Publications

Rangeland ecosystems in the western United States are vulnerable to climate change, fire, and anthropogenic disturbances, yet classification of rangeland areas remains difficult due to frequently sparse vegetation canopies that increase the influence of soils and senesced vegetation, the overall abundance of senesced vegetation, heterogeneity of life forms, and limited ground-based data...

The East Anatolian Fault Zone (EAFZ) is a plate-bounding strike-slip fault capable of hosting large earthquakes, as demonstrated by the extremely damaging February 2023 Mw 7.8 and Mw 7.7 mainshocks of the Kahramanmaraş earthquake sequence. Deformation related to this boundary, part of the Anatolia-Arabia-Africa (A3) Triple Junction, is diffuse, as was shown by part of this earthquake...

BackgroundEnhancing detection of cryptic snakes is critical for the development of conservation and management strategies; yet, finding methods that provide adequate detection remains challenging. Issues with detecting snakes can be particularly problematic for some species, like the invasive Burmese python (Python bivittatus) in the Florida Everglades.MethodsUsing multiple survey...

Elastic continuum mechanical models are widely used to compute deformations due to pressure changes in buried cavities, such as magma reservoirs. In general, analytical models are fast but can be inaccurate as they do not correctly satisfy boundary conditions for many geometries, while numerical models are slow and may require specialized expertise and software. To overcome these...

With growing global capability for satellite measurement of river discharge (flow) comes a need to understand and reduce error in satellite-based discharge measurements. Satellite-based discharge estimates are based on measurements of water surface width, elevation, slope, and potentially velocity. Site selection is important for reducing error and uncertainty in both conventional and...

Scientists and resource managers increasingly use Markdown-based tools to create reproducible reports and manuscripts. These workflows allow people to use standardized methods that are more reproducible, efficient, and transparent than other standard office tools. We present a Quarto template and demonstrate how this template may be used for a journal, the Journal of Fish and Wildlife...

The vertical accuracy of elevation data in coastal environments is critical because small variations in elevation can affect an area’s exposure to waves, tides, and storm-related flooding. Elevation data contractors typically quantify the vertical accuracy of lidar-derived digital elevation models (DEMs) on a per-project basis to gauge whether the datasets meet quality and accuracy...

Spatial machine learning models can be developed from observations with substantial unexplainable variability, sometimes called ‘noise’. Traditional point-scale metrics (e.g., R2) alone can be misleading when evaluating these models. We present a multi-scale performance evaluation (MPE) using two additional scales (distributional and geostatistical). We apply the MPE framework to...

Evaluating the status and trends of natural-origin anadromous fish populations over time requires robust estimates of out-migrating juvenile abundance. Information on abundance is typically acquired by capturing actively migrating fish as they pass stationary monitoring platforms. Challenges to estimation include protracted migration timing, temporally varying capture probabilities and...

The mid-Piacenzian Warm Period (MPWP, ~ 3.264–3.025 Ma) is the most recent example of a persistently warmer climate in equilibrium with atmospheric CO2 concentrations similar to today. Towards studying patterns and dynamics of a warming climate the MPWP is often compared to today. Following the Pliocene Model Intercomparison Project, Phase 2 (PlioMIP2) protocol we prepare a water isotope...

Plateau spot-tailed earless lizards, Holbrookia lacerata, are a species of ground lizard in central Texas that are under review for listing as endangered under the US Endangered Species Act, but heretofore no predictive models of population dynamics or viability have been developed. We used limited available data and published demographic rates in a PVA model to predict future status of...

Widespread supra-permafrost talik formation is currently recognized as a critical mechanism that could accelerate permafrost thaw in the Arctic (e.g., Connon et al. 2018; Farquharson et al. 2022). However, the trajectory of permafrost dynamics following talik formation may prove difficult to predict. Physically-based cryohydrogeologic models provide a powerful tool for understanding...