Shifting Seasons and Threats to Harvest, Culture, and Self-Identity: A Personal Narrative on the Consequences of Changing Climate.

Northern Indigenous communities are experiencing rapid climate change and disrupted seasonal transitions. The Teetł'it Gwich'in use a five-season calendar to measure the year, indicating the timing of seasonal events and associated cultural practices. From trapping in the spring, to fishing in the summer and fall, and hunting in the fall and winter, the Gwich'in have moved upon the land with the changing seasons.

A multidecade experiment shows that fertilization by salmon carcasses enhanced tree growth in the riparian zone.

As they return to spawn and die in their natal streams, anadromous, semelparous fishes such as Pacific salmon import marine-derived nutrients to otherwise nutrient-poor freshwater and riparian ecosystems. Diverse organisms exploit this resource, and previous studies have indicated that riparian tree growth may be enhanced by such marine-derived nutrients. However, these studies were largely inferential and did not account for all factors affecting tree growth.

Within-lake habitat heterogeneity mediates community response to warming trends.

Climate change is rapidly altering many aquatic systems, and life history traits and physiological diversity create differences in organism responses. In addition, habitat diversity may be expressed on small spatial scales, and it is therefore necessary to account for variation among both species and locations when evaluating climate impacts on biological communities. Here, we investigated the effects of temperature and spatial heterogeneity on long-term community composition in a large boreal lake.

Climate change alters the reproductive phenology and investment of a lacustrine fish, the three-spine stickleback.

High-latitude lakes are particularly sensitive to the effects of global climate change, demonstrating earlier ice breakup, longer ice-free seasons, and increased water temperatures. Such physical changes have implications for diverse life-history traits in taxa across entire lake food webs. Here, we use a five-decade time series from an Alaskan lake to explore effects of climate change on growth and reproduction of a widely distributed lacustrine fish, the three-spine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus).