Structured Decision-Making and Rapid Prototyping to Plan a Management Response to an Invasive Species

We developed components of a decision structure that could be used in an adaptive management framework for responding to invasion of hemlock woolly adelgid Adeleges tsugae on the Cumberland Plateau of northern Tennessee. Hemlock woolly adelgid, an invasive forest pest, was first detected in this area in 2007. We used a structured decision-making process to identify and refine the management problem, objectives, and alternative management actions, and to assess consequences and tradeoffs among selected management alternatives. We identified four fundamental objectives: 1) conserve the aquatic and terrestrial riparian conservation targets, 2) protect and preserve hemlock, 3) develop and maintain adequate budget, and 4) address public concerns. We designed two prototype responses using an iterative process. By rapidly prototyping a first solution, insights were gained and shortcomings were identified, and some of these shortcomings were incorporated and corrected in the second prototype. We found that objectives were best met when management focused on early treatment of lightly to moderately infested but relatively healthy hemlock stands with biological control agent predator beetles and insect-killing fungi. Also, depending on the cost constraint, early treatment should be coupled with silvicultural management of moderately to severely infested and declining hemlock stands to accelerate conversion to nonhemlock mature forest cover. The two most valuable contributions of the structured decision-making process were 1) clarification and expansion of our objectives, and 2) application of tools to assess tradeoffs and predict consequences of alternative actions. Predicting consequences allowed us to evaluate the influence of uncertainty on the decision. For example, we found that the expected number of mature forest stands over 30 y would be increased by 4% by resolving the uncertainty regarding predator beetle effectiveness. The adaptive management framework requires further development including identifying and evaluating uncertainty, formalizing other competing predictive models, designing a monitoring program to update the predictive models, developing a process for re-evaluating the predictive models and incorporating new management technologies, and generating support for planning and implementation

Effects of Timber Harvest on Amphibian Populations: Understanding Mechanisms from Forest Experiments

Accompanying appendix may be accessed at: http://hdl.handle.net/10355/1365Harvesting timber is a common form of land use that has the potential to cause declines in amphibian populations. It is essential to understand the behavior and fate of individuals and the resulting consequences for vital rates (birth, death, immigration, emigration) under different forest management conditions.We report on experimental studies conducted in three regions of the United States to identify mechanisms of responses by pond-breeding amphibians to timber harvest treatments. Our studies demonstrate that life stages related to oviposition and larval performance in the aquatic stage are sometimes affected positively by clearcutting, whereas effects on juvenile and adult terrestrial stages are mostly negative

Structured Decision-Making and Rapid Prototyping to Plan a Management Response to an Invasive Species

We developed components of a decision structure that could be used in an adaptive management framework for responding to invasion of hemlock woolly adelgid Adeleges tsugae on the Cumberland Plateau of northern Tennessee. Hemlock woolly adelgid, an invasive forest pest, was first detected in this area in 2007. We used a structured decision-making process to identify and refine the management problem, objectives, and alternative management actions, and to assess consequences and tradeoffs among selected management alternatives. We identified four fundamental objectives: 1) conserve the aquatic and terrestrial riparian conservation targets, 2) protect and preserve hemlock, 3) develop and maintain adequate budget, and 4) address public concerns. We designed two prototype responses using an iterative process. By rapidly prototyping a first solution, insights were gained and shortcomings were identified, and some of these shortcomings were incorporated and corrected in the second prototype. We found that objectives were best met when management focused on early treatment of lightly to moderately infested but relatively healthy hemlock stands with biological control agent predator beetles and insect-killing fungi. Also, depending on the cost constraint, early treatment should be coupled with silvicultural management of moderately to severely infested and declining hemlock stands to accelerate conversion to nonhemlock mature forest cover. The two most valuable contributions of the structured decision-making process were 1) clarification and expansion of our objectives, and 2) application of tools to assess tradeoffs and predict consequences of alternative actions. Predicting consequences allowed us to evaluate the influence of uncertainty on the decision. For example, we found that the expected number of mature forest stands over 30 y would be increased by 4% by resolving the uncertainty regarding predator beetle effectiveness. The adaptive management framework requires further development including identifying and evaluating uncertainty, formalizing other competing predictive models, designing a monitoring program to update the predictive models, developing a process for re-evaluating the predictive models and incorporating new management technologies, and generating support for planning and implementation

