Change in avian functional fingerprints of a Neotropical montane forest over 100 years as an indicator of ecosystem integrity

Ecologically relevant traits of organisms in an assemblage determine an ecosystem's functional fingerprint (i.e., the shape, size, and position of multidimensional trait space). Quantifying changes in functional fingerprints can therefore provide information about the effects of diversity loss or gain through time on ecosystem condition and is a promising approach to monitoring ecological integrity. This, however, is seldom possible owing to limitations in historical surveys and a lack of data on organismal traits, particularly in diverse tropical regions. Using data from detailed bird surveys from 4 periods across more than a century, and morphological and ecological traits of 233 species, we quantified changes in the avian functional fingerprint of a tropical montane forest in the Andes of Colombia. We found that 78% of the variation in functional space, regardless of period, was described by 3 major axes summarizing body size, dispersal ability (indexed by wing shape), and habitat breadth. Changes in species composition significantly altered the functional fingerprint of the assemblage and functional richness and dispersion decreased 35–60%. Owing to species extirpations and to novel additions to the assemblage, functional space decreased over time, but at least 11% of its volume in the 2010s extended to areas of functional space that were unoccupied in the 1910s. The assemblage now includes fewer large-sized species, more species with greater dispersal ability, and fewer habitat specialists. Extirpated species had high functional uniqueness and distinctiveness, resulting in large reductions in functional richness and dispersion after their loss, which implies important consequences for ecosystem integrity. Conservation efforts aimed at maintaining ecosystem function must move beyond seeking to sustain species numbers to designing complementary strategies for the maintenance of ecological function by identifying and conserving species with traits conferring high vulnerability such as large body size, poor dispersal ability, and greater habitat specialization. Article impact statement: Changes in functional fingerprints provide a means to quantify the integrity of ecological assemblages affected by diversity loss or gain.     

贵州草海湿地溶解性有机物的光谱特征及其与PFASs的相关性分析

为描述草海湿地DOM（dissolved organic matter,溶解性有机物）荧光特征,探究其对PFASs（per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances,全氟及多氟化合物）环境行为造成的影响,利用超高效液相色谱-质谱联用技术和三维荧光光谱技术,结合平行因子分析,开展DOM光谱学特性研究,分析ρ（DOM）与ρ（PFASs）的相关关系.结果表明:①草海湿地中共解析出3类4种荧光组分,分别为类腐殖酸[λ_Ex（360 nm）/λ_Em（450 nm）]、长波段腐殖质[λ_Ex（400 nm）/λ_Em（510 nm）]、类富里酸[λ_Ex（330 nm）/λ_Em（400 nm）]和类色氨酸[λ_Ex（280 nm）/λ_Em（350 nm）],贡献率分别为48.6%、23.6%、22.9%和4.9%,其中类腐殖质总贡献率高达72.2%.在农业生产和人类活动的影响下,总荧光强度大致呈现从入湖区向出湖区逐渐降低、湖心区略高的趋势.②在草海湿地表层水中共检出了12种PFASs,ρ（PFASs）为233.18 ng/L,每种平均值为19.43 ng/L,PFBA（perfluorobutanoic acid,全氟丁酸）是主要污染物;草海湿地入湖区点源影响特征明显,生活污水和农业生产用水是主要的潜在污染源.③相关性分析结果显示,各荧光组分含量均与ρ（PFBS）（potassium perfluorobutanesulfonate,全氟丁烷磺酸）负相关;类色氨酸含量与ρ（PFHpA）（perfluororoheptanoic acid,全氟庚酸）负相关,与ρ（PFTriDA）（perfluorotrideanoic acid,全氟十三酸）则显著正相关.研究显示,草海湿地水体腐殖化程度高,外源特征明显,共检出12种PFASs,初步揭示了草海湿地水环境中ρ（DOM）与ρ（PFASs）的相关关系,其受水体性质及化合物结构等差异的影响,有待进一步开展深入研究.      

