Publications

In arid and semiarid environments, evapotranspiration (ET) is the primary discharge component in the water balance, with potential ET exceeding precipitation. For this reason, reliable estimates of ET are needed to construct accurate water budgets in these environments. Remote sensing affords the ability to provide fast, accurate, field-scale ET estimates, but these methods have largely been restr

• Use of adaptive management supported by robust monitoring is vital to solving severe rangeland problems, such as the exotic annual grass invasion and fire cycle in sagebrush-steppe rangelands.• Uncertainty in post-fire plant-community composition and plant response to treatments poses a challenge to land management and research but can be addressed with a high density of observations over short

Deltaic floodplains are highly vulnerable to relative sea level rise (RSLR) depending on the sediment supply from river channels that provides elevation capital as adaptation mechanism. In river channels where levees have restricted sediment supply to coastal deltaic floodplains, river sediment diversions have been proposed as a restoration strategy to increase elevation allowing for marshes to es

Structured decision making is a systematic, transparent process for improving the quality of complex decisions by identifying measurable management objectives and feasible management actions; predicting the potential consequences of management actions relative to the stated objectives; and selecting a course of action that maximizes the total benefit achieved and balances tradeoffs among objective

Species responses to disturbance influence their extinction risks. Greater sage- grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) are bioindicators of sagebrush ecosystem health and the loss of sagebrush (Artemisia spp.) due to wildfire, can cause long-term declines in sage- grouse populations and other sagebrush obligate species. We examined the de-mographic response of a greater sage- grouse population follow

Transgression into adjacent uplands is an important global response of coastal wetlands to accelerated rates of sea level rise. “Ghost forests” mark a signature characteristic of marsh transgression on the landscape, as changes in tidal inundation and salinity cause bordering upland tree mortality, increase light availability, and the emergence of tidal marsh species due to reduced competition. To

Tidal marshes are an important component of estuaries that provide habitat for fish and wildlife, protection from flooding, recreation opportunities, and can improve water quality. Critical to maintaining these functions is vertical accretion, a key mechanism by which tidal marshes build elevation relative to local sea level. The beneficial use of dredged material to build marsh elevations in resp

Wetlands around the world are under pressure from both anthropogenic sources such as land-use change and accelerating climate change (Erwin, 2009; Moomaw et al., 2018). Storage of carbon resources is a key ecosystem service of wetlands and offer natural solutions to climate change mitigation; policies and management actions could determine the fate of these resources and their contributions to cli

Louisiana contains nearly 40% of estuarine herbaceous wetlands in the contiguous United States, supporting valuable ecosystem services and providing significant economic benefits to the state and the entire United States. However, coastal Louisiana is a hotspot for rapid land loss from factors including hurricanes, land use change, and high subsidence rates contributing to high relative sea-level

Climate extremes are becoming more frequent with global climate change and have the potential to cause major ecological regime shifts. Along the northern Gulf of Mexico, a coastal wetland in Texas suffered sudden vegetation dieback following an extreme precipitation and flooding event associated with Hurricane Harvey in 2017. Historical salt marsh dieback events have been linked to climate extreme

ABSTRACT: The deep ocean hosts a large diversity of azooxanthellate cold-water corals whose associated microbiomes remain to be described. While the bacterial genus Endozoicomonas has been widely identified as a dominant associate of tropical and temperate corals, it has rarely been detected in deep-sea corals. Determining microbial baselines for these cold-water corals is a critical first step to

PremiseAdaptive traits can be dramatically altered by genome duplication. The study of interactions among traits, ploidy, and the environment are necessary to develop an understanding of how polyploidy affects niche differentiation and to develop restoration strategies for resilient native ecosystems.MethodsGrowth and fecundity were measured in common gardens for 39 populations of big sagebrush (A