Publications

As part of the model improvement effort for the 2023 Coastal Master Plan, the Habitat Suitability Index (HSI) models used during previous master plans were reevaluated to assess how the model relationships could be improved, and to determine what species should be included in the master plan analyses. This process considered the technical reviews, comments, and suggested improvements provided by m

Habitat suitability index (HSI) models were developed for the 2023 Coastal Master Plan to evaluate the potential effects of coastal restoration and protection projects on habitat for key coastal fish, shellfish, and wildlife species. These species included: eastern oyster, brown shrimp, white shrimp, blue crab, crayfish, gulf menhaden, spotted seatrout, largemouth bass, American alligator, gadwall

The Great American Outdoors Act of 2020 (GAOA), P.L. 116-152, established the National Parks and Public Land Legacy Restoration Fund (LRF) to address priority deferred maintenance projects on National Park Service (NPS) and other federal lands. For the NPS, the LRF equates to receiving a maximum of $1.33 billion per year for fiscal years 2021 through 2025. Funding of this magnitude provides the NP

Pathogens and their associated diseases have the potential to severely affect wildlife populations, including herpetofauna. Concern is increasing for transmission pathways of herpetofaunal diseases, especially for amphibians affected by the fungal pathogens Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd: Longcore et al. 1999) and B. salamandrivorans (Bsal: Martel et al. 2013), and amphibians and reptiles affe

Declines in riparian ecosystem greenness and water use have been observed in the delta of the Lower Colorado River (LCR) since 2000. The purpose of our case study was to measure these metrics on the U.S. side of the border between Hoover and Morelos Dams to see if declining greenness was unique to the portion of the river in Mexico. In this case study, five riparian reaches of the LCR from Hoover

Reduction in wildlife mortality is often cited as a potential advantage to repowering wind facilities, that is, replacing smaller, lower capacity, closely spaced turbines, with larger, higher capacity ones, more widely spaced. Wildlife mortality rates, however, are affected by more than just size and spacing of turbines, varying with turbine operation, seasonal and daily weather and habitat, all o

Recent country and continental-scale digital soil mapping efforts have used a single model to predict soil properties across large regions. However, different ecophysiographic regions within large-extent areas are likely to have different soil-landscape relationships so models built specifically for these regions may more accurately capture these relationships relative to a ‘global’ model. We ask

No abstract available.

Shifts between the alternate stable states of sea urchin barren grounds and kelp forests correspond to sea urchin density. In the Aleutian Archipelago, green sea urchins Strongylocentrotus polyacanthus are the dominant herbivores that graze kelp forests. Sea urchin recruitment is an important driver that influences sea urchin density, particularly in the absence of top-down control from a keystone

The tri-colored bat (Perimyotis subflavus) occurs throughout the eastern United States, from Canada to south Florida and westward to eastern New Mexico, central Colorado, and western Texas. In this study, we document the first record of P. subflavus for both Guadalupe Mountains National Park and Culberson County, Texas. Our record extends the range of P. subflavus into the Trans-Pecos region of Te

Incorporating spatial and temporal scales into greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) population monitoring strategies is challenging and rarely implemented. Sage-grouse populations experience fluctuations in abundance that lead to temporal oscillations, making trend estimation difficult. Accounting for stochasticity is critical to reliably estimate population trends and investigate varia

Animal movements are major determinants of energy expenditure and ultimately the cost–benefit of landscape use. Thus, we sought to understand those costs and how grizzly bears (Ursus arctos) move in mountainous landscapes. We trained captive grizzly bears to walk on a horizontal treadmill and up and down 10% and 20% slopes. The cost of moving upslope increased linearly with speed and slope angle,