Publications

Information about what ecological conditions are likely, causes or drivers of degradation, and potential management actions to restore degraded lands may support land conservation and restoration decisions. State-and-transition models (STMs) describe persistent plant and ecological conditions that are possible (the “state”) within a given abiotic setting and drivers or actions that can...

Water levels in freshwater reservoirs worldwide are changing due to altered climate, management practices, and increasing human demand for water. In the desert southwestern USA, managers are considering significant changes to reservoir operation strategies and water management in response to consumptive use and ongoing drought. To inform reservoir management decision-making, we reviewed...

In the semi-arid grasslands of the southwest United States, annual precipitation is divided between warm-season (July–September) convective precipitation and cool-season (December–March) frontal storms. While evidence suggests shifts in precipitation seasonal distribution, there is a poor understanding of the ecosystem carbon flux responses to cool-season precipitation and the potential...

Restoring healthy, resilient, biodiverse ecosystems is crucial for our Nation’s future. Native plant communities provide essential environmental benefits, such as buffering against extreme weather, improving air, soil, and water quality, and habitat for wildlife. However, the limited availability of locally adapted native plants hampers effective ecological restoration. To address this...

Climate change and river regulation alter environmental controls on riparian plant occurrence and cover worldwide. Simultaneous changes to river flow and air temperature could result in unanticipated plant responses to novel environmental conditions. Increasing temperature could alter riparian plant response to hydrology and other factors, while river regulation may exacerbate...

Suspended-sand concentration and grain-size data in rivers provide valuable information on the catchment's dynamics for scientists and river managers. Producing continuous measurements of suspended-sand concentrations remains a scientific challenge due to their high spatial and temporal variability. Traditional methods such as sediment-rating curves may be highly uncertain, and optical...

Biological soil crusts (biocrusts) are a coherent, thin soil surface layer, engineered and inhabited by a diverse community of moss, lichen, cyanobacteria, and other microorganisms. Biocrusts provide critical functions in dryland systems and may be lost from the ecosystem through physical disturbance or other global change drivers. Once biocrusts are lost, natural recovery can occur very...

Background Wildfire simulation models are used to derive maps of burn probability (BP) based on fuels, weather, topography and ignition locations, and BP maps are key components of wildfire risk assessments. Aims Few studies have compared BP maps with real-world fires to evaluate their suitability for near-future risk assessment. Here, we evaluated a BP map for the conterminous US based...

No abstract available.

Nutrient resorption is a fundamental physiological process in plants, with important ecological controls over numerous ecosystem functions. However, the role of community assembly in driving responses of nutrient resorption to perturbation remains largely unknown. Following the Price equation framework and the Community Assembly and Ecosystem Function framework, we quantified the...

The spread of non-native freshwater mussels in North America is a growing threat that has already resulted in substantial ecological and economic damage to infested areas. A primary vector by which invasive mussels spread is watercraft that are transported over land from an infested waterbody to an uninfested waterbody. Management efforts such as watercraft inspection and detection...

The U.S. Geological Survey investigated land cover at subannual time steps within six wetland areas in Dixie Valley, Churchill County, Nevada, from October 2015 to January 2022. As requested by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, we used aerial photography and satellite remote sensing data to map surface water and other land cover types within the wetland complexes. We identified five...