Ecological Applications

The frequency and severity of drought events are predicted to increase due to anthropogenic climate change, with cascading effects across forested ecosystems. Management activities such as forest thinning and prescribed burning, which are often intended to mitigate fire hazard and restore ecosystem processes, may also help promote tree resistance to drought. However, it is unclear whether these treatments remain effective during the most severe drought conditions or whether their impacts differ across environmental gradients. We used tree‐ring data from a system of replicated, long‐term (>20 years) experiments in the southwestern United States to evaluate the effects of forest restoration treatments (i.e., evidence‐based thinning and burning) on annual growth rates (i.e., basal area increment; BAI) of ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa), a broadly distributed and heavily managed species in western North America. The study sites were established at the onset of the most extreme drought event in at least 1200 years and span much of the climatic niche of Rocky Mountain ponderosa pine. Across sites, tree‐level BAI increased due to treatment, where trees in treated units grew 133.1% faster than trees in paired, untreated units. Likewise, trees in treated units grew an average of 85.6% faster than their pre‐treatment baseline levels (1985 to ca. 2000), despite warm, dry conditions in the post‐treatment period (ca. 2000–2018). Variation in the local competitive environment promoted variation in BAI, and larger trees were the fastest‐growing individuals, irrespective of treatment. Tree thinning and prescribed fire altered the climatic constraints on growth, decreasing the effects of belowground moisture availability and increasing the effects of atmospheric evaporative demand over multi‐year timescales. Our results illustrate that restoration treatments can enhance tree‐level growth across sites spanning ponderosa pine's climatic niche, even during recent, extreme drought events. However, shifting climatic constraints, combined with predicted increases in evaporative demand in the southwestern United States, suggest that the beneficial effects of such treatments on tree growth may wane over the upcoming decades.

Food webs vary in space and time. The structure and spatial arrangement of food webs are theorized to mediate temporal dynamics of energy flow, but empirical corroboration in intermediate‐scale landscapes is scarce. River‐floodplain landscapes encompass a mosaic of aquatic habitat patches and food webs, supporting a variety of aquatic consumers of conservation concern. How the structure and productivity of these patch‐scale food webs change through time, and how floodplain restoration influences their dynamics, are unevaluated. We measured productivity and food‐web dynamics across a mosaic of main‐channel and side‐channel habitats of the Methow River, WA, USA, during two study years (2009–2010; 2015–2016) and examined how food webs that sustained juvenile anadromous salmonids responded to habitat manipulation. By quantifying temporal variation in secondary production and organic matter flow across nontreated river‐floodplain habitats and comparing that variation to a side channel treated with engineered logjams, we jointly confronted spatial food‐web theory and assessed whether food‐web dynamics in the treated side channel exceeded natural variation exhibited in nontreated habitats. We observed that organic matter flow through the more complex, main‐channel food web was similar between study years, whereas organic matter flow through the simpler, side‐channel food webs changed up to ~4‐fold. In the side channel treated with engineered logjams, production of benthic invertebrates and juvenile salmonids increased between study years by 2× and 4×, respectively; however, these changes did not surpass the temporal variation observed in untreated habitats. For instance, juvenile salmonid production rose 17‐fold in one untreated side‐channel habitat, and natural aggregation of large wood in another coincided with a shift to community and food‐web dominance by juvenile salmonids. Our findings suggest that interannual dynamism in material flux across floodplain habitat mosaics is interrelated with patchiness in food‐web complexity and may overshadow the ecological responses to localized river restoration. Although this dynamism may inhibit detection of the ecological effects of river restoration, it may also act to stabilize aquatic ecosystems and buffer salmon and other species of conservation concern in the long term. As such, natural, landscape‐level patchiness and dynamism in food webs should be integrated into conceptual foundations of process‐based, river restoration.

Agricultural areas represent one of the major ecosystems of the world. Intensification of agricultural practices produced openfields characterized by low biological diversity. Nevertheless, the distance up to which intensive agricultural fields alter surrounding natural systems is rarely quantified. We determined the spatial scale at which agricultural landscapes alter the diversity of Odonates, a key taxon in wetland ponds, and we tested to what extent citizen science data can be used reliably for this purpose. We compiled 7731 observations made in a portion of the region Centre‐Val‐de‐Loire (France) over 10 years by naturalists on 729 water bodies to analyze the effect of agricultural landscapes (mainly wheat, rapeseed, sunflower) on the species richness of both damselflies and dragonflies in lentic systems. Sixty species were reported over the 10‐year period. For dragonflies, intensive agricultural landscapes best explained their richness at the scales of 800 and 1600 m for overall and autochthonous species, respectively, when using the full dataset. The spatial scale was smaller for damselflies, at 200 m for both overall and autochthonous species. These distances were not severely impacted when constraining the data to consider several biases. Multimodel averaging showed that the proportion of intensive agriculture decreased species richness, despite the potential biases inherent to an imperfect database acquired by citizens. This imperfect citizen dataset allows to infer the lowest effect size of agriculture on species richness. Quantitatively, this effect was more important for autochthonous species. Interestingly, both relatively rare taxa and common or generalist species can be under threat in intensive agricultural landscapes, calling for more ecotoxicological studies. The influence of agricultural practices from a distance implies that conservation and management plans of wetland ponds should consider the landscape ecological characteristics and not only the pond features. Conservation efforts focusing too locally on a site may be undermined because intensive agriculture from a distance limits the potential for the site to recover highly diverse communities. These distant effects should be integrated by policy‐makers when deciding which wetland pond should benefit from a conservation plan or which conservation action may be planned, implementing, for instance, buffer zones and/or ecological corridors composed of natural vegetation.

