Publications
Below are publications associated with the Southwest Biological Science Center's research.
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Filter Total Items: 1332
Microsite enhancements for soil stabilization and rapid biocrust colonization in degraded drylands
In dryland ecosystems, natural recovery of biological soil crusts (biocrusts) following disturbance may be slow or inhibited, necessitating active restoration practices. While biocrusts can be readily propagated under environmentally controlled conditions, rehabilitation in the field is complicated by environmental stresses which may be particularly acute in degraded, destabilized soils with harsh
Authors
Stephen E. Fick, Natalie K. Day, Michael C. Duniway, Sean Lawrence Hoy-Skubik, Nichole N. Barger
Assessing plant production responses to climate across water-limited regions using Google Earth Engine
(Munson) Climate variability and change acting at broad scales can lead to divergent changes in plant production at local scales. Quantifying how production responds to variation in climate at local scales is essential to understand underlying ecological processes and inform land management decision-making, but has historically been limited in spatiotemporal scale based on the use of discrete grou
Authors
Erin L. Bunting, Seth M. Munson, John B. Bradford
Evolutionary history predicts high-impact invasions by herbivorous insects
A long‐standing goal of invasion biology is to identify factors driving highly variable impacts of non‐native species. Although hypotheses exist that emphasize the role of evolutionary history (e.g., enemy release hypothesis & defense‐free space hypothesis), predicting the impact of non‐native herbivorous insects has eluded scientists for over a century.
Using a census of all 58 non‐native conifer
Authors
Angela M. Mech, Kathryn A. Thomas, Travis D. Marsico, Daniel A. Herms, Craig Allen, Matthew P. Ayres, Kamal J.K. Gandhi, Jessica Gurevitch, Nathan P. Havill, Ruth A. Hufbauer, Andrew M. Liebhold, Kenneth F. Raffa, Ashley N. Schulz, Daniel R. Uden, Patrick C. Tobin
Global ecological predictors of the soil priming effect
Identifying the global drivers of soil priming is essential to understanding C cycling in terrestrial ecosystems. We conducted a survey of soils across 86 globally-distributed locations, spanning a wide range of climates, biotic communities, and soil conditions, and evaluated the apparent soil priming effect using 13C-glucose labeling. Here we show that the magnitude of the positive apparent primi
Authors
Felipe Bastida, Carlos M. Garcia, Noah Fierer, David J. Eldridge, Matthew A. Bowker, Sebastián R. Abades, Fernando D. Alfaro, Asmeret Asefaw Berhe, Nick A. Cutler, Antonio Gallardo, Laura Garcia-Velazquez, Stephen C. Hart, Patrick E. Hayes, Teresa Hernández, Zeng-Yei Hseu, Nico Jehmlich, Martin Kirchmair, Hans Lambers, Sigrid Neuhauser, Victor M. Peña-Ramírez, Cecilia A. Pérez, Sasha C. Reed, Fernanda Santos, Christina Siebe, Benjamin W. Sullivan, Pankaj Trivedi, Alfonso Vera, Mark A. Williams, Jose M. Moreno, Manuel Delgado-Baquerizo
Remote sensing of dryland ecosystem structure and function: Progress, challenges, and opportunities
Drylands make up roughly 40% of the Earth's land surface, and billions of people depend on services provided by these critically important ecosystems. Despite their relatively sparse vegetation, dryland ecosystems are structurally and functionally diverse, and emerging evidence suggests that these ecosystems play a dominant role in the trend and variability of the terrestrial carbon sink. More, dr
Authors
William K. Smith, Matthew P. Dannenberg, Dong Yan, Stephanie Herrmann, Mallory L. Barnes, Greg A. Barron-Gafford, Joel A. Biederman, Scott Ferrenberg, Andrew M. Fox, Amy R. Hudson, John F. Knowles, Natasha MacBean, David J.P. Moore, Pamela L. Nagler, Sasha C. Reed, William A. Rutherford, Russell L. Scott, Xianfeng Wang, Julia Yang
Managing sand along the Colorado River to protect cultural sites downstream of Glen Canyon Dam
