Navigating Climate Change: Managing Future Forest Ecosystems and Combating Invasive Species with Dr. Inés Ibáñez
The following interview was recorded for the Poor Proles Almanac podcast with guest Dr. Inés Ibáñez from the University of Michigan's School for the Environment, where she specializes in ecosystem science and management. We chat about her research and discuss the complex relationships between climate change, invasive species, and mitigating the disastrous effects of species struggling to travel fast enough as the Earth quickly heats up. The three-headed beast of decimated forests from generations of mismanagement, climate change, and globalism has created a unique catastrophe that doesn't provide many clear answers, but decades of research are starting to give us glimmers of hope that the ecology is more resilient than we give it credit for. Check out her work here.
Andy:
Inés, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your research and how you ended up doing this unique type of research?
Dr. Inés Ibáñez:
So I started as a biologist with an overall interest in anything bio, but as I got deeper and deeper into it, I moved into ecology, because it pretty much includes everything organisms, the physical environment. You can study the cell's functioning, but you can go all the way to the whole planet. So, I found that to be absolutely fascinating. Within ecology, I specialize in forest ecosystems because I probably love them, I love working on them, and I love spending time with them. They're a very important ecosystem, but many of them are so. But yeah, so I found that to be my niche: forest ecology.
Andy:
I live in New England, so it's mostly forest. There's not too much prairie lands or anything like that around here. It's really interesting. The more you know, the more you notice, and it just kind of sucks you in deeper and deeper into climate change, from things like invasives to the forest dynamics themselves and succession and all of these different pieces. Did that come from that same interest of just kind of digging deeper and deeper into the subject matter, or was it you saw changes, and it concerned you?
Dr. Inés Ibáñez:
Well, it's a little bit of everything when studying forests. It's an ecosystem that has been studied for quite a bit because it's so important for humans, but what is happening right now is that the rules of the game are changing. Everything we knew about successional dynamics, how, for example, we can harvest but it's still having a productive forest that continues growing. That may not be the case right now because, again, the rules of the game are changing. Now we have climate change and an introduction of species; some have been invasives, pollution, and landscape fragmentation.
So it was a little bit of everything you mentioned. It was very interesting to see how forests function, and what we are seeing right now is that the environment’s forests are functioning. It's changing quite a bit and it's creating these novel environments of which we don't have much information. So now we have this combination of climate change, landscape frag, introduction of species, and pollution, and all this is changing the conditions under which forests are growing, and we don't have knowledge of how forests are going to be responding to these new environments. So that's the research question that has been driving all the research that we have been doing in my group.
Andy:
Awesome. So, specifically on the invasives, one of the things around here, I'm sure you guys have it there, is Japanese knotweed. It's really interesting the way it seems to spring up in some spaces and then not at all in other places, even though the ecologies are very similar or seem to be similar. Are you guys, in your research, starting to see anything that might be pointing to why invasives sometimes are taking over and then other times not?
Dr. Inés Ibáñez:
So, that's definitely part of the work we try to do. It's a difficult question to answer because the answer will be different for each species and each location.
There is quite a bit of research on invasive species and what makes them successful to the point of harming the native community. There are different theories and mechanisms, and I'm sure many of them apply to any particular case.
But what we have been trying to do now in our research is to move a little bit away from that question and to move more into the native community. How can we make a native forest to be more resistant to invasives? So we are trying to use all the knowledge that we have on forest ecology and invasive species and try to figure out what are the characteristics of a forest that make it, again, more resistant to those invasives so even if they colonize the area, at least they don't take over and harm the native community.
So that's a little bit of where we are going. Again, it's a complicated question with many different answers. But what we are seeing repeatedly is that when you break the natural system with a new disturbance, for example, to which the native community has no way to respond, invasive species take over. So preventing that is the key part of it.
Andy:
So, obviously, we're working with a very small historical period as a sample. Are we starting to see that selection pressure from those invasives is either driving evolution or starting to show signs of the ecosystems being able to find a place for those invasives that otherwise had no place, and that's what let them go wild?
