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Publications

Below are publications associated with the Southwest Biological Science Center's research.

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Filter Total Items: 1342

Biological soil crusts

No abstract available.
Authors
Jayne Belnap

Deserts

The deserts of California (Lead photo, Fig. 1) occupy approximately 38% of California’s landscape (Table 1) and consist of three distinct deserts: the Great Basin Desert, Mojave Desert, and Colorado Desert, the latter of which is a subdivision of the Sonoran Desert (Brown and Lowe 1980). The wide range of climates and geology found within each of these deserts result in very different vegetative c
Authors
Jayne Belnap, Robert H. Webb, Todd C. Esque, Matthew L. Brooks, Lesley A. DeFalco, James A. MacMahon

Soil phosphorus cycling in tropical soils: An ultisol and oxisol perspective

Phosphorus (P) is essential for life. It is the backbone of our DNA, provides energy for biological reactions, and is an integral component of cell membranes. As such, it is no surprise that P availability plays a strong role in regulating ecosystem structure and function (Wassen et al. 2005, Elser et al. 2007, Condit et al. 2013), and in determining our capacity to grow food for a burgeoning huma
Authors
Sasha C. Reed, Tana E Wood

Measuring the impact of invasive species on popular culture: a case study based on toy turtles from Japan

The red-eared slider turtle (Trachemys scripta elegans) is native to portions of the United States of America (USA) and adjacent northeastern Mexico. The bright and colorful hatchlings have long been popular as pets globally but numerous individuals have been released into the wild establishing populations in areas well outside their native range. As a result, slider turtles are now introduced wor
Authors
Jeffrey E. Lovich, Katsuya Yamamoto

Does the stress-gradient hypothesis hold water? Disentangling spatial and temporal variation in plant effects on soil moisture in dryland systems

The nature of the relationship between water limitation and facilitation has been one of the most contentious debates surrounding the stress-gradient hypothesis (SGH), which states that plant-plant interactions shift from competition to facilitation with increasing environmental stress. We take a closer look at the potential role of soil moisture in mediating plant-plant interaction outcomes by a
Authors
Bradley J. Butterfield, John B. Bradford, Cristina Armas, Ivan Prieto, Francisco I. Pugnaire

Gopherus Agassizii (Agassiz’s Desert Tortoise). Mechanical Injury

On 3 June 2015 at 1024 h, a team of U.S. Geological Survey scientists located an immature Gopherus agassizii (Agassiz’s desert tortoise) at Joshua Tree National Park, near the southern Cottonwood Canyon entrance. The habitat in the area is typical of the Sonoran Desert in that part of California with various trees and shrubs including Larrea tridentate (creosote bush), Parkinsonia florida (blue pa
Authors
Amanda Smith, Laura A. Tennant, Jeffrey E. Lovich, Terence R. Arundel

Rangeland monitoring reveals long-term plant responses to precipitation and grazing at the landscape scale

Managers of rangeland ecosystems require methods to track the condition of natural resources over large areas and long periods of time as they confront climate change and land use intensification. We demonstrate how rangeland monitoring results can be synthesized using ecological site concepts to understand how climate, site factors, and management actions affect long-term vegetation dynamics at t
Authors
Seth M. Munson, Michael C. Duniway, Jamin K. Johanson

Soil moisture response to experimentally altered snowmelt timing is mediated by soil, vegetation, and regional climate patterns

Soil moisture in seasonally snow-covered environments fluctuates seasonally between wet and dry states. Climate warming is advancing the onset of spring snowmelt and may lengthen the summer-dry state and ultimately cause drier soil conditions. The magnitude of either response may vary across elevation and vegetation types. We situated our study at the lower boundary of persistent snow cover and th
Authors
Lafe G Conner, Richard A. Gill, Jayne Belnap

Surprise and opportunity for learning in Grand Canyon: the Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Program

With a focus on resources of the Colorado River ecosystem below Glen Canyon Dam, the Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Program has included a variety of experimental policy tests, ranging from manipulation of water releases from the dam to removal of non-native fish within Grand Canyon National Park. None of these field-scale experiments has yet produced unambiguous results in terms of managemen
Authors
Theodore S. Melis, Carl Walters, Josh Korman

On the prediction of threshold friction velocity of wind erosion using soil reflectance spectroscopy

Current approaches to estimate threshold friction velocity (TFV) of soil particle movement, including both experimental and empirical methods, suffer from various disadvantages, and they are particularly not effective to estimate TFVs at regional to global scales. Reflectance spectroscopy has been widely used to obtain TFV-related soil properties (e.g., moisture, texture, crust, etc.), however, no
Authors
Junran Li, Cody B. Flagg, Gregory S. Okin, Thomas H. Painter, Kebonye Dintwe, Jayne Belnap

Hybridization between Dusky Grouse and Sharp-tailed Grouse

Cache County, Utah, 7 April 2013: rare hybrid combination of grouse noted. Hybridization between Dusky Grouse (Dendragapus obscurus) and Sharp-tailed Grouse (Tympanuchus phasianellus) has been rarely documented in the wild. The only published record was of one collected from Osoyoos, British Columbia, in 1906 (Brooks 1907, Lincoln 1950). There is also one record of this hybrid in captivity (McCart
Authors
Ryan P. O'Donnell

Roost habitat of Mexican Spotted Owls (Strix occidentalis lucida) in the canyonlands of Utah

In large portions of their geographic range, Mexican Spotted Owls (Strix occidentalis lucida) roost in forest-dominated environments, but in some areas the owls use relatively arid rocky canyonlands. We measured habitat characteristics at 133 male roosts (n = 20 males) during 1992-95, and 56 female roosts (n = 13 females) during 1994-95. Across all years and study areas, 44% of Mexican Spotted Owl
Authors
David W. Willey, Charles van Riper
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