
F Stuart Chapin IIIUniversity of Alaska Fairbanks · Institute of Arctic Biology
F Stuart Chapin III
Doctor of Philosophy
About
754
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Introduction
F Stuart Chapin III (Terry Chapin; https://sites.google.com/alaska.edu/f-stuart-chapin-iii-terry/) addresses the effects of changes in climate and wildfire on Alaskan ecology and rural communities. Through projections of future climate, ecology, and subsistence resources, my research helps people make more informed choices about options for long-term sustainability. My research in earth stewardship explores ways that society can proactively shape changes toward a more sustainable future.
Skills and Expertise
Additional affiliations
July 1973 - present
Publications
Publications (754)
Few disagree that we should pass on the Earth in good shape to future generations, and many scientists want their work to contribute to that goal. Recent work has shown that hopelessness stands in the way of people taking an active attitude. At the same time, it is becoming clear what can be done about that: providing compelling visions of attracti...
Earth stewardship is the proactive shaping of pathways of social‐ecological change to enable people and nature to thrive. Its strategy is to identify and shape sustainable pathways of human–nature interaction. I describe three Earth stewardship approaches to addressing global changes. Two of these (resisting unfavorable change; accepting and adapti...
Understanding the factors influencing species range limits is increasingly crucial in anticipating migrations due to human‐caused climate change. In the boreal biome, ongoing climate change and the associated increases in the rate, size, and severity of disturbances may alter the distributions of boreal tree species. Notably, Interior Alaska lacks...
Perhaps as much as any other scientist in the 20th century, J.P. Grime transformed the study of plant ecology and helped shepherd the field toward international prominence as a nexus of ideas related to global environmental change. Editors at the Journal of Ecology asked a group of senior plant ecologists to comment on Grime's scientific legacy.
Th...
Widespread glacial retreat is now occurring in many arctic mountain ranges, yet little is known about primary succession following deglaciation in these settings. Newly created habitats could provide refugia for flora and fauna whose ranges are threatened elsewhere by rapid warming. To assess vegetation responses to glacial retreat in an arctic–alp...
Financial advisers recommend a diverse portfolio to respond to market fluctuations across sectors. Similarly, nature has evolved a diverse portfolio of species to maintain ecosystem function amid environmental fluctuations. In urban planning, public health, transport and communications, food production, and other domains, however, this feature ofte...
Autotrophic and heterotrophic organisms require resources in stoichiometrically balanced ratios of carbon (C) to nutrients, the demand for which links organismal and ecosystem-level biogeochemical cycles. In soils, the relative availability of C and nitrogen (N) also defines the strength of competition for ammonium between autotrophic nitrifiers an...
Here we provide the ‘Global Spectrum of Plant Form and Function Dataset’, containing species mean values for six vascular plant traits. Together, these traits –plant height, stem specific density, leaf area, leaf mass per area, leaf nitrogen content per dry mass, and diaspore (seed or spore) mass – define the primary axes of variation in plant form...
Transformation toward a sustainable future requires an earth stewardship approach to shift society from its current goal of increasing material wealth to a vision of sustaining built, natural, human, and social capital—equitably distributed across society, within and among nations. Widespread concern about earth’s current trajectory and support for...
Purpose
The plethora of contributions to social learning has resulted in a wide range of interpretations, meanings and applications of social learning, both within and across disciplines. However, advancing the concept and using social learning methods and tools in areas like disaster-shocks requires interdisciplinary consolidation of understanding...
Despite striking global change, management to ensure healthy landscapes and sustained natural resources has tended to set objectives on the basis of the historical range of variability in stationary ecosystems. Many social-ecological systems are moving into novel conditions that can result in ecological transformation. We present four foundations t...
Securing well-being and building resilience in response to shocks are often viewed as key goals of sustainable development. Here, we present an overview of the latest published evidence, as well as the consensus of a diverse group of scientists and practitioners drawn from a structured analytical review and deliberative workshop process. We argue t...
