Publications
Below are publications associated with the Southwest Biological Science Center's research.
If you are unable to access or download a product after you've clicked through the links below, email mhartwell@usgs.gov with your request. Please include the citation in your email and/or a link to the product. Note that each product has several link options once you click on the title.
Filter Total Items: 1332
Nutrient identity modifies the destabilising effects of eutrophication in grasslands
Nutrient enrichment can simultaneously increase and destabilise plant biomass production, with co-limitation by multiple nutrients potentially intensifying these effects. Here, we test how factorial additions of nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and potassium with essential nutrients (K+) affect the stability (mean/standard deviation) of aboveground biomass in 34 grasslands over 7 years. Destabilisatio
Authors
Oliver Carroll, Evan Batzer, Siddharth Bharath, Elizabeth T. Borer, Sofía Campana, Ellen Esch, Yann Hautier, Timothy Ohlert, Eric W. Seabloom, Peter B. Adler, Jonathan D. Bakker, Lori A. Biederman, Miguel N. Bugalho, Maria Caldeira, Qingqing Chen, Kendi F. Davies, Philip A. Fay, Johannes M. H. Knops, Kimberly Komatsu, Jason P. Martina, Kevin S. McCann, Joslin L. Moore, John W. Morgan, Taofeek O. Muraina, Brooke Bossert Osborne, Anita C. Risch, Carly J. Stevens, Peter A. Wilfahrt, Laura Yahdjian, Andrew S. MacDougall
Biocrusts mediate a new mechanism for land degradation under a changing climate
Global concerns for desertification have focused on the slow recovery of extensive and expanding drylands following disturbance, which may be exacerbated by climate change. Biological soil crusts (biocrusts) are photosynthetic soil communities found in drylands worldwide, which are central to the stability and resilience of dryland ecosystems, but vulnerable to global change. Here we use multiple
Authors
Michala Lee Phillips, Brandon E McNellis, Armin J. Howell, Cara Marie Lauria, Jayne Belnap, Sasha C. Reed
Protocol for installing and monitoring a RestoreNet restoration field trial network site
RestoreNet is an ecological restoration experiment that is networked across multiple sites, spanning dryland ecosystems in the southwestern United States. The experiment is organized and led by the U.S. Geological Survey’s Restoration Assessment and Monitoring Program for the Southwest (RAMPS). This protocol functions to provide guidance to additional partners on how to set up a RestoreNet site an
Authors
Katherine M. Laushman, Molly L. McCormick, Seth M. Munson, Kathleen R. Balazs, Bradley J. Butterfield
Knowledge sharing for shared success in the decade on ecosystem restoration
The Decade on Ecosystem Restoration aims to provide the means and incentives for upscaling restoration efforts worldwide. Although ecosystem restoration is a broad, interdisciplinary concept, effective ecological restoration requires sound ecological knowledge to successfully restore biodiversity and ecosystem services in degraded landscapes.We emphasize the critical role of knowledge and data sha
Authors
Emma Ladouceur, Nancy Shackelford, Karma Bouazza, Lars Brudvig, Anna Bucharova, Timo Conradi, Todd E. Erickson, Magda Garbowski, Kelly Garvy, W. Stanley Harpole, Holly P. Jones, Tiffany Knight, Mlungele M. Nsikani, Gustavo B. Paterno, Katharine Suding, Vicky M. Temperton, Péter Török, Daniel E. Winkler, Johnathan M. Chase
RestoreNet: Collaboration to improve success of seed-based restoration on the Colorado Plateau
Land degradation in arid and semiarid ecosystems is often difficult to reverse because low rainfall and high temperatures impede reestablishment of vegetation. Seed-based restoration success and recovery rates are also impeded by harsh climatic conditions and remain extremely low. Additionally, little information is available to land managers about the performance of contrasting seed-based restora
Authors
Seth M. Munson, Ariel Ledger
New indicators of ecological resilience and invasion resistance to support prioritization and management in the sagebrush biome, United States
Ecosystem transformations to altered or novel ecological states are accelerating across the globe. Indicators of ecological resilience to disturbance and resistance to invasion can aid in assessing risks and prioritizing areas for conservation and restoration. The sagebrush biome encompasses parts of 11 western states and is experiencing rapid transformations due to human population growth, invasi
