NASA Biodiversity Research &

Ecological Forecasting:

Answering the New Dismal Science

Woody Turner

University of Maryland Inn and Conference CenterAugust 21, 2006

Joint Workshop on NASA Biodiversity, Terrestrial Ecology, and Related Applied Sciences

Workshop Goals

• Where is biodiversity science going over the next decade or so & what is NASA’s role?

• How can we transition research activities to operations and decision support through the Ecological Forecasting and other programs?

Source: Wikipedia

Thomas Malthus (1766-1834):

Economics=Dismal Science?

• 1798, An Essay on the Principle of Population • Unchecked populations increase geometrically but food supplies increase arithmetically• Predicted that population would outstrip food supply in mid 19th Century• Big influence on Darwin and Wallace - Natural Selection• Danger in extrapolating existing trends into future • Economic growth continues to pull millions from poverty• Yet, at what cost?

Conservation Biology: The New Dismal Science?

• Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Vol. 1• Extinction rate 100x background rate• 12% to 52% of species in well-studied taxa threatened

with extinction under Red List• We are the cause• Climate change potentially dominant driver

• Conservation Biology 20th Anniversary• “… nature is still losing badly.”

Source: MSFC/Tom Sever & Dan Irwin

S=cAz

Global Data for a Global Crisis

Definition of Biodiversity from GBA (1995) is “the total diversity and variability of living things and of the systems of which they are a part”- includes genetic, organismal, and ecological components

Main Message: Biodiversity science needs NASA observations and models to understand patterns and processes at landscape to global scales.

T

2002 2010 2012 2014 20152004

Reduced flux uncertainties; global carbon dynamics

Funded

Unfunded

Global Ocean Carbon / Particle Abundance

N. America’s carbon budget quantified

Global Atmospheric CO2 (OCO)

2006 2008

Reduced flux uncertainties; coastal carbon dynamics

NA Carbon NA Carbon Global C Cycle

T = Technology development

Regional carbon sources/sinks quantified for planet

IPCC IPCC

Effects of tropical deforestation quantified; uncertaintiesin tropical carbon source reduced

= Field Campaign

Physiology & Functional Types

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Vegetation 3-D Structure, Biomass, & Disturbance T Terrestrial carbon stocks &

species habitat characterized

Models w/improved ecosystem functions

High-Resolution Atmospheric CO2 Sub-regional sources/sinks

Integrated global analyses

CH4 sources characterized and quantified

Report

P

Vegetation (AVHRR, MODIS)

Ocean Color (SeaWiFS, MODIS)

Land Cover (Landsat) LDCM Land Cover (OLI)

Vegetation, Fire (AVHRR, MODIS) Ocean/Land (VIIRS/NPP) Ocean/Land (VIIRS/NPOESS)

Models & Computing Capacity

Case Studies

Process UnderstandingImprovements:

Human-Ecosystems-Climate Interactions (Model-Data Fusion, Assimilation); Global Air-Sea Flux

T

Partnership

N. American Carbon Program

Land Use Change in Amazonia

Global CH4; Wetlands, Flooding & Permafrost

Global C Cycle

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2002: Global productivity and land cover resolution coarse; Large uncertainties in biomass, fluxes, disturbance, and coastal events

Systematic Observations

Process controls; errors in sink reduced

Coastal Carbon

Southern Ocean Carbon Program, Air-Sea CO2 Flux

Carbon Cycle and Ecosystems Roadmap

Common Denominator: Ecosystem Function

BIOGEOCHEMISTRY

BIODIVERSITY“Terra Incognita”

Biodiversity mediates ecosystem functioning, including the cycling of carbon, nitrogen, and other elements, as well as environmental response to disturbances.

ECOSYSTEM FUNCTION

ECOSYSTEMSTRUCTURE

Why NASA Needs Biodiversity

(Source: http://courses.cm.utexas.edu/emarcotte/ch339k/fall2005/Lecture1/TreeOfLife.jpg)

Biodiversity constitutes the players in the game of life.

You Can’t Follow the Game of Ecosystems without a Scorecard

Visual differences in benthic particulate

matter after removingP. mariae (right)

compared with the intact fish assemblage

(left).

(CREDIT: MARTIN WIKELSKI/PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, Science 313: 780) Source: http://www.spectsoft.com/wimages/MBARI-ROV.jpg

Source: http://www.delmarvalite.org/photos/2003/10/radar10012003.gifSource: Dan Costa UCSC/TOPP (TOPP web site)

Some of the Tools

Reconciliation of the patterns in biodiversity that are observed at different scales may provide significant insights into their determinants.

