Wildlife Restoration (WiRE) in human-modified landscapes.

人类活动威胁生物多样性，破坏获取自然资源的途径，侵蚀生态系统服务的价值。这一活动在许多景观中都在加剧，在广泛的空间尺度上激发了对恢复关键生态过程的日益增长的需求。了解人类活动如何影响大型哺乳动物的两个生态过程——捕食和连通性——是恢复景观的重要组成部分。通过这些过程，大型哺乳动物可以改变生物量和能量在景观中的流动，调节自然干扰（如火灾、洪水）的频率和影响，并限制疾病暴发的传播。在一些生态系统中，大型哺乳动物不仅仅是恢复过程中的副产品，它们还是恢复过程中的推动者。******确定捕食和连通性对生态系统产生大规模影响的生态环境一直是生态学家面临的主要挑战。许多关于大型哺乳动物生态学的研究完全依赖于相关证据和微弱的推理。这种缺乏严谨性增加了科学的不确定性，导致了关于大型哺乳动物的生态作用和恢复生态系统所需的管理行动的激烈辩论。因此，在社区和空间生态学方面存在知识缺口，这对景观恢复具有重要影响。******我的研究将通过量化景观变化——资源开采、城市发展和交通基础设施——对大型哺乳动物食物网的影响，帮助填补这些空白。由于大型哺乳动物活动范围广、稀有、寿命长（即相对于实验室系统中研究的较小类群而言），量化捕食和连通性需要在大空间和时间尺度上收集野外数据。与此同时，物种相互作用的机制发生在个体尺度上。因此，我的研究整合了广阔（景观）和个体（行为）尺度的生态调查，以了解大型哺乳动物食物网动态的机制。具体来说，本研究使用的方法结合了实地实验、gps遥测、基于主体的模型和高分辨率卫星图像来测量：(a)基础设施对落基山脉食肉动物（美洲狮、狼、熊）与有蹄类动物（麋鹿、鹿）相互作用的影响；(b)林业实践对温哥华岛食肉动物与有蹄类动物相互作用的影响。******这项研究将在生态学的两个关键领域创造知识：(a)它将有助于确定在由大型哺乳动物及其猎物组成的食物网中，捕食对生态系统功能的其他驱动因素发挥首要作用的生态背景；(b)阐明在人为改变的景观中恢复捕食和连通性所需的做法。* * * * *

Human activity threatens biodiversity, undermines access to natural resources, and erodes the value of ecosystem services. This activity is intensifying in many landscapes, motivating a growing demand for the restoration of critical ecological processes across broad spatial scales. Knowledge of how human activity affects two ecological processes - predation and connectivity - for large mammals is an important part of restoring landscapes. Through these processes, large mammals can alter the flow of biomass and energy across the landscape, mediate the frequency and impact of natural disturbance (e.g., fire, flooding), and constrain the spread of disease outbreaks. In some ecosystems, large mammals are not simply by-products of restoration, they are agents of restoration.******Identifying the ecological context in which predation and connectivity have large-scale impacts on the ecosystem has been a major challenge for ecologists. Many studies on large-mammal ecology rely exclusively on correlative evidence and weak inference. This lack of rigor has increased scientific uncertainty, leading to spirited debates about the ecological role of large mammals and the management actions needed to restore ecosystems. Consequently, there are knowledge gaps in community and spatial ecology that have critical implications for landscape restoration. ******My research will help fill these gaps by quantifying the impacts of landscape change – resource extraction, urban development, and transportation infrastructure – on large-mammal food webs. Because of their expansive movements, rarity, and long-life spans (i.e., relative to smaller taxa studied in laboratory systems), quantifying predation and connectivity for large mammals necessitates the collection of field data over large spatial and temporal scales. At the same time, the mechanisms underlying species interactions occur at an individual scale. As such, my research integrates both expansive (landscape) and individual (behavioural) scales of ecological inquiry to understand the mechanisms giving rise to the dynamics of large mammal food webs. Specifically, the methods used in this research combine field experiments, GPS-telemetry, agent-based models, and high-resolution satellite imagery to measure: (a) the impact of infrastructure on carnivore (cougar, wolves, bear)-ungulate (elk, deer) interactions in the Rocky Mountains; (b) the impact of forestry practices on carnivore-ungulate interactions on Vancouver Island. ******This research will create knowledge in two key areas of ecology: (a) it will help identify the ecological context in which predation exerts primacy over other drivers of ecosystem function in food webs comprised of large mammals and their prey; (b) it will articulate the practices required to restore predation and connectivity in human-modified landscapes. *****