upper Great Lakes region, the indirect effects of deer nipping off saplings appear to be more important.

Because young trees have been nibbled down, light levels on the forest floor increase and a whitish layer of soil known as the E horizon thickens as colored nutrients are lost. Deer also increase soil compaction, likely through hoof action.

“Shifts in these environmental factors may result in forest composition changes,” notes Sabo, a graduate student and instructor in UW-Madison’s Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology. “For example, more tree cover is correlated with more herbs that are spread by animals eating their fruit, including trillium. Higher light levels favor raspberries and ferns, and the thicker soil E horizons correlate with fewer lillies and violets.”

Soils that have been compacted grow more grasses and sedges and also are more favorable to non-native plant species such as dandelions, she adds.

The results of the new study may provide an additional explanation for why forest understory plant communities are slow to recover after pressure from deer is eased.

“With exclosures, sometimes you see almost immediate effects,” according to Sabo. “Other times you see very little change, which makes us suspect legacy effects” from having had a lot of deer on the landscape.

The findings of the new study can help scientists design experiments to show the effects of changes in light and soil resources on plant communities. Critically, the results can also inform efforts to conserve forest biodiversity and improve forest restoration techniques.

The study was supported by funds from the Friends of Peninsula State Park, the UW-Madison Department of Botany, and the McIntire-Stennis Program.

UW-Madison researchers studying forest microclimates show that these refuges may mean the difference between life and death for chickadees and their overwintering songbird kin. Photo © Jim Bauer

The polar vortex of 2013 and 2014 brought the coldest winter many parts of the Midwest had experienced in decades. In Dane County, Wisconsin, it was the coldest it had been in 35 years.

By coincidence, that same winter, University of Wisconsin–Madison graduate student Christopher Latimer was gathering data in fragments of forests and woodlots throughout the county. He wanted to know whether these forest “islands” created their own unique climates — microclimates — and what that could mean for overwintering birds like the black-capped chickadee.

In a recent study in the journal Ecography, Latimer and his co-author and advisor, UW-Madison forest and wildlife ecology Professor Ben Zuckerberg, show that these forest refuges may mean the difference between life and death for chickadees and their overwintering songbird kin.

“All our predictions about climate change, from shifting temperatures to altered precipitation, play out over small-scale differences in microclimate, and they can be just as big as global climate,” Zuckerberg says.

For example, Latimer and Zuckerberg found the microclimate variability was so high within the 30-mile study area — which they call the “fragmentation gradient” in recognition of the mosaic nature of wooded areas in Dane County — that a bird living in one part of the study area might experience a climate similar to Chicago while another might experience conditions more like those found in Minneapolis–Saint Paul, 400 miles to the northwest.

A winter landscape in Blue Mounds, Wisconsin, one of the areas included in a recent study of microclimates and the refuge that forested areas provide for birds trying to survive cold winters. Photo: Christopher Latimer

Overall, they found that forests at slightly higher elevations, with more trees, and those closer to urban centers, provide warmer conditions for birds trying to survive frigid winters in southern Wisconsin. This is important, Latimer and Zuckerberg say, because chickadees must double the amount of energy they expend to keep warm when temperatures dip below minus 18 degrees Celsius or about zero degrees Fahrenheit.

Zuckerberg says the study results may help land managers prioritize conservation efforts that protect and create more forested habitat, particularly as more southerly bird species migrate northward in a warming climate.

To gather data, Latimer placed 68 devices that measure and record both light and temperature in 12 forested woodlots throughout Dane County. He hung the sensors from trees, about 1.5 meters from the ground, randomly located throughout the woods so they were at varying distances from the forest edges. Between December 2013 and February 2014, the sensors collected data every 30 minutes.

The Wisconsin researchers also assessed the vegetation within each woodlot because how much light — and therefore energy in the form of solar radiation — the forest holds via vegetation each day and releases each night might influence temperature. They estimated the density of the trees, measured tree width around each sensor, and calculated how far each sensor was from the edge of the woods. The team also measured relative elevation of the woodlot compared to a point just beyond it, the size of each forest patch, and also the distance to the nearest urban center.