Authors
Jeanne C. Chambers, Jessi L. Brown, John B. Bradford, David I. Board, Steven B. Campbell, Karen J. Clause, Brice Hanberry, Daniel Rodolphe Schlaepfer, Alexandra K. Urza
Satellite solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence and near-infrared reflectance capture complementary aspects of dryland vegetation productivity dynamics
Mounting evidence indicates dryland ecosystems play an important role in driving the interannual variability and trend of the terrestrial carbon sink. Nevertheless, our understanding of the seasonal dynamics of dryland ecosystem carbon uptake through photosynthesis [gross primary productivity (GPP)] remains relatively limited due in part to the limited availability of long-term data and unique cha
Authors
Xian Wang, Joel A. Biederman, John F. Knowles, Russell L. Scott, Alexander J Turner, Matthew P. Dannenberg, Philipp Köhler, Christian Frankenberg, Marcy E Litvak, Gerald N. Flerchinger, Beverly E. Law, Hyojung Kwon, Sasha C. Reed, William J Parton, Greg A. Barron-Gafford, William K. Smith
A quantitative soil-geomorphic framework for developing and mapping ecological site groups
Land management decisions need context about how landscapes will respond to different circumstances or actions. As ecologists’ understanding of nonlinear ecological dynamics has evolved into state-and-transition models (STMs), they have put more emphasis on defining and mapping the soil, geomorphological, and climate parameters that mediate these dynamics. The US Department of Agriculture Natural
Authors
Travis W. Nauman, Samuel S Burch, Joel T. Humphries, Anna C Knight, Michael C. Duniway
Estimating actual evapotranspiration over croplands using vegetation index methods and dynamic harvested area
Advances in estimating actual evapotranspiration (ETa) with remote sensing (RS) have contributed to improving hydrological, agricultural, and climatological studies. In this study, we evaluated the applicability of Vegetation-Index (VI) -based ETa (ET-VI) for mapping and monitoring drought in arid agricultural systems in a region where a lack of ground data hampers ETa work. To map ETa (2000–2019)
Authors
Neda Abbasi, Hamideh Nouri, Kamel Didan, Armando Barreto Munez, Sattar Chavoshi Borujeni, Hamidreza Salemi, Christian Opp, Stefan Siebert, Pamela L. Nagler
Mapping biological soil crusts in a Hawaiian dryland
Historical and ongoing land use patterns in the Hawaiian Islands have degraded the Islands’ drylands, causing erosion and detrimentally affecting adjacent coastal marine ecosystems. Biological soil crust (biocrust) communities have been shown to increase soil stability in drylands worldwide, but their efficacy in mitigating soil erosion in Hawaiian drylands is largely unknown. Using a combination
Authors
Eszter Collier, Ryan L. Perroy, Sasha C. Reed, Jon P Price
Parameterizing an aeolian erosion model for rangelands
Aeolian processes are fundamental to arid and semi-arid ecosystems, but modeling approaches are poorly developed for assessing impacts of management and environmental change on sediment transport rates over meaningful spatial and temporal scales. For model estimates to provide value, estimates of sediment flux that encapsulate intra- and inter-annual and spatial variability are needed. Further, it
Authors
Brandon L. Edwards, Nicholas P. Webb, Magda Galloza, Justin W. Van Zee, Ericha M. Courtright, Bradley F. Cooper, Loretta J Metz, Jeffrey E. Herrick, Gregory S Okin, Michael C. Duniway, John Tatarko, Negussie Tedala, Daniel N Moriasi, Beth A. Newingham, Frederick B Pierson, David Toledo, Scott Van Pelt
Birds not in flight: Using camera traps to observe ground use of birds at a wind-energy facility
Context: Camera trapping is increasingly used to collect information on wildlife occurrence and behaviour remotely. Not only does the technique provide insights into habitat use by species of interest, it also gathers information on non-target species.Aims: We implemented ground-based camera trapping to investigate the behaviours of ground-dwelling birds, a technique that has largely been unutilis
Authors
Shellie R. Puffer, Laura A. Tennant, Jeffrey E. Lovich, Mickey Agha, Amanda L. Smith, David Delaney, Terence R. Arundel, Leo J. Fleckenstein, Jessica Briggs, Andrew Walde, Joshua Ennen