Comments
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1998 13:34:45 -0400
From: Chuck_Parker@nps.gov (Chuck Parker)
Subject: Response to the Strawman Draft
To: pswhite@unc.edu
Cc: pick@pick.uga.edu, msharkey@southey.ca.uky.edu, jmorse@clemson.edu,
Keith_Langdon@nps.gov (Keith Langdon),
Becky_Nichols@nps.gov (Becky Nichols),
Mike_Jenkins@nps.gov (Mike Jenkins), Dana_Soehn@nps.gov (Dana Soehn)
Peter: Specific comments on your straw man outline -
I. Rationale:
This should be presented as a rationale for the structured component
of the ATBI, to run
concurrently with the more traditional component. [I am using
"structured" for the concept you
outlined, which you called "controlled inventory." I use
"traditional" for the component that
involves specialists collecting in those areas that their experience
suggests will lead to the highest
biodiversity for their groups or to those areas having especially
interesting species. The collecting
in the traditional component may be qualitative or quantitative,
depending on the group and the
specialist.]
1. Organizing efforts around environmental and historical influences
known to influence certain groups of organisms, such as the
vegetation, may or may not capture the organizing principles for
other groups of organisms. For example, the case of soil nematodes in
Cameroon that do not respond to recognizable features of the
vegetation or the soil.
2. Emphasize the management aspects here, as that will make it easier
for some people to understand the need for a structured component at
all.
3. Many techniques used by systematists can recover that type of
information wherever they are used. The advantages of doing so in
specific areas include the possibility that we can compare data from a
variety of groups in ways that have not been done before. For
instance, the use of the Coddington protocol for spiders allows
estimates of species per unit of time. If other groups of organisms
have protocols that also allow estimates of species per unit of time,
we may be able to compare spiders with other groups in those areas
where both/all protocols are followed.
My perception of the lingering doubt that you mention, aside from
taxonomic specialists being told by ecologists that the ecologists
know a better way of doing t hings, is that many people feel that
directing a lot of effort to a very small number of sites (50 is
hardly any), chosen on the basis of characteristics that may have
little to do with many groups, and restricting the choice of
collecting methods to those that are easily quantifiable, will result
in a serious underestimate of the actual biodiversity, and will not
even allow an estimate of the bias of the approach. Not every
standardized collecting technique that may be used will be suitable to
use in every plot, even if that were desirable. (Some collecting
methods may bias other collecting methods, and therefore should not be
used in the same plot.) The error bounds will only apply to those
groups efficiently and relatively completely sampled in the reference
areas, and for which insignificant additional biodiversity exists
outside the reference areas. Only if the park is much more uniform
than I perceive it to be, will that encompass very many groups.
II. Freedom of choice
This covers what I termed above as the traditional component. As I
suggest above, I think this should be viewed as an equal concurrent
component of the ATBI. Also, I believe that the traditional and
structured components can provide important checks and balances on
each other. The traditional approach may provide a more complete list
of species than the structured approach, although how much difference
will vary among groups. The traditional approach will allow us to
distinguish those groups that are adequately represented by the
reference areas from those that are poorly represented. At this
point, I would not want to hazard a guess which groups are best
represented and which are least well represented. The structured
approach will allow us to develop reliable estimates for the true
biodiversity of selected groups, with the results from the traditional
approach providing absolute lower bounds on the estimates.
I think the third paragraph under this heading is very important. We
need to encourage and welcome all reputable participants willing to
work under the guidelines established for the ATBI. Everyone who may
make a contribution should be made to feel an important part of the
effort. The discovery of a species not previously encountered or the
collection of a common species in a location/habitat not previously
recorded, both contribute invaluable information even if that occurs
outside a reference area.
I strongly support the idea of the "Users' Guide" for ATBI
participants. The two NPS invertebrate inventory workshops in Rhode
Island and Montana recommended such an approach for parks overall.
Not only would a user's guide orient people to the park, it also would
specify the guidelines for participation, including what information
is required for records collected, precision of locality data
required, etc. It should be available on-line, and in a waterproof
printed format that can be used in the field. [As far as the
information required, by the way, number of specimens (or relative
abundance, if that is more applicable) of each species collected/
encountered, and locality, minimally as coordinates. I balk at the
suggestion that I report the veg community I was in - I still cannot
distinguish a beech from a birch, or a red oak from a white oak
(they're all green, for heaven's sake!).]
As far as the suggestion that we develop target groups and fund
particular efforts for those groups to allow us to proceed from
Keith's levels 1=>2=>3, I am reminded of Pick's warning at the
December meeting that targeting certain groups automatically alienates
everyone working on the non-targeted groups. Although he said that
about only conducting an ATBI on targeted groups to begin with, I
think the same caveat applies here. The data needed to progress from
2=>3 may be very easily obtained for some groups and impossible to
obtain for others. I think that we should be very careful about
further biasing the proceedings by providing funds for the easy groups
at the expense of the more difficult groups, while potentially risking
alienation of most of the rest of the participants. It may be just as
or even more informative to provide strong funding for a program that
is not reference area based as it may be for one that is. This will
be a difficult issue.