Using satellite imagery, Latimer also determined the characteristics of the landscape surrounding each woodlot, calculating the percentage of agricultural land, forest and impervious surface — sidewalks, parking lots, roads and other asphalt or concrete features.

Christopher Latimer

Ben Zuckerberg

“When we talk about climate change we tend to think of climate in the absence of land use,” Latimer says. “But the landscape has an influence on the magnitude of the climate effect and can exacerbate or mitigate it, impacting the spatial and temporal refuges available to certain species.”

The researchers also compared their data to those gathered at local weather stations and predicted by accepted models. Weather stations are often located in open, flat regions and do not necessarily capture what’s happening on a smaller scale in more wooded areas.

“We wanted to know how well current methods are capturing local conditions,” says Latimer. “More than half of terrestrial biota (life) lives under forest canopies, and standard weather stations are not good at capturing below the canopy.”

The study revealed that temperatures within the forest fragments were consistently warmer than climate models indicated and thus are not reflecting microclimates that are biologically significant to some species. Chickadees could experience a 40 percent reduction in survival in months with five or more days below minus 18 degrees Celsius, their energy-for-survival temperature threshold. While weather stations recorded 55 cumulative days below that temperature during the study period, the forest island sensors measured just 32 such days.

Forest fragments closer to urban centers were also found to be warmer, likely due to the urban heat island effect. Full of concrete and asphalt, temperatures in cities are often higher than in their nonurban, more vegetated counterparts. This, Latimer and Zuckerberg say, means having natural areas within and close to cities can provide “stepping stones” for southerly, less-cold-adapted birds surviving the winter months.

The researchers were most surprised to find that woodlots at higher elevations were warmer, which they say is likely due to a phenomenon called cold pooling, in which cooler air settles in lower-lying areas.

An example of this, Latimer says, can be seen in early spring on golf courses. The grass may be bare but there is still snow in sand traps because the cold air collects in the concavity.

A cardinal takes flight while foraging for bush berries during winter along the Picnic Point shoreline on the UW-Madison campus. Photo: Jeff Miller

Altogether, the study shows that forests matter for species seeking refuge from harsh climates. Fragmented forests, however, are less effective at dampening climate extremes, Latimer and Zuckerberg say, because they leak energy from their edges into the surrounding landscapes. This could intensify the energy costs for chickadees and other wintering species.

With the new data, “land managers can monitor for certain species in terms of microclimate management,” says Zuckerberg, “and work to have less fragmentation, different vegetation, or locate refugia or parks in places that promote species survival.”

The study was funded by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture; the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Hatch Project; and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources Citizen-based Monitoring Partnership Program.

UW Arboretum land care staff member Austin Pethan uses a drip torch as a ten-person staff manages a prescribed fire at the Arboretum in spring 2016. Prescribed burns are scheduled for this week as well. Photo: Jeff Miller

The smoke floating above the University of Wisconsin–Arboretum today signals that the prescribed fire season is underway at the Arboretum and Lakeshore Nature Preserve.

Both the Arboretum and the Preserve manage many acres of remnant and restored prairies, oak savannas, and woodlands — these native Wisconsin ecosystems require fire to remain healthy. Prescribed fire restores a natural process, stimulates native vegetation growth and seed production, improves wildlife habitat, and provides valuable training and research opportunities.

Prescribed fires are usually set in early spring (March through May) and sometimes in late fall. They are conducted within a strict set of parameters that include temperature, wind speed and direction, relative humidity, and fuel conditions, among many others.

Before and during each burn, the fire manager checks that all current and expected parameters are within prescribed ranges to conduct a safe fire, have good smoke lift, and meet the land care goals. Prescribed fire crew members are trained in wildland fire management and use full protective clothing and equipment.

Many native prairies, savannas, and woodlands evolved to rely on fire for regeneration. Prescribed fires mimic natural ones, but take place under much more controlled conditions. Prescribed fires can also combat invasive plant species, while safely removing old and dry plant material to reduce the risk of uncontrolled wildfires.

Neither the Arboretum nor the Preserve is located within a Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources fire protection area. Both sites notify local officials before every fire is ignited and get permission from the City of Madison or the City of Fitchburg, depending on the location of the prescribed fire.

