Thursday, August 7, 2008: 8:00 AM-11:30 AM
104 A, Midwest Airlines Center
SYMP 17 - Forecasting Future Ecosystem States in a Time of Global Change: From Models to Management
Ecological systems are being strongly influenced by both rapid climate change and human perturbation. The conservation of existing ecosystems and the restoration of degraded ecosystems require information on likely ecological trajectories and future ecological states with climate change. Ecological communities and individual species are at risk of extirpation from rapid climate change singly, or in conjunction with anthropogenic fragmentation of the landscape that limits the potential for range shifts. Other ecological systems have already been degraded directly by human activities or indirectly through anthropogenic alteration of natural disturbance regimes. The restoration of degraded ecological systems requires an endpoint or target ecological state toward which restoration efforts drive the system. A restoration target might be a measure of biodiversity, a particular species composition, or an ecosystem service. The identification of the target ecological state can be difficult because of limited historical information on the "natural" state of the system. Rapid climate change complicates the process of ecological restoration because the target state of the ecosystem is not static, but changes dynamically in response to climate forcing. Restoration targets should be adjusted to account for changing climatic conditions as the pre-degradation ecological condition might no longer be the natural state or even attainable give current climatic conditions. Similarly, defining conservation goals in the context of climate change should consider predicted climate change and resulting effects on species distributions and range shifts in human dominated landscapes. We will specifically address the following questions in the context of diverse ecological systems: (1) What should be the nature of the goals and processes involved in ecosystem conservation and restoration given climate change? (2) How should future ecosystem states be identified given rapid climate change and limited historical information on past states? (3) In what ways might ecological and climatological modeling be used to enhance concepts for ecological conservation in a time of global climate change? We will bring together scientists with diverse perspectives to address the challenges of conserving and restoring ecological systems in a period of rapid climate change. Speakers will include ecological modelers, paleoecologists, and empirical ecologists; their collective expertise will serve to establish both the conceptual and pragmatic basis for ecosystem management with climate change. One result of this session will be an exploration of the utility of coupling regional climate models with ecological models to forecast future ecosystem states, while also discussing the limitations of this approach.
Organizer:Brian Beckage, University of Vermont
Co-organizer:Loretta L. Battaglia, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale
Moderator:I. Jack Stout, University of Central Florida
8:00 AMSYMP 17-1Modeling ecological responses to climate change
Brian Beckage, University of Vermont, Louis Gross, University of Tennessee
8:25 AMSYMP 17-2Forecast from the past: Evolving ecosystems and mounting challenges
Stephen T. Jackson, University of Wyoming
8:50 AMSYMP 17-3Ecological management in the context of rapid global climate change: Running with the Red Queen along the Gulf coast
Bill Platt, Lousiana State University
9:15 AMSYMP 17-4Modeling forest restoration under climate change at multiple spatial scales
Catherine Ravenscroft, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Robert M. Scheller, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Mark A. White, The Nature Conservancy, David J. Mladenoff, University of Wisconsin-Madison
9:40 AM Break
10:00 AMSYMP 17-5Nature reconsidered: Setting appropriate restoration goals in a rapidly changing world
Richard J. Hobbs, Murdoch University
10:25 AMSYMP 17-6The “Quaternary conundrum” and postglacial biogeography in the inland Pacific Northwest
Daniel G. Gavin, University of Oregon, Patrick J. Bartlein, University of Oregon
10:50 AMSYMP 17-7A conceptual framework for restoration and conservation of coastal ecosystems subject to chronic sea-level rise
Loretta L. Battaglia, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, Laura J. Shirley, The University of Melbourne, William J. Platt, Lousiana State University
11:15 AMSYMP 17-8Introduced pests and pathogens as mediators of forest response to climate change: Using models to anticipate the unpredictable
Charles D. Canham, Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies

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See more of The 93rd ESA Annual Meeting (August 3 -- August 8, 2008)