Publications
Below are publications associated with the Southwest Biological Science Center's research.
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Filter Total Items: 1307
Establishing big sagebrush seedlings on the Colorado Plateau
Factors such as soil type and precipitation vary across rangeland landscapes, and these factors affect restoration outcomes and ultimately mean that “one size fits all” management strategies are not effective across large, complex landscapes. Big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata) is a foundational rangeland species that is important to wildlife habitat across the western U.S. On the Colorado Platea
Authors
Kari E. Veblen, Eric Thacker, Mark Larese-Casanova, Kyle C. Nehring, Michael C. Duniway, Colby C. Brungard
Synergistic soil, land use, and climate influences on wind erosion on the Colorado Plateau: Implications for management
Two decades of drought in the southwestern USA are spurring concerns about increases in wind erosion, dust emissions, and associated impacts on ecosystems, agriculture, human health, and water supply. Different avenues of investigation into primary drivers of wind erosion and dust have yielded mixed results depending on the spatial and temporal sensitivity of the evidence. We monitored passive aeo
Authors
Travis W. Nauman, Seth M. Munson, Saroj Dhital, Nicholas P. Webb, Michael C. Duniway
Linking ecosystem processes to consumer growth rates: Gross primary productivity as a driver of freshwater fish somatic growth in a resource-limited river
Individual growth can exert strong controls on population dynamics and be constrained by resource acquisition rates. Difficulty in accurately quantifying resource availability over large spatial extents and at high temporal frequency often limits attempts to understand the extent that resources limit individual growth. Daily estimates of stream metabolism, including gross primary productivity (GPP
Authors
Lindsay Erika Hansen, Charles Yackulic, Brett G. Dickson, Bridget Deemer, Rebecca J. Best
Estimating northern spotted owl (Strix occidentalis caurina) pair detection probabilities based on call-back surveys associated with long-term mark-recapture studies, 1993–2018
The northern spotted owl (Strix occidentalis caurina; hereinafter NSO) was listed as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act in 1990 and population declines have continued since that listing. Given the species’ protected status, any proposed activities on Federal lands that might impact NSO require consultation with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and part of that consultation often includes
Authors
Katie M. Dugger, Alan B. Franklin, Damon B. Lesmeister, Raymond J. Davis, J. David Wiens, Gary C. White, James D. Nichols, James E. Hines, Charles B. Yackulic, Carl J. Schwarz, Steven H. Ackers, L. Steven Andrews, Larissa L. Bailey, Robin Bown, Jesse Burgher, Kenneth P. Burnham, Peter C. Carlson, Tara Chestnut, Mary M Conner, Krista E. Dilione, Eric D. Forsman, Scott A. Gremel, Keith A. Hamm, Dale R. Herter, J. Mark Higley, Rob B. Horn, Julianna M Jenkins, William L. Kendall, David W Lamphear, Christopher McCafferty, Trent L. McDonald, Janice A Reid, Jeremy T. Rockweit, David C. Simon, Stan G Sovern, James K. Swingle, Heather Wise
Recreation use values for water-based recreation
Outdoor recreation is an important and growing activity worldwide. Water-based outdoor recreation is a subset that includes various activities such as fishing, boating, and swimming. While a large portion of water-based recreation is either free or provided at administratively set minimal entrance fees, these activities still involve significant economic value in aggregate. Because many water-base
Authors
John B. Loomis, Lucas Bair
State of the science and decision support for measuring suspended sediment with acoustic instrumentation
Acoustic instrumentation can be used to provide time-series and discrete estimates of suspended-sediment concentration, load, and sediment particle sizes in fluvial systems, which are essential for creating informed solutions to many sediment-related environmental, engineering, and land management concerns. Historically, scientists have developed relations between suspended sediment characteristic
