Publications

Anthropogenically driven flow intermittency is increasing in freshwater streams, with important implications for the management and conservation of aquatic ecosystems. Because most freshwater fishes are mobile, they are expected to emigrate from intermittent reaches, but this may not be true in streams transitioning from perennial to intermittent. Here, we attempt to determine if...

Many populations migrate between two different habitats (e.g. wintering/foraging to breeding area, mainstem–tributary, river–lake, river–ocean, river–side channel) as part of their life history. Detection technologies, such as passive integrated transponder (PIT) antennas or sonic receivers, can be placed at boundaries between habitats (e.g. near the confluence of rivers) to detect...

Restoring biological crust (biocrust) in disturbed drylands is challenging due to the difficult environmental conditions, such as limited soil moisture, low soil nutrients, and extreme temperatures, that impede growth. Understanding how the key components of biocrust—mosses, lichens, and cyanobacteria—react to different environmental factors informs the optimal timing, locations, and...

Predicting how increasing temperatures interact with other global change drivers to influence the structure and dynamics of Earth's ecosystems is a primary challenge in ecology. Our study made use of multiple simultaneous “natural experiments” to examine how rapid warming, declining nutrients, invasive consumers, and riparian invasive species management interact to influence leaf...

Integrating recent scientific knowledge into management decisions supports effective natural resource management and can lead to better resource outcomes. However, finding and accessing scientific knowledge can be time consuming and costly. To assist in this process, the U.S. Geological Survey has created a series of annotated bibliographies on topics of management concern for lands in...

Simulation models are valuable tools for estimating ecosystem response to environmental conditions and are particularly relevant for investigating climate change impacts. However, because of high computational requirements, models are often applied over a coarse grid of points or for representative locations. Spatial interpolation of model output can be necessary to guide decision-making...

Vegetation greening has been suggested to be a dominant trend over recent decades, but severe pulses of tree mortality in forests after droughts and heatwaves have also been extensively reported. These observations raise the question of to what extent the observed severe pulses of tree mortality induced by climate could affect overall vegetation greenness across spatial grains and...

Rising water temperatures in rivers due to climate change are already having observable impacts on river ecosystems. Warming water has both direct and indirect impacts on aquatic life, and further aggravates pervasive issues such as eutrophication, pollution, and the spread of disease. Animals can survive higher temperatures through physiological and/or genetic acclimation, behavioral...

No abstract available.

In support of the goals of the Coachella Valley Conservation Commission and the Bureau of Land Management, we performed surveys to determine the status, distribution, demographics, and possible genetic linkages of Agassiz’s desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii) populations within the Coachella Valley Multiple Species Habitat Conservation Plan (CVMSHCP) area during a multi-decadal...

Background Wildfire is a major proximate cause of historical and ongoing losses of intact big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata Nutt.) plant communities and declines in sagebrush obligate wildlife species. In recent decades, fire return intervals have shortened and area burned has increased in some areas, and habitat degradation is occurring where post-fire re-establishment of sagebrush is...

Context Wildland-urban interface (WUI) areas are facing increased forest fire risks and extreme precipitation events due to climate change, which can lead to post-fire flood events. The city of Flagstaff in northern Arizona, USA experienced WUI forest thinning, fire, and record rainfall events, which collectively contributed to large floods and damages to the urban neighborhoods and city