The construction of Glen Canyon Dam in northern Arizona has greatly reduced the supply of sand to the Colorado River corridor through Glen Canyon National Recreation Area and Grand Canyon National Park, hereafter referred to as Glen Canyon and Grand Canyon, respectively. This deficit has strongly affected the natural sediment cycle in this iconic landscape and has lowered the availability of windb
Authors
Terri Cook, Amy East, Helen Fairley, Joel B. Sankey
Interactions of microhabitat and time control grassland bacterial and fungal composition
Dryland grasslands are vast and globally important and, as in all terrestrial ecosystems, soil microbial communities play fundamental roles in regulating dryland ecosystem function. A typical characteristic of drylands is the spatial mosaic of vascular plant cover surrounded by interspace soils, where biological soil crusts (biocrusts)—a complex community of organisms including bacteria, fungi, al
Authors
Michaeline BN Albright, Rebecca C. Mueller, La Verne Gallegos-Graves, Jayne Belnap, Sasha C. Reed, Cheryl R. Kuske
Viability of Razorback-Flannelmouth Sucker hybrids
Razorback sucker (Xyrauchen texanus) and flannelmouth sucker (Catostomus latipinnis) live in sympatry in the Colorado River basin. Although morphological intermediates have been described since 1889, hybrids were seemingly rare. Rarity of hybrids was likely attributed to razorback suckers' ability to find conspecific mates throughout the basin. Dams have segmented the Colorado River, altering habi
Authors
Pilar N. Wolters, David L. Rogowski, David Ward, Alice C. Gibb
Addressing barriers to improve biocrust colonization and establishment in dryland restoration
Methods to reduce soil loss and associated loss of ecosystem functions due to land degradation are of particular importance in dryland ecosystems. Biocrusts are communities of cyanobacteria, lichens, and bryophytes that are vulnerable to soil disturbance, but provide vital ecosystem functions when present. Biocrusts stabilize soil, improve hydrologic function, and increase nutrient and carbon inpu
Authors
Anita Antoninka, Matthew A. Bowker, Nichole N. Barger, Jayne Belnap, Ana Giraldo Silva, Sasha C. Reed, Ferran Garcia-Pichel, Michael C. Duniway
Understanding reproductive allometry in turtles: A slippery “slope”
Measures of reproductive output in turtles are generally positively correlated with female body size. However, a full understanding of reproductive allometry in turtles requires logarithmic transformation of reproductive and body size variables prior to regression analyses. This allows for slope comparisons with expected linear or cubic relationships for linear to linear and linear to volumetric v
Authors
John B. Iverson, Peter V. Lindeman, Jeffrey E. Lovich
Using oblique imagery to measure hypsometric changes in sandbar volume following controlled floods in the Grand Canyon
Measuring changes in the elevation distribution of sub-aerial fine (< 2 mm ) sediment and estimating sandbar volume multiple times per year can improve sediment budget calculations in fluvial systems. In the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River, effects of dam operations on sandbar size and distribution is of long-term management interest. Bar-building controlled floods have been implemented in 1996
Authors
Ryan Lima, Daniel Buscombe, Temuulen T. Sankey, Paul Grams, Erich R. Mueller
Climate-driven shifts in soil temperature and moisture regimes suggest opportunities to enhance assessments of dryland resilience and resistance
Assessing landscape patterns in climate vulnerability, as well as resilience and resistance to drought, disturbance, and invasive species, requires appropriate metrics of relevant environmental conditions. In dryland systems of western North America, soil temperature and moisture regimes have been widely utilized as an indicator of resilience to disturbance and resistance to invasive plant species
Authors
John B. Bradford, Daniel R. Schlaepfer, William K. Lauenroth, Kyle A. Palmquist, Jeanne C. Chambers, Jeremy D. Maestas, Steven B. Campbell