Breaking Traditional Barriers to Model Climate Change and Land Use Impacts on Freshwater Mussels
Thomas Kwak, Leader of the U.S. Geological Survey North Carolina Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit and Professor of Biology, North Carolina State University, will give a presentation on global declines in the abundance and diversity of freshwater mussels that have been attributed to a wide array of human activities that cause pollution, water-quality degradation, and habitat destruction.
| When |
Mar 26, 2013
from 03:00 PM EDT to 04:00 PM EDT |
|---|---|
| Where | Webinar |
| Contact Name | Ashley Fortune |
| Contact Phone | 304-876-7361 |
| Add event to calendar |
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These anthropogenic effects interact with aquatic environments and their inhabitants at multiple spatial, temporal, and organizational scales. Those dynamics that act at broad scales are complex and difficult to study and understand. These timely, global issues present urgent challenges for the conservation of aquatic habitats and biota that require new information to address. In response, our primary objective for this project was to use our newly developed mussel vulnerability and risk threshold data in downscaled watershed and instream regional models to allow federal and state natural resource managers to forecast species responses to climate change over the next 30-50 years and to develop adaptation strategies to mitigate adverse effects. In this webinar, we will present research highlights from several components of this effort and then demonstrate their integration into holistic models that could not have been developed by any single investigator or institution. We conclude that the significant information needs required for future conservation and management of freshwater mussels in response to global change compel breaking traditional barriers to advance science.