Smoke may be visible to visitors, neighbors and travelers on nearby roads. Visitors to the Arboretum and the Preserve might see posted signs alerting the public to burn activity and closed trails, or swaths of blackened areas after a burn.

The safety of crew and visitors is always a top priority. If you visit the Arboretum or Preserve during a fire, please follow these safety precautions:

• Always stay off trails and firebreaks that are closed for a prescribed fire, and do not go off trail.
• Keep a safe distance from smoke, flames and heat.
• Do not interfere with or obstruct the movement of crew, equipment, and vehicles.
• Do not distract a prescribed fire crew.

See the Arboretum’s Prescribed Fire Updates page for information throughout the season. You can also call the Visitor Center at (608) 263-7888, 9:30 a.m. – 4 p.m. weekdays or 12:30 – 4 p.m. weekends.

For more information about prescribed fire in the Preserve, call the Program Manager at (608) 265-9275, 8 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. weekdays.

In the first segment of this video, a brown howler monkey displays his or her guttural call in a federally-protected reserve in southeastern Brazil called RPPN Feliciano Miguel Abdala. In the second segment, muriqui monkeys roam the forest floor. Credit, part 1: Jefferson Cordeiro, Muriqui Project of Caratinga. Credit, part 2: K.B. Strier, Muriqui Project of Caratinga. 

In a vulnerable forest in southeastern Brazil, where the air was once thick with the guttural chatter of brown howler monkeys, there now exists silence.

Yellow fever, a virus carried by mosquitoes and endemic to Africa and South America, has robbed the private, federally-protected reserve of its brown howlers in an unprecedented wave of death that has swept through the region since late 2016, killing thousands of monkeys.

Karen Strier, a University of Wisconsin–Madison professor of anthropology, has studied the monkeys of this forest since 1983. She visited the reserve – her long-term study site near the city of Caratinga – in the state of Minas Gerais, in January of 2017. “It was just silence, a sense of emptiness,” she says. “It was like the energy was sucked out of the universe.”

Using what in some cases are decades of historical data, Strier and a team of Brazilian scientists focused on studying primates in Brazil’s patchwork Atlantic Forest are poised to help understand and manage what happens next. They have never seen monkeys perish in such numbers, so quickly, from disease.

A view of the four-square-mile federally-protected reserve and study forest in southeastern Brazil called RPPN Feliciano Miguel Abdala. Carla Possamai, Muriqui Project of Caratinga

With her Brazilian counterpart Sérgio Lucena Mendes, a professor of animal biology at the Universidade Federal de Espirito Santo, and their former postdoctoral researcher, Carla Possamai, Strier is ready to census the monkeys that remain at the reserve, comparing the new data to prior censuses performed in the forest. They also plan to study how the surviving brown howler monkeys regroup and restructure their societies, since their existing social groups have been destroyed.

Strier’s study forest, just 4 square miles in size, is a land-locked island of green surrounded by agricultural and pasture lands. How yellow fever showed up here is a mystery, and the monkeys in the forest have nowhere else to go. Less than 10 percent of Brazil’s Atlantic Forest remains intact and much of it exists only as small patches in a fragmented landscape.

“I am very surprised at the speed with which the outbreak is advancing through the landscape and by how the virus can jump from one patch of forest to another, even if they are hundreds of meters apart,” says Mendes. “It is also surprising that it is spreading across such a large geographic region.”

The way yellow fever has spread also concerns Brazilian health officials. As of mid-March 2017, they have confirmed more than 400 human cases of the disease, mostly in Minas Gerais, causing nearly 150 human deaths. The Brazilian Ministry of Health is investigating another 900 possible cases and concern is mounting that it will spread to cities, threatening many more people.

Muriqui monkeys in a federally-protected reserve in southeastern Brazil, called RPPN Feliciano Miguel Abdala. UW–Madison Professor Karen Strier has studied the critically-endangered muriqui monkeys in this patch of Brazil’s Atlantic Forest since 1983. A recent and unprecedented outbreak of the mosquito-borne virus, yellow fever, has killed thousands of monkeys in the region, including nearly all of the muriqui’s main competitors, brown howler monkeys. Carla Possamai, Muriqui Project of Caratinga

Brazilian authorities also want to protect the monkeys from people who fear the animals may be spreading the disease. “We need to show that they help inform when the virus arrives in a region, because being more sensitive than humans, they die first,” Mendes explains.

