Publications
Below are publications associated with the Southwest Biological Science Center's research.
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Filter Total Items: 1342
Do seeding and seedling planting result in similar restored plant communities?
AimsRestoration practitioners often face a tradeoff between low cost but risky seeding vs expensive but more reliable seedling planting to meet revegetation goals. Knowing under what environmental and management conditions direct seeding vs seedling planting benefit different species could improve restoration practice.MethodsWe compared seed emergence to planted-seedling survival among perennial h
Authors
Bradley J. Butterfield, Seth M. Munson
The Landscape Data Commons: A system for standardizing, accessing, and applying large environmental datasets for agroecosystem research and management
Understanding where, when, and why agroecosystems are changing requires quality information about ecosystems that span land tenure, ecological processes, and spatial scales. Over the past two decades, land management agencies and research groups have adopted a suite of standardized methods for monitoring rangelands, which have been implemented at over 85,000 monitoring locations globally. However,
Authors
Sarah E. McCord, Nicholas P. Webb, Brandon T. Bestelmeyer, Kristopher Bonefont, Joseph R. Brehm, Joel R. Brown, Ericha M. Courtright, Christopher Dietrich, Michael C. Duniway, Brandon L. Edwards, Christopher Fraser, Jeffrey E. Herrick, Anna C Knight, Loretta J Metz, Justin W. Van Zee, Craig E. Tweedie
Range-wide trends in tiger conservation landscapes, 2001 - 2020
Of all the ways human beings have modified the planet over the last 10,000 years, habitat loss is the most important for other species. To address this most critical threat to biodiversity, governments, non-governmental actors, and the public need to know, in near real-time, where and when habitat loss is occurring. Here we present an integrated habitat modelling system at the range-wide scale for
Authors
Eric W. Sanderson, Dale G. Miquelle, Kim Fisher, Abishek Harihar, Chris Clark, Jesse Moy, Peter V. Potapov, Nathaniel P. Robinson, Lucinda Royte, Dustin Sampson, Jamie S Sanderlin, Charles Yackulic, Michael Belecky, Urs Breitenmoser, Christine Breitenmoser-Würsten, Pranav Chanchani, Stuart Chapman, Arpit Deomurari, Somphot Duangchantrasiri, Elisa Facchini, Thomas N.E. Gray, John Goodrich, Luke Hunter, Matthew Linkie, Willy Marthy, Akchousanh Rasphone, Sogoto Roy, Detrit Sittibal, Tshering Tempa, Mayuree Umponjan, Karen Wood
Oil and gas reclamation—Operations, monitoring methods, and standards
This publication provides broad guidance for surface management of oil and gas development with a focus on promoting successful reclamation. Successful reclamation depends on sound best management practices, clear standards and expectations, defensible monitoring for effectiveness, and management of production facilities to minimize surface disturbance. This publication provides specific guideline
Authors
Randi C. Lupardus, Janna Simonsen, Gordon Toevs, Barbara Sterling, Zachary H. Bowen, Zoe Davidson, Steve E. Hanser, Emily Kachergis, Alexander Laurence-Traynor, Nika Lepak, Rebecca K. Mann, Aleta Nafus, David S. Pilliod, Michael C. Duniway
Climate change and collapsing thermal niches of desert reptiles and amphibians: Assisted migration and acclimation rescue from extirpation
Recent climate change should result in expansion of species to northern or high elevation range margins, and contraction at southern and low elevation margins in the northern hemisphere, because of local extirpations or range shifts or both. We combined museum occurrence records from both the continental U.S. and Mexico with a new eco-physiological model of extinction developed for lizard families
Authors
Bary Sinervo, Rafael A. Lara Reséndiz, Donald B. Miles, Jeffrey E. Lovich, Philip C. Rosen, Héctor Gadsden, Gamaliel Casteñada Gaytán, Patricia Galina Tessaro, Victor H. Luja, Raymond B. Huey, Amy V. Whipple, Víctor Sánchez Cordero, Jason B. Rohr, Gabriel Caetano, Juan C. Santos, Jr. Sites, Fausto R. Méndez de la Cruz
