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New Project Ideas
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Things you need to consider (eventually):
1) The project must be cross-regional such that everyone can contribute. We want to have some unifying theme such that we can include data from Central America, North America and Europe.
2) The project must involve looking at both on and off farm services -- I.e., what is beneficial for the farmer and what is beneficial to the community/landscape/region.
3) Available data: we have primary data from CATIE/CA on live fences; we have primary data from rights-of-way studies (comparing species composition in scrub vs. forest vs. grassland), we can EXTRACT data from the extensive literature on hedgerows & fencerows in Europe. We might be able to get some data from the Land Institute or the folks who manage the CRP; there is still digging to be done once we know our research question -- all project ideas will need refinement once we scatter in search of data.
We can limit the data by species groups (plants, predacious arthropods, insectivorous birds, etc), LH type (riparian buffers?), agricultural setting (crops vs. pasture), crop type (grain vs. fruit vs. etc.), etc. Probably the more focussed we can be, the better (within reason).
Let's have some fresh ideas!
Re: New Project Ideas
Posted by
dtdalton
at
March 06. 2007
I wanted to let you all know that I have the species composition data from an extensive savanna survey at Cedar Creek Natural History Area in Minnesota. I personally entered all the 2005 data and could possibly get other years. Also, I have shrub data and tree species composition for an oak forest at CCNHA. If we could find species data in linear habitats of east-central Minnesota or other northern Great Plains systems, we may be able to do a regional comparison. Thoughts? Also at Cedar Creek they do all sorts of tests measuring CO2 flux, soil and root cores, canopy light infiltration, etc. Would these data be important to our analysis?
This got me thinking that about how to best focus our efforts, since we don't have a lot of time. Maybe we should focus exlusively on North and Central America. Maybe it's a crazy idea, because Europe has the most data and the best studied systems (in terms of linear habitats). BUT on the other hand, we could probably do a pretty comprehensive review on what exists on LH in North and Central American (since it isn't that much). And if we did this, we would definitely have time to include riparian buffers (meeting certain criteria). So we could do a literature review and then do our original analsyes on the subregions for which there are the most data -- either published or otherwise. I just worry that trying to review the European literature will be overwhelming and it's been done much more recently. And since none of us are actually IN Europe, maybe it would make more sense to focus in the georaphic regions where we reside.
In NA [I can't speak for CA], people are starting to revisit the importance of LH, what with the recent literature pointing out the benefits of "natural" areas in agricultural landscapes. We don't have the limitations (?) of the "cultural heritage" of hedgerows in Europe and so it's much more about pointing out how these habitat could benefit agriculture here in the US & Canada [We'll want/need to include the Canadian literature for sure, as they have done more with hedgerow/fencerows than the US] and how to maximize their utility through design and management.
I'm just doing a little brainstorming here....
I wonder if a next sensible step would be to divide up the literature searching by geographic area and have everyone go out and try to document what has been published (on linear habitats) in their region/biome (or if not much, what data might be available in other forms, i.e., databases, government reports, etc.). Then everyone (or groups of 2?) writes up an annotated bibliography describing what they've found (over the next two weeks or so) and we meet to decide what analyses we can reasonably do. This doesn't replace the idea we've been discussing, but rather gives us a plan to refine it based on what is actually available... and we'll need to have a literature review anyway for the introduction of the manuscript.
[Note: This is the approach the pest control folks are using and it seems like a good way to get things rolling.]
Thoughts? Comments? Volunteers?
I really like the idea of focusing on North and Central America, for all of the reasons you suggested above, Kim. And it would be nice to get a better feel for what data is out there as we compose our questions. I'm willing to do the searches for the northeastern/mid-Atlantic U.S.
Another potential data source might be unpublished sets from relatively prolific authors in each region. We might be able to get some of those by contacting them...
Re: New Project Ideas
Posted by
dtdalton
at
March 08. 2007
I agree that it may be best to focus on North and Central America for now. A goal of this seminar is to make a statement - specifically in the Americas - about ecological services and functions of various landscapes. Studying the composition of our own native species (as opposed to European species for example) will be more relevant to research involving linear habitats in NA and CA.
In Central
America (CA) and Mexico agriculture landscapes are dominated by isolated trees
in pastures, live fences, secondary forest fragments and riparian habitats.
Based in
the chat discussion we propose:
1)
compare
structure and composition of live fences (LF) vs. secondary forest fragments, to stand at what extent LF act as successional
habitats (there are available data bases with information on structure and
composition of LF and secondary forest in CA and Mexico, and papers to compare
our results with, and make inferences about animal diversity) (in case there is
not data available about abundance of species we can work with presence/absence
of species in LF).
2)
find
ecosystem services provided by LF on
(wood, forage, medicinal plants) and off
(landscape connectivity, tree cover percentage in landscape, carbon storage,
biodiversity conservation) farms. (Diego told us there is data available about
uses of plants in LF, but we can also review literature about tree species and
local knowledge).
3)
How
LF management affects LF structure and biodiversity (animal taxa). (There are
studies comparing logged and not logged LF and biodioversity).
4)
Studies
had demonstrated that management through tree pruning (cutting or “poda” in
spanish) rises the carbon storage through branch regeneration. Though material
that has been cut and left in the ground releases carbon to the atmosphere, most
of it returns to the system through decomposition. In this way carbon storage by tree pruning in LF becomes
a off farm ecosystem service that can be measured
We think these four main questions can be
addressed in CA and USA, maybe for the latest a more extensive search of
literature will be required.
In USA, not in CA, LH (hedgerows, etc.) are
within a crop matrix, so we can measure better the ecosystem services on farms
(pollination, pest control), comparing yield (crop) performance with presence/absence
of LF (only if there is data about yield performance).
We have found literature about LF in CA, but we
don’t have access to full text data bases. Fabrice told us we can use he’s
account to search for literature. Next week were will schedule an appointment
with him.
Here we send you a thesis (in Spanish) about
structure, composition, and connectivity effect of LF on bird communities in
Rio Frio, Costa Rica.