Publications

Hydrologic stress is increasing in Fremont cottonwood (Populus fremontii) forests across the southwestern United States because of increased temperature and streamflow diversion. The spatial variability of this stress is large yet poorly understood. Along the Yampa and Green Rivers in Colorado and Utah, vapour pressure deficit and flow diversions increase downstream. To investigate...

Community wildfire readiness includes actions taken by residents, including wildfire risk mitigation at the parcel level and evacuation preparedness. This report presents results from two data collection efforts in the Lake Wenatchee Fire & Rescue service district in Chelan County, Washington: parcel level rapid wildfire risk assessments and household surveys sent to the owners of...

Executive Summary Modern transportation and land-use planning efforts include information from many sources to address topics such as safety, efficiency, commercial, and social needs. This wide breadth of topics provides opportunities for collaboration and development of common tools for diverse users. In many cases, different information systems provide the spatial data and geographic...

Public lands across the United States are managed for multiple uses, resources, and values ranging from energy development to rare plant conservation. Intensified energy development and other land use changes across the Southwestern United States have increased the need for proactive management to mitigate impacts to rare plants. Habitat suitability models can inform decision-making and...

Non-native species can affect ecosystems by influencing native predator-prey dynamics. Therefore, management interventions designed to remove non-natives may inadvertently lead to increased predation on native species. Feral horses are widely distributed throughout the arid parts of western North America. A growing body of research indicates that horses can be an important prey species...

As of 2024, there are 32 National Scenic and Historic Trails (NSHTs) in the system administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), National Park Service, and U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service. The BLM administers, manages, and protects 19 of these trails as part of its system of national conservation lands. Various laws, regulations, and policies require that the BLM...

Aim Due to the socioeconomic and environmental damages caused by invasive species, predicting the distribution of invasive plants is fundamental for effectively targeting management efforts. A habitat suitability model (HSM) is a powerful tool to predict potential habitat of invasive species to help guide the early detection of invasive plants. Despite numerous studies of the predictors...

Wildfires and climate change are having transformative effects on vegetation composition and structure, and post-fire management may have long-lasting impacts on ecosystem reorganization. Post-fire aerial seeding treatments are commonly used to reduce runoff and soil erosion, but little is known about how seeding treatments affect native vegetation recovery over long periods of time...

Estimating the abundance of unmarked animal populations from acoustic data is challenging due to the inability to identify individuals and the need to adjust for observation biases including detectability (false negatives), species misclassification (false positives), and sampling exposure. Acoustic surveys conducted along mobile transects were designed to avoid counting individuals more...

Animal movement is a fundamental mechanism that shapes communities and ecosystems. Ungulates alter the ecosystems they inhabit and understanding their movements and distribution is critical for linking habitat with population dynamics. Predation risk has been shown to strongly influence ungulate movement patterns, such that ungulates may select habitat where predation risk is lower...

Many revegetation projects are intended to benefit wildlife species. Yet, there are few a priori evaluations that assess the potential efficiency of restoration actions in recovering wildlife habitats. We developed a spatial vegetation–habitat recovery model to gauge the degree to which field planting strategies could be expected to recover multi-factor habitat conditions for wildlife...

With bat populations declining in many parts of the world, detailed life history information will be critical for assessing vulnerabilities of bat populations and associated trophic effects. Myotis ciliolabrum (western small-footed bat) is a species of insectivorous bat distributed from the Great Plains to the Pacific Coast and from British Columbia to Central Mexico. The species is...