Publications

Agricultural emissions are the primary source of ammonia (NH3) deposition in Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP), a Class I area, that is granted special air quality protections under the Clean Air Act. Between 2014 and 2016, the pilot phase of the Colorado agricultural nitrogen early warning system (CANEWS) was developed for agricultural producers to voluntarily and temporarily minimize...

The persistence of an invasive species is influenced by its reproductive ecology, and a successful control program must operate on this premise. However, the reproductive ecology of invasive species may be enigmatic due to factors that also limit their management, such as cryptic coloration and behavior. We explored the mating and reproductive ecology of the invasive Brown Treesnake (BTS...

Each fall, thousands of Rocky Mountain Sandhill Cranes and other migratory birds congregate at the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico’s Rio Grande Valley in search of wintering habitat. As such, this refuge is known as one of the premier destinations for bird viewing and photography in the United States. Using contingent valuation data, this case study quantifies...

Outdoor recreation facilitates important connections to nature and wildlife but is perceived differently across population segments. As such, we expected that current and past socio-demographic characteristics of individuals would influence intention to participate in outdoor recreation. We solicited 5,000 U.S. residents. (n = 1,030, 23% response) to describe their perceptions of hunting...

Population monitoring is integral to the conservation and management of wildlife; yet, analyses of population demographic data rarely consider processes occurring across spatial scales, potentially limiting the effectiveness of adaptive management. Therefore, we developed a method to identify hierarchical levels of organization (i.e., populations) to define multiple spatial scales...

Visual encounter survey efforts can be defined and constrained by duration, distance, or both duration and distance simultaneously. This study examines the optimal walking pace that will maximize the number of animal detections within a limited time frame. We predicted that animal sighting rate per unit of distance would decline with increasing pace, but that maximal sighting rate per...

More than a century of dam construction and water development in the western United States has led to extensive ecological alteration of rivers. Growing interest in improving river function is compelling practitioners to consider ecological restoration when managing dams and water extraction. We developed an Ecological Response Model (ERM) for the Cache la Poudre River, northern Colorado...

Studies of aquatic–terrestrial ecosystem linkages explore the mechanisms by which components of one ecosystem, such as the aquatic insect community in a stream, directly affect components of an adjacent ecosystem, such as the density and diversity of riparian predators. On a human level, research into these linkages allows freshwater ecologists to form novel collaborations with...

• Globally, spring phenology and abiotic processes are shifting earlier with warming. Differences in the magnitudes of these shifts may decouple the timing of plant resource requirements from resource availability. In riparian forests across the northern hemisphere, warming could decouple seed dispersal from snowmelt peak streamflow, thus reducing moisture and safe-sites for dominant...

Understanding how natural and anthropogenic processes affect population dynamics of species with patchy distributions is critical to predicting their responses to environmental changes. Despite considerable evidence that demographic rates and dispersal patterns vary temporally in response to an array of biotic and abiotic processes, few applications of metapopulation theory have sought...

No abstract available.

The relict plains cottonwood (Populus deltoides subsp. monilifera) forest along the Missouri River between Lakes Sakakawea and Oahe includes trees as large as two meters in diameter. We cored 24 of these trees to determine their age and suitability for flow reconstruction. Because most of the trees were rotten in the center, we developed a method to estimate the date of the center ring...