Koalas are an iconic, endangered, Australian marsupial. Disease, habitat destruction, and catastrophic mega‐fires have reduced koalas to remnant patches of their former range. With increased likelihood of extreme weather events and ongoing habitat clearing across Australia, koala populations are vulnerable to further declines and isolation. Small, isolated populations are considered at risk when there is increased inbreeding, erosion of genomic diversity, and loss of adaptive potential, all of which reduce their ability to respond to prevailing threats. Here, we characterized the current genomic landscape of koalas using data from The Koala Genome Survey, a joint initiative between the Australian Federal and New South Wales Governments that aimed to provide a future‐proofed baseline genomic dataset across the koala's range in eastern Australia. We identified several regions of the continent where koalas have low genomic diversity and high inbreeding, as measured by runs of homozygosity. These populations included coastal sites along southeast Queensland and northern and mid‐coast New South Wales, as well as southern New South Wales and Victoria. Analysis of genomic vulnerability to future climates revealed that northern koala populations were more at risk due to the extreme expected changes in this region, but that the adaptation required was minimal compared with other species. Our genomic analyses indicate that continued development, particularly linear infrastructure along coastal sites, and resultant habitat destruction are causing isolation and subsequent genomic erosion across many koala populations. Habitat protection and the formation of corridors must be employed for all koala populations to maintain current levels of diversity. For highly isolated koala populations, active management may be the only way to improve genomic diversity in the short term. If koalas are to be conserved for future generations, reversing their genomic isolation must be a priority in conservation planning.

Urbanization is a leading threat to biodiversity, but scientifically informed management of urban ecosystems can mitigate negative impacts. For wild bees, which are declining worldwide, careful consideration of flower choice in public and private green spaces could help preserve their diversity. While floral density and species richness are both linked to wild bee diversity, the mechanisms underlying these relationships are not fully understood. Here, we tested two hypotheses relating the influence of floral trait composition to bee species richness, which we have termed the within‐trait diversity and optimal floral trait hypotheses. Specifically, we assessed whether variation in bee richness relates to variation in the weighted variance (trait diversity) and mean (optimal trait) of floral traits observed in urban green spaces across the city of Montreal, Canada. Our analyses focused on two floral traits relating to pollinator feeding success: nectar sugar concentration and corolla length. After accounting for variation in floral density among sites, bee richness was positively related to community‐weighted variance in corolla length, supporting the within‐trait diversity hypothesis. These findings suggest that management practices that increase the diversity of flower morphologies in urban green spaces can promote the persistence of wild bee communities in cities.

Marine soft sediments play crucial roles in global biogeochemical cycles and biodiversity. Yet, with organisms often hidden in the sediment, they pose challenges for effective monitoring and management. This study introduces a novel approach utilizing sediment microtopography as a proxy for ecosystem functioning and biodiversity. Combining field sampling, benthic chamber incubations, and advanced Structure‐from‐Motion photogrammetry techniques, we investigated the relationships between microtopographic features and various ecological parameters across diverse subtidal habitats. Our findings reveal strong associations between sediment microtopography and environmental variables, benthic fluxes, biodiversity metrics, and community functional traits, with microtopography consistently explaining more than 50% of the variance in the data. This research demonstrates the potential of sediment microtopography as a cost‐effective and scalable tool for assessing soft‐sediment ecosystem dynamics and informing conservation strategies. By providing insights into the links between habitat structure and ecological processes, this study advances our understanding of marine benthic ecology and opens new possibilities for habitat assessment applications worldwide.

Earthworms are a key faunal group in agricultural soils, but little is known on how farming systems affect their communities across wide climatic gradients and how farming system choice might mediate earthworms' exposure to climate conditions. Here, we studied arable soil earthworm communities on wheat fields across a European climatic gradient, covering nine pedo‐climatic zones, from Mediterranean to Boreal (S to N) and from Lusitanian to Pannonian (W to E). In each zone, 20–25 wheat fields under conventional or organic farming were sampled. Community metrics (total abundance, fresh mass, and species richness and composition) were combined with data on climate conditions, soil properties, and field management and analyzed with mixed models. There were no statistically discernible differences between organic and conventional farming for any of the community metrics. The effects of refined arable management factors were also not detected, except for an elevated proportion of subsurface‐feeding earthworms when crop residues were incorporated. Soil properties were not significantly associated with earthworm community variations, which in the case of soil texture was likely due to low variation in the data. Pedo‐climatic zone was an overridingly important factor in explaining the variation in community metrics. The Boreal zone had the highest mean total abundance (179 individuals m⁻²) and fresh mass (86 g m⁻²) of earthworms while the southernmost Mediterranean zones had the lowest metrics (<1 individual m⁻² and <1 g m⁻²). Within each field, species richness was low across the zones, with the highest values being recorded at the Nemoral and North Atlantic zones (mean of 2–3 species per field) and declining from there toward north and south. No litter‐dwelling species were found in the southernmost, Mediterranean zones. These regional trends were discernibly related to climate, with the community metrics declining with the increasing mean annual temperature. The current continent‐wide warming of Europe and related increase of severe and rapid onsetting droughts will likely deteriorate the living conditions of earthworms, particularly in southern Europe. The lack of interaction between the pedo‐climatic zone and the farming system in our data for any of the earthworm community metrics may indicate limited opportunities for alleviating the negative effects of a warming climate in cereal field soils of Europe.

