Publications

The sagebrush (Artemisia spp.) biome, its wildlife, and the services and benefits it provides people and local communities are at risk. Development in the sagebrush biome, for many purposes, has resulted in multiple and often cumulative negative impacts. These impacts, ranging from simple habitat loss to complex, interactive changes in ecosystem function, continue to accelerate even as...

The impacts of wind power development on bat and bird populations are commonly assessed by estimating the number of fatalities at wind power facilities through post-construction monitoring (PCM) studies. Standard methodology involves periodic carcass searches on plots beneath turbines (Strickland et al. 2011, US Fish and Wildlife Service 2012). The resulting counts are adjusted to...

Montane meadows are areas of high biodiversity and provide many important ecosystem services; however, degradation of 40–60% of these habitats in the Sierra Nevada region of California has left many of these areas impaired. The “pond-and-plug” meadow-restoration technique is 1 type of treatment implemented to restore montane meadows. The objectives of this technique are to re-water the...

The enemy release hypothesis proposes that invasion by exotic plant species is driven by their release from natural enemies (i.e. herbivores and pathogens) in their introduced ranges. However, in many cases, natural enemies, which may be introduced or managed to regulate invasive species, may fail to impact target host populations. Landscape heterogeneity, which can affect both the...

Forest soils are among the world’s largest repositories for long-term accumulation of atmospherically deposited mercury (Hg), and understanding the potential for remobilization through gaseous emissions, aqueous dissolution and runoff, or erosive particulate transport to down-gradient aquatic ecosystems is critically important for projecting ecosystem recovery. Forestry operations...

Rock gnome lichen (Gymnoderma lineare [Evans] Yoshimura and Sharp) was listed as a federally endangered species in 1995. It is endemic to the southern Appalachian Mountains, with most known populations occurring in North Carolina, where it grows on vertical rock faces in the fog zone above an elevation of 1,525 meters or in humid, deep river gorges. Threats to the species include...

Background The need for basic information on spatial distribution and abundance of plant species for research and management in semiarid ecosystems is frequently unmet. This need is particularly acute in the large areas impacted by megafires in sagebrush steppe ecosystems, which require frequently updated information about increases in exotic annual invaders or recovery of desirable...

Resource managers in the Pacific Northwest (USA) actively thin second-growth forests to accelerate the development of late-successional conditions and seek to expand these restoration thinning treatments into riparian zones. Riparian forest thinning, however, may impact stream temperatures–a key water quality parameter often regulated to protect stream habitat and aquatic organisms. To...

Coastal margins are important areas of materials flux that link terrestrial and marine ecosystems. Consequently, climate-mediated changes to coastal terrestrial ecosystems and hydrologic regimes have high potential to influence nearshore ocean chemistry and food web dynamics. Research from tightly coupled, high-flux coastal ecosystems can advance understanding of terrestrial–marine links...

When multiple species of fish coexist there are a host of potential ways through which they may interact, yet there is often a strong focus on studies of single species without considering these interactions. For example, many studies of forestry–stream interactions in the Pacific Northwest have focused solely on the most prevalent species: Coastal cutthroat trout. To examine the...

A lack of information regarding which ecological factors influence restoration success or failure has hindered scientifically based restoration decision-making. We focus on one headwater site to examine factors influencing divergent ecological outcomes of two post-mining stream restoration projects designed to improve instream conditions following 70 years of mining impacts. One project...

Beaver-related restoration is a process-based strategy that seeks to address wide-ranging ecological objectives by reestablishing dam building in degraded stream systems. Although the beaver-related restoration has broad appeal, especially in water-limited systems, its effectiveness is not yet well documented. In this article, we present a process-expectation framework that links beaver...