Dr. Inés Ibáñez:
Yeah, so we are definitely seeing the latest that those invasive species start, after they have been in the system for a few decades, start being part of the system without being harmful, without having populations that are large enough to affect others. So this is part of definitely of the evolution of the system. Usually is related to the system having some kind of enemy towards that invasive plant, for example, having a parasite or a herbivore or a pathogen that is going to be affecting it.
Andy:
That's interesting because from the I guess from the layman, we'll call myself, there's a lot of conversations between foragers and people that are just outdoors. People about like, oh, if you see an invasive, rip it up. If you're going to spray a chemical, if it's an invasive it's okay, because, like, it shouldn't be there in the first place. I'm sure there is a point where it's important to put some pressure on those species, but at the same time, the goal is that we're never going to get rid of them, so we need to find a way to integrate them into that system.
Yeah, it's good to see that there's some actual evidence of that happening. You know, we don't ever really have the evidence, or at least from my perspective, it never seems like we do. But if you know, folks have been studying it for decades, and I'm glad to know that it's already being recognized as something that's happening.
Dr. Inés Ibáñez:
Yeah, I know there has been a shift into invasive species management. There is a time in the invasion process where eradicating the plant or the organism is feasible and it will lead to, you know, removing it completely from the system. But now, for many instances, we can't; it's a lost battle. So now there is this thinking about okay, we cannot completely eradicate these species, but how can we manage the system in such a way that we reduce the amount of harm?
Andy:
Sure, and that way, give those native species a chance to evolve so that selection pressure isn't too great to exterminate them. You know, we can do various things to try to do that. So, one of the terms I saw in a lot of your research that I wasn't really familiar with was the term phenological escape. Could you talk a little bit about that?
Dr. Inés Ibáñez:
Yeah, of course. So phenology is the process by which different organisms go through different life stages during the year, so, for example, when plants flower or leave out, when mushrooms come out. So that happens every year, and it happens more or less in the same season. But there is certain variability, and that's because the organisms are responding to environmental cues. It can be temperature, it can be moisture, and when those cues are there, that event-like event happens. So that's phenology.
What we are seeing now with global warming is winters are warmer, and springs are warmer, so plants are leafing out and flowering earlier and earlier, and that's increasing the length of the growing season, which you can think about as something good. Now plants in especially cold climates are going to have a longer period of time to be able to grow.
At the same time, with global warming, what is happening is the summers are becoming hotter, so there is more water demand, and if there is no more precipitation, what it means is many plants now are spending the summers under droughty conditions. And where plants don't have enough water, what they do is they just go dormant. So even if you see a plant that is green in the middle of the summer, if it's dry, it may not be doing anything. It's not taking carbon, it's not growing, it's just dormant.
Andy:
Just surviving.
Dr. Inés Ibáñez:
Yeah, staying there. So we see two things: Plants are benefiting from global warming in the spring because they have a longer growing season, and, at the same time, they are being affected negatively by global warming for what is happening in the summer. So, phenological escape. What it's telling us is that thanks to that earlier phenology in the spring, they are able to compensate for the negative effects that are taking place during the summer when they go dormant, thought of it a little bit differently.
Andy:
I really hadn't thought about that part of it, I guess. I thought that stress was a component of allowing some of these invasives to work their way further into these ecologies.
Dr. Inés Ibáñez:
Yeah, I know, that's another aspect of it. One of the reasons why invasive species are so successful they can grow so fast and produce so many fruits is because they take advantage of early springs to a higher extent than the native community, so they are usually the first ones to live out and flower, and they're also the last ones to drop their leaves, so they have an extended growing season that allows them to be more successful. So that's also part of the phenological escape phenomena.
Andy:
Yeah, it's really interesting how the dynamics interact with one another in some weird way. It feels like a chess game: there can't be an end to the way the parts move around, and it can mean two or three different things.
With that in mind, I want to tie it back to climate change invasives, the conditions of forests, and the degradation of forests over the last couple hundred years. I know to track back to my own native forest here in New England, one of the things that we see is, because of constant logging, a lot of those old-growth succession species. They aren't really around here, and you know, with the large seeds that can't disperse very far, getting them back without human intervention is nearly impossible, or at least it will take a long time.
In my area, there are four hickory trees within a five-mile radius. You know there's no way for that in the near future, in my lifetime at least, to ever see that succession process take place, and in most forests, the same trees that are the canopy are also coming back up underneath.
So I feel like that also feeds into some of this ecological health that is just waning in a lot of ways. So, with climate change, is that, in a way, something that is helping them try to think of how to phrase this? There's, there's these like three different components that are going on, and in some ways, invasives are giving life that can handle the climate that we are moving towards versus the climate we have had. Does that make sense, like how that ties together? In some ways, invasives might be considered a good thing because they are giving that life force that can survive the new climate. Sorry, that was really confusing.
Dr. Inés Ibáñez:
Well, I'm not sure if you mean the new climate of one particular place, that if there is a gap on what can grow there because the local species cannot grow and then invasives can. So yes, definitely it's, it's fulfilling um, they could be fulfilling a gap. It's just that invasive species may be a species we may not want to see because they are witty; they are not the ones that produce good wood, for example, or they grow and harvest a lot of carbon. So there are many issues where we don't want an invasive community, even if it's available and able to take completely over.
You mentioned the fact that the ideas plants are not going to be able to keep up with climate change. The rate of climate change is too fast for plants to be able to move through their seeds to the new areas where they can survive, and definitely we are going to have to assist them with that movement if we want to do that or not and that's part of much of the work we have been doing in our group, because we know where the suitable climate for many plants is going to be and if we want to replace those areas with the species that are going to be doing well, we also know that the rate of migration won't be able to keep up with climate change. So should we be moving then or not? So some of the work that we have been doing is moving them ahead of time.
And the whole idea of moving there is not to check if the climate is going to be suitable, we already know that but it's to check what else is going to be suitable or not. Are the soils going to be the right soils? How are they going to grow within the native community that is already there? What about herbivores or seed predators? And at the same time, if we start moving these species, will they become invasive? Will they become weedy because, suddenly, they are not going to have the regular pathogens and herbivores that feed on them? So, we have been doing all these experiments to answer these questions. So, if we are ready to assist plant species to migrate to new areas, we want to have all the information possible to be sure if this is going to be a good idea or not.
Andy:
So, at this point, is that type of work primarily research, or is there actually? Are you actually busting out shovels and starting to put stuff in the ground?
Dr. Inés Ibáñez:
It's research because that's what we do. We do basic research, so we generate knowledge that people managing land can use to try to manage their communities the way they want.
Andy:
Sure. So, with that in mind, what is realistic in terms of how you envision the future of the forest? I know you're out; you're in Michigan, correct?
Dr. Inés Ibáñez:
Yes.
Andy:
What is a comparable? So like, what are you planning for in terms of, like you're saying, climate change 50 years from now, 100 years from now, 200 years from now? And then, with the forests, are you thinking about a healthy, developed forest, which means then you have to also think a hundred years from now, a hundred. You know all those different things yeah, so so we are.
Dr. Inés Ibáñez:
We look at what is the distribution of the species and we are not bringing any things that are growing in the tropics of Florida here. That's way too far. But, for example, we are bringing things that barely make it to the southern Great Lakes area. So there are several species, but the northern least regional range is around, um, the southern part of the Great Lakes, and those are the ones we are moving north to the northern part of the Great Lakes.
So it's not a big jump, but it's what it will have been: the natural movement of a species if they have enough time to keep up with climate change. So you were talking about hickories, for example. There are hickories that grow in southern Michigan but then don't grow in northern Michigan. So those are some of the species we are moving to northern Michigan.
Andy:
Are you thinking about that forest succession in that process, or are you thinking primarily about those trees that take a longer time to move north?
Dr. Inés Ibáñez:
We are trying a variety of trees of many different, you know, many different types Because, again, we have many different questions that we would like to answer. So, some of them are early successional species, and others are late-successional. So we are just trying to generate the knowledge that if there is a land manager, a conservancy, who is interested in promoting southern species into the north, they have the knowledge that they need to know if they're going to be successful, if they're going to be witty, and they shouldn't introduce them if they are going to be targeted by herbivores, for example.
Andy:
So we are not really moving things in bulk; we are experimenting with them to provide that knowledge, okay? You've brought up a couple of times this idea of whether or not the soil ecology can support those species. Are you doing anything to help? Or have you looked into research about moving the fungi and things like that?
