As global atmospheric carbon emissions continue to rise, scientists and land managers are increasingly looking to natural ecosystems to sequester and store carbon to buffer the impacts of climate change. Despite their small geographic size, many coastal ecosystems such as salt marshes, seagrass meadows, and mangroves sequester large amounts of...
Oregon’s foredunes are part of a dynamic coastal environment that constantly evolves in response to both ecological and physical forces. Invasive beachgrasses have outcompeted native dune grass in the region and have influenced the shape of Oregon’s foredunes via species-specific biophysical feedback mechanisms. As climate change induced sea-level rise will...
Coastal dunes provide a diverse set of ecosystem services including coastal protection against destructive surge and waves during storm events. Dunes are constantly evolving through various stages of response to storm events and post-storm recovery at rates that vary due to a range of drivers including pre-existing morphology, environmental forcing...
Coastal sand dunes and beaches offer a variety of ecosystem services such as coastal protection, sand stabilization, species conservation, and recreation. However, the management and balance of ecosystem services offered by dunes and beaches is challenging when ecosystem services interact across the landscape. Management focusing only on one ecosystem service...
Sandy beaches and dunes cover approximately one-third of the world’s ice-free coastlines and provide ecosystem services including coastal protection, recreation, wildlife habitat, and carbon sequestration. These dynamic interface habitats are variably shaped by wind, waves, sedimentary processes, and vegetation feedbacks. Positive biophysical feedbacks lead to the formation of vegetated coastal...
Ecological communities are connected in space and time through the transfer of energy, materials, and organisms, together known as ecological subsidies. These ecological subsidies can have substantial effects on community structure, function, and services, especially when the connections are between communities with contrasting productivity. At the ocean-land interface, low productivity...
Biological invasions provide a unique opportunity to study the mechanisms that regulate community composition and ecosystem function. Invasive species that are also ecosystem engineers can substantially alter physical features in an environment, and this can lead to cascading effects on the biological community. Aquatic-terrestrial interface ecosystems are excellent systems to...
Biological invasions and climate change represent two preeminent threats to ecological communities and biodiversity, altering the distribution and abundance of species, disrupting existing species interactions and forming unprecedented ones, and creating novel ecological communities. Many of the most successful invasive species are also ecosystem engineers, species that physically modify the...
Classic biological control can be a powerful option for those tasked with managing biological invasions; however, some biocontrol releases lead to non-target attack – feeding, damage or development on species other than the target species. The cinnabar moth, Tyria jacobaeae L. (Lepidoptera: Erebidae) was introduced to Western Oregon as a...
Coastal dunes are dynamic and unique ecosystems. On the Pacific coast, dunes are generally dominated by the beach grasses, Ammophila breviligulata and Ammophila arenaria, two invasive species introduced in the early 1900’s to stabilize sand and create foredunes that serve to protect people who live behind them. Recently, a novel...