Publications
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The U.S. Geological Survey Amphibian Research and Monitoring Initiative-2011 Annual Update
Welcome to the inaugural issue of ARMI's Annual Update. This update provides highlights and significant milestones of this innovative program. ARMI is uniquely qualified to provide research and monitoring results that are scalable from local to national levels, and are useful to resource managers. ARMI has produced nearly 400 peer-reviewed publications, including 18 in 2011. Some of those publicat
Authors
M.J. Adams, E. Muths, E.H.C. Grant, David A. Miller, J.H. Waddle, L.C. Ball
Spatiotemporal patterns and habitat associations of smallmouth bass (Micropterus dolomieu) invading salmon-rearing habitat
1. Smallmouth bass (Micropterus dolomieu) have been widely introduced to fresh waters throughout the world to promote recreational fishing opportunities. In the Pacific Northwest (U.S.A.), upstream range expansions of predatory bass, especially into subyearling salmon-rearing grounds, are of increasing conservation concern, yet have received little scientific inquiry. Understanding the habitat cha
Authors
David J. Lawrence, Julian D. Olden, Christian E. Torgersen
A holistic strategy for adaptive land management
Adaptive management is widely applied to natural resources management (Holling 1973; Walters and Holling 1990). Adaptive management can be generally defined as an iterative decision-making process that incorporates formulation of management objectives, actions designed to address these objectives, monitoring of results, and repeated adaptation of management until desired results are achieved (Brow
Authors
Jeffrey E. Herrick, Michael C. Duniway, David A. Pyke, Brandon T. Bestelmeyer, Skye A. Wills, Joel R. Brown, Jason W. Karl, Kris M. Havstad
Index for characterizing post-fire soil environments in temperate coniferous forests
Many scientists and managers have an interest in describing the environment following a fire to understand the effects on soil productivity, vegetation growth, and wildlife habitat, but little research has focused on the scientific rationale for classifying the post-fire environment. We developed an empirically-grounded soil post-fire index (PFI) based on available science and ecological threshold
Authors
Theresa B. Jain, David S. Pilliod, Russell T. Graham, Leigh B. Lentile, Jonathan E. Sandquist
Interactions of tissue and fertilizer nitrogen on decomposition dynamics of lignin-rich conifer litter
High tissue nitrogen (N) accelerates decomposition of high-quality leaf litter in the early phases of mass loss, but the influence of initial tissue N variation on the decomposition of lignin-rich litter is less resolved. Because environmental changes such as atmospheric N deposition and elevated CO2 can alter tissue N levels within species more rapidly than they alter the species composition of e
Authors
Steven S. Perakis, Joselin J. Matkins, David E. Hibbs
Coordinated bird monitoring: Technical recommendations for military lands
The Department of Defense (DoD) is subject to several rules and regulations establishing responsibilities for monitoring migratory birds. The Sikes Act requires all military installations with significant natural resources to prepare and implement Integrated Natural Resources Management Plans (INRMPs). These plans guide the conservation and long-term management of natural resources on military lan
Authors
Jonathan Bart, Ann Manning, Richard Fischer, Chris Eberly
Fine scale relationships between sex, life history, and dispersal of masu salmon
Identifying the patterns and processes driving dispersal is critical for understanding population structure and dynamics. In many organisms, sex-biased dispersal is related to the type of mating system. Considerably less is known about the influence of life history variability on dispersal. Here we investigated patterns of dispersal in masu salmon (Oncorhynchus masou) to evaluate influences of sex
Authors
Shigeru Kitanishi, Toshiaki Yamamoto, Itsuro Koizumi, Jason B. Dunham, Seigo Higashi
Factors affecting incubation patterns and sex roles of black oystercatchers in Alaska
Studies examining the effects of human disturbance on avian parental behavior and reproductive success are fundamental to bird conservation. However, many such studies fail to also consider the influence of natural threats, a variable environment, and parental roles. Our work examines interactive relationships of cyclical (time of day, tide, temperature, seasonality) and stochastic (natural/human
Authors
Caleb S. Spiegel, Susan M. Haig, Michael I. Goldstein, Manuela M. P. Huso
Data resources for range-wide assessment of livestock grazing across the sagebrush biome
The data contained in this series were compiled, modified, and analyzed for the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) report "Range-Wide Assessment of Livestock Grazing Across the Sagebrush Biome." This report can be accessed through the USGS Publications Warehouse (online linkage: http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2011/1263/). The dataset contains spatial and tabular data related to Bureau of Land Management (BLM)
Authors
T.J. Assal, K.E. Veblen, M.A. Farinha, Cameron L. Aldridge, Michael L. Casazza, D.A. Pyke
A common-garden study of resource-island effects on a native and an exotic, annual grass after fire
Plant-soil variation related to perennial-plant resource islands (coppices) interspersed with relatively bare interspaces is a major source of heterogeneity in desert rangelands. Our objective was to determine how native and exotic grasses vary on coppice mounds and interspaces (microsites) in unburned and burned sites and underlying factors that contribute to the variation in sagebrush-steppe ran
Authors
Amber N. Hoover, Matthew J. Germino
Pattern and process of prescribed fires influence effectiveness at reducing wildfire severity in dry coniferous forests
We examined the effects of three early season (spring) prescribed fires on burn severity patterns of summer wildfires that occurred 1–3 years post-treatment in a mixed conifer forest in central Idaho. Wildfire and prescribed fire burn severities were estimated as the difference in normalized burn ratio (dNBR) using Landsat imagery. We used GIS derived vegetation, topography, and treatment variable
Authors
Robert S. Arkle, David S. Pilliod, Justin L. Welty
Population size of snowy plovers breeding in North America
Snowy Plovers (Charadrius nivosus) may be one of the rarest shorebirds in North America yet a comprehensive assessment of their abundance and distribution has not been completed. During 2007 and 2008, 557 discrete wetlands were surveyed and nine additional large wetland complexes sampled in México and the USA. From these surveys, a population of 23,555 (95% CI = 17,299 – 29,859) breeding Snowy Plo
Authors
Susan M. Thomas, James E. Lyons, Brad A. Andres, Elise Elliot T-Smith, Eduardo Palacios, John F. Cavitt, J. Andrew Royle, Suzanne D. Fellows, Kendra Maty, William H. Howe, Eric Mellink, Stefani Melvin, Tara Zimmerman