Publications

In drylands, there is a need for controlled experiments over multiple planting years to examine how woody seedlings respond to soil texture and the potentially interactive effects of soil depth and precipitation. Understanding how multiple environmental factors interactively influence plant establishment is critical to restoration ecology and in this case to broad-scale restoration...

Across many global drylands, biocrusts form a protective barrier on the soil surface and fill many critical roles in these harsh yet fragile environments. Previous short-term research suggests that climate change and invasive plant introduction can damage and alter biocrust communities, yet few long-term observations exist. Using a globally unique long-term record of continuous biocrust...

No abstract available.

The primary last interglacial, marine isotope substage (MIS) 5e records on the Pacific coast of North America, from Washington (USA) to Baja California Sur (Mexico), are found in the deposits of erosional marine terraces. Warmer coasts along the southern Golfo de California host both erosional marine terraces and constructional coral reef terraces. Because the northern part of the region...

Bennett et al. (2021, Science 373, 1528–1531) reported that ancient human footprints discovered in White Sands National Park, New Mexico date to between ∼23,000 and 21,000 years ago. Haynes (2022, PaleoAmerica, this issue) proposes two alternate hypotheses to explain the antiquity of the footprints. One is that they were made by humans crossing over older sediments sometime during the...

No abstract available.

Semi-arid urban environments are undergoing an increase in both average air temperatures and in the frequency and intensity of extreme heat events. Within cities, different composition and densities of urban landcovers (ULC) influence local air temperatures, either mitigating or increasing heat. Currently, understanding how combinations of ULC influence air temperature at the block to...

Climate change is expected to increase fire activity, which has the potential to accelerate climate-induced shifts in species composition and distribution in the boreal-temperate ecotone. Wildfire can kill resident trees, and thus provide establishment opportunities for migrating tree species. However, the role of fire size and its interactions with tree species with varied life-history...

Disturbances are a key component of ecological processes in coastal ecosystems. Investigating factors that affect tidal marsh accretion and elevation change is important, largely due to accelerating sea-level rise and the ecological and economic value of wetlands. Sediment accumulation rates, elevation change, and flooding were examined at five marshes along a riverine-tidal gradient in...

The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) is recognized by a major negative carbon isotope (δ13C) excursion (CIE) signifying an injection of isotopically light carbon into exogenic reservoirs, the mass, source, and tempo of which continue to be debated. Evidence of a transient precursor carbon release(s) has been identified in a few localities, although it remains equivocal whether...

Tropical regions are experiencing high rates of forest cover loss coupled with changes in the volume and timing of rainfall. These shifts can compromise streamflow and water provision, highlighting the need to identify how forest cover influences streamflow generation under variable rainfall conditions. Although rainfall is the key driver of streamflow regimes, the role of forests is...

For millennia, forest ecosystems in California have been shaped by fire from both natural processes and Indigenous land management, but the notion of climatic variation as a primary controller of the pre-colonial landscape remains pervasive. Understanding the relative influence of climate and Indigenous burning on the fire regime is key because contemporary forest policy and management...