Publications

The painted turtle (Chrysemys picta) is widely distributed from coast to coast in North America with each of four subspecies generally occupying different regions. In the southwestern USA and northern Mexico, where C. p. bellii is the expected native race, populations are small and widelyscattered. Introduced populations of other painted turtle subspecies are reported from various...

Slow ecological processes challenge conservation. Short‐term variability can obscure the importance of slower processes that may ultimately determine the state of a system. Furthermore, management actions with slow responses can be hard to justify. One response to slow processes is to explicitly concentrate analysis on state dynamics. Here, we focus on identifying drivers of Northern...

Over 9000 articles have been published on turtles and tortoises (excluding sea turtles) since 1950 according to the Web of Science, including over 8000 contained in a personal bibliography that we analyze in this paper. Research had a slow start from 1900 to 1950, with mostly anecdotal additions to our knowledge until the contributions of F. Cagle and A. Carr took turtle research to new...

Big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata Nutt.) plant communities are found in western North America and comprise a mix of shrubs, forbs, and grasses. Climate, topography, and soil water availability are important factors that shape big sagebrush stand structure and plant community composition; however, most studies have focused on understanding these relationships at sites in a small portion...

The Arizona hedgehog cactus (Echinocereus triglochidiatus var. arizonicus) is endemic to central Arizona in Gila and Pinal Counties, and has been federally listed as endangered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) since 1979. Mining, mineral exploration, and highway development have resulted in habitat degradation and loss of individual plants. Therefore, decreases in the...

(Fairley) When historians describe the decades preceding designation of Grand Canyon National Park (GCNP), they typically focus attention on early scientific studies conducted by John Wesley Powell, Clarence Dutton, and Charles Walcott. All three of these pioneering scientists were employed by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), a small Federal agency first established in 1879. Yet rarely...

There is a long history of experimental research in the Luquillo Experimental Forest in Puerto Rico. These experiments have addressed questions about biotic thresholds, assessed why communities vary along natural gradients, and have explored forest responses to a range of both anthropogenic and non-anthropogenic disturbances. Combined, these studies cover many of the major disturbances...

Sustainable dryland management depends on understanding environmental factors driving composition of current and future ecological communities. While there has been extensive research on aboveground plant communities, less is known about belowground soil seed bank communities, which can reflect both past and potential future communities. In the Colorado Plateau of the western United...

Change detection of high resolution topographic data is commonly used in river valleys to quantify reach- and site-scale sediment budgets by estimating the erosion/deposition volume, and to interpret the geomorphic processes driving erosion and deposition. Field survey data are typically collected as point clouds that are often converted to gridded raster datasets and the ultimate choice...

Soils play a critical role in the cycling of water, energy, and carbon in the Earth system. Until recently, due primarily to a lack of soil property maps of a sufficiently high‐quality and spatial detail, a minor emphasis has been placed on providing high‐resolution measured soil parameter estimates for land surface models and hydrologic models. This study introduces Probabilistic...

Understanding the importance of biotic interactions in driving the distribution and abundance of species is a central goal of plant ecology. Early vascular plants likely colonized land occupied by biocrusts — photoautotrophic, surface‐dwelling soil communities comprised of cyanobacteria, bryophytes, lichens and fungi — suggesting biotic interactions between biocrusts and plants have been...

No abstract available.