I’ve spent the last two weeks looking into moss conservation around the world– how are mosses faring? have we taken conservation action? do we need to? And I feel like the most common response I found in literature dated as recently as nine years ago was ‘We don’t have enough information to judge.’ This is […]
Archive for the ‘habitat fragmentation’ Tag
Are we at critical moss?
A swiftly changing forest
In my last post, I talked about the impacts of forest loss and fragmentation on boreal birds. These issues impact birds whether they are year-round residents or summer visitors, and the impacts can be pretty intense- Sauer et al. (2005) estimated that the boreal chickadee population experienced an annual decline of about 3.6% between 1966 […]
If a tree falls in the boreal forest, do the birds pay attention?
When we think of boreal forests, we may think of dense networks of coniferous trees covering the landscape, but the reality is a bit more complicated than that- in addition to deciduous trees in the understory and canopy and bodies of water of all shapes and sizes, boreal forests are mosaics with patches of different […]
What flies in a northern forest?
In July I had the opportunity to attend the North American Congress on Conservation Biology in Madison, Wisconsin. In addition to having a blast in the cooler weather and meeting researchers doing amazing work, I also was reminded that the boreal forests of the world are huge- in fact, they are much, much bigger than […]
Sharing the night with moths
As I’ve mentioned before, some of the biggest issues facing moths are habitat loss and becoming the unintended target of biocontrol efforts- while we may only be able to influence the latter policy-wise, we have a lot of options when looking at moth habitat and population concerns. When I started looking for groups that work […]
Careful management for moths
In my last post I mentioned that two of the biggest challenges facing native moth populations are unintended targeting by biological control species and habitat fragmentation. With regard to biological control, the remedy is to be as selective with insect-specific controls as we are with other species, and that’s something to be addressed at a […]
A complicated relationship with moths
In looking at moth conservation research over the last week, it quickly became clear that we have something of a love-hate relationship with these insects, a relationship that is heavily influenced by whether or not a species is native. As might be expected, native species are often in trouble and non-natives often cause trouble for […]
Combating the swamp of sadness
Getting the water just right
As I have mentioned in previous posts, wetlands around the world are disappearing, in part because of land use changes and climate change. We should all be concerned about these losses because wetlands provide a number of ecosystem services that benefit us all, services like water filtration, vital wildlife habitat, carbon sequestration (in the peat), […]
Carving out a piece of the pie
I started looking into research on wetland loss around the world and quickly discovered that a large portion of what’s been published is about the Gulf Coast, specifically Louisiana. I could write for days about the situation all around me, but I know that wetlands in many locations are in trouble, so I kept digging […]