Publications
Below are publications associated with the Southwest Biological Science Center's research.
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Filter Total Items: 1332
Climate sensitivity of water use by riparian woodlands at landscape scales
Semi‐arid riparian woodlands face threats from increasing extractive water demand and climate change in dryland landscapes worldwide. Improved landscape‐scale understanding of riparian woodland water use (evapotranspiration, ET) and its sensitivity to climate variables is needed to strategically manage water resources, as well as to create successful ecosystem conservation and restoration plans fo
Authors
Marc Mayes, Kelly K. Caylor, Michael B. Singer, John C Stella, Dar Roberts, Pamela L. Nagler
Does channel narrowing by floodplain growth necessarily indicate sediment surplus? Lessons from sediment‐transport analyses in the Green and Colorado rivers, Canyonlands, Utah
Analyses of suspended sediment transport provide valuable insight into the role that sediment supply plays in causing geomorphic change. The sediment supply within a river system evolves depending on the discharge, flood frequency and duration, changes in sediment input, and ecohydraulic conditions that modify sediment transport processes. Changes in supply can be evaluated through analyses of cou
Authors
David Dean, David Topping, Paul Grams, Alexander E. Walker, John C. Schmidt
Micro-geographic variation in burrow use of Agassiz’s desert tortoises in the Sonoran Desert of California
Little has been published regarding the burrowing habits of Agassiz’s desert tortoises (Gopherus agassizii) in the Sonoran Desert of California. We monitored the interactions of tortoises with their burrows, and other tortoises, via radio-telemetry at two nearby sites between the Cottonwood and Orocopia Mountains, from 2015-2018. We examined how annual cycles of drought and non-drought years, beha
Authors
Kristy L. Cummings, Jeffrey E. Lovich, Shellie R. Puffer, Terence R. Arundel, Kathleen D. Brundige
Getting to the root of restoration: Considering root traits for improved restoration outcomes under drought and competition
A foundational goal of trait‐based ecology, including trait‐based restoration, is to link specific traits to community assembly, biodiversity, and ecosystem function. Despite a growing awareness of the importance of belowground traits for ecological processes, a synthesis of how to root traits can inform restoration of terrestrial plant communities is lacking. We reviewed and summarized existing l
Authors
M. Garbowski, B. Avera, J. H. Bertram, J.S. Courkamp, J. Gray, K.M. Hein, R. Lawrence, M. McIntosh, S. McClelland, A. Post, Ingrid J. Slette, Daniel E. Winkler, C. S. Brown
Water balance as an indicator of natural resource condition: Case studies from Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve
Managing climate impacts to natural resources in protected areas can be hampered by lack of monitoring data, poor understanding of natural resource responses to climate, or lack of timely condition assessments that can inform management actions. Here we demonstrate the utility of water balance as a tool for understanding natural resource responses to climate by developing case studies focused on s
Authors
David P. Thoma, Michael T. Tercek, E. William Schweiger, Seth M. Munson, John E. Gross, S. Tom Olliff
The biggest bang for the buck: Cost‐effective vegetation treatment outcomes across drylands of the western United States
Restoration and rehabilitation are globally implemented to improve ecosystem condition but often without tracking treatment expenditures relative to ecological outcomes. We evaluated the cost‐effectiveness of widely conducted woody plant and herbaceous invasive plant removals and seeding treatments in drylands of the western United States from 2004 to 2018 to determine how land managers can optimi
Authors
Seth M. Munson, Ethan O. Yackulic, Lucas S. Bair, Stella M. Copeland, Kevin L. Gunnell
Photosynthetic and respiratory acclimation of understory shrubs in response to in situ experimental warming of a wet tropical forest
