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Sistemas Integrados de Monitoreo e Información para el Manejo de Especies Acuáticas Invasoras en un Clima Cambiante
Author(s) -
LEE II HENRY,
REUSSER DEBORAH A.,
OLDEN JULIAN D.,
SMITH SCOTT S.,
GRAHAM JIM,
BURKETT VIRGINIA,
DUKES JEFFREY S.,
PIORKOWSKI ROBERT J.,
MCPHEDRAN JOHN
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
conservation biology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.2
H-Index - 222
eISSN - 1523-1739
pISSN - 0888-8892
DOI - 10.1111/j.1523-1739.2008.00955.x
Subject(s) - ecological niche , niche , environmental niche modelling , ecology , climate change , environmental resource management , abundance (ecology) , temporal scales , habitat , geography , environmental science , biology
Changes in temperature, precipitation, and other climatic drivers and sea‐level rise will affect populations of existing native and non‐native aquatic species and the vulnerability of aquatic environments to new invasions. Monitoring surveys provide the foundation for assessing the combined effects of climate change and invasions by providing baseline biotic and environmental conditions, although the utility of a survey depends on whether the results are quantitative or qualitative, and other design considerations. The results from a variety of monitoring programs in the United States are available in integrated biological information systems, although many include only non‐native species, not native species. Besides including natives, we suggest these systems could be improved through the development of standardized methods that capture habitat and physiological requirements and link regional and national biological databases into distributed Web portals that allow drawing information from multiple sources. Combining the outputs from these biological information systems with environmental data would allow the development of ecological‐niche models that predict the potential distribution or abundance of native and non‐native species on the basis of current environmental conditions. Environmental projections from climate models can be used in these niche models to project changes in species distributions or abundances under altered climatic conditions and to identify potential high‐risk invaders. There are, however, a number of challenges, such as uncertainties associated with projections from climate and niche models and difficulty in integrating data with different temporal and spatial granularity. Even with these uncertainties, integration of biological and environmental information systems, niche models, and climate projections would improve management of aquatic ecosystems under the dual threats of biotic invasions and climate change.