Thomas M. Neeson

The rise of novelty in ecosystems

Rapid and ongoing change creates novelty in ecosystems everywhere, both when comparing contemporary systems to their historical baselines, and predicted future systems to the present. However, the level of novelty varies greatly among places. Here we propose a formal and quantifiable definition of abiotic and biotic novelty in ecosystems, map abiotic novelty globally, and discuss the implications of novelty for the science of ecology and for biodiversity conservation. We define novelty as the degree of dissimilarity of a system, measured in one or more dimensions relative to a reference baseline, usually defined as either the present or a time window in the past. In this conceptualization, novelty varies in degree, it is multidimensional, can be measured, and requires a temporal and spatial reference. This definition moves beyond prior categorical definitions of novel ecosystems, and does not include human agency, self-perpetuation, or irreversibility as criteria. Our global assessment of novelty was based on abiotic factors (temperature, precipitation, and nitrogen deposition) plus human population, and shows that there are already large areas with high novelty today relative to the early 20th century, and that there will even be more such areas by 2050. Interestingly, the places that are most novel are often not the places where absolute changes are largest; highlighting that novelty is inherently different from change. For the ecological sciences, highly novel ecosystems present new opportunities to test ecological theories, but also challenge the predictive ability of ecological models and their validation. For biodiversity conservation, increasing novelty presents some opportunities, but largely challenges. Conservation action is necessary along the entire continuum of novelty, by redoubling efforts to protect areas where novelty is low, identifying conservation opportunities where novelty is high, developing flexible yet strong regulations and policies, and establishing long-term experiments to test management approaches. Meeting the challenge of novelty will require advances in the science of ecology, and new and creative. conservation approaches.

Enhancing ecosystem restoration efficiency through spatial and temporal coordination

Significance Societies around the world make massive investments in ecosystem restoration projects to mitigate habitat loss, conserve biodiversity, and boost ecosystem services. We use a return-on-investment framework to assess the value of coordinating restoration efforts in space and time to maximize ecological connectivity between the Laurentian Great Lakes and their tributaries, which are fragmented by hundreds of thousands of dams and road crossings. We show that coordinating restoration efforts across the entire region is nine times more cost-effective than local-scale planning. Similarly, a single lump sum investment is up to 10 times more cost-effective than a series of annual allocations. These dramatic economic and ecological efficiencies provide ample incentive for coordinating conservation efforts across broad spatial and temporal scales. In many large ecosystems, conservation projects are selected by a diverse set of actors operating independently at spatial scales ranging from local to international. Although small-scale decision making can leverage local expert knowledge, it also may be an inefficient means of achieving large-scale objectives if piecemeal efforts are poorly coordinated. Here, we assess the value of coordinating efforts in both space and time to maximize the restoration of aquatic ecosystem connectivity. Habitat fragmentation is a leading driver of declining biodiversity and ecosystem services in rivers worldwide, and we simultaneously evaluate optimal barrier removal strategies for 661 tributary rivers of the Laurentian Great Lakes, which are fragmented by at least 6,692 dams and 232,068 road crossings. We find that coordinating barrier removals across the entire basin is nine times more efficient at reconnecting fish to headwater breeding grounds than optimizing independently for each watershed. Similarly, a one-time pulse of restoration investment is up to 10 times more efficient than annual allocations totaling the same amount. Despite widespread emphasis on dams as key barriers in river networks, improving road culvert passability is also essential for efficiently restoring connectivity to the Great Lakes. Our results highlight the dramatic economic and ecological advantages of coordinating efforts in both space and time during restoration of large ecosystems.

Pet Project or Best Project? Online Decision Support Tools for Prioritizing Barrier Removals in the Great Lakes and Beyond

Structures that block movement of fish through river networks are built to serve a variety of societal needs, including transportation, hydroelectric power, and exclusion of exotic species. Due to their abundance, road crossings and dams reduce the amount of habitat available to fish that migrate from the sea or lakes into rivers to breed. The benefits to fish of removing any particular barrier depends on its location within the river network, its passability to fish, and the relative position of other barriers within the network. Balancing the trade-offs between ecological and societal values makes choosing among potential removal projects difficult. To facilitate prioritization of barrier removals, we developed an online decision support tool (DST) with three functions: (1) view existing barriers at various spatial scales; (2) modify information about barriers, including removal costs; and (3) run optimization models to identify portfolios of removals that provide the greatest amount of habitat access f...

Prioritizing ecological restoration among sites in multi-stressor landscapes.

Most ecosystems are impacted by multiple local and long-distance stressors, many of which interact in complex ways. We present a framework for prioritizing ecological restoration efforts among sites in multi-stressor landscapes. Using a simple model, we show that both the economic and sociopolitical costs of restoration will typically be lower at sites with a relatively small number of severe problems than at sites with numerous lesser problems. Based on these results, we propose using cumulative stress and evenness of stressor impact as complementary indices that together reflect key challenges of restoring a site to improved condition. To illustrate this approach, we analyze stressor evenness across the worlds rivers and the Laurentian Great Lakes. This exploration reveals that evenness and cumulative stress are decoupled, enabling selection of sites where remediating a modest number of high-intensity stressors could substantially reduce cumulative stress. Just as species richness and species evenness are fundamental axes of biological diversity, we argue that cumulative stress and stressor evenness constitute fundamental axes for identifying restoration opportunities in multi-stressor landscapes. Our results highlight opportunities to boost restoration efficiency through strategic use of multi-stressor datasets to identify sites that maximize ecological response per stressor remediated. This prioritization framework can also be expanded to account for the feasibility of remediation and the expected societal benefits of restoration projects.