畜禽养殖业的清洁生产途径

现有畜禽养殖的生产工艺落后、资源消耗量大、环境污染严重，通过推行清洁生产技术，可以有效解决畜禽养殖业的环境问题、提高畜禽养殖业的经济效益，实现畜禽养殖业的可持续发展。     

上海地区湿地生态旅游资源研究

从国内外湿地研究进展中发现，湿地景观资源及其管理对策研究得到人们越来越广泛的重视。上海市湿地面积广阔，占全市海拔-5m以上总面积9123km^2的65．67％，同时具有景观多样性和生物物种多样性。丰富的湿地资源为上海市提供了广阔的绿地空间，成为宝贵的旅游资源。本文对上海市的湿地景观资源进行了细致的分析，并介绍了其开发和利用现状，在此基础上提出了规划设想和几点建议。     

Wetland loss and substitution by the Section 404 permit program in southern California,USA

To test the effectiveness of the 404 permit program in preventing a net loss of wetland resources, 75 Section 404 projects permitted in the years 1987–1989 and located in a portion of southern California were evaluated. From this group of projects, 80.47 ha of wetlands were affected by Section 404 permits and the Army Corps of Engineers required 111.62 ha of wetland mitigation. To verify the successful completion of each mitigation project, all 75 project sites were visited and evaluated based on the amount of dead vegetation, growth and coverage, and the number of invasive species. Based on the field verification results, the actual amount of completed mitigation area was 77.33 ha, resulting in a net loss of 3.14 ha of wetland resources in the years 1987–1989. By comparing the types of wetlands lost to the types of wetlands mitigated, it is apparent that, in particular, freshwater wetlands are experiencing a disproportionately greater loss of area and that riparian woodland wetlands are most often used in mitigation efforts. The net result of these accumulated actions is an overall substitution of wetland types throughout the region. Results also indicate that, typically, large-scale mitigation projects are more successful compared to smaller projects and that successful compliance efforts are not evenly distributed throughout the region. We recommend that better monitoring, mitigation in-kind, mitigation banking, and planning on a regional or watershed scale could greatly improve the effectiveness of the Section 404 permitting program.     

Rapid amino acid cycling in arctic and antarctic soils

Amino acids constitute one of the largest inputs of organic nitrogen (N) to most polar soils and have been hypothesized to be important in regulating vegetational succession and productivity in Arctic ecosystems. Our understanding of amino acid cycling in these soils, however, is poor. The aim of this study was to investigate the size and rate of turnover of the amino acid pool in a range of Arctic and Antarctic soils. Our results indicate that in polar soils with either high or low ornithogenic inputs the amino acid pool is small in comparison to the inorganic N pool (NO^–₃ and NH⁺₄). The free amino acid pool constituted only a small proportion of the total dissolved organic nitrogen (DON) pool in these soils. Here we show that these low concentrations may be due to rapid use by the soil microbial community in both Arctic and Antarctic soils. The turnover of the amino acid pool in soil was extremely rapid, with a half-life ranging from 2 to 24 h, indicating that this N pool can be turned over many hundred times each summer when polar soils are frequently unfrozen. The implications of amino acids in N cycling and plant and microbial nutrition are discussed.     

中国湿地现状综述

湿地是重要的自然资源,对人类生存起着重要作用。本文综述了湿地的含义、功能与 价值、中国湿地的特点与现状,以促进中国湿地的可持续发展与利用。     

Use of Microbial Community to Evaluate Performance of a Wetland System in Treating Pb/Zn Mine Drainage

