Safeguarding Wildlife from Climate Change Web Conference Series

A partnership between the National Wildlife Federation and the USFWS. NCTC Climate Change Logo

The USFWS and National Wildlife Federation (NWF) have developed a series of web conferences to increase communication and transfer of technical information between conservation professionals regarding the increasing challenges from climate change. This program is being facilitated by the USFWS's National Conservation Training Center (NCTC). A key to the success of the web series will be improved collaboration and shared learning of rapidly developing tools and processes for evaluating future effects to fish and wildlife species and ecosystems.

Web conferencing is a way to hold group meetings or live presentations over the Internet. It minimizes travel, reduces costs, facilitates collaboration, and is real time. At a web conference, participants sit at their personal computer and share information with each other through the Internet. Visual communication on the computer is usually accompanied by voice communication through a telephone conference call. Typical features of web conferences include a slide presentation, application sharing such as spreadsheet manipulation, whiteboards, Internet co-browsing, chat, file sharing, and polls.

The web conferences are similar to a graduate seminar, last about 1 hour, and feature an interactive question-and-answer session. Topics are related to the expertise of invited speaker and will include scientists from academia, government, and private conservation organizations. The conferences are targeted at a technical level equivalent to that of a graduate seminar and assume that the participants already have some knowledge of and background with the topic. Pre-conference materials are made available by NCTC as appropriate to the topics.

Who should attend: Any conservation professional or scientist who desires to keep up-to-date with current developments to help safeguard fish and wildlife resources at both national and international scales.

“Conserving wildlife in mountain ecosystems: importance of a broad-scale perspective”

Wednesday, May 16, 1:00-2:30 PM Eastern

Description:  : This presentation will use mountain wildlife to illustrate several phenomena related to contemporary climate change: a) investigation of body-condition and reproductive-fitness responses to possible phenological mismatches across elevational gradients, involving timing of sagebrush-obligate migratory birds, their insect prey, and plant flowering; b) examples of behavioral plasticity ‘softening’ distributional constraints, illustrating one form of adaptation; and c) context-dependent trends and distributional constraints in a broadly distributed species. In the latter case, research on American pikas across 18 years of contemporary data and historical records from 1898-1956 suggest that pace of local extinctions and rate of upslope retraction have been markedly more rapid in the last decade than during the 20th century, and that dynamics governing the extinction process differed greatly between the two periods. This may mean that understanding even recent dynamics of species losses may not always help us predict the patterns of future loss. Given the prevalence and importance of clinal variability and ecotypic variation, phenotypic and behavioral plasticity, and variation in climatic conditions, greatest progress in understanding phenomena such as distributional determinants, the local-extinction process, and factors acting as drivers of density and population dynamics will occur with coordinated, landscape-scale research and monitoring.

YOU MUST REGISTER TO JOIN THIS WEBINAR:     
To register, go to: https://doilearn.webex.com/doilearn/k2/j.php?ED=138215972&UID=1130433557&HMAC=f35a0718ccb65eec07715d3e2b47746037e12ecf&RT=MiMxMQ%3D%3D&FM=1
Once submitted, your name will be added to the registry for the webinar and you will receive an email with instructions on how to join the webinar via WebEx platform.

 

 

 

Presenters:
Dr. Erik Beever
Research Ecologist at the U.S. Geological Survey Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center

PDF of the Presentation:TBD

All conferences, including questions and answers, are recorded and available in NCTC’s climate change web library. To view,click icon below:

Click on icon to view archived webinars.
Please send your suggestions for speakers and topics to:
Donna C. Brewer
NCTC Climate Change Coordinator
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
National Conservation Training Center
698 Conservation Way
Shepherdstown, WV 25443
Office: 304 876-7451
Fax: 304 876-7234
Email: donna_brewer@fws.gov		 Naomi Edelson
Sr. Manager, State Wildlife Programs
National Wildlife Federation
National Advocacy Center
901 E St, NW, Suite 400
Washington, DC 20004
Office: 202 797-6889 (Wed and Fri)
Cell: 202 657-2024
Email: edelsonn@nwf.org

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Last updated: May 7, 2012