Publications

Movement of shortnose sturgeon (Acipenser brevirostrum) among major river systems in the Gulf of Maine is common and has implications for the management of this endangered species. Directed movements of 61 telemetered individuals monitored between 2010 and 2013 were associated with the river of tagging and individual characteristics. While a small proportion of fish tagged in the...

The United States (U.S.) has faced major environmental changes in recent decades, including agricultural intensification and urban expansion, as well as changes in atmospheric deposition and climate—all of which may influence eutrophication of freshwaters. However, it is unclear whether or how water quality in lakes across diverse ecological settings has responded to environmental change...

Understanding the drivers of biological invasions is critical for preserving aquatic biodiversity. Stream fishes make excellent model taxa for examining mechanisms driving species introduction success because their distributions are naturally limited by catchment boundaries. In this study, we compared the relative importance of catchment-scale abiotic and biotic predictors of native and

An individual-based model framework was used to evaluate growth potential of the federally endangered pallid sturgeon (Scaphirhynchus albus) in the Missouri River. The model, developed for age-0 sturgeon, combines information on functional feeding response, bioenergetics and swimming ability to regulate consumption and growth within a virtual foraging arena. Empirical data on water...

Context Efficient restoration of longitudinal river connectivity relies on barrier mitigation prioritization tools that incorporate stream network spatial structure to maximize ecological benefits given limited resources. Typically, ecological benefits of barrier mitigation are measured using proxies such as the amount of accessible riverine habitat. Objectives We developed an...

Context Species-specific models of landscape capability (LC) can inform landscape conservation design. Landscape capability is “the ability of the landscape to provide the environment […] and the local resources […] needed for survival and reproduction […] in sufficient quantity, quality and accessibility to meet the life history requirements of individuals and local populations.”...

Prescribed burning has the potential to improve habitat for species that depend on pyric ecosystems or other early successional vegetation types. For species that occupy diverse plant communities over the extent of their range, response to disturbances such as fire might vary based on post-disturbance vegetation dynamics among plant communities. Although responses of snowshoe hares...

Although research has advanced methods for clarifying factors that relate to customer satisfaction, they have not been embraced by leisure researchers. Using results from a survey of wild turkey hunters, we applied traditional and revised importance-performance (IPA/RIPA), importance-grid analysis (IGA), and penalty-reward-contrast analysis (PRCA) to examine how activity-specific factors

Since the early 1990s, >5,000 ha of historic wetlands (and adjacent prairie) have been restored on the row-crop agricultural landscape of Winnebago County, Iowa, USA. From 2008–2011, we surveyed 22 of these sites for probabilities of occupancy and colonization by Boreal Chorus Frogs (BCF; Pseudacris maculata), Northern Leopard Frogs (NLF; Lithobates pipiens), and American Toads (AT...

Protected areas are the cornerstone of global conservation, yet financial support for basic monitoring infrastructure is lacking in 60% of them. Citizen science holds potential to address these shortcomings in wildlife monitoring, particularly for resource-limited conservation initiatives in developing countries – if we can account for the reliability of data produced by volunteer...

We used spatially continuous field-measured and remotely-sensed aquatic habitat characteristics paired with weekly ground-based telemetry tracking and snorkel surveys to describe movements and habitat occupancy of adult rainbow trout (N = 82) in a runoff-fed, salmon-influenced southcentral Alaska river system. We found that during the ice-free feeding season (June through September)...

Context Scientists face several theoretical and methodological challenges in appropriately describing fundamental wildlife-habitat relationships in models. The spatial scales of habitat relationships are often unknown, and are expected to follow a multi-scale hierarchy. Typical frequentist or information theoretic approaches often suffer under collinearity in multi-scale studies, fail to...