Maintaining healthy, productive ecosystems in the face of pervasive and accelerating human impacts including climate change requires globally coordinated and sustained observations of marine biodiversity. Global coordination is predicated on an understanding of the scope and capacity of existing monitoring programs, and the extent to which they use standardized, interoperable practices for data management. Global coordination...

Since vegetative associations stabilized about 4,000 years ago, the Appalachian mixed-oak forests have experienced three profoundly different fire regimes. Periodic, low-intensity surface fires lit by American Indians characterized the first regime, and this regime helped perpetuate oak as one of the dominant species groups. The Industrial Revolution led to high-intensity, stand-replacing fires, causing extensive damage to the...