Publications

Rare earth element (REE) resources of the Bear Lodge Alkaline Complex, Wyoming, are hosted in variably leached carbonatite spatially related to diatreme breccia pipes. We investigated the genesis of REE and lesser-known gold resources through fluid inclusion analysis of carbonatite, fluorite breccia, and smoky quartz vein samples. Physicochemical characteristics of inclusion-trapped...

Vicuñas (Vicugna vicugna) and guanacos (Lama guanicoe) are the two species of wild South American camelids whose distributions range from Peru to northern Argentina and southern Peru to southern Argentina, respectively. Listed as critically endangered in the 1960s due to poaching, vicuña numbers had been gradually recovering; however, new concerns about population stability have arisen...

Climate change was barely a blip on the radar for inland fisheries management 20 years ago. Today, it's a central focus. A 2016 paper helped shift conversations, sparked adaptation efforts across fisheries management. The future is still uncertain, but adaptation is key to sustaining these important resources.

Accurate reconstructions of past environmental changes are crucial in paleoecological research and require reliable chronologies of sedimentary archives. Establishing robust age-models and obtaining the most appropriate proxies for analysis is a complex scientific endeavor, requiring extensive resources and collaboration among specialists, including radiochronologists. Radiometric dating...

In a previous study, bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) were periodically photographed by trail cameras when they visited desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii) burrows in the San Bernardino Mountains near Palm Springs, California, USA. The authors suggested that bighorn sheep may utilize the excavated spoil material from burrows as a mineral lick. To test that supposition, we collected soil...

Understanding the origin and spread of invasive species is critical for predicting when and where new introductions will establish, and impact native species. However, due to the complexity of contributing factors such as multiple introductions, dispersal method, genetic admixture in founding populations, and variable propagule pressure, genetic patterns observed in invasive species may...

Mysis diluviana is a macroinvertebrate that couples benthic and pelagic habitats on a daily timescale through diel vertical migration (DVM). However, quantifying how much Mysis biomass is exchanged between benthic and pelagic habitats at an ecosystem scale is difficult because of sampling limitations and variability in Mysis DVM behavior related to light and depth. Although Mysis are...

Water quality post-wildfire is often impaired by increased turbidity and elevated concentrations of elements such as manganese (Mn) and iron (Fe). Precipitation events exacerbate these issues, due in part to increased erosion and transport of sediment from hillslopes to surface water. Both Mn and Fe are major redox-active elements in sediments that drive a variety of biogeochemical...

Natural history museum records may provide unique information on the distribution of species that can supplement survey data collected by resource managers. However, there can be challenges to using museum data for analyses, such as spurious geographic information, misidentifications, and incorrect labeling. Museum records have been centralized by open-source repositories with flags for...

Coral reefs near high human population areas suffer from sedimentation and increased turbidity due to coastal development. However, there is limited research on how key species respond to turbidity caused by terrigenous sediment and how this response may change with increased water temperatures. This study investigated the effects of ambient and elevated turbidity (+ 26 NTU) in...

Distributed acoustic sensing (DAS), which transforms a fiber optic cable into an array of high frequency strainmeters, has the potential to help us characterize earthquakes with a dense sampling of measurements. While earthquake focal mechanisms are frequently determined using P-wave polarities and S/P amplitude ratios with inertial seismometers, the dense sampling of DAS over...

Ecological systems can undergo large changes and regime shifts that are either catastrophic, neutral, or desirable. Rivers worldwide have recently undergone desirable regime shifts related to re-oligotrophy, which is a notable and ongoing reduction in concentrations of total suspended solids (TSS), total N, total P, or phytoplankton. For example, the Upper Mississippi River, USA, has...