Publications

Improvements in timber harvest practices and reductions in harvest volumes over the past half century are commonly presumed to have reduced sediment loads in many western US rivers. However, direct assessments in larger watersheds are relatively sparse. Here, we compare 2019–21 sediment concentrations against those of the late 1970s in the Bogachiel and Calawah River watersheds, adjacent...

Salt marsh ponds expand and deepen over time, potentially reducing ecosystem carbon storage and resilience. The water filled volumes of ponds represent missing carbon due to prevented soil accumulation and removal by erosion and decomposition. Removal mechanisms have different implications as eroded carbon can be redistributed while decomposition results in loss. We constrained ponding...

The R package iBluff is designed for coastal bluffs/bluffs morphological analysis and offers an automatic and reproducible alternative to identify bluff edges using a bare earth digital elevation model (DEM) instead of hand digitizing. This package extracts elevation profiles along automatically identified transects on the bluff-face, bluff top, toe, secondary inflections, relative...

1. Integrating ecological theory with empirical methods is ubiquitous in ecology using hierarchical Bayesian models. However, there has been little development focused on integration of ecological theory into models for survival analysis. Survival is a fundamental process, linking individual fitness with population dynamics, but incorporating life history strategies to inform survival...

A novel interaction between a long-tailed weasel (Mustela frenata) and a plains spotted skunk (Spilogale interrupta) carcass is detailed. In November 2020, a farmer in Edmunds County in north-central South Dakota sent in a video recording of a long-tailed weasel with a spotted skunk carcass. Location of the event, carcass condition, and recorded behavior of the long-tailed weasel offer...

Knowledge co-production, a process that involves both creators and users of information in knowledge generation, is growing in popularity in the conservation and ecology fields. While examples of successful co-production are becoming more common, many barriers and challenges remain in this work. Here, we reflect on our experiences in knowledge co-production from three recent case studies...

Parasite infrapopulation size - the population of parasites affecting a single host - is a central metric in parasitology. However, parasites are small and elusive such that imperfect detection is expected. Repeated sampling of parasites during primary sampling occasions (e.g., each host capture) informs the detection process. Here, we estimate flea (Siphonaptera) infrapopulation size on...

Recreational-grade side-scan sonar (SSS) has become an invaluable tool for inland fisheries, particularly when characterizing underwater habitat, but it is being increasingly used for enumerating large-bodied (> 1 m total length [TL]) aquatic fauna. We used SSS in river and reservoir environments to evaluate methods for identifying and counting Paddlefish Polyodon spathula, a large...

In 1999–2001, Guagua Pichincha volcano, Ecuador, produced a series of cyclic explosive and effusive eruptions. Rock samples, including dense blocks and pumiceous clasts collected during the eruption sequence, and ballistic bombs later collected from the crater floor, provide information about magma storage, ascent, decompression, degassing, repressurization, and regassing prior to...

The spatial patterns and context of invasions are increasingly recognized as important for successful and efficient management actions. Beyond mapping occurrence or percent cover in pixels, spatial summary information that describes the size and arrangement of patches in the context of a larger landscape (e.g., infested regions, connected patch networks) can add a depth of information...

Geothermal well data from Southern Methodist University and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) were used to create maps of estimated background conductive heat flow across the Great Basin region of the western United States. These heat flow maps were generated as part of the USGS hydrothermal and Enhanced Geothermal Systems resource assessment process, and the creation process seeks to...

The frequency of large supraglacial landslides (rock avalanches) occurring in glacial environments is thought to be increasing due to feedbacks with climate warming and permafrost degradation. However, it is difficult to (i) test this; (ii) establish cause–effect relationships; and (iii) determine associated lag-times, due to both temporal and spatial biases in detection rates. Here we...