Integrating knowledge from across the natural and social sciences is necessary to effectively address societal tradeoffs between human use of biological diversity and its preservation. Collaborative processes can change the ways decision makers think about scientific evidence, enhance levels of mutual trust and credibility, and advance the conservation policy discourse. Canada has responsibility for a large fraction of some major ecosystems, such as boreal forests, Arctic tundra, wetlands, and temperate and Arctic oceans. Stressors to biological diversity within these ecosystems arise from activities of the country's resource-based economy, as well as external drivers of environmental change. Effective management is complicated by incongruence between ecological and political boundaries and conflicting perspectives on social and economic goals. Many knowledge gaps about stressors and their management might be reduced through targeted, timely research. We identify 40 questions that, if addressed or answered, would advance research that has a high probability of supporting development of effective policies and management strategies for species, ecosystems, and ecological processes in Canada. A total of 396 candidate questions drawn from natural and social science disciplines were contributed by individuals with diverse organizational affiliations. These were collaboratively winnowed to 40 by our team of collaborators. The questions emphasize understanding ecosystems, the effects and mitigation of climate change, coordinating governance and management efforts across multiple jurisdictions, and examining relations between conservation policy and the social and economic well-being of Aboriginal peoples. The questions we identified provide potential links between evidence from the conservation sciences and formulation of policies for conservation and resource management. Our collaborative process of communication and engagement between scientists and decision makers for generating and prioritizing research questions at a national level could be a model for similar efforts beyond Canada.Generación de Preguntas de Investigación Prioritarias para Informar a las Políticas y Gestión de la Conservación a Nivel Nacional

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Factors that influence individual and colony spacing are still not well understood in many organisms. Common eiders ( Somateria mollissima (L. 1758)) nest on coastal islands and forage in intertidal and shallow subtidal waters. We considered several biotic and abiotic factors, their interactions, and how these might influence the distribution of eider colonies at several spatial scales in Labrador, Canada. At the island level, nest abundance was not related to intertidal prey density. At the 104 km2 grid scale, eider nest abundance and the coefficient of dispersion (CD; the variance to mean ratio of colony size or grid cell, where CD indicates population dispersion) were negatively related to the number of islands. Spring ice cover was positively related to the number of islands but was negatively related to eider nest abundance and to CD. Ice cover – abundance and ice cover – CD were significant at two spatial scales (104 and 455 km2, respectively), but other relationships were weaker at the larger spatial scale. We hypothesize that during the spring, archipelagos with many islands trap ice, providing terrestrial predators access to nesting islands by acting as bridges and that increased predation reduces habitat quality causing nesting eiders to disperse. Our findings suggest that eiders respond to landscape features, including ice cover, a feature that is being influenced by climate change.

Understanding how environmental factors aVect ecological parameters is important to understanding and predicting impacts of environmental change. Given evidence and anticipated impacts of climate variability, this is especially true with respect to sea ice and its role in animal life history in northern regions. We examined relationships between the extent of consolidated spring ice cover (pack and landfast), nest initiation and clutch size in common eiders (Somateria mollissima) in northern Labrador, a sub-Arctic region on the east coast of Canada. Our initial prediction was that eiders would delay nesting and have smaller clutches in years with more extensive spring ice cover. Between 1998 and 2003, we surveyed coastal islands for breeding eiders and collected information on nest age and clutch size. For those years, we estimated ice cover based on Radarsat-1 images supplied by the Canadian Ice Service during the spring period (approximately June 7-12). We found that spring ice cover was a signiWcant positive predictor of nest initiation date, and the regression equation indicated that if the average extent of ice cover around nesting islands increased by 18 ha, average nesting date was delayed by approximately 1 day. Nest initiation date was a signiWcant negative predictor of clutch size, and the regression equation indicated that a 20 day delay in nesting reduced average clutch size by approximately 1 egg. However, ice cover itself was not a signiWcant predictor of clutch size. Our Wndings suggest that eiders breed when ice is present, but ice extent may negatively inXuence aspects of their breeding ecology.

Spatial distribution, patchy environments, and population turnover have many fundamental implications for conservation ecology. Common eider ( Somateria mollissima L., 1758) population processes were investigated in Labrador, Canada, between 1998 and 2003. We predicted that local colonies would exhibit population turnover, that extinction would be negatively related to colony and patch size, that colonization would be negatively related to island isolation, and that intraspecific incidence–abundance relationships would be positive. We found that small colonies were prone to extinction, but patch size was not a significant predictor of extinction, nor was colonization related to isolation. The overall observed annual extinction and colonization rates were 0.11 ± 0.02 and 0.41 ± 0.06, respectively, and showed variation across archipelagos. At two spatial scales we found that mean colony size was a positive predictor of island occupancy (incidence), and these relationships were maintained across years. Our findings show that common eider colonies in Labrador are dynamic and have greater turnover rates than previously expected in a species that is considered highly philopatric. Our findings support the notion that highly mobile organisms such as migratory birds can exhibit characteristics associated with metapopulation processes.