Publications

Conservation in fragmented ecosystems, such as grasslands, has historically put more value on larger habitat patches but recent research suggests that small, high-quality habitat patches hold important conservation value. In many grassland systems, Athene cunicularia hypugaea (Western Burrowing Owl) relies on habitat patches created by Cynomys ludovicianus (Black-tailed Prairie Dog...

Hurricanes drive diverse estuarine phytoplankton responses and can trigger cascading ecological and physicochemical impacts. Capturing these short-term dynamics requires high spatiotemporal resolution. Here, we applied a globally-applicable coastal ocean color algorithm, Variational Autoencoder (VAE), to Sentinel-2 MSI imagery for chlorophyll-a (Chl-a) estimation and validated its strong

Gravel augmentation is a widely used restoration technique used to improve habitat below dams, including salmonids spawning habitat. However, gravel augmentation can be cost-prohibitive, and it is often unclear which stream segments have the highest potential to benefit spawning salmonids. A tool to help prioritize reaches for gravel restoration could aid managers in making good...

Introduction: Bigheaded carp (Hypophthalmichthys spp.) are invasive fish in the Mississippi River basin. Their rapid proliferation has raised concerns about exploitative competition with native fishes, with consequences that remain incompletely understood. We aimed to identify native species most susceptible to competition based on overlap with bigheaded carp in dietary and habitat...

1. Rising timber demand is transforming forest structure globally, profoundly affecting biodiversity and climate resilience. Logging-driven fragmentation is potentially a major driver of biodiversity loss in production landscapes, yet its interactions with escalating climate stressors remain poorly understood. 2. We combine two decades of Landsat-derived habitat metrics with 29,000...

Reproductive output can vary widely among mammalian species. There are many drivers that affect reproductive output including evolutionary, environmental, population, social, and individual traits. Although several factors, including human-caused mortality, can affect reproductive output, we generally have a poor understanding of how such factors interact to affect reproduction...

In the summer, juvenile Atlantic sturgeon (Acipenser oxyrinchus oxyrinchus) are vulnerable to extreme water quality conditions (i.e., temperature, dissolved oxygen [DO], and salinity) in the estuaries they inhabit. The effects of climate change on Atlantic sturgeon are largely unknown, but it may exacerbate these water quality issues. We used a 20-year dataset from the Altamaha River...

North American beavers (Castor canadensis) are increasingly being used to achieve restoration goals, prompting practitioners to engage with private landowners in efforts to promote beaver coexistence. Through 23 semi-structured interviews with restoration practitioners in Oregon, USA, we explored how practitioners from government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), service

The American kestrel (Falco sparverius, hereafter referred to as kestrel) has declined across much of its North American range since at least the mid-1960s. Kestrel population dynamics have been explored through a multitude of local studies and two broad reviews of available data. Across large geographic extents, however, the demographic cause(s) of kestrel population declines remain(s)...

Genetic structuring in wildlife populations is driven by barriers that restrict gene flow as well as the history of population demography. Mechanisms driving genetic structuring can be nuanced in group-living species, such as gray wolves (Canis lupus). Behavioral factors, such as social affiliation and resistance, natal habitat imprinting, and trade-offs between dispersal from natal...

Smoke from new fire regimes driven by climate change may affect biodiversity in new regions of the world. Wildfires that occurred in eastern Canada in 2023 burned nearly 7.8 million hectares of forest, sending smoke throughout the northeastern United States. We leveraged passive acoustic monitoring to investigate real-time effects of wildfire smoke on vocalization behavior of globally...

Characterizing geochemical and mineralogical soil distributions across large spatial extents is essential for understanding mineral resources, ecosystem processes, and environmental risks. Rasters of soil geochemical distributions for the conterminous United States, however, are limited. We present a Bayesian modeling workflow and tool for generating predictive geochemical and mineralogy