Biocrusts modulate carbon losses under warming across global drylands: A bayesian meta-analysis
Biocrusts are critical biological components of drylands and play an important role in soil carbon (C) cycling. However, the effect of biocrusts on soil CO2 exchange across global gradients of temperature and moisture is poorly understood. Moreover, their response to climate change remains highly uncertain. Bayesian hierarchical meta-analyses were performed on 47 published studies to quantify the
Authors
Jingyao Sun, Kailiang Yu, Ning Chen, Seth M. Munson, Xinrong Li, Rongliang Jia
Multi-year tracing of spatial and temporal dynamics of post-fire aeolian sediment transport using rare earth elements provide insights into grassland management
Aeolian sediment transport occurs as a function of, and with feedback to ecosystem changes and disturbances. Many desert grasslands are undergoing rapid changes in vegetation, including the encroachment of woody plants, which alters fire regimes and in turn can change the spatial and temporal patterns of aeolian sediment transport. We investigated aeolian sediment transport and spatial distributio
Authors
William Burger, Robert Van Pelt, David E. Grandstaff, Guan Wang, Temuulen T. Sankey, Junran Li, Joel B. Sankey, Sujith Ravi
USGS RAMPS (Restoration Assessment and Monitoring Program for the Southwest) newsletter - Fall 2023 edition
No abstract available.
Authors
Laura Cecilia Shriver
Respiratory acclimation of tropical forest roots in response to in situ experimental warming and hurricane disturbance
Climate projections predict higher temperatures and more frequent hurricanes in the tropics. Tropical plants subjected to these stresses may respond by acclimating their physiology. We investigated tropical forest root respiration in response to in situ experimental warming and hurricane disturbance in eastern Puerto Rico. We measured mass-normalized root specific respiration, root biomass, and ro
Authors
Rob Tunison, Tana E. Wood, Sasha C. Reed, Molly A. Cavaleri
Unraveling mechnisms underlying effects of wetting–drying cycles on soil respiration in a dryland
Rewetting of dry soils usually stimulates soil carbon (C) emission, a phenomenon known as the Birch effect. Soil C cycling in drylands, which store approximately one third of terrestrial soil organic C (SOC), is strongly affected by wetting–drying cycles. However, the physical, chemical, and biological mechanisms that link rewetting cycles with dryland soil C cycling have not been comprehensively
Authors
Guopeng Liang, Sasha C. Reed, John M. Stark, Bonnie G. Waring
Combining resilience and resistance with threat-based approaches for prioritizing management actions in sagebrush ecosystems
The sagebrush biome is a dryland region in the western United States experiencing rapid transformations to novel ecological states. Threat-based approaches for managing anthropogenic and ecosystem threats have recently become prominent, but successfully mitigating threats depends on the ecological resilience of ecosystems. We used a spatially explicit approach for prioritizing management actions t
Authors
Jeanne C. Chambers, Jessi L. Brown, John B. Bradford, Kevin Doherty, Michele R. Crist, Daniel Rodolphe Schlaepfer, Alexandra K. Urza, Karen Short
Testing the hierarchy of predictability in grassland restoration across a gradient of environmental severity
Ecological restoration is critical for recovering degraded ecosystems but is challenged by variable success and low predictability. Understanding which outcomes are more predictable and less variable following restoration can improve restoration effectiveness. Recent theory asserts that the predictability of outcomes would follow an order from most to least predictable from coarse to fine communit
Authors
Diana Bertuol-Garcia, Emma Ladouceur, Lars A. Brudvig, Daniel C. Laughlin, Seth M. Munson, Michael F. Curran, Kirk W. Davies, Lauren N. Svejcar, Nancy Shackelford