Stewardship has been increasingly used in the realm of conservation and sustainable land use as an important pathway for action. Ecosystem stewardship, a specific application of this concept, is an approach for natural resource management, but the lack of empirical examples is a shortcoming to its applicability. With this work, we aimed at investig...
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed an interconnected and tightly coupled globalized world in rapid change. This article sets the scientific stage for understanding and responding to such change for global sustainability and resilient societies. We provide a systemic overview of the current situation where people and nature are dynamically intertwine...
Climate change is reshaping the comparative advantage of regions and hence driving migration flows, principally toward urban areas. Migration has multiple benefits and costs in both origin and destination regions. Coordinated policies that recognize how and why people move can reduce future costs and facilitate adaptation to climate change both wit...
We tested whether post-fire seedling establishment of common boreal tree and expanding shrub species at treeline and in Arctic tundra is facilitated by co-migration of boreal forest mycorrhizal fungi. Wildfires are anticipated to facilitate biome shifts at the forest-tundra ecotone by improving seedbed conditions for recruiting boreal species; at t...
The book presents a novel strategy for addressing the major environmental and social problems of our time. It emphasizes transformative actions by individual citizens, both ordinary and extraordinary, rather than by government and other groups. It empowers a spectrum of solutions appropriate to people with varying interests, skills, political persu...
The corona pandemic has exposed the interconnected, tightly coupled and vulnerable globalised world. This White Paper sets the scientific stage for understanding and responding to such crises for global sustainability and resilient societies. We provide a systemic overview of the current situation; where people and nature are dynamically intertwine...
Disturbances can interrupt feedbacks that maintain stable plant community structure and create windows of opportunity for vegetation to shift to alternative states. Boreal forests are dominated by tree species that overlap considerably in environmental niche, but there are few tests of what conditions initiate and sustain different forest states. H...
The majority of variation in six traits critical to the growth, survival and reproduction of plant species is thought to be organised along just two dimensions, corresponding to strategies of plant size and resource acquisition. However, it is unknown whether global plant trait relationships extend to climatic extremes, and if these interspecific r...
We consider two aspects of the human enterprise that profoundly affect the global environment: population and consumption. We show that fertility and consumption behavior harbor a class of externalities that have not been much noted in the literature. Both are driven in part by attitudes and preferences that are not egoistic but socially embedded;...
Plant traits—the morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and phenological characteristics of plants—determine how plants respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels, and influence ecosystem properties and their benefits and detriments to people. Plant trait data thus represent the basis for a vast area of research sp...
This chapter summarizes the status and trends of drivers of landscape change in the Northwest Boreal (NWB) Region. Tables are also provided that summarize the judgment of each chapter team on: an assessment of the state of knowledge and current monitoring capacity and the associated degree of confidence in the findings; information gaps and the rel...
Traditional harvest practices of the harvesting and sharing of fish, wildlife, and other wild resources are an integral source of food security that support physical, mental, and spiritual wellness, education, socio-economic development, and cultural identity of Indigenous communities in Interior Alaska. Many significant changes, including climate...
Sustainability within planetary boundaries requires concerted action by individuals, governments, civil society and private actors. For the private sector, there is concern that the power exercised by transnational corporations generates, and is even central to, global environmental change. Here, we ask under which conditions transnational corporat...
Human water use, climate change and land conversion have created a water crisis for billions of individuals and many ecosystems worldwide. Global water stocks and fluxes are estimated empirically and with computer models, but this information is conveyed to policymakers and researchers through water cycle diagrams. Here we compiled a synthesis of t...
Aim
Plant functional groups are widely used in community ecology and earth system modelling to describe trait variation within and across plant communities. However, this approach rests on the assumption that functional groups explain a large proportion of trait variation among species. We test whether four commonly used plant functional groups rep...
