Date: Friday, February 28, 2020
Time: 12:00 pm -1:00 pm
Room: WBY 002
Cascading ecosystem effects of landscape moderated predator communities
Nature-based climate solutions are increasing being touted as ways to recapture atmospheric carbon and store it within ecosystems. Proposed solutions focus on managing plants and microbes owing to the huge role they play in forming carbon sinks within ecosystems. Conserving or managing animal species to is rarely considered as part of the portfolio of natural solutions. The thinking, in fact, often holds that managing habitat space to conserve animals will conflict with allocating space to capture and store carbon; or if both can happen in the same locations they are, nonetheless, functionally unrelated. I will show that failing to account for the functional role of animals in regulating ecosystem carbon cycling can lead to missed opportunities to enhance carbon storage or a failure to achieve carbon management targets. I will further show how the existence of animals within ecosystems and hence the sustainability of natural animal-driven carbon storage depends heavily on the way human land uses across landscapes filter the species composition of ecosystems.
About the speaker:
Os Schmitz Bio
Oswald Schmitz is the Oastler Professor of Population and Community Ecology, in the Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. His research aims to make sense of nature’s complexity that comes from interdependencies among the variety of carnivore, herbivore, and plant species that coexist within ecosystems. These insights help to inform environmental stewardship to enhance the conservation of wildlife species and ensure the sustainability of ecosystems, their functions, and the services that they provide to humankind. He teaches courses on the role of humans in nature and how humans can develop the means to coexist harmoniously with nature. His book “The New Ecology: Rethinking a Science for the Anthropocene” encapsulates much of his thinking about humans and nature, making ecological science accessible to a broader readership.
For more information, contact: PSLA at psla@uconn.edu