Mangroves' ability to store carbon (C) has long been recognized, but little is known about whether planted mangroves can store C as efficiently as naturally established (i.e., intact) stands and in which time frame.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMangrove forest conservation can help reduce global C emissions. Despite this benefit to climate change mitigation and adaptation, mangrove forests are being deforested or degraded at an alarming rate, though restoration efforts may offset these losses. The impacts of deforestation to C stocks are relatively intuitive and result in significant decreases in C stocks.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMangrove forests play an important role in climate change adaptation and mitigation by maintaining coastline elevations relative to sea level rise, protecting coastal infrastructure from storm damage, and storing substantial quantities of carbon (C) in live and detrital pools. Determining the efficacy of mangroves in achieving climate goals can be complicated by difficulty in quantifying C inputs (i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFClimate change is expected to alter precipitation patterns worldwide, which will affect streamflow in riverine ecosystems. It is vital to understand the impacts of projected flow variations, especially in tropical regions where the effects of climate change are expected to be one of the earliest to emerge. Space-for-time substitutions have been successful at predicting effects of climate change in terrestrial systems by using a spatial gradient to mimic the projected temporal change.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDeploying mosquito predators such as the guppy (Poecilia reticulata) into bodies of water where mosquitoes breed is a common strategy for limiting the spread of disease-carrying mosquitoes. Here, we draw on studies from epidemiology, conservation, ecology and evolution to show that the evidence for the effectiveness of guppies in controlling mosquitoes is weak, that the chances of accidental guppy introduction into local ecosystems are large, and that guppies can easily establish populations and damage these aquatic ecosystems. We highlight several knowledge and implementation gaps, and urge that this approach is either abandoned in favour of more effective strategies or that it is used much more rigorously.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPotential shifts in rainfall driven by climate change are anticipated to affect watershed processes (e.g., soil moisture, runoff, stream flow), yet few model systems exist in the tropics to test hypotheses about how these processes may respond to these shifts.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPoeciliids, one of the most invasive species worldwide, are found on almost every continent and have been identified as an "invasive species of concern" in the United States, New Zealand, and Australia. Despite their global prevalence, few studies have quantified their impacts on tropical stream ecosystem structure, function, and biodiversity. Utilizing Hawaiian streams as model ecosystems, we documented how ecological structure, function, and native species abundance differed between poeciliid-free and poeciliid-invaded tropical streams.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Environ Qual
February 2010
Inter- and intra-site comparisons of the nitrogen (N) stable isotope composition of wetland plant species have been used to identify sources of N in coastal areas. In this study, we compared delta(15)N values from different herbaceous wetland plants across 34 different coastal wetlands from the five main Hawaiian Islands and investigated relationships of delta(15)N with land use, human population density, and surface water quality parameters (i.e.
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