Making the leap from ponds to landscapes: Integrating field-based monitoring of amphibians and wetlands with satellite observations

Brice, Elaine M.; Halabisky, Meghan; Ray, Andrew M.

doi:10.1016/j.ecolind.2022.108559

Cited by 9 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 60 publications

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“…Continued fragmentation of amphibian populations based on their hydroregime dependency has demonstrated that periods of drought effectively isolate numerous endangered species (Zamberletti et al, 2018;Allen et al, 2020). Further, conservation of breeding wetlands is insufficient to overcome the challenges presented by anthropogenically or climatically modified habitats (Allen et al, 2020), particularly the anticipated reduction in temporary wetland inundation (Brice et al, 2022). Additionally, wetland protection depends on legal decisions that are subject to amendment or revision.…”

Section: Habitat Degradationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Framework for multi-stressor physiological response evaluation in amphibian risk assessment and conservation

Awkerman,

Glinski,

Henderson

et al. 2024

Front. Ecol. Evol.

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Controlled laboratory experiments are often performed on amphibians to establish causality between stressor presence and an adverse outcome. However, in the field, identification of lab-generated biomarkers from single stressors and the interactions of multiple impacts are difficult to discern in an ecological context. The ubiquity of some pesticides and anthropogenic contaminants results in potentially cryptic sublethal effects or synergistic effects among multiple stressors. Although biochemical pathways regulating physiological responses to toxic stressors are often well-conserved among vertebrates, different exposure regimes and life stage vulnerabilities can yield variable ecological risk among species. Here we examine stress-related biomarkers, highlight endpoints commonly linked to apical effects, and discuss differences in ontogeny and ecology that could limit interpretation of biomarkers across species. Further we identify promising field-based physiological measures indicative of potential impacts to health and development of amphibians that could be useful to anuran conservation. We outline the physiological responses to common stressors in the context of altered functional pathways, presenting useful stage-specific endpoints for anuran species, and discussing multi-stressor vulnerability in the larger framework of amphibian life history and ecology. This overview identifies points of physiological, ecological, and demographic vulnerability to provide context in evaluating the multiple stressors impacting amphibian populations worldwide for strategic conservation planning.

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Section: Habitat Degradationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Framework for multi-stressor physiological response evaluation in amphibian risk assessment and conservation

Awkerman,

Glinski,

Henderson

et al. 2024

Front. Ecol. Evol.

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“…In practical applications, the cost and logistical efforts involved in monitoring single wetlands (let alone complete wetlandscapes) are substantial (Maleki et al, 2018), and in situ data are generally missing for these two conditions to be rigorously verified. Instead, model development and calibration is often based on monitoring data from a small subset of wetlands (Bertassello et al, 2022), or hermeneutic relationships to ancillary data (Brice et al, 2022). This practice raises the need to determine whether (and under what conditions) the arbitrary and sparse sample of instrumented wetlands is representative of the full population of wetlands in the considered wetlandscape.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Wetlands can consist of a wide range of hydrologic features, from large permanent waters that provide important hydrologic functions to smaller ephemeral ponds that provide important biogeochemical functions (Evenson et al, 2018). These features do not function in isolation but form a landscape mosaic (here referred to as wetlandscape) that sustains unique and fragile ecosystems (Brice et al, 2022; Dahl, 1990; Erwin, 2009; Van Meter & Basu, 2015; Walpole & Davidson, 2018). Ephemeral wetlands, in particular, account for approximately 60% of global wetlands (Papa et al, 2006) and are critically important in their ability to generate windows of transient connectivity for species dispersal and occupancy.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

From wetlands to wetlandscapes: Remote sensing calibration of process‐based hydrological models in heterogeneous landscapes

Mullen

Bertassello

Rao

et al. 2022

Hydrological Processes

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Wetlands are vital components of landscapes that sustain a range of important ecosystem services. Understanding how wetland‐rich landscapes—or wetlandscapes—will evolve under a changing climate and increasing anthropogenic encroachment is urgent. Wetlandscapes are highly heterogeneous, and scaling local modelling insights from individual instrumented wetlands to characterize landscape‐scale dynamics has been a pervasive challenge. We investigate the potential to use water extent information from satellite imagery to calibrate landscape‐scale process‐based hydrological models. Applications to wetlandscapes in the Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) in North Dakota and the Texas Playa Lakes (TPL) shed light on two important trade‐offs. First, in‐situ monitoring provides accurate water extent information on an arbitrary subset of wetlands, whereas satellite imagery captures landscape‐scale hydrological dynamics but suffers persistent water‐detection challenges. Satellite imagery is a superior source of data for model calibration in sparsely monitored and spatially heterogeneous landscapes like the PPR, where the sampling uncertainty of monitored wetlands exceeds the water detection uncertainty of remote sensing. The two data sources are equivalent for more homogeneous landscapes like the TPL. The second tradeoff concerns the spatial resolution and temporal coverage of satellite imagery. In that regard, the 20 years of bi‐weekly images captured by Landsat 7 provides unprecedented insights into the dynamic nature of the ecohydrological characteristics of wetlandscapes, such as seasonal and inter‐annual changes of their metapopulation capacity. In the PPR, the amplitude of these dynamics far exceeds the bias introduced by Landsat's inability to capture ecologically important connectivity details due to its coarse spatial resolution compared to more recent imagery.

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Informing the Conservation of Ephemerally Flooded Wetlands Using Hydrologic Regime and LiDAR-Based Habitat Assessments

Chandler,

McLaughlin,

Haas

2024

Wetlands

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Integrated assessments of wetland hydrologic regimes and other environmental factors are key to understanding the ecology of species breeding in ephemerally flooded wetlands, and reproductive success is often directly linked to suitable flooding regimes, both temporally and spatially. We used high-resolution Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data to develop bathymetric stage–flooded area relationships, predict spatial extent of flooding, and assess vegetation structure in 30 pine flatwoods wetlands. For a subset of wetlands with monitoring wells, we then integrated bathymetric and water level data to create multi-year time series of daily flooded areas. We then related the observed flooded areas to topographic and landscape metrics to develop models predicting flooded extents in wetlands without monitoring wells. We found that stage–area curves varied depending on wetland size and bathymetry, such that a one-cm increase in water depth could generate flooded area increases ranging from hundreds to thousands of square meters. Flooded areas frequently fragmented into discrete flooded patches as wetlands dried, and there was a weak positive correlation between hydroperiod and mean flooded area across multiple years (r = 0.32). To evaluate the utility of using LiDAR-derived data to support the conservation of wetland-breeding species, we combined metrics of flooding and vegetation to map potentially suitable habitat for the imperiled reticulated flatwoods salamander (Ambystoma bishopi). Overall, projects focusing on the ecology of wetland-breeding species could gain a broader understanding of habitat effects from coupled assessments of bathymetry, water level dynamics, and other wetland characteristics.

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Making the leap from ponds to landscapes: Integrating field-based monitoring of amphibians and wetlands with satellite observations

Cited by 9 publications

References 60 publications

Framework for multi-stressor physiological response evaluation in amphibian risk assessment and conservation

Framework for multi-stressor physiological response evaluation in amphibian risk assessment and conservation

From wetlands to wetlandscapes: Remote sensing calibration of process‐based hydrological models in heterogeneous landscapes

Informing the Conservation of Ephemerally Flooded Wetlands Using Hydrologic Regime and LiDAR-Based Habitat Assessments

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