Collaborative Study: Climatic Forcing of Wetland Landscape Connectivity in the Great Plains

这一试点项目将解决气候变化对美国大平原湿地的影响，重点是栖息地连通性，即依赖湿地的动物物种在各个湿地之间移动的能力。在这个以农业为主的地区，保持这种联系对于平衡农业生产和野生动物保护至关重要。图论是数学的一个分支，用于描述物体在空间中是如何连接的，无论它们是社会网络、全球航空运输网络还是万维网。该项目将使用图论来确定三个重点地区湿地栖息地连通性与鸟类种群之间的历史关系，这三个地区是北部平原的草原坑洞地区、内布拉斯加州中部的雨水盆地和南部平原的普拉亚湖地区。将使用对未来气候的预测和地表水动态的计算机模拟模型来预测未来湿地的位置，并确定由此对湿地栖息地连通性的影响。图论还将被用来识别在气候变化发生时维持连通性的关键湿地。气候变化迫使动植物物种寻找新的栖息地，因为现有的栖息地变得太热、太干或太湿。因此，找到一个恰到好处的地方需要适当程度的栖息地连通性。大平原是研究气候变化对这种连接的潜在影响的理想实验室。这里制定的方法应广泛适用于使生物适应气候变化成为可能的全球挑战。这一合作项目还将建立一个研究网络，将南达科他州立大学的景观生态学专业知识、德克萨斯理工大学的气候建模和鸟类学专业知识以及俄亥俄州立大学的水文建模专业知识结合起来。将举办一次讲习班，目的是扩大对这一网络的参与。探索性重点领域的结果将被用来准备未来的提案，在整个大平原上进行气候变化和连通性研究。

This pilot project will address climate change effects on wetlands in the Great Plains of the United States and focuses on habitat connectivity, or the ability of wetland dependent animal species to move between individual wetlands. Maintaining such connectivity is vitally important in balancing agricultural production with wildlife conservation in this agriculturally dominant region. Graph theory is a branch of mathematics useful for describing how objects are connected in space, whether they are social networks, the global air transportation network, or the World Wide Web. This project will use graph theory to determine historical relationships between wetland habitat connectivity and bird populations in three focus areas, the Prairie Pothole region in the northern plains, the Rainwater Basin in central Nebraska, and the Playa Lakes region in the southern plains. Projections of future climate and a computer simulation model of surface water dynamics will be used to predict the locations of future wetlands and determine the resulting impacts on wetland habitat connectivity. Graph theory will also be used to identify wetlands critical to maintaining connectivity as climatic shifts occur.Climate change is forcing plant and animal species to find new places to live as existing habitats become too hot, or too dry, or too wet. Finding a place that is just right thus requires a suitable degree of habitat connectivity. The Great Plains is an ideal laboratory for studying potential impacts of climate change on such connectivity. Approaches developed here should be broadly applicable to the global challenge of enabling biological adaptation to climate change. This collaborative project will also build a research network combining expertise in landscape ecology at South Dakota State University, climate modeling and ornithology at Texas Tech University, and hydrologic modeling at Ohio State University. A workshop will be held with the goal of broadening participation in this network. Results from exploratory focus areas will be used to prepare a future proposal to do climate change and connectivity research across the entire Great Plains.