Dr. Inés Ibáñez:
We haven't moved the fungi, but we have the fungi and things like that. We haven't moved the fungi, but we have considered the fungi available in the forest and the role we could play because that's critical for plants that have that association. So it happens that as far as you are using forested soil, plants and trees, which are the species we work with, are going to be finding suitable fungi to associate with.
Andy:
Sure, they're similar enough.
Dr. Inés Ibáñez:
Yeah, they're similar because mycorrhizal fungi, which are the fungi that are associated with trees, are relatively generalist, so they are doing well in that respect. Where we are seeing differences is in the pathogens, so pathogens are a lot more specific in the species that they affect, and what we are seeing differences is in the pathogens. So pathogens are a lot more specific in the species that they affect, and what we are seeing is that by moving a species beyond the area where they usually grow, suddenly, they are released from some of those pathogens. So they will do well.
Andy:
Oh, that's interesting. Now, on the flip side of that, is there any concern about new pathogens from moving novel species?
Dr. Inés Ibáñez:
Yeah, definitely, that can always happen. It probably won't happen if you are just planting seeds, but if you are moving plants with soil attached to them, that's definitely a possibility. We have seen that already happening with introductions into different continents, so that definitely can be an issue.
Andy:
Okay, so I want to talk a bit more about the role of globalization in this process. So obviously we have all these invasive species, species. I recently was speaking with a researcher who was talking about an under-recognized problem in mainstream media about, like climate change and all these issues that we're talking about, and it was about the fact that there are so many bugs, essentially, that are traveling through globalism, especially now with, you know, everyone's in COVID, so everything's shipped online.
It's not even bothering going to a store first, and maybe something dies before it comes to your house, it's going straight to you, and that there's a lot of issues with those types of whatever they are bugs, mosquitoes, you know, insects uh, is that something that you guys are, in your research, seeing as a common thread or is that not really even it just kind of falls into the mix of all the issues of climate change?
Dr. Inés Ibáñez:
No, it's definitely a key issue. I would say that in eastern North American forests, the threat of introduced pathogens or pests is probably the highest risk is probably the highest risk. You know, in the West of the United States, it's more about drought, but in this area, it is going to be probably a pest or a pathogen, and we have seen that in the last 150 years, there is a recurring introduction of diseases and pests that have been affecting forests. Some of them are worse than others, so they're going to continue coming.
There is no doubt about that, and it's very difficult to be prepared for it because these introductions are so harmful because they are novel, and the local plant species have not evolved to deal with these new enemies, either a pathogen or a pest.
Right now, the only tool that we have to prevent damage is diversity. Let's diversify forests as much as we can within a species. They are diversified genetically, but tree populations are usually pretty diverse genetically because there is a lot of gene change through pollen. But also diversify forests with respect to species because when you have a more diverse forest, the first damage is going to be lower if it affects one species, and also, the pest of the species is going to spread much slower. So it's going to be easier to contain.
Andy:
I think about the chestnut blight and what the forest once looked like, and I, you know, you think about it, and you think about oaks. If something ever happened to oaks, like how quickly the forest would collapse, at least on the East Coast, is there? With that in mind, is there a place for humanity to have some involvement in terms of selective breeding or any of those types of things that could help in any way kind of give us? I'm thinking like we have like seed gene pools that we can dip into for genetic modification for crops, when things come up that we never would have thought of. Is there something that we should be doing with trees in that same kind of thought process?
Dr. Inés Ibáñez:
Yeah, we should absolutely do that with trees because we don't know what the next agent will be.
We don't know what is the next pest, we don't know what is the next pathogen, so we don't know what is the gene or genetic background we are going to be. We don't know what is the next pest, we don't know what is the next path again, so we don't know what is the gene or genetic background we are going to need. So definitely, with respect to wild species, forest species, and tree species, we should have this kind of genetic bank. It can be through seeds, it can be through arboretums, where you have a diversity of genotypes of the same species.
This happened recently with the emerald ash borer. It is decimating ash species, but researchers are finding that a few are resistant to this pest. So, if we have already banked into that genetic diversity, both across species and within species, it will be a much faster process for us to identify the genes that we need to fight that new pest or pathogen.
Andy:
Yeah, is there any species in particular that you're concerned about? That? You think is All of them, because we don't know.