Amphibian Biomass Export from Geographically Isolated Wetlands: Temporal Variability, Species Composition, and Potential Implications for Terrestrial Ecosystems

Recently metamorphosed amphibians transport substantial biomass and nutrients from wetlands to terrestrial ecosystems. Previous estimates (except 1) were limited to either a subset of the community or a single year. Our goal was to examine temporal variability in biomass export of all amphibians within breeding ponds and the composition of that export. We completely encircled ponds with drift fences to capture, count, and weigh emerging recently metamorphosed individuals in Maine (four wetlands, six years) and Missouri (eight wetlands, 2–4 years). We estimated total amphibian biomass export, export scaled by pond surface area, species diversity, and percentage of biomass from anurans. Biomass export and export composition varied greatly among ponds and years. Our estimates were of similar magnitude to previous studies. Amphibian biomass export was higher when species diversity was low and the proportion of anurans was higher. Biomass estimates tended to be highest for juvenile cohorts dominated by a single ranid species: green frogs (Missouri) or wood frogs (Maine). Ranid frogs made up a substantial proportion of amphibian biomass export, suggesting that terrestrial impacts will likely occur in the leaf litter of forests. Future studies should examine the impacts of ranid juveniles on terrestrial ecosystem dynamics

Effects of Timber Harvest on Amphibian Populations: Understanding Mechanisms from Forest Experiments. Appendix

Appendix only of an article to be published in BioScience by the American Institute of Biological Sciences.The Appendix provides a summary of results for four forest management treatments according to region, species, and response variables

Cross-oncopanel study reveals high sensitivity and accuracy with overall analytical performance depending on genomic regions.

Targeted sequencing using oncopanels requires comprehensive assessments of accuracy and detection sensitivity to ensure analytical validity. By employing reference materials characterized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration-led SEquence Quality Control project phase2 (SEQC2) effort, we perform a cross-platform multi-lab evaluation of eight Pan-Cancer panels to assess best practices for oncopanel sequencing. All panels demonstrate high sensitivity across targeted high-confidence coding regions and variant types for the variants previously verified to have variant allele frequency (VAF) in the 5-20% range. Sensitivity is reduced by utilizing VAF thresholds due to inherent variability in VAF measurements. Enforcing a VAF threshold for reporting has a positive impact on reducing false positive calls. Importantly, the false positive rate is found to be significantly higher outside the high-confidence coding regions, resulting in lower reproducibility. Thus, region restriction and VAF thresholds lead to low relative technical variability in estimating promising biomarkers and tumor mutational burden. This comprehensive study provides actionable guidelines for oncopanel sequencing and clear evidence that supports a simplified approach to assess the analytical performance of oncopanels. It will facilitate the rapid implementation, validation, and quality control of oncopanels in clinical use.All SEQC2 participants freely donated their time, reagents, and computing resources for the completion and analysis of this project. Part of this work was carried out with the support of the Intramural Research Program of the National Institutes of Health (to Mehdi Pirooznia), National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (to Pierre Bushel), and National Library of Medicine (to Danielle Thierry-Mieg, Jean Thierry-Mieg, and Chunlin Xiao). Leming Shi and Yuanting Zheng were supported by the National Key R&D Project of China (2018YFE0201600), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31720103909), and Shanghai Municipal Science and Technology Major Project (2017SHZDZX01). Donald J. Johann, Jr. acknowledges the support by FDA BAA grant HHSF223201510172C. Timothy Mercer and Ira Deveson were supported by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) of Australia grants APP1108254, APP1114016, and APP1173594 and Cancer Institute NSW Early Career Fellowship 2018/ECF013. This research has also been, in part, financially supported by the MEYS of the CR under the project CEITEC 2020 (LQ1601), by MH CR, grant No. (NV19-03-00091). Part of this work was carried out with the support of research infrastructure EATRIS-CZ, ID number LM2015064, funded by MEYS CR. Boris Tichy and Nikola Tom were supported by research infrastructure EATRIS-CZ, ID number LM2018133 funded by MEYS CR and MEYS CR project CEITEC 2020 (LQ1601).S