Regreening efforts in deserts have been implemented globally to combat land degradation and desert expansion, but how they affect above‐ and belowground community succession and assembly processes remains unknown. Here, we examined variations in plant and soil microbial community attributes along a 53‐year restoration chronosequence following the establishment of straw checkerboard barriers (SCBs) in the Tengger Desert of China. This approach is a combination of fixing shifting sand and adding organic material (straw) simultaneously to expedite vegetation restoration by enhancing the success of plant establishment. Our findings revealed that the establishment of SCBs significantly triggered plant and soil microbial communities to gradually approximate those of the natural community along restoration duration. We observed positive and negative bidirectional shifts in plant and soil microbial community composition. Critical temporal threshold zones for relatively rapid changes in community composition were identified, with 2–15.5 years for plants, 0.5–8.5 years for bacteria, and 2–8.5 years for fungi. This suggests a delayed response of plant communities to restoration efforts compared with soil microbial communities. Both stochastic and deterministic processes regulated plant and soil microbial community assembly. Stochastic processes played a more important role in plant and fungal community succession, whereas deterministic processes primarily governed bacterial succession. In terms of deterministic processes, temporal variations in community composition mainly resulted from the intrinsic correlations among plant, bacterial, and fungal communities, as well as an increase in soil organic carbon (SOC) with restoration duration. Thus, temporal patterns and functional contributions of bacterial communities appear to be more predictable than those of plant and fungal communities during desert ecosystem restoration. This study emphasizes that plant‐bacteria‐fungi correlations and increasing SOC content are critical for accelerating community succession and promoting dryland restoration. Future studies should explore and integrate temporal variations and restoration effects of multiple ecosystem functions to better predict dryland development and resilience to global climate changes over a large temporal scale.

Increasing interest in seabed resource use in the ocean is introducing new pressures on deep‐sea environments, the ecological impacts of which need to be evaluated carefully. The complexity of these ecosystems and the lack of comprehensive data pose significant challenges to predicting potential impacts. In this study, we demonstrate the use of Bayesian networks (BNs) as a modeling framework to address these challenges and enhance the development of robust quantitative predictions concerning the effects of human activities on deep‐seafloor ecosystems. The approach consists of iterative model building with experts, and quantitative probability estimates of the relative decrease in abundance of different functional groups of benthos following seabed mining. The model is then used to evaluate two alternative seabed mining scenarios to identify the major sources of uncertainty associated with the mining impacts. By establishing causal connections between the pressures associated with potential mining activities and various components of the benthic ecosystem, our model offers an improved comprehension of potential impacts on the seafloor environment. We illustrate this approach using the example of potential phosphorite nodule mining on the Chatham Rise, offshore Aotearoa/New Zealand, SW Pacific Ocean, and examine ways to incorporate knowledge from both empirical data and expert assessments into quantitative risk assessments. We further discuss how ecological risk assessments can be constructed to better inform decision‐making, using metrics relevant to both ecology and policy. The findings from this study highlight the valuable insights that BNs can provide in evaluating the potential impacts of human activities. However, further research and data collection are crucial for refining and ground truthing these models and improving our understanding of the long‐term consequences of deep‐sea mining and other anthropogenic activities on marine ecosystems. By leveraging such tools, policymakers, researchers, and stakeholders can work together toward human activities in the deep sea that minimize ecological harm and ensure the conservation of these environments.

In water‐limited dryland ecosystems of the Western United States, climate change is intensifying the impacts of heat, drought, and wildfire. Disturbances often lead to increased abundance of invasive species, in part, because dryland restoration and rehabilitation are inhibited by limited moisture and infrequent plant recruitment events. Information on ecological resilience to disturbance (recovery potential) and resistance to invasive species can aid in addressing these challenges by informing long‐term restoration and conservation planning. Here, we quantified the impacts of projected future climate on ecological resilience and invasion resistance (R&R) in the sagebrush region using novel algorithms based on ecologically relevant and climate‐sensitive predictors of climate and ecological drought. We used a process‐based ecohydrological model to project these predictor variables and resulting R&R indicators for two future climate scenarios and 20 climate models. Results suggested widespread future R&R decreases (24%–34% of the 1.16 million km² study area) that are generally consistent among climate models. Variables related to rising temperatures were most strongly linked to decreases in R&R indicators. New continuous R&R indices quantified responses to climate change; particularly useful for areas without projected change in the R&R category but where R&R still may decrease, for example, some of the areas with a historically low R&R category. Additionally, we found that areas currently characterized as having high sagebrush ecological integrity had the largest areal percentage with expected declines in R&R in the future, suggesting continuing declines in sagebrush ecosystems. One limitation of these R&R projections was relatively novel future climatic conditions in particularly hot and dry areas that were underrepresented in the training data. Including more data from these areas in future updates could further improve the reliability of the projections. Overall, these projected future declines in R&R highlight a growing challenge for natural resource managers in the region, and the resulting spatially explicit datasets provide information that can improve long‐term risk assessments, prioritizations, and climate adaptation efforts.

