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Publications

Below is a list of available NOROCK peer reviewed and published science. If you are in search of a specific publication and cannot find it below or through a search, please contact twojtowicz@usgs.gov.

Filter Total Items: 1211

Why replication is important in landscape genetics: American black bear in the Rocky Mountains

We investigated how landscape features influence gene flow of black bears by testing the relative support for 36 alternative landscape resistance hypotheses, including isolation by distance (IBD) in each of 12 study areas in the north central U.S. Rocky Mountains. The study areas all contained the same basic elements, but differed in extent of forest fragmentation, altitude, variation in elevation
Authors
Bull R.A. Short, S.A. Cushman, R. MacE, T. Chilton, K.C. Kendall, E.L. Landguth, Maurice L. Schwartz, K. McKelvey, F.W. Allendorf, G. Luikart

Breeding chorus indices are weakly related to estimated abundance of boreal chorus frogs

Call surveys used to monitor breeding choruses of anuran amphibians generate index values that are frequently used to represent the number of male frogs present, but few studies have quantified this relationship. We compared abundance of male Boreal Chorus Frogs (Pseudacris maculata), estimated using capture–recapture methods in two populations in Colorado, to call index values derived from automa
Authors
P. S. Corn, E. Muths, A.M. Kissel, R. D. Scherer

Climatic controls on the snowmelt hydrology of the northern Rocky Mountains

The northern Rocky Mountains (NRMs) are a critical headwaters region with the majority of water resources originating from mountain snowpack. Observations showing declines in western U.S. snowpack have implications for water resources and biophysical processes in high-mountain environments. This study investigates oceanic and atmospheric controls underlying changes in timing, variability, and tren
Authors
Gregory T. Pederson, S.T. Gray, T. Ault, W. Marsh, Daniel B. Fagre, A.G. Bunn, C.A. Woodhouse, L.J. Graumlich

Multi-scale clustering of functional data with application to hydraulic gradients in wetlands

A new set of methods are developed to perform cluster analysis of functions, motivated by a data set consisting of hydraulic gradients at several locations distributed across a wetland complex. The methods build on previous work on clustering of functions, such as Tarpey and Kinateder (2003) and Hitchcock et al. (2007), but explore functions generated from an additive model decomposition (Wood, 20
Authors
Mark C. Greenwood, Richard S. Sojda, Julia L. Sharp, Rory G. Peck, Donald O. Rosenberry

Shared bacterial and viral respiratory agents in bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis), domestic sheep (Ovis aries), and goats (Capra hircus) in Montana

Transmission of infectious agents from livestock reservoirs has been hypothesized to cause respiratory disease outbreaks in bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis), and land management policies intended to limit this transmission have proven controversial. This cross-sectional study compares the infectious agents present in multiple populations of bighorn sheep near to and distant from their interface wit
Authors
David S. Miller, Glen C. Weiser, Keith Aune, Brent Roeder, Mark Atkinson, Neil Anderson, Thomas J. Roffe, Kim A. Keating, Phillip L. Chapman, Cleon Kimberling, Jack C. Rhyan, P. Ryan Clarke

Response of western mountain ecosystems to climatic variability and change: A collaborative research approach

No abstract available.
Authors
David L. Peterson, Craig D. Allen, Jill S. Baron, Daniel B. Fagre, Donald McKenzie, Nathan L. Stephenson, Andrew G. Fountain, Jeffrey A. Hicke, George P. Malanson, Dennis S. Ojima, Christina L. Tague, Phillip J. van Mantgem

Contexts for change in alpine tundra

Because alpine tundra is responding to climate change, a need exists to understand the meaning of observed changes. To provide context for such interpretation, the relevance of niche and neutral theories of biogeography and the continuum and classification approaches to biogeographic description are assessed. Two extensive studies of alpine tundra, from the Indian Peaks area, Colorado and Glacier
Authors
George P. Malanson, Jonathan P. Rose, P. Jason Schroeder, Daniel B. Fagre

Infectious diseases in Yellowstone’s canid community

Each summer Yellowstone Wolf Project staff visit den sites to monitor the success of wolf reproduction and pup rearing behavior. For the purposes of wolf monitoring, Yellowstone National Park (YNP) is divided into two study areas, the northern range and the interior, each distinguished by their ecological and physiographical differences. The 1,000 square kilometer northern range, characterized by
Authors
Emily S. Almberg, Paul C. Cross, L. David Mech, Doug W. Smith, Jennifer W. Sheldon, Robert L. Crabtree

Evidence and implications of recent and projected climate change in Alaska's forest ecosystems

The structure and function of Alaska's forests have changed significantly in response to a changing climate, including alterations in species composition and climate feedbacks (e.g., carbon, radiation budgets) that have important regional societal consequences and human feedbacks to forest ecosystems. In this paper we present the first comprehensive synthesis of climate-change impacts on all fores
Authors
Jane M. Wolken, Teresa N. Hollingsworth, T. Scott Rupp, Stuart III Chapin, Sarah F. Trainor, Tara M. Barrett, Patrick F. Sullivan, A. David McGuire, Eugénie S. Euskirchen, Paul E. Hennon, Erik A. Beever, Jeff S. Conn, Lisa K. Crone, David V. D'Amore, Nancy Fresco, Thomas A. Hanley, Knut Kielland, James J. Kruse, Trista Patterson, Edward A.G. Schuur, David L. Verbyla, John Yarie

Decreasing prevalence of brucellosis in red deer through efforts to control disease in livestock

When a pathogen infects a number of different hosts, the process of determining the relative importance of each host species to the persistence of the pathogen is often complex. Removal of a host species is a potential but rarely possible way of discovering the importance of that species to the dynamics of the disease. This study presents the results of a 12-year programme aimed at controlling bru
Authors
E. Serrano, P.C. Cross, M. Beneria, A. Ficapal, J. Curia, X. Marco, S. Lavin, I. Marco

An ecosystem-scale model for the spread of a host-specific forest pathogen in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem

The introduction of nonnative pathogens is altering the scale, magnitude, and persistence of forest disturbance regimes in the western United States. In the high-altitude whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis) forests of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE), white pine blister rust (Cronartium ribicola) is an introduced fungal pathogen that is now the principal cause of tree mortality in many locati
Authors
J.A. Hatala, M.C. Dietze, R.L. Crabtree, Katherine C. Kendall, D. Six, P.R. Moorcroft

Mountain treelines: A roadmap for research orientation

For over 100 years, mountain treelines have been the subject of varied research endeavors and remain a strong area of investigation. The purpose of this paper is to examine aspects of the epistemology of mountain treeline research-that is, to investigate how knowledge on treelines has been acquired and the changes in knowledge acquisition over time, through a review of fundamental questions and ap
Authors
George P. Malanson, Lynn M. Resler, Maaike Y. Bader, Fredrich-Karl Holtmeier, David R. Butler, Daniel J. Weiss, Lori D. Daniels, Daniel B. Fagre