Dr. Inés Ibáñez:
We don't know what the next pest or pathogen will be, but we know they are coming.
Andy:
Yeah. And you know they are right there. Are there any species that are super common that don't have much genetic diversity? The one saving grace is that they hybridize easily. There's a ton of them. Are there other species that you're like? These are really important, but there's not a lot of that diversity.
Dr. Inés Ibáñez:
The only one I can think of is a Mediterranean pine that is not here but in eastern North America.
Andy:
Diversity seems to be so important, and we don't really, or at least I don't really think about it that often until we have these types of conversations, and it becomes really apparent why Oak is so successful across the country because it's so diverse biologically and it's so able to cross-pollinate and evolve to unique conditions. So is there anything that, like normal people, can do to help, either protect or prepare?
Dr. Inés Ibáñez:
Well, I mean, we can be helpful at many different levels. We can be helpful with how we combat climate change with our own particular actions. You know how we eat, how we recycle and use energy, so that's one way to go about it. So, if there is anything that we can do in our power to protect forests if you are a landowner, you can afford it, which is also an issue. If you can afford to protect your forest, definitely do that. So, just knowing about what the issues are and also knowing a little bit about what it may take for the system to be resilient to all these factors, I think it's a good step forward.
Andy:
Yeah, I think those are all definitely things if you can do it. So, I know you work at the University of Michigan, and it's a unique school. I was reading all the people that you work with and all their biographies and everything, and it just seems totally different from anything else I've seen in an ecological program or a forestry program or anything like that. Could you talk just a little bit about that?
Dr. Inés Ibáñez:
Yeah, so we are the School for Environment and Sustainability, so that's the focus of environment and sustainability sciences. So, what the school is doing is bringing the expertise that is needed across different disciplines. So there are ecologists, like myself, but we also have social scientists, which is a very important aspect of that. We have science, which is a very important aspect of that. We have engineering engineers working on energy. We also have people in the humanities. We have landscape architectures, which are more focused on design. We have connections with many other schools in business law, public health, and urban planning.
So, again, it's more about focusing on the issue and bringing the disciplines that are needed instead of being just a disciplinary department. So it's great for us as researchers because it expands our reach. When you think about your research, you think broader than you will do when you are just doing your experiments. It also gives you the chance to easily work with people outside your discipline, so that's also very rewarding. So, yeah, it's a different way to to think about science and how we use science and how we move forward with these environmental issues.
Andy:
Yeah, it's a really interesting idea, and I'm kind of interested to know if it's had any successful cross-pollination, and I'm assuming it has. I won't put you on the spot about it. I think it points to a very natural understanding of when we do research, the fact that so much of it is interdisciplinary, and we don't generally think of it that way until we actually have those opportunities to reach across the aisle in a lot of ways.
Dr. Inés Ibáñez:
Yeah, so we have a sustainable food systems group, for example, which includes soil ecologists, entomologists, people working with remote sensing data, and you know, a very different set of expertise, but including environmental justice, for example. But the whole goal is to think about sustainable food systems.
Andy:
I saw you had done some work with silvopasture, and that's kind of my niche in farming. I have sheep, silvopasture trees, tree hay, all those things that are not forgotten but not as utilized anymore. Your research was, and I don't want to put you on the spot too much, but you had done some research on native species diversity in silvopasture. Could you talk a little bit about that, or is that something that might be?
Dr. Inés Ibáñez:
It was a while ago. I'm originally from Spain, where Spain and Portugal have a very traditional pastoral system that has been in place for hundreds of years. So, you know, people living in those areas were able to find a good balance of having subsistence living, or even beyond subsistence living, and still keeping a system going that included forested area mixture with pasture, and also game and domestic livestock. So that has been working for quite a bit, but now it's being threatened by climate change, so we'll see if it's going to be able to continue or not.
Andy:
It's interesting that these systems that have been in place for so long are threatened by things that weren't their fault, unfortunately. Well, I appreciate you taking the time to chat with us. I look forward to seeing some of the research that you guys continue doing because I think it's really interesting, and people want to know about it. We have to plan for the future.
Dr. Inés Ibáñez:
Thank you.
To listen to this episode, tune into the Episode #53 of the Poor Proles Almanac.