Publications

To improve understanding of the distribution of ecologically important, ephemeral wetland habitats across the Great Plains, the occurrence and distribution of surface water in playa wetland complexes were documented for four different years across the Great Plains Landscape Conservation Cooperative (GPLCC) region. This information is important because it informs land and wildlife...

The greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus; hereafter GRSG) has been a focus of scientific investigation and management action for the past two decades. The 2015 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listing determination of “not warranted” was in part due to a large-scale collaborative effort to develop strategies to conserve GRSG populations and their habitat and to reduce threats to...

Enhancing natural resource management has been a focus of landscape ecology since its inception, but numerous authors argue that landscape ecology has not yet been effective in achieving the underlying goal of planning and designing sustainable landscapes. We developed nine questions reflecting the application of fundamental research topics in landscape ecology to the landscape planning...

Understanding the complex influences of landscape and anthropogenic elements that shape the population genetic structure of invasive species provides insight into patterns of colonization and spread. The application of landscape genomics techniques to these questions may offer detailed, previously undocumented insights into factors influencing species invasions. We investigated the...

As grassland birds of central North America experience steep population declines with changes in land use, management of remaining tracts becomes increasingly important for population viability. The integrated use of fire and grazing may enhance vegetation heterogeneity and diversity in breeding birds, but the subsequent effects on reproduction are unknown. We examined the influence of...

From the 21stto the 23rdJune 2017, the Herrenhausen castle inHannover/Germany hosted a diverse and large crowd with morethan 70 tree physiologists, forest ecologists, forest inventoryexperts, remote-sensing scientists, and vegetation modele rs. Par-ticipants from six continent s and from more than 20 countriesgathered to discuss how to improve the scientific determination ofglobal-scale...

Many different factors influence animal activity. Often, the value of an environmental variable may influence significantly the upper or lower tails of the activity distribution. For describing relationships with heterogeneous boundaries, quantile regressions predict a quantile of the conditional distribution of the dependent variable. A quantile count model extends linear quantile...

Perissodactyla (Schoch 1989) includes tapirs, rhinoceros, wild asses, horses, and zebras. It is the order of hoofed mammals referred to as “odd-toed ungulates” because its members have one to three weight-bearing toes and walk on hoofs or “ungules.” They are herbivores that are specialized to exploit grasslands and brushy habitat (rhinos, horses, asses, zebras) or dense tropical forests...

The Prairie Pothole Region, situated in the northern Great Plains, provides important stopover habitat for migratory shorebirds. During spring migration in the U.S. Prairie Potholes, 7.3 million shorebirds refuel in the region's myriad small, freshwater wetlands. Shorebirds use mudflats, shorelines, and ephemeral wetlands that are far more abundant in wet years than dry years. Generally...

Feral horses are widespread in the western United States, with the majority of feral horse herds found in the Great Basin. There is a federal mandate to manage these herds in order to maintain “ecological balance”; however, understanding of the specific effects of feral horse grazing on rangeland plant communities in this region is incomplete. To address this research gap, we utilized...

Executive Summary This report provides information from a general public survey conducted in early 2017 to help inform the North American Waterfowl Management Plan (NAWMP) 2018 update. This report is intended for use by the NAWMP advisory committees and anyone interested in the human dimensions of wetlands and waterfowl management. A mail-out survey was sent to 5,000 addresses in the...

The river stonefly, Pteronarcys californica (aka salmonfly), is an iconic insect in rivers of western North America due to its large size and its support of economically important species like wild trout (Nehring et al. 2011). Their emergence generates a large economic subsidy to local communities, as anglers from around the world travel to western rivers to fish the salmonfly “hatch” (e...