Publications

Long-term ecological studies are invaluable for detecting changes over time. Forest restoration has been a conservation priority in Hawaiʻi, where invasive species have negatively impacted native bird habitat. During 1993–1994, a study was conducted of Hawaiʻi ʻelepaio (Chasiempis sandwichensis) nest site selection and forest composition in mesic montane forest along Mauna Loa Road in...

The segment of the Upper Missouri River between Fort Peck Dam and the headwaters of Lake Sakakawea is home to a population of the endangered Scaphirhynchus albus (pallid sturgeon). Lack of population growth (recruitment failure) has been attributed to inadequate dispersal distance of larvae between spawning locations and the headwaters of Lake Sakakawea, where conventional wisdom holds...

Executive Summary Anadromous fish returning to the lower American River are restricted to 36 kilometers of free-flowing river between Nimbus Dam and American River’s confluence with the Sacramento River, California. Salmon in the American River provide an important freshwater recreational fishery. However, annual salmon production in the American River in recent years has been low...

Invasive freshwater mussels, such as the zebra (Dreissena polymorpha), quagga (Dreissena rostriformis bugensis), and golden (Limnoperna fortunei) mussel have spread outside their native ranges throughout many regions of the North American, South American, and European continents in recent decades, damaging infrastructure and the environment. This review describes ongoing efforts by...

Ecosystem state transitions can be ecologically devastating or be a restoration success. State transitions are common within aquatic systems worldwide, especially considering human-mediated changes to land use and water use. We created a transferable conceptual framework to enable multiscale assessments of state resilience and early warnings of state transitions that can inform strategic

Non-invasive methods are important to the field of conservation physiology to reduce negative effects on organisms being studied. Glucocorticoid (GC) hormones are often used to assess health of individuals, but collection methods can be invasive. Many amphibians are imperiled worldwide, and saliva is a non- or semi-invasive matrix to measure GCs that has been partially validated for only...

The sagebrush biome is a dryland region in the western United States experiencing rapid transformations to novel ecological states. Threat-based approaches for managing anthropogenic and ecosystem threats have recently become prominent, but successfully mitigating threats depends on the ecological resilience of ecosystems. We used a spatially explicit approach for prioritizing management...

Objective High juvenile mortality prevents recruitment into the adult populations of endangered Shortnose Sucker Chasmistes brevirostris and Lost River Sucker Deltistes luxatus in Upper Klamath Lake, Oregon. To address the lack of recruitment, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service implemented the Sucker Assisted Rearing Program (SARP). Managers developing the rearing program lack...

For many conifer species in dry conifer forests of North America, seeds must be present for postfire regeneration to occur, suggesting that seed dispersal from surviving trees plays a critical role in postfire forest recovery. However, the application of tree fecundity and spatial arrangement to postfire conifer recovery predictions have only recently become more common, and is often...

Avalanche forecasters and snow scientists use physically based snow stratigraphy models to fill spatial and temporal gaps in field-based snow profile observations. These models generate stratigraphy predictions using meteorological input from automated weather stations (AWS) or numerical weather prediction (NWP) models. The choice of input data is often determined by data availability or

Wet snow avalanches are predicted to increase in frequency with climate change and are often difficult to forecast. Improving our understanding of wet snow avalanche timing will help with current forecasting challenges. The onset of wet snow avalanching is closely tied to the temporal progression of liquid water flow through the seasonal snowpack. Measuring the flow of water through the...

Triggering whumpfs is a primary indicator of unstable snowpack conditions. Although backcountry travelers and avalanche forecasters rely on whumpfs as a warning sign of potential avalanches, there is little formal research to confirm this relationship. This study investigated the temporal correlation between whumpfs and avalanche activity in data from Colorado's Front Range and southern...