Publications

Tropical peatlands, which store 20% of global peat carbon, are increasingly threatened by conversion to alternative land-uses such as oil palm plantations, pulp wood plantations, crop growth or other economic activities. This transformation involves peatland drainage, which lowers water tables, exposes peat to oxygen, and alters greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions: increasing carbon dioxide...

Nitrous oxide (N2O), a potent greenhouse gas (GHG) and major contributor to climate change, is primarily released through agricultural activities. To better understand and quantify how land management practices, local climate conditions, and soil physicochemical properties affect these agricultural N2O emissions, we conducted a review of the peer-reviewed literature on N2O emission from...

Wetlands are a major source of methane emissions and contribute to the observed increase in atmospheric methane over the last 20 years. Methane production in wetlands is the final step of carbon decomposition performed by anaerobic archaea. Although hydrogen/carbon dioxide and acetate are the substrates most often attributed to methanogenesis, other substrates—such as methylated...

Invasive carps, specifically silver carp (Hypophthalmichthys molitrix), bighead carp (H. nobilis), grass carp (Ctenopharyngodon idella), and black carp (Mylopharyngodon piceus), have proliferated in the Mississippi River Basin owing to escapes from aquaculture facilities and intentional releases. In the Water Resources and Development Act (WRDA) of 2020 Sec. 509, Congress directed the U...

Whooping Cranes land in a palustrine-emergent wetland amid row crop agriculture near Atkinson, Nebraska, during spring migration in April of 2020 (photo by M. L. Forsberg). From 2023 to 2024, the U.S. and Canada updated conservation plans for the Whooping Crane through international workshops. These forthcoming documents will reflect shared goals for wetland conservation aimed at...

Conservation of imperiled species often includes management strategies intended to improve specific vital rates. However, some management practices can have unforeseen consequences that negate the intended benefit. For example, nest exclosures are often used for ground-nesting avian species to reduce nest predation but may increase depredation of adults. Tradeoffs between nest survival...

For at-risk species, understanding population vital rates is imperative for developing informed conservation strategies and population models. Managers often assume that species that are spatially distributed among patches of suitable habitat meet the criteria of a metapopulation. Metapopulation dynamics are determined not only by within-patch birth and death processes but also by...

This “U.S. Geological Survey Pollinator Science Strategy, 2025–35—A Review and Look Forward” (“Pollinator Science Strategy”) describes the science vision of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to support management, conservation, and policy decisions on animal pollinators and their habitats. As the science arm of the Department of the Interior, the USGS has a primary role in providing...

Maintaining accurate mortality records for endangered species is important for guiding management and conservation actions. Mortalities of whooping cranes (Grus americana) in the Aransas-Wood Buffalo Population (AWBP) are documented in published records from 1950 through 2010. This paper documents publicly available records of known mortalities from 2011 through 2023, and updates...

Inland habitat use by wintering Aransas-Wood Buffalo whooping cranes (Grus americana) is expected to increase given projected population growth and observations of some whooping cranes using inland winter habitat in addition to coastal marshes. We developed resource utilization functions using ‘random forests’ to model whooping crane use as a function of environmental covariates...

Millions of small waterbodies are dispersed throughout the middle of the North American continent, and billions of dollars have been invested to conserve, restore, and manage these waterbodies in the 20th and 21st centuries. Small waterbody conservation has been supported by different stakeholders aiming at improving water quality, enhancing floodwater storage, and supporting migratory...

Constructed water quality wetlands, designed to accept tile drainage and surface runoff, are a promising solution for reducing surface water nutrient loading from agricultural systems. In addition to their water quality benefits, these systems may also offset losses of migratory waterbird stopover sites resulting from historical and future agricultural drainage modernization. To assess...