Despite the importance of tropical forests to global carbon balance, our understanding of how tropical plant physiology will respond to climate warming is limited. In addition, the contribution of tropical forest understories to global carbon cycling is predicted to increase with rising temperatures, however, in situ warming studies of tropical forest plants to date focus only on upper canopies. W
Authors
Kelsey R. Carter, Tana E Wood, Sasha C. Reed, Elsa C. Schwartz, Madeline B. Reinsel, Xi Yang
Net-spinning caddisfly distribution in large regulated rivers
Most of the world's large rivers are dammed for the purposes of water storage, flood control, and power production. Damming rivers fundamentally alters water temperature and flows in tailwater ecosystems, which in turn affects the presence and abundance of downstream biota.We collaborated with more than 200 citizen scientists to collect 2,194 light trap samples across 2 years and more than 2,000 r
Authors
Anya Metcalfe, Jeffrey Muehlbauer, Theodore Kennedy, Charles Yackulic, Kimberly L. Dibble, Jane C. Marks
An integrative ecological drought framework to span plant stress to ecosystem transformation
Droughts have increased globally in the twenty-first century and are expected to become more extreme and widespread in the future. Assessments of how drought affects plants and ecosystems lack consistency in scope and methodology, confounding efforts to mechanistically interpret structural and functional impacts and predict future transformations under climate change. To promote integration among
Authors
Seth M. Munson, John B. Bradford, Kevin R. Hultine
Ecohydrological responses to surface flow across borders: Two decades of changes in vegetation greenness and water use in the riparian corridor of the Colorado River Delta
Hydrological and bioclimatic processes that lead to drought may stress plants and wildlife, restructure plant community type and architecture, increase monotypic stands and bare soils, facilitate the invasion of non‐native plant species and accelerate soil erosion. Our study focuses on the impact of a paucity of Colorado River surface flows from the United States (U.S.) to Mexico. We measured chan
Authors
Pamela L. Nagler, Armando Barreto-Muñoz, Sattar Chavoshi Borujeni, Christopher J. Jarchow, Marth M. Gómez‐Sapiens, Hamideh Nouri, Stefanie M. Herrmann, Kamel Didan
Unfamiliar territory: Emerging themes for ecological drought research and management
Novel forms of drought are emerging globally, due to climate change, shifting teleconnection patterns, expanding human water use, and a history of human influence on the environment that increases the probability of transformational ecological impacts. These costly ecological impacts cascade to human communities, and understanding this changing drought landscape is one of today’s grand challenges.
Authors
Shelley D. Crausbay, Julio L. Betancourt, John B. Bradford, Jennifer M. Cartwright, William C. Dennison, Jason B. Dunham, Carolyn Armstrong Enquist, Abby G. Frazier, Kimberly R. Hall, Jeremy Littell, Charlie H. Luce, Richard Palmer, Aaron R. Ramirez, Imtiaz Rangwala, Laura Thompson, Brianne M. Walsh, Shawn Carter
The influence of soil age on ecosystem structure and function across biomes
The importance of soil age as an ecosystem driver across biomes remains largely unresolved. By combining a cross-biome global field survey, including data for 32 soil, plant, and microbial properties in 16 soil chronosequences, with a global meta-analysis, we show that soil age is a significant ecosystem driver, but only accounts for a relatively small proportion of the cross-biome variation in mu
Authors
Manuel Delgado-Baquerizo, Peter B. Reich, Richard D. Bardgett, David J. Eldridge, Hans Lambers, David A. Wardle, Sasha C. Reed, César Plaza, Guochen K. Png, Sigrid Neuhauser, Asmeret A. Berhe, Stephen C. Hart, Hang-Wei Hu, Ji-Zheng He, Felipe Bastida, Sebastián R. Abades, Fernando D. Alfaro, Nick A. Cutler, Antonio Gallardo, Laura García-Velázquez, Patrick E. Hayes, Zeng-Yei Hseu, Cecilia A. Pérez, Fernanda Santos, Christina Siebe, Pankaj Trivedi, Benjamin W. Sullivan, Luis Weber-Grullon, Mark A. Williams, Noah Fierer