Ecological forecasting for boreal conservation: fire, owls and woodpeckers

北方生物群落是一片广阔的荒野，被认为是地球上仅存的前沿生态系统之一。欧洲殖民的足迹仍然相对较轻，入侵物种很少，捕食者-猎物关系基本上完好无损，对自然干扰的控制相对较少。工业的影响仅限于南方，但正在向北扩展，在某些地区，人为气候变化的间接影响已经达到临界水平。“极地放大”现象导致的变暖速度比全球平均水平高出三倍，可能会产生巨大而深远的后果，我们还无法详细预测，无法提前计划。为了制定这样的计划而展望未来的艺术和科学被称为“生态预测”。当我接近这个问题时，它涉及统计数据分析和计算机模拟的综合。这项建议是在大量工作的基础上提出的，这些工作是为了开发数据和方法，以便能够使用预测工具。它涉及两个具体的问题领域：野火和生物多样性。 我们知道，气候变暖将增加北方森林许多地区的火灾数量。这反过来可能导致或促进森林性质的巨大变化，对林业以及生活在那里的人类和其他动物产生重大影响。然而，可用于预测这些变化的工具需要一些改进：它们还没有考虑到火灾和植被之间的重要相互作用，这些相互作用可以部分或很大程度上减轻变暖的影响，因为这些都是从最近的火灾活动和年度火灾天气条件之间的相关性推断出来的。 生物多样性是指地球上的全部生命，但我们预测生物多样性对北方系统变化的反应的能力仅限于极少数物种，如树木、鸣禽、鸭子和驯鹿。在这个建议中，我将扩展我过去对鸣禽和鸭子的研究，为北方繁殖的猫头鹰和啄木鸟开发新的预测模型。为了做到这一点，我将使用公民科学家在过去30年中收集的一些广泛但长期被忽视的数据集。

The boreal biome is a vast wilderness, considered one of the last remaining frontier ecosystems on the planet. The footprint of European colonisation remains relatively light, invasive species are few, predator-prey relationships are substantially intact, and there is relatively little control over natural disturbances. Industrial impacts have been limited to the south but are expanding northwards, and the indirect impacts of anthropogenic climate change have already reached critical levels in some areas. The phenomena of “polar amplification” is resulting in warming rates three times higher than the global average, with possibly enormous and far-reaching consequences that we can not yet foresee in detail enough to plan ahead. The art and science of looking into the future in order to make such plans is known as “ecological forecasting”. As I approach the matter, it involves the synthesis of statistical data analysis and computer simulation. This proposal builds on a large body of work to develop the data and methods to enable forecasting tools. It addresses two specific problem areas: wildfire, and biodiversity. We know that climate warming will tend to increase the amount of fire in many parts of the boreal forest. This could in turn cause or facilitate large changes in the nature of forest, with big effects on the forest industry and the humans and other animals who live there. However, the tools available to predict these changes need some improving: they don't yet account for important interactions between fire and vegetation that could partially or largely mitigate the effects of warming, as these are inferred from correlations between recent fire activity and annual fire weather conditions. Biodiversity refers to the entirety of life on earth, but our ability to forecast biodiversity responses to changes in boreal systems is limited to only a very few species, such as trees, songbirds, ducks and caribou. In this proposal, I will expand on my past work on songbirds and ducks to develop new predictive models for species of boreal-breeding owls and woodpeckers. To do this, I will use some extensive but long-neglected data sets that citizen scientists have been collecting over the last 30 years.