A method for mapping forest biomass was developed and tested on a study area in the boreal forest of interior Alaska. In order to understand above ground biomass values within this forest, we employed the Boruta algorithm, Random Forest (RF), and Classification and Regression Tree (CART) analysis (three different machine learning techniques) to pre...
The tundra is warming more rapidly than any other biome on Earth, and the potential ramifications are far-reaching because of global feedback effects between vegetation and climate. A better understanding of how environmental factors shape plant structure and function is crucial for predicting the consequences of environmental change for ecosystem...
Significance
Soil carbon sequestration plays an important role in mitigating anthropogenic increases in atmospheric CO 2 concentrations. Recent studies have shown that biodiversity increases soil organic carbon (SOC) storage in experimental grasslands. However, the effects of species diversity on SOC storage in natural ecosystems have rarely been s...
Public participation is increasingly advocated in natural resource management to meet a spectrum of instrumental to normative goals. However, the success of participation in achieving these goals is highly variable, depending on both societal and institutional contexts. Whether participation realises its benefits or succumbs to its pitfalls is shap...
Biocultural homogenization entails interwoven losses of native biological and cultural diversity at local, regional, and global scales. It is a driver and a product of complex and pervasive losses of biological and cultural diversity; however, it is not yet widely recognized to its full extent. In this book we show how the processes of biological a...
Competitor, stress‐tolerator, ruderal ( CSR ) theory is a prominent plant functional strategy scheme previously applied to local floras. Globally, the wide geographic and phylogenetic coverage of available values of leaf area ( LA ), leaf dry matter content ( LDMC ) and specific leaf area ( SLA ) (representing, respectively, interspecific variation...
The Arctic is one of the world’s regions most affected by cultural, socio-economic, environmental, and climatic changes. Over the last two decades, scholars, policymakers, extractive industries, governments, intergovernmental forums, and non-governmental organizations have turned their attention to the Arctic, its peoples, resources, and to the cha...
Improving the dynamic relationship between nature and human well-being is a pressing issue of our time. Landscapes embody this tight interconnectedness and serve as unique sustainability learning hubs, showcased by the global rise of place-based and holistic landscape stewardship initiatives. Incorporating these exciting developments, this book exp...
A field-portable list of mean CSR strategies for common plant species, adapted from Table S1 of Pierce et al. (2017) Functional Ecology 31: 444–457 doi: 10.1111/1365-2435.12722 for use on smartphones
Root-associated fungi, particularly ectomycorrhizal fungi (EMF), are critical symbionts of all boreal tree species. Although climatically-driven increases in wildfire frequency and extent have been hypothesized to increase vegetation transitions from tundra to boreal forest, fire reduces mycorrhizal inoculum. Therefore, changes in mycobiont inoculu...
‘StrateFy’, the global vascular plant CSR calculator tool from Pierce et al. (2017; Funct. Ecol. 31(2), 444-457) in Microsoft Excel format.
ContextPatterns of forest diversity are less well known in the boreal forest of interior Alaska than in most ecosystems of North America. Proactive forest planning requires spatially accurate information about forest diversity. Modeling is a cost-efficient way of predicting key forest diversity measures as a function of human and environmental fact...
Amplified climate change in the Arctic has altered interactions between rural communities and local wild resources. Shifting interactions warrant analysis because they can influence cultural practices and food security of northern societies. We collaborated with four indigenous communities in Alaska and conducted semi-directed interviews with 71 ex...
The full Arctic Resilience Report 2016 can be downloaded from https://www.sei-international.org/publications?pid=3047.
As the Arctic's sole circumpolar high-level policy forum, the Arctic Council plays an increasingly important role in issues that have major social and environmental implications. Institutions such as the Arctic Council help guide...
The full Arctic Resilience Report 2016 can be downloaded from https://www.sei-international.org/publications?pid=3047.
