@article{90e65fe2f9ab475592f1a665178d4163,
title = "Cascading effects: insights from the U.S. Long Term Ecological Research Network",
abstract = "Ecosystems across the United States are changing in complex and unpredictable ways and analysis of these changes requires coordinated, long-term research. This paper is a product of a synthesis effort of the U.S. National Science Foundation funded Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) network addressing the LTER core research area of “populations and communities.” This analysis revealed that each LTER site had at least one compelling “story” about what their site would look like in 50–100 yr. As the stories were prepared, themes emerged, and the stories were group into papers along five themes: state change, connectivity, resilience, time lags, and cascading effects. This paper addresses the cascading effects theme and includes stories from the Bonanza Creek (boreal), Kellogg Biological Station (agricultural and freshwater), Palmer (Antarctica), and Harvard Forest (temperate forest) LTER sites. We define cascading effects very broadly to include a wide array of unforeseen chains of events that result from a variety of actions or changes in a system. While climate change is having important direct effects on boreal forests, indirect effects mediated by fire activity—severity, size, and return interval—have large cascading effects over the long term. In northeastern temperate forests, legacies of human management and disturbance affect the composition of current forests, which creates a cascade of effects that interact with the climate-facilitated invasion of an exotic pest. In Antarctica, declining sea ice creates a cascade of effects including declines in Ad{\`e}lie and increases in Gentoo penguins, changes in phytoplankton, and consequent changes in zooplankton populations. An invasion of an exotic species of lady beetle is likely to have important future effects on pest control and conservation of native species in agricultural landscapes. New studies of zebra mussels, a well-studied invader, have established links between climate, the heat tolerance of the mussels, and harmful algal blooms. Collectively, these stories highlight the need for long-term studies to sort out the complexities of different types of ecological cascades. The diversity of sites within the LTER network facilitates the emergence of overarching concepts about trophic interactions as an important driver of ecosystem structure, function, services, and futures.",
keywords = "Antarctica, Special Feature: Forecasting Earth{\textquoteright}s Ecosystems with Long-Term Ecological Research, agriculture, boreal forest, fire, forests, lady bugs, lakes, land use, penguins, zebra mussels",
author = "Bahlai, {Christie A.} and Clarisse Hart and Kavanaugh, {Maria T.} and White, {Jeffrey D.} and Ruess, {Roger W.} and Brinkman, {Todd J.} and Ducklow, {Hugh W.} and Foster, {David R.} and Fraser, {William R.} and H{\'e}l{\`e}ne Genet and Groffman, {Peter M.} and Hamilton, {Stephen K.} and Johnstone, {Jill F.} and Knut Kielland and Landis, {Douglas A.} and Mack, {Michelle C.} and Orlando Sarnelle and Thompson, {Jonathan R.}",
note = "Funding Information: The Bonanza Creek study was funded by the NSF Long‐Term Ecological Research program. We thank Terry Chapin, Eugenie Euskirchen, Tamara Harms, Teresa Hollingsworth, Jay Jones, Gary Kofinas, Mary Beth Leigh, Dave McGuire, Christa Mulder, Vlad Romanovsky, Scott Rupp, Ted Schuur, Elena Sparrow, Lee Taylor, Merritt Turetsky, Dave Verbyla, Diane Wagner, and all the BNZ LTER staff, graduate students, and undergraduate assistants. The Kellogg Biological Station lady beetle research was supported by the NSF Long‐Term Ecological Research Program (DEB 1637653 and 182042) at the Kellogg Biological Station and by Michigan State University AgBioResearch. We thank Stuart Gage, Manuel Colunga‐Garcia, Mary Gardiner, Alejandro Costamagna, Julia Perrone, J. Megan Woltz, Stacey VanderWulp, and countless student workers for maintenance and sampling of the lady beetle trapping network. The authors of the Kellogg Biological Station zebra mussel story acknowledge funding from the Environmental Protection Agency (Ecology and Oceanography of Harmful Algal Blooms/2004‐Science to Achieve Results‐C1, project RD83170801), the National Science Foundation (Division of Environmental Biology grants 0841864, 0841944, and 1027253), the Gull Lake Quality Organization, and Michigan State University (Kellogg Biological Station and recruitment fellowship to J. White). Preparation of the Palmer Station story was supported by NSF LTER Award PLR‐1440435 to HWD and NASA ROSES award NNX14AL86G to S. Doney (WHOI). Data used are all available from the LTER Datazoo, http://oceaninformatics.ucsd.edu/datazoo/data/pallter/datasets . Production of the Harvard Forest LTER story was supported by NSF LTER Award DEB‐1237491. Funding Information: The Bonanza Creek study was funded by the NSF Long-Term Ecological Research program. We thank Terry Chapin, Eugenie Euskirchen, Tamara Harms, Teresa Hollingsworth, Jay Jones, Gary Kofinas, Mary Beth Leigh, Dave McGuire, Christa Mulder, Vlad Romanovsky, Scott Rupp, Ted Schuur, Elena Sparrow, Lee Taylor, Merritt Turetsky, Dave Verbyla, Diane Wagner, and all the BNZ LTER staff, graduate students, and undergraduate assistants. The Kellogg Biological Station lady beetle research was supported by the NSF Long-Term Ecological Research Program (DEB 1637653 and 182042) at the Kellogg Biological Station and by Michigan State University AgBioResearch. We thank Stuart Gage, Manuel Colunga-Garcia, Mary Gardiner, Alejandro Costamagna, Julia Perrone, J. Megan Woltz, Stacey VanderWulp, and countless student workers for maintenance and sampling of the lady beetle trapping network. The authors of the Kellogg Biological Station zebra mussel story acknowledge funding from the Environmental Protection Agency (Ecology and Oceanography of Harmful Algal Blooms/2004-Science to Achieve Results-C1, project RD83170801), the National Science Foundation (Division of Environmental Biology grants 0841864, 0841944, and 1027253), the Gull Lake Quality Organization, and Michigan State University (Kellogg Biological Station and recruitment fellowship to J. White). Preparation of the Palmer Station story was supported by NSF LTER Award PLR-1440435 to HWD and NASA ROSES award NNX14AL86G to S. Doney (WHOI). Data used are all available from the LTER Datazoo, http://oceaninformatics.ucsd.edu/datazoo/data/pallter/datasets. Production of the Harvard Forest LTER story was supported by NSF LTER Award DEB-1237491. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2021 The Authors.",
year = "2021",
month = may,
doi = "10.1002/ecs2.3430",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "12",
journal = "Ecosphere",
issn = "2150-8925",
publisher = "Ecological Society of America",
number = "5",
}