All Publications

Effective conservation is becoming more difficult as threats to wildlife increase. Natural resource managers are pressured to make difficult decisions with limited resources, and in many instances, large uncertainty. Scientists and managers tasked with the conservation of a species need tools to help guide efficient decision-making. Often, information for management decisions is...

The Rappahannock Tributary Summary outlines change over time for a suite of monitored tidal water quality parameters and associated potential drivers of those trends for the period of 1985 to 2022, and provides a brief description of the current state of knowledge explaining these observed changes. Water quality parameters described include surface (above pycnocline) total nitrogen (TN)...

No abstract available.

Increasing wildfire has motivated the construction of fuel breaks on many rangelands to improve prospects for wildfire suppression. However, the linear shape of fuel breaks greatly increases treatment perimeter: area and thus increased potential for edge effects, e.g., invasions by exotic plants. Potential for edge effects are further increased by the disturbances associated with fuel...

Human-carnivore conflicts pose significant challenges in the management and conservation of carnivores across the globe. Abundant research has led to generalizable insights into the causes of such conflicts. For example, conflicts predictably occur when carnivores have access to human food resources, particularly when their natural foods are scarce. However, similar insights into the...

In the referenced article, the authors would like to correct text in the first paragraph on page 2571, Figure 9 and its caption. The changes reflect an error made in the processing of the rainfall intensity-duration data used to compare storms to published debris flow triggering thresholds. The correctly processed data does not change the interpretations made in the paper but does...

The white-backed hog-nosed skunk (Conepatus leuconotus) is an understudied mesocarnivore thought to be declining throughout its range in the southwestern United States. With the exception of a single skull of unknown age, hog-nosed skunks have not been documented in Oklahoma since 1930. We conducted a camera trapping survey in Cimarron County, Oklahoma during summer 2022 and confirmed...

Hydrologic models are the primary tools that are used to simulate streamflow drought and assess impacts. However, there is little consensus about how to evaluate the performance of these models, especially as hydrologic modeling moves toward larger spatial domains. This paper presents a comprehensive multi-objective approach to systematically evaluating the critical features in...

Hydrological streamline delineation is critical for effective environmental management, influencing agriculture sustainability, river dynamics, watershed planning, and more. This study develops a novel approach to combining transfer learning with convolutional neural networks that capitalize on image-based pre-trained models to improve the accuracy and transferability of streamline...

1. While species distribution models (SDM) are frequently used to predict species occurrences to help inform conservation management, there is limited evidence evaluating whether habitat suitability can reliably predict intrinsic growth rates or distinguish source from sink populations. Filling this knowledge gap is critical for conservation science, as applications of SDMs for...

American black bear (Ursus americanus) populations are increasing throughout much of North America. Use of multiple harvest methods, including hunting over bait, is intended to increase harvest success rates to meet harvest and population management objectives. However, black bear population growth can be influenced by food availability, and some speculate the use of bait may...

Context Widespread ecological degradation has prompted calls for massive global investments in ecological restoration, yet limited resources necessitate efficient application of restoration efforts. In western North America, altered fire regimes are increasing the scale of restoration needed to preserve the sagebrush (Artemisia species) biome but prioritizing and implementing effective...