Publications

Context Plant communities vary both abruptly and gradually over time but differentiating between types of change can be difficult with existing classification and ordination methods. Structural topic modeling (STRUTMO), a text mining analysis, offers a flexible methodology for analyzing both types of temporal trends.Objectives Our objectives were to (1) identify post-fire dominant...

Charrs (Salvelinus) reach their southernmost distribution in Japan, and are uniquely adapted to the short, steep streams of this island archipelago. Southern Asian Dolly Varden (Salvelinus curilus) occur only in Hokkaido Island, whereas white-spotted charr (Salvelinus leucomaenis) range to southern Honshu. Both species diverged from an ancestral lineage during the late Pliocene/early...

Birds in steppe landscapes change their behaviour over the annual cycle. We used GPS telemetry to track 12 steppe-dwelling adult Ferruginous Hawks (Buteo regalis) to understand how their home ranges varied across the year. Home range sizes of territorial adult hawks showed strong intra-annual variation, being smallest from April to June, and largest from July to October. Patterns in home...

Kazakhstan is a key area for the conservation of the steppe eagle, which is classified as an endangered species by the IUCN. Systematic work on monitoring changes in its number and reproductive success is carried out in protected areas. The remaining steppe spaces are explored sporadically. Our work partially fills this gap. Over 5 years of monitoring the nesting group in the north of...

Terrestrial soils in forested landscapes represent some of the largest mercury (Hg) reserves globally. Wildfire can alter the storage and distribution of terrestrial-bound Hg via reemission to the atmosphere or mobilization in watersheds where it may become available for methylation and uptake into food webs. Using data associated with the 2007 Moonlight and Antelope Fires in California...

Genetic resiliency is the likelihood that populations retain sufficient genetic diversity to respond to environmental change. It is rarely examined through time in conservation genetic studies due to challenges of acquiring and sequencing historical specimens. Focusing on populations of two sibling bumble bee species of conservation concern with different recent patterns of decline, we...

No abstract available.

Fuel-treatments targeting shrubs and fire-prone exotic annual grasses (EAGs) are increasingly used to mitigate increased wildfire risks in arid and semiarid environments, and understanding their response to natural factors is needed for effective landscape management. Using field-data collected over four years from fuel-break treatments in semiarid sagebrush-steppe, we asked 1) how the...

Forest thinning on public lands in the Pacific Northwest USA is an important tool for restoring diversity in forest stands with a legacy of simplified structure from decades of intensive management for timber production. A primary application of thinning in young ( 50-year-old) stands is to accelerate forest development to mitigate loss of late-seral habitat to decades of logging...

Wildlife conservation strategies focused on one season or population segment may fail to adequately protect populations, especially when a species’ habitat preferences vary among seasons, age-classes, geographic regions, or other factors. Conservation of golden eagles (Aquila chrysaetos) is an example of such a complex scenario, in which the distribution, habitat use, and migratory...

No abstract available.

Large-scale disturbances, such as megafires, motivate restoration at equally large extents. Measuring the survival and growth of individual plants plays a key role in current efforts to monitor restoration success. However, the scale of modern restoration (e.g., >10,000 ha) challenges measurements of demographic rates with field data. In this study, we demonstrate how unoccupied aerial...