Authors
Molly S. Wood, Joel T. Groten, Timothy D. Straub, Dan R.W. Haught, Ronald E. Griffiths, Justin A. Boldt, Zulimar Lucena, Jeb E. Brown, Steven E. Suttles, Patrick J. Dickhudt
Biting midges (Diptera: Ceratopogonidae) as putative vectors of zoonotic Onchocerca lupi (Nematoda: Onchocercidae) in northern Arizona and New Mexico, southwestern United States
Onchocerca lupi (Rodonaja, 1967) is an understudied, vector-borne, filarioid nematode that causes ocular onchocercosis in dogs, cats, coyotes, wolves, and is also capable of infecting humans. Onchocercosis in dogs has been reported with increasing incidence worldwide. However, despite the growing number of reports describing canine O. lupi cases as well as zoonotic infections globally, the disease
Authors
Chandler C. Roe, Olivia Holiday, Kelly Upshaw-Bia, Gaven Benally, Charles H.D. Williamson, Jennifer Urbanz, Guilherme G. Verocai, Chase Ridenour, Roxanne Nottingham, Morgan Ford, Derek Lake, Theodore Kennedy, Crystal Hepp, Jason W. Sahl
Archaeological sites in Grand Canyon National Park along the Colorado River are eroding owing to six decades of Glen Canyon Dam operations
The archaeological record documenting human history in deserts is commonly concentrated along rivers in terraces or other landforms built by river sediment deposits. Today that record is at risk in many river valleys owing to human resource and infrastructure development activities, including the construction and operation of dams. We assessed the effects of the operations of Glen Canyon Dam – whi
Authors
Joel B. Sankey, Amy E. East, Helen C. Fairley, Joshua Caster, Jennifer Dierker, Ellen Brennan, Lonnie Pilkington, Nathaniel Dylan Bransky, Alan Kasprak
Colorado River Basin
The Colorado River is often referred to as “the lifeblood of the west.” The basin supplies municipal water to nearly 40 million people and irrigates approximately 22,000 km2 of agricultural lands. Twenty-two major rivers converge with the Colorado after it begins its descent from the Rocky Mountains and winds through the plateaus of Colorado, Utah, and Arizona, onto the deserts of southwestern Ari
Authors
Anya Metcalfe, Jeffrey Muehlbauer, Morgan Ford, Theodore Kennedy
Human factors used to estimate and forecast water supply and demand in the Upper Colorado River Basin
Water availability is a result of complex interactions between regional water supply and demand and underlying environmental, institutional, and economic determinants. For this study, water availability is defined as “access to a specific quantity and quality of water at a point in time and space, for a specific use, recognizing the social and economic value of water across uses and institutions t
Authors
Nicole M. Herman-Mercer, Lucas Bair, Megan Hines, Diana Restrepo-Osorio, Veronica Romero, Aidan Lyde
Assessment of potential recovery viability for Colorado Pikeminnow Ptychocheilus lucius in the Colorado River in Grand Canyon
Colorado Pikeminnow Ptychocheilus lucius, the Colorado River’s top native predatory fish, was historically distributed from the Gulf of California delta to the upper reaches of the Green, Colorado, and San Juan rivers in the Colorado River basin in the Southwestern US. In recent decades Colorado Pikeminnow population abundance has declined, primarily due to predation by warmwater nonnative fish an
Authors
Kimberly L. Dibble, Charles Yackulic, Kevin R. Bestgen, Keith B. Gido, Tildon Jones, Mark McKinstry, Doug Osmundson, Dale Ryden, Robert C. Schelly
Inland water greenhouse gas budgets for RECCAP2: 2. Regionalization and homogenization of estimates
Inland waters are important sources of the greenhouse gasses (GHGs) carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) to the atmosphere. In the framework of the 2nd phase of the REgional Carbon Cycle Assessment and Processes (RECCAP-2) initiative, we synthesize existing estimates of GHG emissions from streams, rivers, lakes and reservoirs, and homogenize them with regard to underlying gl
Authors
Ronny Lauerwald, George H. Allen, Bridget Deemer, Shaoda Liu, Taylor Maavara, Peter Raymond, Lewis Alcott, David Bastviken, Adam Hastie, Meredith A. Holgerson, Matthew S. Johnson, Bernhard Lehner, Peirong Lin, Alessandra Marzadri, Lishan Ran, Hanqin Tian, Xiao Yang, Yuanzhi Yao, Pierre Regnier