Steve Vissault

Ecological networks are increasingly studied at large spatial scales, expanding their focus from a conceptual tool for community ecology into one that also addresses questions in biogeography and macroecology. This effort is supported by increased access to standardized information on ecological networks, in the form of openly accessible databases....

Aim Tree species may be vulnerable to migration lags because they are sessile, long‐lived, have a small intrinsic growth rate and relatively short dispersal. Our study assesses if those ecological mechanisms will mitigate the progression of the north‐eastern American temperate forest leading edge into the boreal forest. Location The North‐eastern...

The St. Lawrence is a vast and complex socio-ecological system providing a wealth of services that sustain numerous economic sectors. This ecosystem is subject to significant human pressures that overlap and potentially interact with climate-driven environmental changes. Our objective in this paper was to systematically characterize the distributio...

Several temperate tree species are expected to migrate northward and colonise boreal forests in response to climate change. Tree migrations could lead to transitions in forest types, but these could be influenced by several non‐climatic factors, such as disturbances and soil conditions. We analysed over 10,000 forest inventory plots, sampled from 1...

Ecological networks are increasingly studied at large spatial scales, expanding their focus from a conceptual tool for community ecology into one that also adresses questions in biogeography and macroecology. This effort is supported by increased access to standardized information on ecological networks, in the form of openly accessible databases....

Interactions among species is at the heart of ecology. Despite their importance, studying ecological interactions remains difficult due to the lack of standard information and the disparity of formats in which ecological interactions are stored (Poisot et al. 2015). Historically, ecologists have used matrices to store interactions, which tend to ea...

Many studies of individual sites have revealed biotic changes consistent with climate warming (e.g., upward elevational distribution shifts), but our understanding of the tremendous variation among studies in the magnitude of such biotic changes is minimal. In this study we re‐surveyed forest vegetation plots 40 years after the initial surveys in t...

A regional assessment of cumulative impacts is required for the Estuary and Gulf of St. Lawrence to facilitate ecosystem based management supported by evidence. The only currently available assessment was performed at the global scale using 19 drivers of anthropogenic stressors such as fisheries and pollution. While valuable, certain datasets inclu...

Describing environmental and anthropogenic drivers of ecosystem change (e.g. hypoxia and fisheries) is largely relying on simplistic metrics that ignore dependencies and the potentially convoluted propagation of effects through complex ecological networks. While informative, such approaches are hardly conducive to robust inference on the impacts of...

Many studies of individual sites have revealed biotic changes consistent with climate warming (e.g., upward elevational distribution shifts), but our understanding of the tremendous variation among studies in the magnitude of such biotic changes is minimal. In this study we re-surveyed forest vegetation plots 40 years after the initial surveys in t...

Scientists, policy makers, and journalists are three key, interconnected players involved in prioritizing and implementing solutions to mitigate the consequences of anthropogenic pressures on the environment. The way in which information is framed and expertise is communicated by the media is crucial for political decisions and for the integrated m...

Gathering data for large scale, systematic research initiatives such as regional multi-stressor analyses can be a very challenging - not to say painful - process. On one hand, there is an overwhelming wealth of data available, while on the other hand, some required data remain largely unavailable or inaccessible. Coupled with political intricacies,...

Marine ecological indicators can be used to assess the condition of the pelagic ecosystems. The bloom onset provides a warning bell for possible changes in trophic interactions and biogeochemical processes. However, depicting the phenology of phytoplankton blooms at high latitudes, where long-term observations are sparse or unavailable, is not a st...

Global climate change is already having an impact on species ranges. For species with slow demography and limited dispersal, such as trees, lags between climate change and distribution shifts are likely to increase in the future. Such lags can be of critical importance to management and biodiversity of forests, because they can result in ‘extinctio...

Communities consist of species and their interactions. They can thus be described as networks, with species as nodes and interactions as links. Within such networks, the diversity of nodes and the distribution of links may affect patterns of energy transfer between trophic levels, the dynamics of the system, and the outcome in terms of ecosystem fu...

Since the mid-20th century, climate change and biodiversity loss have been identified as major consequences of anthropological pressures and both have already transgressed safe limits. Given their significance for human health and well-being and their large-scale effects, international cooperation is crucial to address these issues. Intergovernment...

Interestingly, relationships between demographic parameters and occurrence probability did not vary substantially across degrees of shade tolerance and regions. Although they were influenced by the uncertainty in the estimation of the demographic parameters, we found that r was generally negatively correlated with P-occ, while N, and for most regio...

The North Water (NOW), located between Greenland and Ellesmere Island (Canadian Arctic), is one of the largest and most productive polynyas in the Northern Hemisphere. Recent sea ice and oceanic observations reveal that major changes are happening in the NOW. The impact of those changes on the marine productivity is still not well understood. A sat...