Publications

Stream habitat assessments are commonplace in fish management, and often involve nonspatial analysis methods for quantifying or predicting habitat, such as ordinary least squares regression (OLS). Spatial relationships, however, often exist among stream habitat variables. For example, water depth, water velocity, and benthic substrate sizes within streams are often spatially correlated...

Over the past 50 years, the number and size of high-latitude lakes have decreased throughout many regions; however, individual lake trends have been variable in direction and magnitude. This spatial heterogeneity in lake change makes statistical detection of temporal trends challenging, particularly in small analysis areas where weak trends are difficult to separate from inter- and intra...

Understanding the time frame in which ecosystem services (that is, water quality maintenance, shoreline protection, habitat provision) are expected to be provided is important when restoration projects are being designed and implemented. Restoration of three-dimensional shell habitats in coastal Louisiana and elsewhere presents a valuable and potentially self-sustaining approach to...

Restoration of three-dimensional shell habitats in coastal Louisiana presents a valuable and potentially self-sustaining approach to providing shoreline protection and critical nekton habitat and may contribute to water quality maintenance. The use of what has been called “living shorelines” is particularly promising because in addition to the hypothesized shoreline protection services...

Conflict between native amphibians and aquatic weed management in the Pacific Northwest is rarely recognized because most native stillwater-breeding amphibian species move upland during summer, when herbicide application to control weeds in aquatic habitats typically occurs. However, aquatic weed management may pose a risk for aquatic species present in wetlands through the summer, such...

Concerns regarding the potential negative impacts of regulated furbearer trapping to reintroduced Mexican gray wolves (Canis lupus baileyi), led to an executive order prohibiting trapping in the New Mexico, USA, portion of the Blue Range Wolf Recovery Area. This ban was to last for 6 months and required an evaluation of the risk posed to wolves by traps and snares legally permitted in...

It is important to understand the fate of carbon in boreal peatland soils in response to climate change because a substantial change in release of this carbon as CO2 and CH4 could influence the climate system. The goal of this research was to synthesize the results of a field water table manipulation experiment conducted in a boreal rich fen into a process-based model to understand how...

In the Klamath province of southwestern Oregon, Northern Spotted Owls (Strix occidentalis caurina) occur in complex, productive forests that historically supported frequent fires of variable severity. However, little is known about the relationships between Spotted Owl survival and home-range size and the characteristics of fire-prone, mixed-conifer forests of the Klamath province. Thus...

Dead woody material, long ignored or viewed as a nuisance for forest management, has gained appreciation for its many roles in the forest including wildlife habitat, nutrient storage and cycling, energy for trophic webs, protection of soil, fuel for fire and carbon storage. The growing interest in managing dead woody material has created strong demand for greater understanding of factors...

This study examined how spring-flow (SF) contributions to streams related to the distribution and abundance of smallmouth bass Micropterus dolomieu in a predominately pasture landscape in Missouri, USA. Stream segments (N=13) with similar landscape characters were classified by SF volume into high SF (HSF) or low SF (LSF) groups. The densities of smallmouth bass, channel unit (CU) use...

Dam removal is increasingly used to restore lotic habitat and biota, but its effects on freshwater mussels (family Unionidae) are not well known. We conducted a four-year study to assess short-term effects on mussels after removal of a small hydropower dam on the Deep River (Cape Fear River drainage), North Carolina, USA, in 2006. We conducted annual pre- and post-removal monitoring of...

Estimating productivity for precocial species can be difficult because young birds leave their nest within hours or days of hatching and detectability thereafter can be very low. Recently, a method for using a modified catch-curve to estimate precocial chick daily survival for age based count data was presented using Piping Plover (Charadrius melodus) data from the Missouri River...