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Person

Melinda Martinez

Research Ecologist
Email: melindamartinez@usgs.gov
Office Phone: 301-497-5500
ORCID: 0000-0001-6652-9220

Location
12100 Beech Forest Road
Laurel , MD 20708
US
Abstract (from Springer): Climate change is altering species’ range limits and transforming ecosystems. For example, warming temperatures are leading to the range expansion of tropical, cold-sensitive species at the expense of their cold-tolerant counterparts. In some temperate and subtropical coastal wetlands, warming winters are enabling mangrove forest encroachment into salt marsh, which is a major regime shift that has significant ecological and societal ramifications. Here, we synthesized existing data and expert knowledge to assess the distribution of mangroves near rapidly changing range limits in the southeastern USA. We used expert elicitation to identify data limitations and highlight knowledge gaps for...
Categories: Publication; Types: Citation
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Data shows CH4 fluxes from the upper portion of cypress knees across various climate and flooding gradients of the North American Baldcypress Swamp Network in the Mississippi River Alluvial Valley. Climate data in the form of temperature, relative humidity, barometric pressure, and precipitation 3-days leading up to sampling date are also included. There various forms to calculate fluxes using cone and frustrum shapes that were compared to LiDAR scans fromi the field, therefore surface area and volume for each geometric shape is also included in the dataset.
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Global climate change is leading to large-scale shifts in species’ range limits. For example, rising winter temperatures are shifting the abundance and distributions of tropical, cold sensitive plant species towards higher latitudes. Coastal wetlands provide a prime example of such shifts, with tropical mangrove forests expanding into temperate salt marshes as winter warming alleviates past geographic limits set by cold intolerance. These rapid changes are dynamic and challenging to monitor, and uncertainty remains regarding the extent of mangrove expansion near poleward range limits. Here, we synthesized existing datasets and expert knowledge to assess the current (i.e., 2021) distribution of mangroves near dynamic...
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Raster data shows landscape scale trajectories of change as four potential scenarios based on Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) trends and standard deviation trends using full time series (Scenarios_All_FULL_TS.tif) as well as time series up to LandTrendr breakpoint if detected (Scenarios_All_LT_TS.tif). Time series analysis for trend use Landsat surface reflectance imagery from 1985 to 2021. Scenarios: 1) Abrupt Transition – ecosystem is unstable and transitioning to alternate state (regime shift, exhibiting EWS); 2) Slowly Transitioning – ecosystem is transitioning slowly to alternate state (no EWS detected); 3) Recovering ecosystem – ecosystem is unstable but also becoming re-vegetated over the years;...
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Climate change is altering the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events. Quantifying ecosystem responses to extreme events at the landscape scale is critical for understanding and responding to climate-driven change but is constrained by limited data availability. Here, we integrated remote sensing with ground-based observations to quantify landscape-scale vegetation damage from an extreme climatic event. We used ground- and satellite-based black mangrove (Avicennia germinans) leaf damage data from the northern Gulf of Mexico (USA and Mexico) to examine the effects of an extreme freeze in a region where black mangroves are expanding their range. The February 2021 event produced coastal temperatures as low...
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