Effective management of wild animals requires understanding how predation and harvest alter the composition of populations. These top‐down processes can alter consumer body size and behavior and thus should also have consequences for bottom‐up processes because (1) body size is a critical determinant of the amount of nutrients excreted and (2) variation in foraging behavior, which is strongly influenced by predation, can determine the amount and spatial distribution of nutrients. Changes to either are known to affect ecosystem‐scale nutrient dynamics, but the consequences of these dynamics on ecosystem processes are poorly understood. We used an individual‐based model of an artificial reef (AR) and reef fish in a subtropical seagrass bed to test how fish body size can interact with variation in foraging behavior at the population and individual levels to affect seagrass production in a nutrient‐limited system. Seagrass production dynamics can be driven by both belowground (BGPP) and aboveground primary production (AGPP); thus, we quantified ecosystem‐scale production via these different mechanistic pathways. We found that (1) populations of small fish generated greater total primary production (TLPP = BGPP + AGPP) than large fish, (2) fish that foraged more increased TLPP more than those that spent time sheltering on ARs, and (3) small fish that foraged more led to greatest increases in TLPP. The mechanism by which this occurred was primarily through increased BGPP, highlighting the importance of cryptic belowground dynamics in seagrass ecosystems. Populations of extremely bold individuals (i.e., foraged significantly more) slightly increased TLPP but strongly affected the distribution of production, whereby bold individuals increased BGPP, while populations of shy individuals increased AGPP. Taken together, these results provide a link between consumer body size, variation in consumer behavior, and primary production—which, in turn, will support secondary production for fisheries. Our study suggests that human‐induced changes—such as fishing—that alter consumer body size and behavior will fundamentally change ecosystem‐scale production dynamics. Understanding the ecosystem effects of harvest on consumer populations is critical for ecosystem‐based management, including the development of ARs for fisheries.

Lands devoted to military use are globally important for the production of ecosystem services and for the conservation of biodiversity. The United States has one of the largest military land estates in the world, and most of these areas occur in water‐limited landscapes. Despite many of these areas receiving intense or sustained disturbance from military training activities, the structure and function of ecosystems contained within their boundaries continue to provide critical benefits to people across spatial scales. The land owned and managed by the Department of Defense is subject to regulation across local, state, and federal governing bodies, constraining and shaping both how land management is conducted and how ecosystem services are prioritized. Here, we explored the supply of ecosystem services from military lands in dryland areas of the United States using key indicators of ecosystem services: biodiversity estimates derived from range maps, ecosystem productivity estimates from satellite observations, and spatially explicit, hierarchical ecosystem classifications. Additionally, we utilized content analysis of the environmental management plans of these areas to describe the unique set of demands and regulatory constraints on these areas. We found that the US military land estate in drylands contains many types of ecosystems and provides a large and diverse supply of ecosystem services, comparable to the sum of services from public lands in these areas. Additionally, the degree to which the ecosystem services concept is captured in environmental management plans is strongly shaped by the language of the governing legislation that mandated the use of environmental management plans in these areas, although these plans do not explicitly address land management using the concept of ecosystem services. Collectively, our findings suggest that military use and management of land represents an important source of ecosystem services, that military land use can be considered a cultural ecosystem service unto itself, and that top‐down regulation can affect how these services are identified and valued. Our work highlights the need for the research and conservation communities to quantify ecosystem services from individual military installations so that both services and biodiversity can be safeguarded in an era of military conflict across the globe.

Human‐induced stressors are impacting the oceans and reducing the biodiversity of marine ecosystems. The many stressors affecting marine environments do not act in isolation. However, their cumulative impact is difficult to predict. Most of the available methods for quantifying cumulative impacts on marine ecosystems sum the impact of individual stressors to estimate cumulative impact. We demonstrate how experimental evidence from interacting stressors can be accounted for in cumulative impact assessments. We adapted a widely used additive model to incorporate nonadditive stressor interactions into a marine spatially explicit cumulative impact assessment for seagrasses. We combined experimental data on the impact of multiple stressors with spatial data on stressor intensity to test whether stressor interactions impact seagrasses in a case study region in South Australia. We also assessed how uncertainty about cumulative impacts changes when uncertainty in stressor interactions is included in the impact mapping. The results from an additive spatial cumulative impact assessment model were compared with results from the model incorporating interactions. Cumulative effects from the interaction model were more variable than those produced by the additive model. Five of the 15 stressor interactions that we tested produced impacts that significantly deviated from those predicted by an additive model. Areas of our study region that showed the largest discrepancies between the additive and interactive outputs were also associated with higher uncertainty. Our study demonstrates that the inclusion of stressor interactions changes the pattern and intensity of modeled spatial cumulative impact. Additive models have the potential to misrepresent cumulative impact intensity and do not provide the opportunity for targeted mitigation measures when managing the interactive effects of stressors. Appropriate inclusion of interacting stressor data may have implications for the identification of key stressors and the subsequent spatial planning and management of marine ecosystems and biodiversity.

