Project Funding: 2011 - 2016

NRA: 2010 NASA: Climate and Biological Response: Research and Applications   

Funded by NASA

Abstract:
We propose to investigate the impact of climate on trophic linkages between primary productivity, herbivores, and top predators across landscapes in the western United States. This research will generate new understandings of climatic influences on vegetation, foraging, and animal movement, and will produce quantitative recommendations for the management of public lands. Using the NLCD 2001 and MODIS land cover to distinguish vegetation types and MODIS 16-day NDVI composites to measure plant development, we will model land surface phenology based on geospatial climate datasets, including interpolated, remotely sensed, and topo-climatic variables derived from digital elevation models. We will deploy GPS collars on 30 mule deer and use the data collected to model spatial patterns of ungulate density on a 16-day interval based on remotely sensed phenology. The resulting approximately semi-monthly dynamic ungulate habitat models will be used to extrapolate predictions of prey density across the study area, which we will then use as the main predictor for modeling cougar movement using a decade of records collected from 70 intensely monitored individuals across the region. Once fit to data, the movement models will be simulated using Monte Carlo methods to predict the habitat occupancy and traversibility over the study area for cougars. Resulting occupancy surfaces will be modified by spatially-explicit estimates of survival from known fates of >200 cougars to derive analogs of density. With the cost and occupancy surfaces from this analysis, we will then analyze the habitat and movement of cougars as a network to assess the sustainability of the regional cougar metapopulation. The proposed research is of Type A (basic research). The study will fit niche-based distribution and animal movement models to remotely sensed data in order to describe the linkages between climate and ecosystems across the three dominant trophic levels (i.e., primary producer, herbivore, and predator), and will be the first study to do so at such an expansive scale. The research will gather time series of satellite images and coincident direct measurements of predator-prey communities over nearly a decade, as well as static soil, topography, and other geospatial data layers into a model ecosystem to inform natural resource management across the region. It will thus improve fundamental and applied scientific knowledge of the distribution and abundance of species and the connectivity of metapopulations, as governed by climate. Although not directly targeted at ecosystem management as a Type B proposal, the study has clear implications for managing wildlife populations in the face of climate change.

Publications:

Mahoney, P. J., Young, J. K., Hersey, K. R., Larsen, R. T., McMillan, B. R., Stoner, D. C. 2018. Spatial processes decouple management from objectives in a heterogeneous landscape: predator control as a case study. Ecological Applications. 28(3), 786-797. DOI: 10.1002/eap.1686

McCarthy, M. J., Colna, K. E., El-Mezayen, M. M., Laureano-Rosario, A. E., Mendez-Lazaro, P., Otis, D. B., Toro-Farmer, G., Vega-Rodriguez, M., Muller-Karger, F. E. 2017. Satellite Remote Sensing for Coastal Management: A Review of Successful Applications. Environmental Management. 60(2), 323-339. DOI: 10.1007/s00267-017-0880-x

Sexton, J. O., Noojipady, P., Anand, A., Song, X., McMahon, S., Huang, C., Feng, M., Channan, S., Townshend, J. R. 2015. A model for the propagation of uncertainty from continuous estimates of tree cover to categorical forest cover and change. Remote Sensing of Environment. 156, 418-425. DOI: 10.1016/j.rse.2014.08.038

Sexton, J. O., Noojipady, P., Song, X., Feng, M., Song, D., Kim, D., Anand, A., Huang, C., Channan, S., Pimm, S. L., Townshend, J. R. 2015. Conservation policy and the measurement of forests. Nature Climate Change. 6(2), 192-196. DOI: 10.1038/nclimate2816

SONG, N. 2008. A Review of the Domestic Researches on Land Use and Land Cover Change. Geo-information Science. 10(1), 60-66. DOI: 10.3724/sp.j.1047.2008.00060

Song, X. P., Huang, C., Townshend, J. R. 2014. An integrated framework for evaluating the effects of deforestation on ecosystem services. IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science. 17, 012061. DOI: 10.1088/1755-1315/17/1/012061

Song, X. P., Tang, H. 2015. ACCURACY ASSESSMENT OF LANDSAT-DERIVED CONTINUOUS FIELDS OF TREE COVER PRODUCTS USING AIRBORNE LIDAR DATA IN THE EASTERN UNITED STATES. The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences. XL-7/W4, 241-246. DOI: 10.5194/isprsarchives-xl-7-w4-241-2015

Song, X., Huang, C., Feng, M., Sexton, J. O., Channan, S., Townshend, J. R. 2013. Integrating global land cover products for improved forest cover characterization: an application in North America. International Journal of Digital Earth. 7(9), 709-724. DOI: 10.1080/17538947.2013.856959

Song, X., Huang, C., Saatchi, S. S., Hansen, M. C., Townshend, J. R. 2015. Annual Carbon Emissions from Deforestation in the Amazon Basin between 2000 and 2010. PLOS ONE. 10(5), e0126754. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0126754

Song, X., Huang, C., Sexton, J., Channan, S., Townshend, J. 2014. Annual Detection of Forest Cover Loss Using Time Series Satellite Measurements of Percent Tree Cover. Remote Sensing. 6(9), 8878-8903. DOI: 10.3390/rs6098878

Song, X., Huang, C., Townshend, J. R. 2017. Improving global land cover characterization through data fusion. Geo-spatial Information Science. 20(2), 141-150. DOI: 10.1080/10095020.2017.1323522

Song, X., Sexton, J. O., Huang, C., Channan, S., Townshend, J. R. 2016. Characterizing the magnitude, timing and duration of urban growth from time series of Landsat-based estimates of impervious cover. Remote Sensing of Environment. 175, 1-13. DOI: 10.1016/j.rse.2015.12.027

Stoner, D. C., Sexton, J. O., Choate, D. M., Nagol, J., Bernales, H. H., Sims, S. A., Ironside, K. E., Longshore, K. M., Edwards, T. C. 2018. Climatically driven changes in primary production propagate through trophic levels. Global Change Biology. 24(10), 4453-4463. DOI: 10.1111/gcb.14364

Vega-Rodriguez, M., Muller-Karger, F., Hallock, P., Quiles-Perez, G., Eakin, C., Colella, M., Jones, D., Li, J., Soto, I., Guild, L., Lynds, S., Ruzicka, R. 2015. Influence of water-temperature variability on stony coral diversity in Florida Keys patch reefs. Marine Ecology Progress Series. 528, 173-186. DOI: 10.3354/meps11268

More details may be found in the following project profile(s):

• NASA Biological Diversity & Ecological Conservation (BDEC) Project Profile