Kari Norman
@karinorman.bsky.social
Ecologist at Rocky Mountain Research Station. Thinking about measuring biodiversity change, monitoring, and tools for making those things easier.
Environmental science
80%
Geography
20%
The Equilibrium Conundrum
Although an assumption of equilibrium dynamics underlies most ecological theory, the evidence for this dynamic in nature and in empirical studies is scarce. This creates an unfortunate disconnect bet...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Most major theories in ecology assume some sort of equilibrium, but only ~half of empirical tests acknowledge it & even fewer observed it in their system. Does this matter? How did the idea become so pervasive in ecology anyway? Find out in our new paper! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Kari Norman
@karinorman.bsky.social
· Mar 24
“Within protected areas, there is an urgent need to rethink what we are protecting: the current landscape conditions or the landscape dynamics that generate those conditions.”
New paper in BioScience “Conserving landscape dynamics, not just landscapes”
Link: academic.oup.com/bioscience/a...
New paper in BioScience “Conserving landscape dynamics, not just landscapes”
Link: academic.oup.com/bioscience/a...
Conserving landscape dynamics, not just landscapes
Abstract. Protected areas form the backbone of modern conservation. However, the current policies and practices in protected areas reinforce a static view
academic.oup.com
Really excited to have been a part of this one! Hopefully sparks some conversation about what exactly we want our protected areas to *do*.
Reposted by Kari Norman
gavin jones
@ecologyofgavin.bsky.social
· Mar 24
Conserving landscape dynamics, not just landscapes
Abstract. Protected areas form the backbone of modern conservation. However, the current policies and practices in protected areas reinforce a static view
academic.oup.com
“Within protected areas, there is an urgent need to rethink what we are protecting: the current landscape conditions or the landscape dynamics that generate those conditions.”
New paper in BioScience “Conserving landscape dynamics, not just landscapes”
Link: academic.oup.com/bioscience/a...
New paper in BioScience “Conserving landscape dynamics, not just landscapes”
Link: academic.oup.com/bioscience/a...
Kari Norman
@karinorman.bsky.social
· Feb 25
No General Trend in Functional Diversity in Bird and Mammal Communities Despite Compositional Change
Aim Despite unprecedented environmental change due to anthropogenic pressure, recent work has found increasing dissimilarity due to turnover but no overall trend in species diversity through time at...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Shameless plug for my recent paper looking at this via functional traits - we found interesting local changes in functional structure but no general trends! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Reposted by Michael Catchen
Kari Norman
@karinorman.bsky.social
· Feb 12
Some postdoc work up now up as a preprint! ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v... Choosing sites for monitoring biodiversity is critical for robust inference - so which algorithm should you use to pick sites? We found similar performance for algos and outline the features that might influence your decision.
Reposted by Kari Norman
New paper from me + @lauradee.bsky.social on using causal inference methods and concepts in ecology! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... (1/5)
Kari Norman
@karinorman.bsky.social
· Jan 15
I'd love to be added!
Kari Norman
@karinorman.bsky.social
· Jan 7
tl;dr: big changes can happen in the functional space even when species-based metrics look otherwise stable through time, and on the flip side, losses/gains of species or changes in species identity can have little to no impact on the functional space
Please dm me for a pdf if you're paywalled!
Please dm me for a pdf if you're paywalled!
Kari Norman
@karinorman.bsky.social
· Jan 7
We also found that individual studies fell into four general groups: no change in species or functional metrics, functional diversity change independent of species change, loss of functional redundancy, and increasing species richness.
Kari Norman
@karinorman.bsky.social
· Jan 7
We found no trend across communities in functional richness, evenness, or divergence - in line with other species-based work. This also held true for almost all models of the means of individual trait axes.
Kari Norman
@karinorman.bsky.social
· Jan 7
No General Trend in Functional Diversity in Bird and Mammal Communities Despite Compositional Change
Aim Despite unprecedented environmental change due to anthropogenic pressure, recent work has found increasing dissimilarity due to turnover but no overall trend in species diversity through time at...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
My inaugural post is for my paper recently out in GEB! A contribution to the conversation around local biodiversity change, we reconstructed thousands of functional diversity time series to assess shifts in functional structure for bird & mammal communities. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...