Increases in forest disturbances have altered global forest demography rates, with many regions now characterized by extensive areas of early‐successional forest. Heterogeneity in the structure, diversity, and composition of early‐successional forests influence their inherent ecological values from immediately following disturbance to later successional stages, including values for biodiversity and carbon storage. Here, using 14 years of longitudinal data, we describe patterns in the structure, richness, and composition of early‐successional forests subject to one of three different disturbance types: (1) clearcut logging followed by slash burn, (2) severe wildfire followed by salvage logging, and (3) severe wildfire only, in the Mountain Ash (Eucalyptus regnans) and Alpine Ash (Eucalyptus delegatensis) forests of southeastern Australia. We also documented the influence of disturbance intervals (short, medium, and long) on early‐successional forests. Our analyses revealed several key differences between forests that regenerated from wildfire versus two different anthropogenic perturbations. Most ash‐type plant communities were resilient to wildfire within historical fire‐regimes (75–150 years), exhibiting temporal trends of recovery in plant structure, richness, and composition within the first decade. In contrast, the richness, occurrence, and abundance of some plant lifeforms and life history traits were negatively associated with clearcut logging and salvage logging, relative to forests disturbed by wildfire alone. These included resprouting species, such as tree ferns and ground ferns. However, Acacia spp. and shrubs were more abundant after clearcut logging. Our findings also provide evidence of the pronounced negative impact of salvage logging on early‐successional plant communities, relative to that of both clearcut logging and wildfire. Notably, plant richness declined for over a decade after salvage logging, rather than increased as occurred following other disturbance types. Early‐successional forests provide the template for the stand structure and composition of mature forests. Therefore, altered patterns of recovery with different disturbance types will likely shape the structure and function of later‐successional stages. Predicted increases in wildfire will increase the generation of early‐successional forests and subsequent salvage logging. Therefore, it is pertinent that management consider how different disturbance types can produce alternate states of forest composition and structure early in succession, and the implications for mature stands.

Global wildlife trade is a billion‐dollar industry, with millions of individuals traded annually from a diversity of taxa, many of which are directly threatened by trade. Reptiles exhibiting desirable life‐history or aesthetic traits, such as large body sizes or colorful morphologies, are traded preferentially. A key issue is understanding geographic and temporal variation between desirable species traits and their trade. Poor understanding of this can generalize patterns of consumer trait preferences and conceal functional consequences of wild harvest in ecosystems. Using records of legal, international trade in Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES)‐listed reptiles between 2000 and 2020, we examine geographic and temporal variation in the functional composition of traded assemblages, both captive‐ and wild‐sourced, identifying key hotspots and routes of functional diversity in trade. We also identify associations between functional traits and species presence in trade. We find that functionally diverse trade assemblages are exported primarily from the tropics, with hotspots in sub‐Saharan Africa, and imported across Asia, Europe, and North America. Patterns of functional composition in trade remained broadly stable from 2000 to 2020. Globally, the species most likely to be traded were large, fecund, generalists. Sustained wild harvest of functionally diverse reptilian assemblages in trade hotspots, such as Madagascar and Indonesia, places substantial pressure on large‐bodied reptiles that fulfill important ecological functions, including population control and nutrient cycling, while also endangering harvest‐vulnerable species with slow life histories. Despite limited species‐specific descriptions of reptilian ecological functions, management in harvest hotspots can safeguard ecosystem functioning by prioritizing protection for threatened species that contribute disproportionately to local and regional functional diversity.

Tropical forest restoration presents a potential lifeline to mitigate climate change and biodiversity crises in the Anthropocene. Yet, the extent to which human interventions, such as tree planting, accelerate the recovery of mature functioning ecosystems or redirect successional trajectories toward novel states remains uncertain due to a lack of long‐term experiments. In 2004–2006, we established three 0.25‐ha plots at 10 sites in southern Costa Rica to test three forest restoration approaches: natural regeneration (no planting), applied nucleation (planting in patches), and plantation (full planting). In a comprehensive survey after 16–18 years of recovery, we censused >80,000 seedlings, saplings, and trees from at least 255 species across 26 restoration plots (nine natural regeneration, nine applied nucleation, eight plantation) and six adjacent reference forests to evaluate treatment effects on recruitment patterns and community composition. Both applied nucleation and plantation treatments resulted in significantly elevated seedling and sapling establishment and more predictable community composition compared with natural regeneration. Similarity of vegetation composition to reference forest tended to scale positively with treatment planting intensity. Later‐successional species with seeds ≥5 mm had significantly greater seedling and sapling abundance in the two planted treatments, and plantation showed similar recruitment densities of large‐seeded (≥10 mm) species to reference forest. Plantation tended toward a lower abundance of early‐successional recruits than applied nucleation. Trees (≥5 cm dbh) in all restoration treatments continued to be dominated by a few early‐successional species and originally transplanted individuals. Seedling recruits of planted taxa were more abundant in applied nucleation than the other treatments though few transitioned into the sapling layer. Overall, our findings show that active tree planting accelerates the establishment of later‐successional trees compared with natural regeneration after nearly two decades. While the apparent advantages of higher density tree planting on dispersal and understory establishment of larger seeded, later‐successional species recruitment is notable, more time is needed to assess whether these differences will persist and transition to the more rapid development of a mature later‐successional canopy. Our results underscore the need for ecological restoration planning and monitoring that targets biodiversity recovery over multiple decades.

