Publications

The increasing incidence of wildfires across the southwestern United States (US) is altering the contemporary forest management template within historically frequent-fire conifer forests. An increasing fraction of southwestern conifer forests have recently burned, and many of these burned landscapes contain complex mosaics of surviving forest and severely burned patches without surviving...

The increasing frequency and severity of drought may exacerbate ongoing global amphibian declines. However, interactions between drought and coincident stressors, coupled with high interannual variability in amphibian abundances, can mask the extent and underlying mechanisms of drought impacts. We synthesized a decade (2009–2019) of regional-scale amphibian monitoring data (2273 surveys...

Wildfire affects many types of communities and is a particular concern for communities in the wildland urban interface (WUI), such as Chalk Creek in Chaffee County. The core intent of this project was to provide evidence to support Colorado State Forest Service (CSFS) Salida Field Office’s wildfire mitigation and education program. This report analyzes existing wildfire risk data...

Utah prairie dogs (UPDs, Cynomys parvidens) are colonial, herbivorous rodents listed under the Endangered Species Act as threatened. Little is known about UPD population dynamics at higher elevations in the species’ range. From 2013 through 2016, we studied UPDs on five colonies at 2,645 to 2,873 m elevation on the Awapa Plateau, Utah, USA. Primary production increases with precipitation...

No abstract available.

Some avian species have developed the capacity to leverage resource subsidies associated with human manipulated landscapes to increase population densities in habitats with naturally low carrying capacities. Elevated corvid densities and new territory establishment have led to an unsustainable increase in depredation pressure on sympatric native wildlife prey populations as well as in...

For species with variable phenology, it is often challenging to produce reliable estimates of population dynamics or changes in occupancy. The Arizona Toad (Anaxyrus microscaphus) is a southwestern USA endemic that has been petitioned for legal protection, but status assessments are limited by a lack of information on population trends. Also, timing and consistency of Arizona Toad...

Old-growth forests serve as critical habitat for many sensitive species, but management practices have diminished their prevalence, and former regions of old-growth are now dominated by second-growth stands lacking the structural heterogeneity, diversity, and species richness that these older forests possess. In western Washington state in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, the...

Aim Invasive species prevention and management can be guided by comparisons of invasion risk across space and among species. Species distribution models are widely used to assess invasion risk and typically estimate suitability for species presence. However, suitability for presence may not capture patterns of abundance and impact. We asked how models estimating suitability for presence...

Although birdwatchers comprise a large and growing proportion of the American public, there is a lack of racial and ethnic diversity in the birdwatching community. Previous research suggests that this homogeneity is self-perpetuating, as ethno-racial minorities are less likely to pursue activities in which no one they know participates. However, it is unclear whether this trend in...

Natural and cultural resource managers are increasingly working with the scientific community to create information on how best to adapt to the current and projected impacts of climate change. Engaging with these managers is a strategy that researchers can use to ensure that scientific outputs and findings are actionable (or useful and usable). In this article, the authors adapt Davidson...

Assessing the long-term efficacy of control methods is a critical component of invasive species management. For example, if traits related to control have significant heritability or are influenced by maternal effects, control methods may lose efficacy over time. The potential for these effects can be evaluated via parent/offspring survival analysis, which concomitantly recasts adaptive...