19
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
0 collections
    0
    shares
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: found
      Is Open Access

      Contemporary Land Change Alters Fish Communities in a San Francisco Bay Watershed, California, U.S.A.

      research-article
      1 , * , 2 , 1
      PLoS ONE
      Public Library of Science

      Read this article at

      Bookmark
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          Urbanization is one of the leading threats to freshwater biodiversity, and urban regions continue to expand globally. Here we examined the relationship between recent urbanization and shifts in stream fish communities. We sampled fishes at 32 sites in the Alameda Creek Watershed, near San Francisco, California, in 1993–1994 and again in 2009, and we quantified univariate and multivariate changes in fish communities between the sampling periods. Sampling sites were classified into those downstream of a rapidly urbanizing area (“urbanized sites”), and those found in less impacted areas (“low-impacted sites”). We calculated the change from non-urban to urban land cover between 1993 and 2009 at two scales for each site (the total watershed and a 3km buffer zone immediately upstream of each site). Neither the mean relative abundance of native fish nor nonnative species richness changed significantly between the survey periods. However, we observed significant changes in fish community composition (as measured by Bray-Curtis dissimilarity) and a decrease in native species richness between the sampling periods at urbanized sites, but not at low-impacted sites. Moreover, the relative abundance of one native cyprinid ( Lavinia symmetricus) decreased at the urbanized sites but not at low-impacted sites. Increased urbanization was associated with changes in the fish community, and this relationship was strongest at the smaller (3km buffer) scale. Our results suggest that ongoing land change alters fish communities and that contemporary resurveys are an important tool for examining how freshwater taxa are responding to recent environmental change.

          Related collections

          Most cited references12

          • Record: found
          • Abstract: found
          • Article: not found

          Global biodiversity scenarios for the year 2100.

          Scenarios of changes in biodiversity for the year 2100 can now be developed based on scenarios of changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide, climate, vegetation, and land use and the known sensitivity of biodiversity to these changes. This study identified a ranking of the importance of drivers of change, a ranking of the biomes with respect to expected changes, and the major sources of uncertainties. For terrestrial ecosystems, land-use change probably will have the largest effect, followed by climate change, nitrogen deposition, biotic exchange, and elevated carbon dioxide concentration. For freshwater ecosystems, biotic exchange is much more important. Mediterranean climate and grassland ecosystems likely will experience the greatest proportional change in biodiversity because of the substantial influence of all drivers of biodiversity change. Northern temperate ecosystems are estimated to experience the least biodiversity change because major land-use change has already occurred. Plausible changes in biodiversity in other biomes depend on interactions among the causes of biodiversity change. These interactions represent one of the largest uncertainties in projections of future biodiversity change.
            Bookmark
            • Record: found
            • Abstract: found
            • Article: found
            Is Open Access

            A Meta-Analysis of Global Urban Land Expansion

            The conversion of Earth's land surface to urban uses is one of the most irreversible human impacts on the global biosphere. It drives the loss of farmland, affects local climate, fragments habitats, and threatens biodiversity. Here we present a meta-analysis of 326 studies that have used remotely sensed images to map urban land conversion. We report a worldwide observed increase in urban land area of 58,000 km2 from 1970 to 2000. India, China, and Africa have experienced the highest rates of urban land expansion, and the largest change in total urban extent has occurred in North America. Across all regions and for all three decades, urban land expansion rates are higher than or equal to urban population growth rates, suggesting that urban growth is becoming more expansive than compact. Annual growth in GDP per capita drives approximately half of the observed urban land expansion in China but only moderately affects urban expansion in India and Africa, where urban land expansion is driven more by urban population growth. In high income countries, rates of urban land expansion are slower and increasingly related to GDP growth. However, in North America, population growth contributes more to urban expansion than it does in Europe. Much of the observed variation in urban expansion was not captured by either population, GDP, or other variables in the model. This suggests that contemporary urban expansion is related to a variety of factors difficult to observe comprehensively at the global level, including international capital flows, the informal economy, land use policy, and generalized transport costs. Using the results from the global model, we develop forecasts for new urban land cover using SRES Scenarios. Our results show that by 2030, global urban land cover will increase between 430,000 km2 and 12,568,000 km2, with an estimate of 1,527,000 km2 more likely.
              Bookmark
              • Record: found
              • Abstract: found
              • Article: not found

              Long-term datasets in biodiversity research and monitoring: assessing change in ecological communities through time.

              The growing need for baseline data against which efforts to reduce the rate of biodiversity loss can be judged highlights the importance of long-term datasets, some of which are as old as ecology itself. We review methods of evaluating change in biodiversity at the community level using these datasets, and contrast whole-community approaches with those that combine information from different species and habitats. As all communities experience temporal turnover, one of the biggest challenges is distinguishing change that can be attributed to external factors, such as anthropogenic activities, from underlying natural change. We also discuss methodological issues, such as false alerts and modifications in design, of which users of these data sets need to be aware. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
                Bookmark

                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Role: Editor
                Journal
                PLoS One
                PLoS ONE
                plos
                plosone
                PLoS ONE
                Public Library of Science (San Francisco, CA USA )
                1932-6203
                18 November 2015
                2015
                : 10
                : 11
                : e0141707
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, University of California, Berkeley, California, United States of America
                [2 ]United States Environmental Protection Agency, San Francisco, California, United States of America
                Biodiversity Insitute of Ontario—University of Guelph, CANADA
                Author notes

                Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

                Conceived and designed the experiments: KCY SMC RAL. Performed the experiments: RAL KCY SMC. Analyzed the data: KCY. Wrote the paper: KCY SMC. Contributed the data: RAL.

                [¤]

                Current address: San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, Oakland, California, United States of America

                Article
                PONE-D-15-29098
                10.1371/journal.pone.0141707
                4651541
                26580560
                7432adb2-b80a-43d8-898f-1bd03ab4e13f

                This is an open access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication

                History
                : 2 July 2015
                : 12 October 2015
                Page count
                Figures: 6, Tables: 3, Pages: 19
                Funding
                Support was provided by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program, grant number: DGE1106400 to KCY [ https://www.nsfgrfp.org]. Publication made possible in part by support from the Berkeley Research Impact Initiative (BRII) sponsored by the UC Berkeley Library. The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
                Categories
                Research Article
                Custom metadata
                Data are available from Dryad (doi: 10.5061/dryad.54hr0).

                Uncategorized
                Uncategorized

                Comments

                Comment on this article