Publications
Below are publications associated with the Southwest Biological Science Center's research.
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Filter Total Items: 1338
Prestoration: Using species in restoration that will persist now and into the future
Climate change presents new challenges for selecting species for restoration. If migration fails to keep pace with climate change, as models predict, the most suitable sources for restoration may not occur locally at all. To address this issue we propose a strategy of “prestoration”: utilizing species in restoration for which a site represents suitable habitat now and into the future. Using the Co
Authors
B.J. Butterfield, Stella M. Copeland, Seth M. Munson, C.M. Roybal, Troy E. Wood
Not all droughts are created equal: The impacts of interannual drought pattern and magnitude on grassland carbon cycling
Climate extremes, such as drought, may have immediate and potentially prolonged effects on carbon cycling. Grasslands store approximately one-third of all terrestrial carbon and may become carbon sources during droughts. However, the magnitude and duration of drought-induced disruptions to the carbon cycle, as well as the mechanisms responsible, remain poorly understood. Over the next century, glo
Authors
David L. Hoover, Brendan M. Rogers
POLARIS: A 30-meter probabilistic soil series map of the contiguous United States
A new complete map of soil series probabilities has been produced for the contiguous United States at a 30 m spatial resolution. This innovative database, named POLARIS, is constructed using available high-resolution geospatial environmental data and a state-of-the-art machine learning algorithm (DSMART-HPC) to remap the Soil Survey Geographic (SSURGO) database. This 9 billion grid cell database i
Authors
Nathaniel W. Chaney, Eric F Wood, Alexander B McBratney, Jonathan W Hempel, Travis W. Nauman, Colby W. Brungard, Nathan P Odgers
Mid-latitude shrub steppe plant communities: Climate change consequences for soil water resources
In the coming century, climate change is projected to impact precipitation and temperature regimes worldwide, with especially large effects in drylands. We use big sagebrush ecosystems as a model dryland ecosystem to explore the impacts of altered climate on ecohydrology and the implications of those changes for big sagebrush plant communities using output from 10 Global Circulation Models (GCMs)
Authors
Kyle A. Palmquist, Daniel R. Schlaepfer, John B. Bradford, Willliam K. Lauenroth
Terrestrial nitrogen cycling in Earth system models revisited
Understanding the degree to which nitrogen (N) availability limits land carbon (C) uptake under global environmental change represents an unresolved challenge. First-generation ‘C-only’vegetation models, lacking explicit representations of N cycling,projected a substantial and increasing land C sink under rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations. This prediction was questioned for not taking into acc
Authors
Benjamin Stocker, I. Colin Prentice, Sarah Cornell, T Davies-Barnard, Adrien Finzi, Oskar Franklin, Ivan Janssens, Tuula Larmola, Stefano Manzoni, Torgny Näsholm, John Raven, Karin Rebel, Sasha C. Reed, Sara Vicca, Andy Wiltshire, Sönke Zaehle
Resource subsidies between stream and terrestrial ecosystems under global change
Streams and adjacent terrestrial ecosystems are characterized by permeable boundaries that are crossed by resource subsidies. Although the importance of these subsidies for riverine ecosystems is increasingly recognized, little is known about how they may be influenced by global environmental change. Drawing from available evidence, in this review we propose a conceptual framework to evaluate the
Authors
Stefano Larsen, Jeffrey D. Muehlbauer, Maria Eugenia Marti Roca
Long-term continuous acoustical suspended-sediment measurements in rivers - Theory, application, bias, and error
It is commonly recognized that suspended-sediment concentrations in rivers can change rapidly in time and independently of water discharge during important sediment‑transporting events (for example, during floods); thus, suspended-sediment measurements at closely spaced time intervals are necessary to characterize suspended‑sediment loads. Because the manual collection of sufficient numbers of sus
Authors
David J. Topping, Scott Wright
Vegetation of semi-stable rangeland dunes of the Navajo Nation, Southwestern USA
Dune destabilization and increased mobility is a worldwide issue causing ecological, economic, and health problems for the inhabitants of areas with extensive dune fields. Dunes cover nearly a third of the Navajo Nation within the Colorado Plateau of southwestern USA. There, higher temperatures and prolonged drought beginning in 1996 have produced significant increases in dune mobility. Vegetation
Authors
Kathryn A. Thomas, Margaret H. Redsteer
Flow management for hydropower extirpates aquatic insects, undermining river food webs
Dams impound the majority of rivers and provide important societal benefits, especially daily water releases that enable on-peak hydroelectricity generation. Such “hydropeaking” is common worldwide, but its downstream impacts remain unclear. We evaluated the response of aquatic insects, a cornerstone of river food webs, to hydropeaking using a life history–hydrodynamic model. Our model predicts th
Authors
Theodore A. Kennedy, Jeffrey D. Muehlbauer, Charles B. Yackulic, D.A. Lytle, S.A. Miller, Kimberly L. Dibble, Eric W. Kortenhoeven, Anya N. Metcalfe, Colden V. Baxter
Assessing predation risks for small fish in a large river ecosystem between contrasting habitats and turbidity conditions
This study examined predation risk for juvenile native fish between two riverine shoreline habitats, backwater and debris fan, across three discrete turbidity levels (low, intermediate, high) to understand environmental risks associated with habitat use in a section of the Colorado River in Grand Canyon, AZ. Inferences are particularly important to juvenile native fish, including the federally end
Authors
Michael J. Dodrill, Michael D. Yard, William E. Pine
Using climate, energy, and spatial-based hypotheses to interpret macroecological patterns of North America chelonians
Our study investigates how factors, such as latitude, productivity, and several environmental variables, influence contemporary patterns of the species richness in North American turtles. In particular, we test several hypotheses explaining broad-scale species richness patterns on several species richness data sets: (i) total turtles, (ii) freshwater turtles only, (iii) aquatic turtles, (iv) terre
Authors
Joshua R. Ennen, Mickey Agha, Wilfredo A. Matamoros, Sarah C. Hazzard, Jeffrey E. Lovich
A morphological review of subspecies of the Asian box turtle, Cuora amboinensis (Testudines, Geomydidae)
The turtle Cuora amboinensis has an extensive distribution covering most of southern mainland Asia, Indonesia, and extending to the Philippine Islands. Unlike many species, C. amboinensis occurs on both sides of Wallace's Line separating Asian and Australian flora and fauna. Four subspecies are currently recognized; Cuora a. kamaroma (southern continental Asia, Java and the northern Philippines [i
Authors
Carl H. Ernst, Arndt F. Laemmerzahl, Jeffrey E. Lovich