Conservation of migratory fishes in freshwater ecosystems

Migratory fishes are natural wonders. For many people, the term migratory fish evokes images of salmon audaciously jumping at waterfalls as they return to their own riverine birthplace to spawn after years of growth in the ocean, but freshwater fishes actually show a broad spectrum of migration strategies. Migratory fishes include small species – three-spined sticklebacks that spawn in coastal streams around the northern Pacific and gobies that move from the ocean into tropical island streams by climbing waterfalls (McDowall, 1988) – as well as some of the largest freshwater fishes in the world, such as the Mekong dog-eating catfish and the Chinese paddlefish (Stone, 2007). Aside from migratory habits, these species have few shared characteristics; they encompass numerous evolutionary lineages, enormous differences in life history, and every possible direction and distance of migration. Biologists treat migratory freshwater fishes as a functional group because their life-history strategy revolves around long-distance movement between ecosystems in a perilous quest to take advantage of both high-quality breeding sites and bountiful feeding areas. As humans have physically blocked fish migrations, degraded breeding and feeding grounds and relentlessly harvested migrants for their flesh and roe, many populations have declined or been extirpated. This chapter will provide an overview of fundamental and applied research that is helping to guide efforts to conserve migratory freshwater fishes. For practical purposes, we define migratory behaviour as the synchronized movement of a substantial proportion of a population between distinct habitats, which is repeated through time within or across generations. Modern definitions of fish migrations typically recognise both the adaptive benefits of migrating and individual variation in executing the general strategy (see McDowall, 1988; Lucas & Baras, 2001). Not every individual must move, the timing may vary somewhat from year to year, and the motive for migrating may include seeking refuge from harsh conditions in addition to breeding and feeding. Nonetheless, in most cases, migration is critical to individual fitness and population persistence because it enables specialised use of different habitats for growth and reproduction. Where their migration routes are blocked or key habitats are lost, migratory fishes often suffer rapid and catastrophic losses. Human appropriation and degradation of the Earths freshwater ecosystems (Vorosmarty et al. , 2010; Carpenter et al. , 2011) have transformed this reliance on multiple habitats into a detriment for many migratory fishes.

The Anthropocene Biosphere: Supporting ‘Open Interdisciplinarity’ through Blogging

This paper describes a process of open interdisciplinary scholarship. Researchers from across the University of Oklahoma blogged about a recent paper by ecologist Erle Ellis, and met in person to discuss posts. They then hosted Ellis for a seminar on questions that emerged, and for a public panel discussion.

Conserving rare species can have high opportunity costs for common species

Conservation practitioners face difficult choices in apportioning limited resources between rare species (to ensure their existence) and common species (to ensure their abundance and ecosystem contributions). We quantified the opportunity costs of conserving rare species of migratory fishes in the context of removing dams and retrofitting road culverts across 1,883 tributaries of the North American Great Lakes. Our optimization models show that maximizing total habitat gains across species can be very efficient in terms of benefits achieved per dollar spent, but disproportionately benefits common species. Conservation approaches that target rare species, or that ensure some benefits for every species (i.e., complementarity) enable strategic allocation of resources among species but reduce aggregate habitat gains. Thus, small habitat gains for the rarest species necessarily come at the expense of more than 20 times as much habitat for common ones. These opportunity costs are likely to occur in many ecosystems because range limits and conservation costs often vary widely among species. Given that common species worldwide are declining more rapidly than rare ones within major taxa, our findings provide incentive for triage among multiple worthy conservation targets.

Minimizing opportunity costs to aquatic connectivity restoration while controlling an invasive species: Cost of Invasive Control

Controlling invasive species is critical for conservation but can have unintended consequences for native species and divert resources away from other efforts. This dilemma occurs on a grand scale in the North American Great Lakes, where dams and culverts block tributary access to habitat of desirable fish species and are a lynchpin of long-standing efforts to limit ecological damage inflicted by the invasive, parasitic sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus). Habitat restoration and sea-lamprey control create conflicting goals for managing aging infrastructure. We used optimization to minimize opportunity costs of habitat gains for 37 desirable migratory fishes that arose from restricting sea lamprey access (0-25% increase) when selecting barriers for removal under a limited budget (US

Aging infrastructure creates opportunities for cost‐efficient restoration of aquatic ecosystem connectivity

1-105 million). Imposing limits on sea lamprey habitat reduced gains in tributary access for desirable species by 15-50% relative to an unconstrained scenario. Additional investment to offset the effect of limiting sea-lamprey access resulted in high opportunity costs for 30 of 37 species (e.g., an additional US

Prioritizing sites for conservation based on similarity to historical baselines and feasibility of protection: Zooarchaeological Baseline

20-80 million for lake sturgeon [Acipenser fulvescens]) and often required ≥5% increase in sea-lamprey access to identify barrier-removal solutions adhering to the budget and limiting access. Narrowly distributed species exhibited the highest opportunity costs but benefited more at less cost when small increases in sea-lamprey access were allowed. Our results illustrate the value of optimization in limiting opportunity costs when balancing invasion control against restoration benefits for diverse desirable species. Such trade-off analyses are essential to the restoration of connectivity within fragmented rivers without unleashing invaders.