Publications

Southern California’s beaches can support a remarkable diversity of birds along the Pacific Flyway. We asked whether seasonal, annual, and spatial factors affect bird richness and abundance on public beaches. To do so, we conducted three years of monthly bird surveys on 12 sandy beaches in Ventura California. Across all surveys, we counted 22 shorebird species, 8 gull species, 24 other...

Planning for marine conservation often requires estimates of the amount of habitat needed to support assemblages of interacting species. During winter in subtidal San Pablo Bay, California, the 3 main diving duck species are lesser scaup Aythya affinis (LESC), greater scaup A. marila (GRSC), and surf scoter Melanitta perspicillata (SUSC), which all feed almost entirely on the bivalve...

Rodents frequently forage in a density-dependent manner, increasing harvesting in patches with greater seed densities. Although seldom considered, seed harvesting may also depend on the species identities of other individuals in the seed neighbourhood. When the seed harvest of a focal species increases in association with another seed species, the focal species suffers from Associational

Tidal marshes are dynamic ecosystems, which are influenced by oceanic and freshwater processes and daily changes in sea level. Projected sea-level rise and changes in storm frequency and intensity will affect tidal marshes by altering suspended sediment supply, plant communities, and the inundation duration and depth of the marsh platform. The objective of this research was to evaluate...

The analysis of long-term monitoring data is increasingly important; not only for the discovery and documentation of changes in environmental systems, but also as an enterprise whose fruits validate the allocation of effort and scarce funds to monitoring. In simple terms, we may distinguish between the detection of change in some ecosystem attribute versus the investigation of causes and

Birds are often the most numerous vertebrates damaged and rehabilitated in marine oil spills; however, the efficacy of avian rehabilitation is frequently debated and rarely examined experimentally. We compared survival of three radio-marked treatment groups, oiled, rehabilitated (ORHB), un-oiled, rehabilitated (RHB), and un-oiled, non-rehabilitated (CON), in an experimental approach to...

Non-breeding sooty shearwaters are the most abundant seabird in the California Current Large Marine Ecosystem (CCLME) during boreal spring and summer months. This, combined with relatively great energy demands, reliance on patchy, shoaling prey (krill, squid, and forage fishes), and unconstrained mobility free from central-place-foraging demands—make shearwaters useful indicators of...

Waste rice seed is an important food for wintering waterfowl and current estimates of its availability are needed to determine the carrying capacity of rice fields and guide habitat conservation. We used a line-intercept method to estimate mass-density of rice seed remaining after harvest during 2010 in the Sacramento Valley (SACV) of California and compared results with estimates from...

Various anthropogenic pressures, including habitat loss, threaten reptile populations worldwide. Riparian zones are critical habitat for many reptile species, but these habitats are also frequently modified by anthropogenic activities. Our study investigated the effects of two riparian habitat modifications-damming and urbanization-on overall and species-specific reptile occupancy...

We surveyed birds on grain and non-grain fields in the Tulare Basin of California treated post-harvest with two types of flooding that varied in duration and depth of water applied (Flooded-type fields [FLD]: 1 week; Irrigated-type fields [IRG]:

During the last 3 decades, many road removal projects have been implemented on public and private lands in the United States to reduce erosion and other impacts from abandoned or unmaintained forest roads. Although effective in decreasing sediment production from roads, such activities have a carbon (C) cost as well as representing a carbon savings for an ecosystem. We assessed the...

Although many studies on the taxonomy of digenean trematodes of marine fishes have been completed in the Eastern Indo-Pacific (EIP) marine ecoregion, only a few have considered metacercarial stages. Here, the results are presented of a taxonomic survey of the digenean metacercariae of fishes from Palmyra Atoll, a remote and relatively pristine US National Wildlife Refuge located 1680 km...