A dead monkey is like a canary in a coal mine, alerting public health officials that a pathogen may be present, mobilizing preventative and precautionary efforts. So, what does it mean when so many have perished?

“No one really knows the consequences for the other primates or the forest when nearly the entire population of an abundant species dies from disease in just a few months,” says Strier. “We are in a position to learn things we never knew before, with all the background information that we have collected.”

Nearly two decades ago, Strier helped expand and secure protection for the primates at her study forest, which include four monkey species: the brown howler, the black capuchin, the buffy-headed marmoset and, Strier’s animal of interest, the critically-endangered northern muriqui.

It is too soon to say whether the howler monkey population can recover but Strier remains optimistic, in large part because of a career spent studying and helping conserve the brown howler’s main competitor, the muriquis. “The muriquis have shown us that it’s possible for small populations of primates to recover if they are well-protected,” says Strier.

When she first arrived at her study forest, known as RPPN Feliciano Miguel Abdala, there were just 50 muriquis. By September 2016, there were nearly 340, representing one-third of the species’ total known population. The animals reside in just 10 forests in southeastern Brazil and nowhere else in the world. Strier’s efforts and those of her colleagues have helped restore their numbers.

She is relieved that, so far, the muriquis appear to be less susceptible to yellow fever. “It was really tense – scary – to go into the forest, knowing the howlers were gone but not knowing how bad things might also be for the muriquis,” Strier recalls.

Muriqui monkeys in a federally-protected reserve in southeastern Brazil. Carla Possamai, Muriqui Project of Caratinga

Her long-term studies have revealed that muriquis have a lifespan of more than 40 years and she has known some of the individual muriquis in the forest their entire lives. Strier can recognize individuals based on natural differences in their fur and facial markings.

Now, in the face of ecological tragedy, she and her colleagues have an opportunity to study how the muriquis adapt in a forest nearly devoid of their competitors.

“It’s like a controlled natural experiment, but one you would never plan to do,” Strier says. “My happy hypothesis is that the muriquis are out foraging, feasting on all the best fruits and leaves that the howlers used to eat. Will they eat more of their favorite foods, or travel less? Will their social order change? Will they form smaller groups?”

She has documented that kind of behavioral flexibility before. In the late 1980s and early 90s, the muriquis began splitting into smaller groups. In the early 2000s, as their population grew, they began spending more time on the ground, rather than in the trees, often consuming fallen fruits and even half-eaten “leftovers” under the trees.

“I feel like I am 20 years old again” she says. “I have so many questions that are important to answer, for the primates, their Atlantic forest habitat, and for the people that share their world.”

To raise awareness about and funds for her muriqui project, Strier is working with the Brazilian non-profit that administers the reserve, called Preserve Muriqui, and Global Wildlife Conservation, a Texas-based non-profit dedicated to conserving the diversity of life on earth.

Hongjie Li, a UW-Madison postdoctoral researcher, was the first to observe close-up the symbiotic system that unites termites with the fungus Termitomyces. UW-Madison/James Runde

In the Microbial Sciences Building at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the incredibly efficient eating habits of a fungus-cultivating termite are surprising even to those well acquainted with the insect’s natural gift for turning wood to dust.

According to a study published today (April 17, 2017) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, when poplar wood undergoes a short, 3.5-hour transit through the gut of the termite, the emerging feces is almost devoid of lignin, the hard and abundant polymer that gives plant cells walls their sturdiness. As lignin is notorious for being difficult to degrade, and remains a costly obstacle for wood processing industries such as biofuels and paper, the termite is the keeper of a highly sought after secret: a natural system for fully breaking down biomass.

“The speed and efficiency with which the termite is breaking down the lignin polymer is totally unexpected,” says John Ralph, a UW–Madison professor of biochemistry, researcher at the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC) and lignin expert. “The tantalizing implication is that this gut system holds keys to breaking down lignin using processes that are completely unknown.”

