Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center
Topics covered in the October activity report.
Blake Sauey, Joel Putnam (UMESC), Robin Calfee, Ed Little, Travis Thompson, and Cody Slaugh (CERC) performed a micro-particle pond trial at CERC, October 8-10, 2015. This was a proof of concept experiment to see if algal attractants and feeding rings could be used to lure Asian carps into an area where they could be fed antimycin A laced micro-particles. The algal attractants and feeding rings are products developed at CERC. Microparticles laced with antimycin A is a biocide product developed at UMESC.
Blake Sauey, Joel Putnam (UMESC), Robin Calfee, Ed Little, Travis Thompson, and Cody Slaugh (CERC) performed a microparticle pond trial at CERC, October 26-28, 2015, as a follow-up to the proof of concept trial conducted earlier in the month. The test was conducted to verify if algal attractants and feeding rings could be used to lure Asian carps into an area where they could be fed antimycin A laced micro-particles. A number of fish died during the first trial, and video records showed additional fish were swimming poorly and had stopped feeding. The algal attractants and feeding rings are products developed at CERC. Microparticles laced with antimycin A is a biocide product developed at UMESC.
Chris Merkes, Jon Amberg, and Mark Gaikowski (UMESC) met with LeAnn White, Julie Lenoch, Jeff Lorch, David Blehert, Daniel Grear, Katie Richgels, Chris Brand, and Scott Morlock at NWHC on October 21, 2015, to discuss the development of a rapid portable diagnostic tool to test salamanders for salamander chytrid fungus - Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans (Bsal). The portable tool could be used to screen salamander imports as they enter the country or monitor wild populations in near real time so that infected individuals can be rapidly quarantined to contain the infection and prevent its spread throughout the U.S.
Terrance Hubert (UMESC) gave a presentation on UMESC’s 2015 technical assistance projects at the Great Lakes Fishery Commission Sea Lamprey Control Board meeting in Ann Arbor, MI, October 20, 2015.
Andrea Ostroff, Science Advisor for the USGS fisheries program, visited the Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center October 6-7, 2015, to meet with the Center’s Principal Investigators, tour the facility, and visit a Mississippi River Habitat Rehabilitation and Enhancement Project.
Richard Erickson (UMESC) gave two guest lectures at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point (UWSP) on October 5 and 6, 2015. Both lectures were related to Erickson’s research on modeling the impacts of wind energy developments and White-nose syndrome on cave bats. The presentation given in a Conservation Biology class focused on wind energy impacts assessment and methodology. The presentation given in a Wildlife Disease class focused on White-nose syndrome. While at UWSP, Richard Erickson also meet with Dan Isermann, the Acting Unit Leader of the Wisconsin USGS Fisheries Cooperative Research Unit. They discussed their ongoing research and possible future fisheries research collaborations.
Randy Hines, Patty Ries, Larry Robinson, and Janis Ruhser (UMESC) hosted over a 100 students from La Crosse's Longfellow Middle School’s "School on the River," October 21, 2015. The Program’s curriculum focuses on the Mississippi River’s ecological systems and how these systems lead to students’ understanding of how cultural, economic, political, and organizational systems work in the real world. Larry's and Janis' presentation discussed the use of geographic information systems to map and monitor floodplain vegetation on the Upper Mississippi River System, including the use of historic aerial photos and 3D mapping technologies.
Jeff Houser, Nate De Jager and Kristin Bouska (UMESC) met with colleagues from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and Illinois Natural History Survey to begin developing a conceptual model describing the ecological resilience of the Upper Mississippi River. This modeling effort is part of a larger project developing and indicators of resilience for the Upper Mississippi River, funded by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Upper Mississippi River Restoration Program. The meeting was held October 8, 2015, at UMESC.