With agricultural demands increasing globally, determining the nature of impacts of different forms of agriculture on biodiversity, especially for threatened vertebrates and habitats, is critical to inform land management. This is especially true for open ecosystems such as the natural rock outcrops and amphibians, both of which are threatened by land‐use change. Lateritic plateaus of the northern Western Ghats are rock outcrop ecosystems harboring endemic biodiversity. Since most of these plateaus are located outside protected areas and officially classified as wastelands, they are rapidly lost due to multiple human pressures, including agriculture. We compared amphibian composition, diversity, and species responses across these rocky plateaus (hereafter plateaus), orchards, and rice paddy in the Western Ghats‐Sri Lanka biodiversity Hotspot, India. We sampled 50 belt transects across four geographically separated plateaus, covering three land‐use classes in three of the plateaus, and recorded information on amphibians and their microhabitats. Each transect was sampled four times across the rainy season. We compared responses of amphibians across three land‐use categories at the community level using Hill numbers, beta‐diversity measures, and nonmetric multidimensional scaling, and at the species level using joint species distribution modeling. Converting plateaus to paddy and orchards significantly altered microhabitat availability by reducing the rock pool habitat availability in paddy and orchards, and increased deep, water‐submerged areas and grass cover in paddy. Conversion to paddy mostly had species‐ and community‐level impacts, that is, lowered species occurrence of certain species, lowered species richness, and more nested communities, whereas conversion to orchards mostly had species‐level impacts, that is, lowered species occurrence, highlighting that different forms of agriculture have varying impacts on amphibians that can be determined by examining community‐ and species‐level effects simultaneously. Using only community‐ or species‐level metrics would not have unraveled these impacts completely. We show that large rock pools are critical microhabitats for frogs, most likely serving as refugia and protecting frogs from desiccation during dry spells in monsoons. Since Indian lateritic plateau habitats in low elevations are rapidly being converted to orchards, efforts are needed to conserve them in partnership with local communities, the custodians of these habitats.

In arid and semiarid systems of western North America, the most damaging invasive plants are winter annuals. These plants are destroying wildlife habitat, reducing livestock production, and increasing wildfires. Monitoring these plants for lasting population changes is challenging because their abundances vary widely from year to year. Some of this variation is due to weather, and quantifying effects of weather is important for distinguishing transcient from lasting population changes and understanding effects of climate change. Fall and spring weather affect germination and seed production of the current generation of plants and, therefore, impact population sizes of subsequent generations of plants. Extensive data are required to estimate effects of fall and spring weather on multiple generations of plants. We used Bayesian statistics to integrate experimental and long‐term (31 years) monitoring data and quantify invasive annual grass [downy brome (Bromus tectorum L.) and Japanese brome (Bromus japonicus Thunb.)] responses to weather. Bromes ranged from nearly absent to comprising half of total biomass depending on three previous years of weather. Brome biomass increased with precipitation one, two, and three falls prior to measurement. Fall precipitation is projected to increase, and a mere 6.5 mm increase, which is just 2% of mean annual precipitation, would increase brome biomass 40% (28%, 54%) (mean [95% CI]) according to our model. Increased fall precipitation could favor many invasive winter annual grasses and forbs. Dry spring conditions reduced brome biomass the current year but increased brome biomass one and likely two (p = 0.08) years later, perhaps because dry conditions weakened perennial competitors. This finding casts doubt on several one‐year precipitation experiments that concluded drier spring weather would reduce brome abundances. Integrating short‐term experiments and long‐term monitoring is useful for estimating invasive plant responses to the weather and characterizing their responses to climate change. Our research provides predictions of brome abundances that could improve monitoring efforts by helping land managers interpret population dynamics in the context of seasonal precipitation patterns.