Key Messages • The need to be responsive to evolving conditions places constantly changing demands on policy and decision-making structures. Maintaining effectiveness requires an ongoing effort to facilitate and accelerate learnin...
The full Arctic Resilience Report 2016 can be downloaded from https://www.sei-international.org/publications?pid=3047.
Key Messages
• The Arctic Council can build upon its activities that strengthen resilience, and ensure that
resilience monitoring, policies and practices take an integrated social-ecological approach.
Deeper and more frequent inte...
Climate change, biodiversity loss, antibiotic resistance, and other global challenges pose major collective action problems: A group benefits from a certain action, but no individual has sufficient incentive to act alone. Formal institutions, e.g., laws and treaties, have helped address issues like ozone depletion, lead pollution, and acid rain. Ho...
The Arctic is among the world’s regions most affected by ongoing and increasing cultural, socio-economic, environmental and climatic changes. Over the last two decades, scholars, policymakers, extractive industries, local, regional and national governments, intergovernmental forums, and non-governmental organizations have turned their attention to...
Long-term experiments provide a way to test presumed causes of successional or environmentally driven vegetation changes. Early-successional nitrogen (N)-fixing plants are widely thought to facilitate productivity and vegetation development on N-poor sites, thus accounting for observed vegetation patterns later in succession. We tested this facilit...
Citizen science has advanced science for hundreds of years, contributed to many peer-reviewed articles, and informed land management decisions and policies across the United States. Over the last 10 years, citizen science has grown immensely in the United States and many other countries. Here, we show how citizen science is a powerful tool for tack...
CO2 emissions from inland waters are commonly determined by indirect methods that are based on the product of a gas transfer coefficient and the concentration gradient at the air water interface (e.g., wind-based gas transfer models). The measurements of concentration gradient are typically collected during the day in fair weather throughout the co...
Background
Vegetation change in high latitude tundra ecosystems is expected to accelerate due to increased wildfire activity. High-severity fires increase the availability of mineral soil seedbeds, which facilitates recruitment, yet fire also alters soil microbial composition, which could significantly impact seedling establishment.
Results
We inv...
Context
Forecasting the expansion of forest into Alaska tundra is critical to predicting regional ecosystem services, including climate feedbacks such as carbon storage. Controls over seedling establishment govern forest development and migration potential. Ectomycorrhizal fungi (EMF), obligate symbionts of all Alaskan tree species, are particularl...
Multiple actors are typically involved in forest management, namely communities, managers and researchers. In such cases, suboptimal management outcomes may, in addition to other factors, be symptomatic of a divergence in perspectives among these actors driven by fundamental differences in ecological knowledge. We examine the degree of congruence b...
The call for integrated social–environmental science, complete with outreach to applications and solutions, is escalating worldwide. Drawing on several decades of experience, researchers engaged in such science, completed an assessment of the design and management attributes and impact pathways that lead to successful projects and programs and to u...
As the permafrost region warms, its large organic carbon pool will be increasingly vulnerable to decomposition, combustion, and hydrologic export. Models predict that some portion of this release will be offset by increased production of Arctic and boreal biomass; however, the lack of robust estimates of net carbon balance increases the risk of fur...
The concept of Ecological Solidarity (ES) is a major feature of the 2006 law reforming National Park policy in France. In the context of biodiversity conservation, the objectives of this paper are to outline the historical development of ES, provide a working definition, and present a method for its implementation that combines environmental pragma...
This paper describes the integration of social–ecological science with traditional knowledge to address global-change challenges faced by indigenous communities in rural Alaska. The Community Partnership for Self-Reliance is a novel boundary organization that uses community visions for self-reliance, based on local and traditional knowledge, to lin...
Publicly available remote sensing products have boosted science in many ways. The openness of these data sources suggests high reproducibility. However, as we show here, results may be specific to versions of the data products that can become unavailable as new versions are posted. We focus on remotely-sensed tree cover. Recent studies have used th...