Jennifer Dieck, Kevin Hop, Erin Hoy, Joe Jakusz, Stephanie Sattler, Andrew Strassman (UMESC), and Rickie White (NatureServe) completed an evaluation of Accuracy Assessment results in correlation with the Southern Blue Ridge (SBR) Ecoregion of the Appalachian National Scenic Trail (APPA) for the National Park Service Vegetation Mapping Inventory Program mapping project. The reconciliation of Accuracy Assessment results meeting took place October 6-8, 2015, at the Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center in La Crosse, WI. Site specific Accuracy Assessment field data results were reviewed for potential changes to vegetation assignments; adjustments to the APPA SBR vegetation classification were also addressed.
Wayne Thogmartin (UMESC) co-authored a publication on the onset of spring plant growth, that it has shifted earlier in the year over the past several decades due to rising global temperatures. Earlier spring onset may cause honological mismatches between the availability of plant resources and dependent animals, and potentially lead to more false springs, when subsequent freezing temperatures damage new plant growth. Collaborators from the University of Wisconsin, Madison (A. Allstadt, S. Vavrus, A. Pidgeon, V. Radeloff), U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (P. Heglund), and USGS (W. Thogmartin) used extended spring indices to project changes in spring onset, defined by leaf out and by first bloom, and predicted false springs until 2100 in the conterminous United States (US) using statistically downscaled climate projections from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 5 ensemble. Averaged over the study region, the median shift in spring onset was 23 days earlier in the Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 scenario with particularly large shifts in the Western US and the Great Plains. Spatial variation in phenology was due to the influence of short-term temperature changes around the time of spring onset versus season long accumulation of warm temperatures. False spring risk increased in the Great Plains and portions of the Midwest, but remained constant or decreased elsewhere. The authors concluded that global climate change may have complex and spatially variable effects on spring onset and false springs, making local predictions of change difficult. A copy of the publication is available at http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/10/10/104008/meta. Additional information is available at http://environmentalresearchweb.org/cws/article/news/62894.
Wayne Thogmartin, Kevin Aagaard, Tim Fox, and Kevin Kenow (UMESC) along with co-authors from the PWRC, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Chicago Botanic Garden, and Miami University published a generalizable energetics-based model of avian migration with the ostensible aim of linking local-level management action to continental-scale management considerations. In this model, birds move through an energy landscape as a function of caloric gains and losses. Sensitivity analyses suggested that survival during migration was sensitive to flight speed, flight cost, the amount of energy the animal could carry and the spatial pattern of energy availability, but generally insensitive to total energy availability per se. Nevertheless, continental patterns in the bird-use days occurred principally in relation to wetland cover and agricultural habitat in the fall. Bird-use days were highest in both spring and fall in the Mississippi Alluvial Valley and along the coast and near-shore environments of South Carolina. Spatial sensitivity analyses suggested that locations nearer to migratory endpoints were less important to survivorship. This sort of spatially explicit information may allow decision-makers to prioritize their conservation actions toward locations most influential to migratory success. Currently, the model is tuned to the attributes of dabbling ducks, principally mallards, but can be modified to accommodate a wide-array of migratory birds including waterbirds and shorebirds. This manuscript is a contribution of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Integrated Waterbird Management and Monitoring Program. The publication is available online, at http://www.esajournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1890/14-1947.1.
Thomas Custer (UMESC) was selected from more than 1,100 reviewers of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (ET&C), as one of the 15 exceptional reviewers in 2015. The list of the exceptional reviewers will appear in the January 2016 issue of ET&C, and will be announced at the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) North America Meeting in November 2015 and the SETAC Europe meeting in May 2016.
Wayne Thogmartin (UMESC) represented the Monarch Conservation Science Partnership at the Midwest Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (MAFWA)/States Monarch Workshop in Des Moines, IA, October 27-29, 2015. Thogmartin provided two presentations, one pertaining to extinction risk and population size targets, and another describing storylines for recovery and geospatial tools useful to conservation planning.
APPA – Appalachian National Scenic Trail
ET&C – Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry
MAFWA – Midwest Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies
NPS – National Park Service
NWHC – National Wildlife Health Center
PWRC – Patuxent Wildlife Research Center
SETAC – Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry
SBR – Southern Blue Ridge
UMESC – Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center
USFWS – U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
USGS – U.S. Geological Survey
UWSP – University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point