Young worker termites build combs (such as the one pictured here) from their own wood-fed feces, and cultivate the fungus that breaks the comb into simple sugars that feed older worker termites. UW-Madison/James Runde

Hongjie Li, co-first author of the study, began studying the termite as graduate student at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China. Now a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of UW–Madison bacteriology professor and GLBRC researcher Cameron Currie, Li was the first to keep this genus of termite alive in a lab setting, and the first to observe close-up the symbiotic system that unites the termites with the fungus Termitomyces.

The entire process, as is often the case with social insects, is complex. Young termites, or young workers, collect and eat the wood. The termites’ fungal-laden feces then become an integral part of a fungal comb, a sponge-like structure the termites create within a protected chamber. On the comb, the fungi further degrade the wood until its simple sugars are ready, some 45 days later, to be consumed by old worker termites.

“For decades, everybody just thought that the young worker wasn’t doing anything, because of how rapidly the wood passes through its gut,” says Li. “But after observing the termites in the lab, I assumed there were some functions there, since the fungi simply cannot live on the wood on their one.”

To explore those functions, Li enlisted the help of co-first author Daniel Yelle, a research forest products technologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Products Laboratory, and an expert in wood-degrading fungal systems.

“This system is unique because the fungus and the termite can’t live without each other,” says Yelle. “They’re symbiotic, and they work together very efficiently to do things fungi can’t do in nature. Together they do everything more rapidly.”

Dan Yelle, , a research forest products technologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Products Laboratory, in the laboratory. UW-Madison/James Runde

The system may be symbiotic, but the processes involved in the gut transit — or the mechanisms by which the termite gut succeeds in cleaving even the hardest-to-cleave portions of the lignin — are still unknown. Future research will focus on determining which enzymes or bacterial systems might be at work in the gut. If that super enzyme or process can be replicated outside of the termite, it could result in a dramatic improvement in the way we process wood and make biofuels, improving economics and cutting energy use.

“This is a great example of the value of basic science research,” says Currie. “Studying how termites process plant biomass in nature not only helps us understand our natural world, but it could contribute to our own efforts to break down biomass.”

Aldo Leopold circa 1947. Leopold’s radio addresses were early reflections on the land ethic, his philosophy of how to live in harmony with nature, which he detailed later in “A Sand County Almanac.” Photo: Aldo Leopold Foundation/UW Archives

In celebration of Earth Day, Wisconsin audiences will once again hear portions of conservationist and former University of Wisconsin–Madison professor Aldo Leopold’s radio addresses that originally aired more than 80 years ago on WHA, which is now a part of Wisconsin Public Radio.

Although no known recordings of Leopold’s voice survive, UW–Madison conservation professor emeritus Stan Temple, who once held Leopold’s faculty position at the university and is now a senior fellow at the Aldo Leopold Foundation, will read excerpts from the original transcripts. Leopold’s ideas outlined in these broadcasts went on to influence generations of conservationists and establish the science and tenets of modern wildlife management.

Leopold’s radio addresses spoke directly to farmers, making only passing references to city dwellers and their inability to do much for conservation beyond “making speeches.” UW Archives

Leopold’s radio addresses were early reflections on the land ethic, his philosophy of how to live in harmony with nature, which he detailed later in “A Sand County Almanac.” They were intended primarily for farmers, using radio to reach audiences across the state in an expression of the Wisconsin Idea. In them, Leopold encouraged rural landowners to set aside and manage natural habitats to promote wildlife for both private and public benefit.

The interview with Temple about Leopold’s radio addresses and his readings from the transcripts will air at 4 p.m. on Sunday, April 23, on “University of the Air” on WPR. Leopold originally presented his talks during the predecessor program, “College of the Air,” from 1933 to 1936. Excerpts will also be broadcast periodically on Wisconsin Life, WPR’s series of essays on the culture of the state.

Just weeks after he joined UW–Madison as the chair on game management, Leopold turned to radio to fulfill an obligation toward outreach and extension work. In his first address, on Sept. 8, 1933, titled “Building a Wisconsin game crop,” Leopold entreated farmers to manage their properties to sustain and increase wildlife populations. By couching wildlife management in agricultural terms of raising crops, Leopold aimed to communicate with farmers in their own language.

