Publications

Fiscal year 2011 was the first year of implementing an approved elk monitoring protocol in Mount Rainier (MORA) and Olympic (OLYM) National Parks in the North Coast and Cascades Network (NCCN) (Griffin et al. 2012). However, it was the fourth and second year of gathering data according to protocol in MORA and OLYM respectively; data gathered during the protocol development phase followed

Riparian-zone vegetation can influence terrestrial and aquatic food webs through variation in the amount, timing, and nutritional content of leaf and other litter inputs. We investigated how riparian-forest community composition, understory density, and lateral slope shaped vertical and lateral litter inputs to 16 streams in the Oregon Coast Range. Riparian forests dominated by deciduous...

Wind erosion and aeolian transport processes are under studied compared to rainfall-induced erosion and sediment transport on burned landscapes. Post-fire wind erosion studies have predominantly focused on near-surface sediment transport and associated impacts such as on-site soil loss and site fertility. Downwind impacts, including air quality degradation and deposition of dust or...

Measuring the potential impacts of wind farms on wildlife can be difficult and may require development of new statistical tools and models to accurately reflect the measurement process. This presentation reviews the recent history of approaches to estimating wildlife fatality under the unique conditions encountered at wind farms, their unifying themes and their potential shortcomings...

The INL Site and other landscapes having sagebrush steppe vegetation are experiencing a simultaneous change in climate and floristics that result from increases in exotic species. Determining the separate and combined/interactive effects of climate and vegetation change is important for assessing future changes on the landscape and for hydrologic processes. This research uses the 72...

1. Ecohydrological niches are important for understanding plant community responses to climate shifts, particularly in dry lands. According to the two-layer hypothesis, selective use of deep-soil water increases growth or persistence of woody species during warm and dry summer periods and thereby contributes to their coexistence with shallow-rooted herbs in dry ecosystems. The resource...

The Land Treatment Digital Library (LTDL) was created by the U.S. Geological Survey to catalog legacy land treatment information on Bureau of Land Management lands in the western United States. The LTDL can be used by federal managers and scientists for compiling information for data-calls, producing maps, generating reports, and conducting analyses at varying spatial and temporal scales...

Acid deposition and repeated biomass harvest have decreased soil calcium (Ca) availability in many temperate forests worldwide, yet existing methods for assessing available soil Ca do not fully characterize soil Ca forms. To account for discrepancies in ecosystem Ca budgets, it has been hypothesized that the highly insoluble biomineral Ca oxalate might represent an additional soil Ca...

Greater scientific knowledge, changing societal values, and legislative mandates have emphasized the importance of implementing large-scale flow experiments (FEs) downstream of dams. We provide the first global assessment of FEs to evaluate their success in advancing science and informing management decisions. Systematic review of 113 FEs across 20 countries revealed that clear...

Across the country, public land managers make decisions each year that influence landscapes and ecosystems within their jurisdictions. Many of these decisions involve vegetation manipulations, which often are referred to as land treatments. These treatments include removal or alteration of plant biomass, seeding of burned areas, application of herbicides, and other activities. Data...

Non-native species are considered one of the greatest threats to freshwater biodiversity worldwide (Drake et al. 1989; Allen and Flecker 1993; Dudgeon et al. 2005). Some of the first hypotheses proposed to explain global patterns of amphibian declines included the effects of non-native species (Barinaga 1990; Blaustein and Wake 1990; Wake and Morowitz 1991). Evidence for the impact of...

Amphibians live in a wide variety of habitats around the world, many of which have been modified or destroyed by human activities. Most species have unique life history characteristics adapted to specific climates, habitats (e.g., lentic, lotic, terrestrial, arboreal, fossorial, amphibious), and local conditions that provide suitable areas for reproduction, development and growth...