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Folders: ROOT > ScienceBase Catalog > National and Regional Climate Adaptation Science Centers > Southeast CASC > FY 2015 Projects > Consequences of Urbanization and Climate Change on Human and Ecosystem Health ( Show direct descendants )

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Abstract (from http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0173844): Urban habitats are characterized by impervious surfaces, which increase temperatures and reduce water availability to plants. The effects of these conditions on herbivorous insects are not well understood, but may provide insight into future conditions. Three primary hypotheses have been proposed to explain why multiple herbivorous arthropods are more abundant and damaging in cities, and support has been found for each. First, less complex vegetation may reduce biological control of pests. Second, plant stress can increase plant quality for pests. And third, urban warming can directly increase pest fitness and abundance. These...
Urban forests provide well-documented environmental and societal benefits valued at more than four billion dollars per year in the United States. As cities expand onto land once occupied by rural forests, urban trees take on an even more vital role in mitigating global climate change, conserving biodiversity, and protecting human health. Maintaining the health of trees is challenging in cities and in forests under climate change because of tree stress and pests. Unhealthy trees do not provide adequate ecosystem services or conservation value compared to healthy trees. In this work we found that exotic trees can remain healthy and maintain biodiversity of arthropods (e.g. spiders and insects) that is similar to native...
Abstract (from Environmental Entomology) An insect species’ geographic distribution is probably delimited in part by physiological tolerances of environmental temperatures. Gloomy scale (Melanaspis tenebricosa (Comstock)) is a native insect herbivore in eastern U.S. forests. In eastern U.S. cities, where temperatures are warmer than nearby natural areas, M. tenebricosa is a primary pest of red maple (Acer rubrum L.; Sapindales: Sapindaceae) With warming, M. tenebricosa may spread to new cities or become pestilent in forests. To better understand current and future M. tenebricosa distribution boundaries, we examined M. tenebricosa thermal tolerance under laboratory conditions. We selected five hot and five cold experimental...
Abstract (from MDPI ) Sleeper species are innocuous native or naturalized species that exhibit invasive characteristics and become pests in response to environmental change. Climate warming is expected to increase arthropod damage in forests, in part, by transforming innocuous herbivores into severe pests: awakening sleeper species. Urban areas are warmer than natural areas due to the urban heat island effect and so the trees and pests in cities already experience temperatures predicted to occur in 50–100 years. We posit that arthropod species that become pests of urban trees are those that benefit from warming and thus should be monitored as potential sleeper species in forests. We illustrate this with two case...
Abstract (from SpringerLink) Predation by natural enemies is important for regulating herbivore abundance and herbivory. Theory predicts that complex habitats support more natural enemies, which exert top-down control over arthropods and therefore can reduce herbivory. However, it is unclear if theory developed in other more natural systems similarly apply to predation by vertebrate and invertebrate natural enemies across urban habitats of varying complexity. We used plasticine caterpillar models to assess risk of predation by birds and insects, collected leaf-feeding arthropods, and measured herbivory in willow oak trees (Quercus phellos) in two seasons to determine how predation influenced herbivory across urban...
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In this study, we investigated how the interaction of urbanization, latitudinal warming, and scale insect abundance affected urban tree health. We predicted that trees in warmer, lower latitude cities would be in poorer health at lower levels of urbanization than trees at cooler, higher latitudes due to the interaction of urbanization, latitudinal temperature, and herbivory. To evaluate our predictions, we surveyed the abundance of scale insect herbivores on a single, common tree species (Acer rubrum) in eight US cities spanning 10° of latitude. We estimated urbanization at two extents, a local one that accounted for the direct effects on an individual tree, and a larger one that captured the surrounding urban landscape.
Urbanization represents an unintentional global experiment that can provide insights into how species will respond and interact under future global change scenarios. Cities produce many conditions that are predicted to occur widely in the future, such as warmer temperatures, higher carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations and exacerbated droughts. In using cities as surrogates for global change, it is challenging to disentangle climate variables—such as temperature—from co-occurring or confounding urban variables—such as impervious surface—and then to understand the interactive effects of multiple climate variables on both individual species and species interactions. However, such interactions are also difficult to replicate...
Abstarct (from Oikos): Urban landscapes are characterized by high proportions of impervious surface resulting in higher temperatures than adjacent natural landscapes. In some cities, like those at cooler latitudes, trees may benefit from warmer urban temperatures, but trees in many cities are beset with problems like drought stress and increased herbivory. What drives patterns of urban tree health across urbanization and latitudinal temperature gradients? In natural systems, latitude–herbivory relationships are well‐studied, and recent temperate studies have shown that herbivory generally increases with decreasing latitudes (warmer temperatures). However, the applicability of this latitude–herbivory theory in already‐warmed...
Abstract (from Landscape Ecology): Context Development and survival vary across a species’ geographic range and are also affected by local conditions like urban warming, which may drive changes in biology that magnify or reduce the risks of hazardous organisms to people. Larvae of the pine processionary moth (Thaumetopoea pityocampa Schiff; PPM) are covered with setae (hair-like structures) that cause allergic reactions in warm-blooded vertebrates upon contact with the skin, eyes, or respiratory tract. Objectives Our objective was to determine whether PPM larva development, phenology, and survival change with urban warming in ways that affect the risks of this organism to people. Methods In Orléans, France, we...
Categories: Publication; Types: Citation
Abstract (from Nature Communications): A major challenge in articulating human dimensions of climate change lies in translating global climate forecasts into impact assessments that are intuitive to the public. Climate-analog mapping involves matching the expected future climate at a location (e.g., a person’s city of residence) with current climate of another, potentially familiar, location - thereby providing a more relatable, place-based assessment of climate change. For 540 North American urban areas, we used climate-analog mapping to identify the location that has a contemporary climate most similar to each urban area’s expected 2080’s climate. We show that climate of most urban areas will shift considerably...
Abstract from Journal of Applied Ecology: Urban forests provide important ecosystem services to city residents, including pollution removal and carbon storage. Climate change and urbanization pose multiple threats to these services. However, how these threats combine to affect urban trees, and thus how to mitigate their effects, remains largely untested because multi-factorial experiments on mature trees are impractical. We used a unique urban warming experiment paired with a laboratory chamber experiment to determine how three of the most potentially damaging factors associated with global change for urban and rural trees—warming, drought, and insect herbivory—affect growth of Quercus phellos(willow oak), the...
Abstract (from Forestry): Higher temperatures and drought are key aspects of global change with the potential to alter the distribution and severity of many arthropod pests in forest systems. Scale insects (Hemiptera: Coccoidea) infest many tree species and are among the most important pests of trees in urban and rural forests, plantations and other forest systems. Infestations of native or exotic scale insects can kill or sicken trees with economic and ecosystem-wide consequences. Warming can have direct effects on the life history, fitness and population dynamics of many scale insect species by increasing development rate, survival or fecundity. These direct benefits can increase the geographic distribution of...
Categories: Publication; Types: Citation
Abstract (from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.13550/abstract): Biological effects of climate change are expected to vary geographically, with a strong signature of latitude. For ectothermic animals, there is systematic latitudinal variation in the relationship between climate and thermal performance curves, which describe the relationship between temperature and an organism's fitness. Here, we ask whether these documented latitudinal patterns can be generalized to predict arthropod responses to warming across mid- and high temperate latitudes, for taxa whose thermal physiology has not been measured. To address this question, we used a novel natural experiment consisting of a series of urban warming...
map background search result map search result map Scale insect abundance, impervious surface proportions, and temperature data for Acer rubrum study trees Scale insect abundance, impervious surface proportions, and temperature data for Acer rubrum study trees