Stan Temple, emeritus professor of forest and wildlife ecology and senior fellow at the Aldo Leopold Foundation, is pictured in the snowy woods near the historic Aldo Leopold Shack in rural Baraboo, Wisconsin. Photo: Jeff Miller

“Leopold’s way of linking agriculture to wildlife management came out of his realization that most of the land on which wildlife could potentially live is farmland,” explains Temple. “So, his approach was a perfect fit for the College of Agriculture.”

Leopold eventually assumed the position of professor of wildlife management in what is now the Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences. His was the first faculty appointment in wildlife management in the world.

The radio addresses talked directly to farmers, making only passing references to city dwellers and their inability to do much for conservation beyond “making speeches.” For Leopold, farmers and other rural landowners had all the agency. In an address on Sept. 10, 1936, he wrote, “The farmer who gives them (birds) food and cover is a more important conservationist than all the speechmakers in Christendom.”

Listen to excerpts of Temple reading Leopold

“Leopold’s paradigm-shifting idea was that wildlife was not going to respond to the prescription of the day, which was protection,” says Temple. “After all his life experiences, especially after years traveling around the upper Midwest looking at the situation, Leopold realized protection alone was not enough — wildlife needed habitat.”

Temple says the shift from passive wildlife protection to active habitat management was revolutionary.

Although Leopold’s radio addresses were recorded on fragile transcription disks, they were not maintained in central archives and have been lost. Temple is leading an effort to find any of the lost disks in hopes of obtaining what would be the only recordings of Leopold’s voice. The transcripts were retained by the Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology and can be viewed in the Leopold archives.

Leopold’s ideas established the science and tenets of modern wildlife management. Here, he weighs specimens after a woodcock hunt. Aldo Leopold Foundation/UW Archives

“With it being the celebration of the 100th anniversary of Wisconsin public radio broadcasting this year, it also seems like a great chance to look back at the history of the radio station as a vehicle for education,” says Emily Auerbach, one of the hosts of “University of the Air,” of the occasion to revisit Leopold’s radio addresses. Auerbach, a UW–Madison professor of English, also teaches “A Sand County Almanac” in her course on wilderness literature.

“You can see him very shrewdly in these excerpts thinking about his audience and trying to think about how to get them on board with the revolutionary idea of conservation and ecology,” says Auerbach.

“There’s just this excitement when you find another piece of someone you’re trying to understand from the past.”

HOW TO LISTEN

• In the Madison area: FM 90.9, FM 107.9, FM 88.9 and WHA AM 970, the station that originally aired Leopold’s radio addresses in the 1930s.
• For listening in other regions of the state, look for the Ideas Network stations at the WPR website.
• No radio? Out of state? You can also listen live online.
• The archived show will be available later on the “University of the Air“ website.

Conserved private land purchased for an easement on this southern California hillslope serves as mitigation for neighboring urban development. Courtesy of Adena Rissman

American taxpayers spend millions of dollars each year to conserve privately owned lands. These lands provide public benefits like timber, water quality protection and food. Yet, information about conserved private lands — including where they are and what protections are in place — can be hard to find, impeding the effectiveness of conservation efforts and taxpayer investments.

A new study led by researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison examined why private-land conservation data is sometimes inaccessible and found that limited capacity within some federal agencies as well as laws prohibiting others from disclosing certain information are to blame.

“It’s difficult or impossible to advance planning, monitoring and evaluation without good information about where private land conservation is happening,” says lead author Adena Rissman, an associate professor of environmental policy and management in the Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology.

Adena Rissman

The money Americans spend on private land conservation often takes the form of subsidies or tax breaks to landowners for stewardship practices, like conservation farming or saving habitat for wildlife. Without access to good data, it is harder for government agencies and nonprofits to target these public investments efficiently and ensure taxpayers are getting the most bang for their buck.

“There is limited funding for conservation, so we want to use conservation dollars in the places where they can make the biggest difference,” says Rissman.