The performance of a wetland system in treating lead (Pb)/zinc (Zn) mine drainage was evaluated by using the polyurethane foam unit (PFU) microbial community (method), which has been adopted by China as a standardized procedure for monitoring water quality. The wetland system consisted of four cells with three dominant plants: Typha latifolia, Phragmites australis and Paspalum distichum. Physicochemical characteristics [pH, EC, content of total suspended solid (TSS) and metals (Pb, Zn, Cd, and Cu)] and PFU microbial community in water samples had been investigated from seven sampling sites. The results indicated that the concentrations of Pb, Zn, Cd, Cu, and TSS in the mine drainage were gradually reduced from the inlet to the outlet of the wetland system and 99%, 98%, 75%, 83%, and 68% of these metals and TSS respectively, had been reduced in concentration after the drainage passed through the wetland system. A total of 105 protozoan species were identified, the number of protozoa species and the diversity index (DI) gradually increased, while the heterotrophic index (HI) gradually decreased from the inlet to the outlet of the wetland system. The results indicated that DI, HI, and total number species of protozoa could be used as biological indicators indicating the improvement of water quality.     

Using environmental heterogeneity to plan for sea‐level rise

Environmental heterogeneity is increasingly being used to select conservation areas that will provide for future biodiversity under a variety of climate scenarios. This approach, termed conserving nature's stage (CNS), assumes environmental features respond to climate change more slowly than biological communities, but will CNS be effective if the stage were to change as rapidly as the climate? We tested the effectiveness of using CNS to select sites in salt marshes for conservation in coastal Georgia (U.S.A.), where environmental features will change rapidly as sea level rises. We calculated species diversity based on distributions of 7 bird species with a variety of niches in Georgia salt marshes. Environmental heterogeneity was assessed across six landscape gradients (e.g., elevation, salinity, and patch area). We used 2 approaches to select sites with high environmental heterogeneity: site complementarity (environmental diversity [ED]) and local environmental heterogeneity (environmental richness [ER]). Sites selected based on ER predicted present‐day species diversity better than randomly selected sites (up to an 8.1% improvement), were resilient to areal loss from SLR (1.0% average areal loss by 2050 compared with 0.9% loss of randomly selected sites), and provided habitat to a threatened species (0.63 average occupancy compared with 0.6 average occupancy of randomly selected sites). Sites selected based on ED predicted species diversity no better or worse than random and were not resilient to SLR (2.9% average areal loss by 2050). Despite the discrepancy between the 2 approaches, CNS is a viable strategy for conservation site selection in salt marshes because the ER approach was successful. It has potential for application in other coastal areas where SLR will affect environmental features, but its performance may depend on the magnitude of geological changes caused by SLR. Our results indicate that conservation planners that had heretofore excluded low‐lying coasts from CNS planning could include coastal ecosystems in regional conservation strategies.     

Using empirical models of species colonization under multiple threatening processes to identify complementary threat‐mitigation strategies

Approaches to prioritize conservation actions are gaining popularity. However, limited empirical evidence exists on which species might benefit most from threat mitigation and on what combination of threats, if mitigated simultaneously, would result in the best outcomes for biodiversity. We devised a way to prioritize threat mitigation at a regional scale with empirical evidence based on predicted changes to population dynamics—information that is lacking in most threat‐management prioritization frameworks that rely on expert elicitation. We used dynamic occupancy models to investigate the effects of multiple threats (tree cover, grazing, and presence of an hyperaggressive competitor, the Noisy Miner (Manorina melanocephala) on bird‐population dynamics in an endangered woodland community in southeastern Australia. The 3 threatening processes had different effects on different species. We used predicted patch‐colonization probabilities to estimate the benefit to each species of removing one or more threats. We then determined the complementary set of threat‐mitigation strategies that maximized colonization of all species while ensuring that redundant actions with little benefit were avoided. The single action that resulted in the highest colonization was increasing tree cover, which increased patch colonization by 5% and 11% on average across all species and for declining species, respectively. Combining Noisy Miner control with increasing tree cover increased species colonization by 10% and 19% on average for all species and for declining species respectively, and was a higher priority than changing grazing regimes. Guidance for prioritizing threat mitigation is critical in the face of cumulative threatening processes. By incorporating population dynamics in prioritization of threat management, our approach helps ensure funding is not wasted on ineffective management programs that target the wrong threats or species.