Generating ecological insights from historical data

Ecologists worldwide are searching for historical datasets that can provide insight into how ecosystems and species are responding to climate change, often with a focus on changes in species' phenology, distribution, and abundance. Once confined to libraries, museums, attics, and overlooked fil...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Frontiers in ecology and the environment 2023-06, Vol.21 (5), p.216-217
Main Authors: Primack, Richard B, Miller, Tara K, Miller‐Rushing, Abraham J
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Attics
Climate change
Ecologists
Ecology
Geographical distribution
Mountains
Museums
Phenology
Plant communities
Plant populations
Refugia
Trophic levels
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Summary:Ecologists worldwide are searching for historical datasets that can provide insight into how ecosystems and species are responding to climate change, often with a focus on changes in species' phenology, distribution, and abundance. Once confined to libraries, museums, attics, and overlooked file cabinets, physical or offline records are increasingly being digitized, made available online, and used by ecologists in innovative ways. In many cases, these records provide detailed descriptions of changes that occurred in particular places. Resurveying the records of ecologist Joseph Grinnell from the Sierra Nevada Mountains is yielding information about bird species' range shifts and helping to identify climate-change refugia. Revisiting amateur naturalist David Bertelsen's observations of the Santa Catalina Mountains has generated insights into community-level changes in phenology in an arid ecosystem. Likewise, our own work with the records of the environmental philosopher Henry David Thoreau, and less well-known naturalists like Alfred Hosmer, from Concord, Massachusetts, has provided evidence of changes in phenology and abundance in plant communities and across trophic levels.
ISSN:1540-9295
1540-9309
DOI:10.1002/fee.2641