Additionally, says co-author Jessica Owley, the public often gives up the protection of environmental amenities, like wetlands, to allow development because it’s told other lands are being protected in return. The research suggests it may be hard to confirm that such protection actually takes place.

“When we forgo both tax dollars and ecosystem services, we should be able to understand what the tradeoffs are and make sure they are worthwhile,” says Owley, a law professor at the University at Buffalo (State University of New York).

The authors’ own difficulty accessing data for previous research inspired their investigation, which examined four conservation programs focused on private land.

For example, they found the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which administers the Endangered Species Act, lacks the personnel and capacity to collect and maintain records on private lands set aside for endangered species as compensation for permitted development that harms habitat.

“When we forgo both tax dollars and ecosystem services, we should be able to understand what the tradeoffs are and make sure they are worthwhile.”

Jessica Owley

“If they don’t even know where mitigation lands are, how can they ensure the persistence of species and verify that the terms of those permit agreements are being upheld over time?” Rissman asks.

The researchers also uncovered restricted access to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Conservation Reserve Program, which pays farmers to convert highly erodible farmland into natural space to protect water and soil health.

While the USDA has accurate data on the locations of CRP-enrolled land, a revision to the 2008 Farm Bill – following a court case where private-land geospatial records were released to an agricultural vendor – prohibits it from sharing those records, leaving no way for the public to know what land is entering or leaving the program.

While it’s important to balance the public’s right to know with the privacy concerns of landowners, Rissman says, managers and researchers need such information to track trends in water quality and soil health, for example. The return of thousands of CRP-enrolled acres back to row crops in the past decade, spurred by farmers’ desire to reap the benefits of high corn prices, highlights the need for the data to monitor the effects of these conversions.

“It’s difficult or impossible to advance planning, monitoring and evaluation without good information about where private land conservation is happening.”

Adena Rissman

To solve the inaccessibility problem, Rissman says addressing capacity shortfalls in agencies like the Fish and Wildlife Service with increases in funding for staffing, data collection and technical training could certainly help.

She adds that, while it is still unclear what the next federal budget will mean for conservation programs, overall cuts will make it more difficult for agencies to have the capacity they need to be accountable to the public.

Policy revisions can help in other cases. The next Farm Bill revision, set for 2018, presents an opportunity to re-examine the data-restricting language and make it easier for researchers, local governments and the public to access maps of CRP-enrolled lands.

“Transparency can be complicated, because information can be used in sometimes unintended ways,” says Rissman, acknowledging concerns raised by the agricultural industry over breaches of privacy and increased regulation. “On the other hand, access to this information can help us plan strategically to protect both agriculture and the environment, as well as account for the funds the federal government spends.”

The study was published in the journal Ecology and Society and was funded by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Knobloch Family Foundation and the Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy.

On small Barro Colorado Island, in the middle of the Panama Canal, hundreds of tree species thrive. Jacob Usinowicz, an ecologist, recalls visiting there one field season and being astounded by the number of mahogany seeds littering the tropical forest floor.

“They produce seeds like maple trees, all these little helicopters, and the trees produce thousands of them,” says Usinowicz, a former graduate student in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “If you go when they are reproducing, the seeds are just everywhere.”

A new study demonstrates that tropical forests like this one on Barro Colorado Island, Panama, contain high tree species biodiversity because trees within a species compete more with one another in these forests than they do with other species. Center for Tropical Forest Science (CTFS), Smithsonian-ForestGEO

It’s these seeds, and the full-grown trees they ultimately produce, that took Usinowicz there in the first place. Tropical forests boast a diversity of tree species — Barro Colorado Island has roughly as many tree species as all of Europe ­— and as part of his Ph.D. research, Usinowicz wanted to understand why and how they all manage to coexist. He recently published his findings in the journal Nature with a research team that included UW–Madison professor of integrative biology Tony Ives and Joe Wright from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.

Using vast quantities of long-term data from 10 forests around the globe — from the Appalachian foothills to a mountain range spanning China and North Korea — Usinowicz built reliable mathematical models that show trees in the tropics can better coexist because the climate allows for longer growing seasons, producing reproductive asynchrony that alleviates competition between species.