Fisheries can profoundly impact co‐occurring species exposed to incidental capture. Spatiotemporal fisheries management holds substantial potential to balance socioeconomic benefits with ecological costs to threatened bycatch species. This study estimated the effect of the spatial and temporal distribution of effort by a western Pacific Ocean tuna purse seine fishery on catch rates of target and at‐risk species by fitting spatially explicit generalized additive multilevel regression models within a Bayesian inference framework to observer data. Mean field prediction surfaces defined catch rate hotspots for tunas, silky sharks, rays, and whale sharks, informing the design of candidate area‐based management strategies. Due to limited sample sizes, odontocete and marine turtle catch rate geospatial patterns were summarized using simple 2D hexagonal binning. Effort could be focused in two areas within core fishing grounds to reduce overlap with hotspots for silky sharks, rays, and whale sharks without affecting target catch. Effort could be shifted outside of core fishing areas to zones with higher target tuna catch rates to reduce overlap with hotspots for at‐risk species. Sparse and small marine turtle and whale shark hotspots occurred across the fishing grounds. Results did not identify opportunities for temporally dynamic spatial management to balance target and at‐risk catch rates. Research on the economic and operational viability of alternative spatial management strategies is a priority. A small subset of sets had disproportionately large odontocete captures. Real‐time fleet communication, move‐on rules, and avoiding sets on dolphin schools might reduce odontocete catch rates. Managing set association type and mesh size present additional opportunities to balance catch rates of at‐risk and target species. Employing output controls that effectively constrain the fishery would alter the spatial management strategy to focus fishing within zones with the lowest ratio of at‐risk bycatch to target tuna catch. Findings inform the design of alternative spatial management strategies to avoid catch rate hotspots of at‐risk species without compromising the catch of principal market species.

Human−wildlife conflict is a global conservation issue, necessitating effective mitigation strategies. Hunting is a common management approach to reduce conflict, but the indirect consequences are often overlooked. Chronic hunting‐related disturbance can reduce fitness and redistribute species. In recent decades, goose−agricultural conflict has intensified due to increasing abundance and shifts towards agricultural foraging. On Islay, Scotland, escalating conflict culminated in shooting Greenland barnacle geese Branta leucopsis to reduce damage to agricultural grassland. In this study, we contrast the impact of shooting disturbance on the movement, behavior, energy expenditure and habitat selection of the target species (Greenland barnacle goose) and a vulnerable nontarget species (Greenland white‐fronted goose, Anser albifrons flavirostris) using biologging devices (target species: n = 33; nontarget species: n = 94). Both species were displaced by shooting, and greater distances were subsequently traveled by the target species (1.71 km when directly targeted). When disturbed at any distance, total daily movement increased significantly by 1.18 km for the target species but not for the nontarget species. The target species exhibited no accompanying change in diurnal energy expenditure (measured via accelerometery) but foraged in improved grasslands further from roads after shooting disturbance, where disturbance from all sources was likely lower. The significant increases in movement and changes in foraging site selection of the target species could reduce fitness but given the infrequency of shooting disturbances (0.09 per day) there is likely capacity for compensatory feeding to recoup energetic losses. The nontarget species expectedly showed no significant change in energy expenditure, behavior or habitat selection following shooting disturbance, suggesting mitigation strategies have been effective at minimizing fitness impacts. Refuge areas with a 3.5 km diameter (three times the maximum distance from shooting that displacement was detectable) could provide undisturbed foraging for the target species, minimizing compensatory feeding and further agricultural damage. Wildlife managers should, where possible, consider the fitness implications of shooting disturbance, and whether compensatory feeding and redistribution could hamper conflict mitigation. Management strategies should also include species‐specific monitoring and mitigation as we have demonstrated differing responses potentially due to imposed mitigation but also differing species ecology and “landscapes of fear.”

Terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems are tightly linked, with direct implications for applied resource management and conservation. It is well known that human land use change and intensification of terrestrial systems can have large impacts on surface freshwater ecosystems. Contrastingly, the study and understanding of such land use impacts on groundwater communities is lagging behind. Both the impact strength of land use on groundwater communities and the spatial extents at which such interlinkages are operating are largely unknown, despite our reliance on groundwater for drinking water extraction as a key ecosystem service. Here, we analyzed groundwater amphipod occurrence from several hundred shallow groundwater aquifers used for drinking water extraction across a region of varying agricultural intensity and human population density in Switzerland. Despite drinking water extraction sites being generally built at locations with expected minimal aboveground impacts on water quality, we found a direct correlation between land use type and intensity within the surrounding catchment area and the locally measured nitrate concentrations, which is a direct proxy for drinking water quality. Furthermore, groundwater amphipods were more likely to be found at sites with higher forest coverage than at sites with higher crop and intensive pasture coverages, clearly indicating a tight connection between aboveground land use and groundwater biodiversity. Our results indicate that land use type effects on groundwater communities are most relevant and pronounced to spatial scales of about 400–1000 m around the groundwater sampling site. Importantly, the here identified spatial scale is 1.2‐ to 3‐fold exceeding the average extent of currently defined groundwater protection zones. We postulate that incorporating an ecosystem perspective into groundwater management strategies is needed for effective protection of groundwater quality and biodiversity.

In many crops, both pollination and biocontrol determine crop yield, whereby the relative importance of the two ecosystem services can be moderated by the landscape context. However, additive and interactive effects of pollination and biocontrol in different landscape contexts are still poorly understood. We examined both ecosystem services in South African macadamia orchards. Combining observations and experiments, we disentangled their relative additive and interactive effects on crop production with variation in orchard design and landscape context (i.e., cover of natural habitat and altitude). Insect pollination increased the nut set on average by 280% (initial nut set) and 525% (final nut set), while biocontrol provided by bats and birds reduced the insect damage on average by 40%. Pollination services increased in orchards where macadamia tree rows were positioned perpendicular to orchard edges facing natural habitat. Biocontrol services decreased with elevation. Pest damage was reduced by higher cover of natural habitat at landscape scale but increased with elevation. Pollination and biocontrol are both important ecosystem services and complementary in providing high macadamia crop yield. Smart orchard design and the retention of natural habitat can simultaneously enhance both services. Conjoint management of ecosystem services can thus enable the ecological intensification of agricultural production.

