Wildlife Restoration (WiRE) in human-modified landscapes.

人类改造景观中的野生动物恢复 (WiRE)。

• 批准号: RGPIN-2017-03797
• 负责人: Ford, Adam
• 金额: $ 4.23万
• 依托单位: University of British Columbia
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2022-01-01 至 2023-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=761647
• 关键词: Wildlife; Restoration; WiRE; human; modified

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.

人类活动威胁着生物多样性，破坏了对自然资源的机会，并侵蚀了生态系统服务的价值。在许多景观中，这种活动正在加剧，激发了对跨空间尺度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整个景观中的生物质和能量的流动，介导自然障碍的频率和影响（例如火灾，洪水），并限制疾病暴发的传播。在某些生态系统中，大型哺乳动物不仅仅是恢复的副产品，它们是恢复的推动者。识别生态环境，在生态环境中，捕食和连通性对生态系统产生大规模影响一直是生态学家的主要挑战。许多关于大型哺乳动物生态学的研究仅依赖于相关证据和弱推断。这种缺乏严格的科学不确定性增加了，导致有关大型哺乳动物的生态作用以及恢复生态系统所需的管理行动的激烈辩论。因此，社区和空间生态学上存在知识差距，对景观恢复具有关键意义。我的研究将通过量化景观变化的影响资源提取，城市发展和运输基础设施对大型妈妈食品网的影响来帮助填补这些空白。由于它们的宽敞运动，稀有性和长寿命跨度（即相对于在实验室系统中研究的较小分类单元），量化了大型哺乳动物的捕食和连通性，因此需要在大空间和时间尺度上收集现场数据。同时，物种相互作用的机制在单个尺度上发生。因此，我的研究将生态探究的膨胀（景观）和个体（行为）量表整合在一起，以了解大型哺乳动物食物网的动力学的机制。具体而言，该研究中使用的方法结合了现场实验，GPS- telemetry，基于代理的模型和高分辨率卫星图像来衡量：（a）基础架构对岩石山脉中的Carnivore（Cougar，Wolves，Bear，Bear）绞鼻（Cougar，Wolves，Bear）的影响； （b）林业实践对温哥华岛食肉动物核对互动的影响。这项研究将在生态学的两个关键领域中创造知识：（a）它将有助于确定生态环境，在这种情况下，捕食对生态系统功能的其他驱动因素在食物网络中施加了至关重要，该驱动因素由大型哺乳动物及其猎物组成； （b）它将阐明恢复人类修饰景观中捕食和连通性所需的实践。