Publications

While federal regulations during the past 10 years have treated isolated wetlands as unconnected to aquatic resources protected by the Clean Water Act, they provide critical ecosystem services to society that extend well beyond their wetland boundaries. The authors offer well-documented examples from the scientific literature on some of the ecosystem services provided by isolated...

Nebraska's Central Platte River Valley (CPRV) is a major spring‐staging area for migratory birds. Over 6 million ducks, geese, and sandhill cranes (Grus canadensis) stage there en route to tundra, boreal forest, and prairie breeding habitats, storing nutrients for migration and reproduction by consuming primarily corn remaining in fields after harvest (hereafter residual corn). In...

Millions of ducks, geese, and sandhill cranes (Grus canadensis; hereafter cranes) stop in the Central Platte River Valley (CPRV) of Nebraska to store nutrients for migration and reproduction by consuming corn remaining in fields after harvest. We examined factors that influence use of cornfields by cranes and geese (all mid‐continent species combined; e.g., Anser, Chen, and Branta spp.)...

Indicators of rangeland health generally do not include a measure of biodiversity. Increasing attention to maintaining biodiversity in rangelands suggests that this omission should be reconsidered, and plant species richness and diversity are two metrics that may be useful and appropriate. Ideally, their response to a variety of anthropogenic and natural drivers in the ecosystem of...

Prescribed fire is an important, ecology-driven tool for restoration of grassland systems. However, prescribed fire remains controversial for some grassland managers because of reported reductions in bird use of recently burned grasslands. Few studies have evaluated effects of fire on grassland bird populations in the northern mixed-grass prairie region. Fewer studies yet have examined...

We examined chronology and intensity of molt and their relationships to nutrient reserves (lipid and protein) of Lesser Scaup (Aythya affinisK/i>) to test predictions of two competing hypotheses. The "staggered cost" hypothesis states that contour-feather molt is nutritionally costly and should not occur during nutritionally costly periods of the annual cycle unless adequate nutrients...

Animals frequently undergo periods when they accumulate lipid reserves for subsequent energetically expensive activities, such as migration or breeding. During such periods, daily lipid-reserve dynamics (DLD) of sentinel species can quantify how landscape modifications affect function, health, and resilience of ecosystems. Aythya affinis (Eyton 1838; lesser scaup; diving duck) are

Mating with close kin can lead to inbreeding depression through the expression of recessive deleterious alleles and loss of heterozygosity. Mate selection may be affected by kin encounter rate, and inbreeding avoidance may not be uniform but associated with age and social system. Specifically, selection for kin recognition and inbreeding avoidance may be more developed in species that...

We used locations of 6 wolves (Canis lupus) in Minnesota from Global Positioning System (GPS) collars to compare day-versus-night locations to estimate territory size and location during summer. We employed both minimum convex polygon (MCP) and fixed kernel (FK) methods. We used two methods to partition GPS locations for day-versus-night home-range comparisons: (1) daytime = 0800–2000 h...

We examined 35 years of relationships among wolf (Canis lupus) pup survival, population change and canine parvovirus (CPV) seroprevalence in Northeastern Minnesota to determine when CPV exerted its strongest effects. Using correlation analysis of data from five periods of 7-years each from 1973 through 2007, we learned that the strongest effect of CPV on pup survival (r = -0.73) and on...

Phragmites australis (common reed) is known to have occurred along the Platte River historically, but recent rapid increases in both distribution and density have begun to impact habitat for migrating sandhill cranes and nesting piping plovers and least terns. Invasiveness in Phragmites has been associated with the incursion of a European genotype (haplotype M) in other areas...

Diversified grasslands that contain native plant species are being recognized as important elements of agricultural landscapes and for production of biofuel feedstocks as well as a variety of other ecosystem services. Unfortunately, establishment of such grasslands is often difficult, unpredictable, and highly vulnerable to interference and invasion by weeds. Evidence suggests that soil...