Urbanization profoundly impacts biodiversity and ecosystem function, exerting an immense ecological filter on the flora and fauna that inhabit it, oftentimes leading to simplistic and homogenous ecological communities. However, the response of soil animal communities to urbanization remains underexplored, and it is unknown whether their response to urbanization is like that of aboveground organisms. This study investigated the influence of urbanization on soil animal communities in 40 public parks along an urbanization gradient. We evaluated soil animal abundance, diversity, and community composition and related these measures to urban and soil characteristics at each park. The most urbanized parks exhibited reduced animal abundance, richness, and Shannon diversity. These changes were influenced by many variables underscoring the multifaceted influence of urbanization on ecological communities. Notably, contrary to our expectation, urbanization did not lead to community homogenization; instead, it acted stochastically, creating unique soil animal assemblages. This suggests that urban soil animal communities are concomitantly shaped by deterministic and stochastic ecological processes in urban areas. Our study highlights the intricate interplay between urbanization and soil animal ecology, challenging the notion of urban homogenization in belowground ecosystems and providing insight for managing and preserving belowground communities in urban areas.

Remote sensing can provide continuous spatiotemporal information about vegetation to inform wildlife habitat estimates, but these methods are often limited in availability or lack adequate resolution to capture the three‐dimensional vegetative details critical for understanding habitat. The Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) is a spaceborne light detection and ranging system (LiDAR) that has revolutionized the availability of high‐quality three‐dimensional vegetation measurements of the Earth's temperate and tropical forests. To date, wildlife‐related applications of GEDI data or GEDI‐fusion products have been limited to estimate species habitat use, distribution, and diversity. Here, our goal was to expand the use of GEDI‐based applications to wildlife demography by evaluating if GEDI data fusions could aid in characterizing demographic parameters of wildlife. We leveraged a recently published dataset of GEDI‐fusion forest structures and capture–mark–recapture data to estimate the density and survival of two small mammal species, Humboldt's flying squirrel (Glaucomys oregonensis) and Townsend's chipmunk (Neotamias townsendii), from three studies in western Oregon spanning 2014–2021. We used capture histories in Huggins robust design models to estimate apparent annual survival and density as a derived parameter. We found strong support that both flying squirrel and chipmunk density were associated with GEDI‐fusion forest structures of foliage height diversity and plant area volume density in the 5–10 m strata for flying squirrels and proportionately higher plant area volume density in the 0–20 m strata for chipmunks, as well as other spatiotemporal factors such as elevation. We found weak support that apparent annual survival was associated with GEDI‐fusion forest structures for flying squirrels but not for chipmunks. We demonstrate further utility of these methods by creating spatially explicit density maps of both species that could aid management and conservation policies. Our work represents a novel application of GEDI data to evaluate wildlife demography and produce continuous spatially explicit density predictions for these species. We conclude that aspects of small mammal demography can be explained by forest structure as characterized via GEDI data fusions.

Planting diverse forests has been proposed as a means to increase long‐term carbon (C) sequestration while providing many co‐benefits. Positive tree diversity–productivity relationships are well established, suggesting more diverse forests will lead to greater aboveground C sequestration. However, the effects of tree diversity on belowground C storage have the potential to either complement or offset aboveground gains, especially during early stages of afforestation when potential exists for large losses in soil C due to soil decomposition. Thus, experimental tests of the effects of planted tree biodiversity on changes in whole‐ecosystem C balance are needed. Here, we present changes in above‐ and belowground C pools 6 years after the initiation of the Forests and Biodiversity experiment (FAB1), consisting of high‐density plots of one, two, five, or 12 tree species planted in a common garden. The trees included a diverse range of native species, including both needle‐leaf conifer and broadleaf angiosperm species, and both ectomycorrhizal and arbuscular mycorrhizal species. We quantified the effects of species richness, phylogenetic diversity, and functional diversity on aboveground woody C, as well as on mineral soil C accumulation, fine root C, and soil aggregation. Surprisingly, changes in aboveground woody C pools were uncorrelated to changes in mineral soil C pools, suggesting that variation in soil C accumulation was not driven by the quantity of plant litter inputs. Aboveground woody C accumulation was strongly driven by species and functional identity; however, plots with higher species richness and functional diversity accumulated more C in aboveground wood than expected based on monocultures. We also found weak but significant effects of tree species richness, identity, and mycorrhizal type on soil C accumulation. To assess the role of the microbial community in mediating these effects, we further compared changes in soil C pools to phospholipid fatty acid (PLFA) profiles. Soil C pools and accumulation were more strongly correlated with specific microbial clades than with total microbial biomass or plant diversity. Our results highlight rapidly emerging and microbially mediated effects of tree biodiversity on soil C storage in the early years of afforestation that are independent of gains in aboveground woody biomass.