NE CASC News

A team led by Curtice Griffin recently completed the NE CASC project, "Mechanisms for species responses to climate change: Are there biological thresholds?"

This work responds to the widespread impacts of climate change on species and ecosystems across the NE CASC region along with the accompanying need to better equip natural resource managers with information that will help them maintain ecological function and species persistence as climate change becomes more intense. 

Invasive species are shifting their ranges in response to climate change.  The Northeast has been identified as a ‘hotspot’ where up to 100 warm-adapted, range-shifting invasive plants could establish before 2050. But, effectively monitoring and managing for 100 species is an impractical and unrealistic strategy. Writing in Biological Invasions, a team of NE CASC researchers led by Bethany Bradley has recently identified a more practical number of species to manage by using an IUCN recommended impacts assessment called the Environmental Impacts Classification of Alien Taxa (EICAT).

Though it is a comparatively small aquatic creature, the sand lance plays a significant role in sustaining the dynamic ecosystem of the Northwest Atlantic Ocean. Sometimes described as a “quintessential forage fish,” the sand lance serves as a food source for myriad predators, including marine mammals, seabirds, and larger fish such as Atlantic sturgeon, cod, and bluefin tuna. Despite its ecological importance, however, most aspects of the sand lance’s ecology, population dynamics and vulnerability to current and future stressors in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean (NWA) are poorly understood.