Indeed, it is increasingly apparent that knowledge of the roles of pattern and process at different scales is at the very heart of an understanding of global variation in biodiversity.

Kevin J. Gaston in Nature 405:220-227 (2000)

Helicobacterium pylorii Genome from:http://biocrs.biomed.brown.edu/Books/Chapters/Ch%2038/Pylori-Genome.gif

Graphic compiled from various sources by Tim Newman and on Web at: http://www.snprc.org/baboon/faq/africa.html

But There Are Still More Tools:We Can No Longer Ignore Molecular Biology!

WHY? Because molecular techniques will (1) lead us directly to the processes driving ecosystem functioning; (2) allow us to capture ecosystem & biodiversity change (i.e., evolution) in action; & (3), through phylogeny,

they are our best window into history and historical effects!

Little Rock Lake in Wisconsin; produced by Neo D. Martinez of San Francisco State University,

Romberg Tiburon Center for Environmental Studies

Models Unite Observations of Pattern and Link Them to Processes

Models of trophic webs are a key tool in that they not only link the ecological players but also connect physical and biological realms: Follow the Energy!

Ecological Forecasting

= using observations and models to predict the impacts of environmental change, whether natural or anthropogenic, on the ecosystems that sustain us. One example (or all we need to do) is:

GCM Regional CM (~1 km grid) Biogeochemical Cycling Model

Ecophysiological Model Trophic Model PHVA Model

Result: Impact of climate variability and change on species of concern (be they T&E species, invasives, pathogens, whatever)!

Is this foolish? Naïve? Overly simplistic? Perhaps. Linking models, much less coupling them, is not trivial!

Except many of you are already doing pieces of this!

One Way Forward

• Mind the gaps! Build bridges!– Target your work at the gaps between those different

modeling approaches to make the most progress (e.g., Behrenfeld’s focus on the C growth rate term as a bridge between biogeochemical & physiological approaches)

– Example of another marine challenge: we are linking regional climate to biogeochemical carbon models (a la JPL/Chao-UME/Chai) for primary producers (phytoplankton); however linking this to the models of changes in zooplankton, and thereby getting to the next step on the trophic web, is a major hurdle—ultimate goal to go from climate to large fish

• What can we do here?– No one should leave this workshop without making an

interdisciplinary connection! Seriously!

Some Key Science Questions• How does biodiversity relate to the functioning of ecosystems?• What are the effects of spatial scale on patterns of biodiversity?• How do climate variability and change affect the abundance and

distribution of organisms?• How do ecosystems change in response to anthropogenic disturbances

and how does biodiversity mediate these changes?• How does the level of energy in an ecosystem affect its biodiversity?• What is the role of ecosystem physical structure in promoting and

maintaining biodiversity?• Are the organisms in communities fungible, e.g.: how stable are trophic

webs at retaining their function?• What are the hottest of the hot spots for retaining maximum species

diversity, i.e.: is there taxonomic covariance in species richness and abundance and, if so, where is it?

• What are the best RS proxies for ecosystem diversity and ecosystem health (e.g., NDVI, NPP, soil moisture, SST/SSH & location of fronts, vegetation structural complexity, rates of disturbance, rates of upwelling, etc.)? And what scales of sensing are necessary?

• Can we catch evolution in action by first correlating environmental changes at landscape/broader scales with genomic/proteomic changes?

• What is the role of history in establishing local and regional biodiversity?

Fig. 2. Maps of the nine global biodiversity conservation priority templates: CE, crisis ecoregions (21); BH, biodiversity hot spots [(11), updated by (39)]; EBA, endemic bird areas (15); CPD, centers of plant diversity (12); MC, megadiversity countries (13); G200, global 200 ecoregions [(16), updated by (54)]; HBWA, high-biodiversity wilderness areas (14); FF, frontier forests

(19); LW, last of the wild (20). [Brooks, T. et al. in Science (2006) 313:58 – 61]

Next Step 2010?

Norse and Carlton (Conservation Biology 17:1475-1476) used googlefight.com in August 2003 to determine how many WWW sites mentioned biodiversity.

• Biodiversity received 3,100,000 mentions• Molecular Biology – 1,550,000 mentions• Climate Change – 1,460,000 mentions• Relativity – 917,000 mentions• Oceanography – 624,000 mentions• The Beatles – 2,800,000 mentions• George W. Bush – 2,580,000 mentions• Tiger Woods – 664,000 mentions

Humans are very good at addressing problems we put our minds to!

Dismal Science?