Publications

Recent trends of rising temperatures and longer droughts between precipitation events are impacting water-limited dryland ecosystems in the western United States. Although ecosystem drought response depends directly on soil moisture, trends in soil moisture (e.g., edaphic drought) remain more poorly explored than precipitation (e.g., meteorological drought), representing an important...

Conducting detailed investigations of large landslides is difficult, especially in the subsurface, largely due to environmental factors such as steep slopes, difficult access, and numerous objective hazards. These factors have made it challenging to accurately estimate the depth to the failure surface of the Barry Arm landslide, a large (roughly 108 cubic meters), deep-seated bedrock...

Fungi are considered particularly important in regulating the structure and function of dryland ecosystems, yet the response of dryland fungal communities to global change remains notably understudied. Without a clear understanding of how fungi respond to global change drivers, mitigation plans—required for biodiversity and ecosystem service conservation and restoration—are impossible to...

Harvest sustainability is a primary goal of wildlife management and conservation, and in a changing world, it is increasingly important to consider environmental drivers of population dynamics alongside harvest in cohesive management plans. This is particularly pertinent for harvested species that acutely experience effects of climate change. The Pacific walrus (Odobenus rosmarus...

Sea otters (Enhydra lutris) were extirpated from much of their range in the North Pacific by the early 1900s but have made a remarkable recovery in Southeast Alaska. Sea otter populations have been particularly successful in Glacier Bay, Alaska, a protected tidewater glacier fjord with a diverse and productive nearshore habitat. Collection of sea otter foraging observations in Glacier...

Estimates of annual maximum (peak) flow quantiles are needed for basins undergoing changes in both urbanization and climate. Most previous work on the effect of urbanization on peak flows has considered urbanization alone and only the spatial variation in flood quantiles or its mean temporal effect, and most work on the effect of nonstationarity in climate has focused on single-station...

Food webs vary in space and time. The structure and spatial arrangement of food webs are theorized to mediate temporal dynamics of energy flow, but empirical corroboration in intermediate-scale landscapes is scarce. River-floodplain landscapes encompass a mosaic of aquatic habitat patches and food webs, supporting a variety of aquatic consumers of conservation concern. How the structure...

Testing of ducks in Tennessee, United States, before introduction of highly pathogenic influenza A(H5N1) virus demonstrated a high prevalence of antibodies to influenza A virus but very low prevalence of antibodies to H5 (25%) or H5 and N1 (13%) subtypes. Antibody prevalence increased after H5N1 introduction.

The frequency and severity of drought events are predicted to increase due to anthropogenic climate change, with cascading effects across forested ecosystems. Management activities such as forest thinning and prescribed burning, which are often intended to mitigate fire hazard and restore ecosystem processes, may also help promote tree resistance to drought. However, it is unclear...

In 2023, the U.S. Geological Survey developed a national inventory of water bottling facilities for the United States, including information about locations, water sources, water use, and a collection of other attributes. The purpose of the inventory was to provide information about water bottling facilities needed to assess and improve understanding of local-, regional-, and national...

Understanding the near-surface environment where atmospheric and solid earth processes interact, often termed the “Critical Zone,” is important for assessing resources and building resilient societies. Here, we examine a volcanic landscape in the Oregon Cascade Range, an understudied Critical Zone setting that is host to major regional water resources, pervasive silicate weathering, and

The U.S. Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coasts are vulnerable to storms, which can cause significant erosion of beaches and dunes that protect coastal communities. Real-time forecasts of storm-driven erosion are useful for decision support, but they are limited due to demands for computational resources and uncertainties in dynamic coastal systems and storm forcings. Current methods for...