“The reason you have so many species is because when a tree does really well in the tropics, it’s mostly competing only with other individuals of its own species,” says Usinowicz, who is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.

Seeds from two medium-sized trees in the genus Virola, one of the more abundant types of trees on Barro Colorado Island in Panama. The seeds are from different species, though the two look quite similar. Courtesy of Joe Wright, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute

In temperate and boreal forests, the growing season for trees is often shorter, driven by cold temperatures or excessive moisture. This constrains all species to compete with one another for limited nutrients and space over a very short period of time.

“Things get pushed on top of each other and the thought is that, as a result, species reproduce at the same time of year and are exposed to the same conditions in that year,” says Usinowicz. “If everyone reproduces in June and June happens to be rainy, it’s a bad year for everyone. In the tropics, however, you essentially have all year.”

Long growing seasons give each species the opportunity to take advantage of the right conditions over a greater span of time, allowing them to better time their recruitment, the process of successfully producing seedlings that survive to become trees.

“The goal of the tree is to grow big enough to be in the overstory canopy,” says Usinowicz. “Most of the competition happens in the push to establish new seedlings, and the seedlings eventually become saplings. A lot of these species are very shade tolerant and will hang around for a really long time — decades or longer — in the understory, waiting for the death of an adult tree.”

Jacob Usinowicz

Usinowicz used datasets from each forest containing records on seedlings, saplings, species and survival. He used them in combining two existing ecological models — writing his own lines of code — into a relatively simple mathematical tool to assess coexistence in these forests as a factor of latitudinal and climate variation.

The findings confirm that climate seasonality plays a role in the higher biodiversity scientists observe near the equator, but crucially, it highlights that this coexistence mechanism — which scientists call the storage effect — also varies with latitude.

“It’s the first paper to show that one of these mechanisms we talk about in the theoretical literature not only contributes to the diversity of single forests but it also contributes to how diversity changes across latitudes,” says Usinowicz. “No one has ever shown that before in an ecological mechanism.”

Usinowicz and his coauthors acknowledge that other ecological factors are also at play, including variation in pollinator behavior, disease and herbivory, but they point out that other studies show these factors operate more strongly and more frequently in the tropics as well.

“Coexistence mechanisms require different ingredients to operate,” says Usinowicz. “There is always more than one mechanism operating.”

Unlike in tropical forests, where trees within a species compete more with one another than they do with other species, trees in temperate forests like this one in China’s Chanbaishan National Nature Reserve must compete with one another for limited resources over shorter growing seasons. Center for Tropical Forest Science (CTFS), Smithsonian-ForestGEO

Usinowicz, who is currently studying how climate change may affect species interactions by examining range shifts up the slopes of mountains, credits his co-authors with the robustness of the models he was able to create for the study. For some of them, these datasets represent their life’s work collecting seedling and sapling data from forests around the globe.

“Joe (Wright) has one of the oldest datasets from Panama, but almost around the same time, Takashi Masaki established his dataset in Japan,” says Usinowicz, noting that people collect seeds from traps in the forests and count and tag seedlings every year, a process that takes several months. Both projects spanned nearly 30 years. “It’s an amazing effort and it’s amazing that it’s been ongoing for as long as it has.”

He says the most difficult part of the study was managing these large datasets and figuring out how to write the code.

“Seedlings were given an ID on a tag and the model had to keep track of when each appeared and when each died, and what species it belonged to,” says Usinowicz. “The coding was on that end, but once I had on spreadsheets how many seedlings each species made each year, I fed that right into the model.”

Like helicopter seeds settling onto a crowded canopy floor.

The following funding sources have been essential to the ongoing collection of long-term forest data used in the study: Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Center for Tropical Forest Science, Environment Research and Technology Development Fund of the Japan Ministry of the Environment, JSPS KAKENHI, National Key Research and Development Program of China, National Natural Science Foundation of China, National Science Foundation of the United States (DDIG, IGERT, LTER, LTREB), Natural Environment Research Council of the UK, Natural History Museum of London, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Taiwan Forestry Bureau, Taiwan Forestry Research Institute, Taiwan Ministry of Science and Technology, USDA U.S. Forest Service.