III. Organizing principles for biological inventory
I suggest that what are described are organizing principles for the
structured component of an ATBI and that ways to incorporate the
traditional component need specifically to be developed.
1. Principle 1 - I doubt that anyone will argue against the idea that
efforts must be stratified. Almost everybody stratifies their
efforts, at least informally. However, there are many ways to
stratify and not all of them are compatible or obvious. If we select
an approach that works according to, say, Whittaker's concepts, people
will understand where it came from, even if they may not find it
particularly useful. A GIS is the only way to go here.
Principle 2 - My concept of the reference areas is that the work in
these areas will be at the direction of specialists (from the TWIGs),
but done by ATBI hires or volunteers (the Collecting Working Group).
The specialists will determine which approaches are suitable for which
groups, how frequently traps need to be emptied, preservatives to be
used, etc. Specialists will determine where individual traps will be
located in any given Biodiversity Reference Point, and which BRPs
should be sampled for group A or B, etc. This, of course requires
visit(s) by the specialists, which will depend on funding, time,
commitments, etc. This encompasses point 2 Science listed under
this principle. The Collecting Working Group teams will be trained by
the specialists in the installation, operation, maintenance, and
servicing of each collecting method employed. These teams will have
the greatest need for solving logistical problems as pointed out in
point 1 Practicality. Point 3 Management, will best be addressed by
Park staff, especially by the Resources Management staff. Input from
specialists will be welcomed, of course.
Gradient responses can be reassembled from random points. However,
points are not random under the traditional approach, although they
may not follow a conventional gradient, either. Systematists do not
collect randomly--ecologists do. Systematists very carefully select
sites based on their intimate knowledge of the groups with which they
work. To a non-specialist it may appear random or arbitrary, or at
least obscure, and it may be that a systematist has a difficult time
articulating the reasons for selecting one site over another. But,
there is usually good agreement among specialists in the same or
related groups about what constitutes a good collecting locality.
Putting together data from sites selected by specialists in group X
may result in clear patterns that were not at all obvious to the
nonspecialist.
I have already suggested that catchments and small watersheds may be a
good approach to determining Landscape Reference Areas. They have the
distinct advantage of being natural units, as opposed to being
arbitrarily defined squares on a map. They have the distinct
disadvantage of being fixed (you cannot adjust them a few hundred
meters east to make logistics easier), and generally of being large
relative to arbitrarily sized plots. And, I suppose, for some
gradients it might make more sense to use the inverse of a
catchment--that is a ridge with its side slopes. But, from my
background in aquatics they make a lot of sense.
How many and what size are important questions. If we use the upper
extremes in the straw man (50 LRA of 10 sq. km each), we get 50,000
ha, which is about 24% of the park. If there then are 50 1-ha BRPs
within each LRA, that's 2500 BRPs and 2500 ha (about 1% of the park).
This truly is a mind-boggling number of sites to contemplate sampling
in any scheme that requires more than a single visit per site over the
10-15 years optimistically allocated for the effort. For example, the
present I&M program samples 27 permanent sites and 13-15 rotating
sites once each year for the aquatic macroinvertebrate component of
the program. Samples require a minimum of 3 people to collect, and
sample collection occurs from June-September each year. That much
time is required due to logistics, weather, other duties, etc.--all
the usual problems. Then, the samples cost about $185 each to process
(this year, guaranteed to be higher next year), and processing will
take about 6 months. So, data from summer 1998 sampling should be
received by March or April (although, we haven't received the data
from 1996 and 1997, yet). If we ignore the personnel costs (ha!),
that is $7400 and 10 months for 40 samples (6 months to process plus
the 4 months needed to collect the samples). If we scale that up to
2500 samples, we are talking $462,500 and (no fewer than) 375 months!
Well, obviously, we cannot do that once, let alone once each year.
Let's drop back to the lower number, about 250 samples. The numbers
are more reasonable, but remember that I have left out the personnel
costs. All this is for a semi-quantitative (at best) method that
concentrates on the immature stages that often can only be identified
to genus. OK, so maybe that is not the method we need to use in the
ATBI. My point is that we are talking big bucks. Would it be cheaper
to use Malaise traps, light traps, emergence traps, flight intercept
traps, sticky traps, some combination of the above, etc.? Pick
empties his Malaise traps every 2 weeks. That is a lot. Very high
maintenance. Very high personnel costs. Very high sample processing
costs. And, in general, they do a lousy job of sampling aquatics!
Or, would a more traditional approach be much more cost effective in
the long run?
4. Principle 4 - Can we use this design to look at convergence and
the "regional" component of diversity, a la Schluter and Ricklefs? If
we substitute the LRAs for the regions typically used in this type of
analysis, we may find some interesting relationships among watersheds,
vegetation types, geology, etc. This may work well for some groups
and not at all for others. Or, it may not work at all. I'm looking
at my aquatic data to see if it provides any interesting insights
there.
=====================================
Anyway, I guess I've sort of rambled on here. I know we discussed
some of these points last week, and some of them probably are obvious
and didn't require putting down specifically, but I hope some of it is
of value.
Chuck
| Discover Life in America | Science | Inventory Design | Parker - 29 September, 1998 |