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: 1338
Decoupling of species and plant communities of the U.S. Southwest: A CCSM4 climate scenario example
Climate change is predicted to alter the current climate suitability under which plant species and communities occur. Predictions of change have focused on individual species or entire communities, but theory indicates plants will not respond uniformly to climate change within or between communities. We developed models of the current climate suitability (the baseline) of 66 plant species characte
Authors
Kathryn A. Thomas, Brett A. Stauffer, Christopher J. Jarchow
A review of common natural disasters as analogs for asteroid impact effects and cascading hazards
Modern civilization has no collective experience with possible wide-ranging effects from a medium-sized asteroid impactor. Currently, modeling efforts that predict initial effects from a meteor impact or airburst provide needed information for initial preparation and evacuation plans, but longer-term cascading hazards are not typically considered. However, more common natural disasters, such as vo
Authors
Timothy N. Titus, D. G. Robertson, Joel B. Sankey, Larry G. Mastin, Francis K. Rengers
Do nurse plant effects strengthen over time? Results from 12 years of desert habitat restoration
Nurse plant effects occur when benefactor perennials facilitate beneficiary plants below their canopies. Two poorly understood aspects of nurse plant ecology include whether facilitation strengthens as nurse plants mature and whether reestablishing perennials through ecological restoration at disturbed sites can trigger facilitation akin to in natural plant communities. We examined these uncertain
Authors
Scott R. Abella, Lindsay P. Chiquoine, Mary A. Balogh, Adam J. Taylor, Seth M. Munson
Proceedings of the Fiscal Year 2022 Annual Reporting Meeting to the Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Program
(Hartwell) This report is prepared primarily to account for work conducted and products delivered in FY 2022 by GCMRC and to inform the Technical Work Group of science conducted by GCMRC and its cooperators in support of the Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Program (GCDAMP).
It includes a summary of accomplishments, modifications to work plans, results, and recommendations related to projects i
Authors
David Topping, Paul Grams, Emily C. Palmquist, Joel B. Sankey, Helen C. Fairley, Bridget Deemer, Charles Yackulic, Theodore Kennedy, Anya Metcalfe, Maria C. Dzul, David Ward, Mariah Aurelia Giardina, Lucas Bair, Thomas Gushue, Caitlin M. Andrews, Ronald E. Griffiths, David Dean, Keith Kohl, Michael J Moran, Nicholas Voichick, Thomas A. Sabol, Laura A. Tennant, Kimberly Dibble, Michael C. Runge
Appendix 1: Lake Powell water quality monitoring
No abstract available.Â
Authors
Bridget Deemer, Nicholas Voichick, Thomas A. Sabol, Caitlin M. Andrews, Bryce Anthony Mihalevich
Livestock removal increases plant cover across a heterogeneous dryland landscape on the Colorado Plateau
Livestock removal is increasingly used as a management option to mitigate the negative impacts of grazing-related disturbances on rangelands. Removal generally increases plant cover, but it is unclear when, where, and by how much plant and soil cover changes can be expected. On the Colorado Plateau, complex geology, topography, soils, and climate all interact to mediate the relationship between la
Authors
Brandon E McNellis, Anna C Knight, Travis W. Nauman, Samuel Norton Chambers, C.W. Brungard, S.E. Fick, C.G. Livensperger, C.G. Borthwick, Michael C. Duniway
Over half a century record of limnology data from Lake Powell, desert southwest United States: From reservoir filling to present day (1964–2021)
Lake Powell is a large water storage reservoir in the arid southwestern United States. Here, we present a 58-yr limnology dataset that captures water quality parameters from reservoir filling to present day (temperature, salinity, major ions, total suspended solids), as well as a 38-yr record of Secchi depth, and a ~ 30-yr record of nutrients, phytoplankton, and zooplankton assemblages. The datase
Authors
Bridget Deemer, Caitlin M. Andrews, Kristin E. Strock, Nicholas Voichick, James Hensleigh, John Beaver, Robert Radtke
Effectiveness of a decade of treatments to reduce invasive buffelgrass (Pennisetum ciliare)
The invasion of nonnative grasses threatens biodiversity and ecosystem function globally through competition with native plant species and increases to wildfire frequency and intensity. Management actions to reduce buffelgrass [Pennisetum ciliare (L.) Link], an invasive warm-season perennial bunchgrass, are widely implemented, with chemical and mechanical treatments extending over two decades with
Authors
Yue M. Li, Seth M. Munson, Ya-Ching Lin, Perry Grissom
Plant community predictions support the potential for big sagebrush range expansion adjacent to the leading edge
Big sagebrush ecosystems are widespread across drylands of western North America and provide numerous services, but the abundance of these ecosystems has declined substantially and the future of these ecosystems is uncertain. As a result, characterizing potential areas for expansion of these ecosystems is important. Species distribution models of the big sagebrush suggest areas of increasing clima
Authors
T. Martyn, K. Palmquist, John B. Bradford, Daniel Rodolphe Schlaepfer, W.K. Lauenroth
Taxonomic identity, biodiversity, and antecedent disturbances shape the dimensional stability of stream invertebrates
The “dimensional stability” approach measures different components of ecological stability to investigate how they are related. Yet, most empirical work has used small-scale and short-term experimental manipulations. Here, we apply this framework to a long-term observational dataset of stream macroinvertebrates sampled between the winter flooding and summer monsoon seasons. We test hypotheses that
Authors
Daniel C Allen, Brian A Gill, Anya Metcalfe, Sophia M Bonjour, Scott Starr, Junna Wang, Diana Valentin, Nancy B. Grimm
The detection and attribution of extreme reductions in vegetation growth across the global land surface
Negative extreme anomalies in vegetation growth (NEGs) usually indicate severely impaired ecosystem services. These NEGs can result from diverse natural and anthropogenic causes, especially climate extremes (CEs). However, the relationship between NEGs and many types of CEs remains largely unknown at regional and global scales. Here, with satellite-derived vegetation index data and supporting tree
Authors
Huiping Yang, Seth M. Munson, Chris Huntingford, Nuno Carvalhais, Alan K. Knapp, Xiangyi Li, Josep Peñuelas, Jakob Zscheichler, Anping Chen
Sound-side inundation and seaward erosion of a barrier island during hurricane landfall
Barrier islands are especially vulnerable to hurricanes and other large storms, owing to their mobile composition, low elevations, and detachment from the mainland. Conceptual models of barrier-island evolution emphasize ocean-side processes that drive landward migration through overwash, inlet migration, and aeolian transport. In contrast, we found that the impact of Hurricane Dorian (2019) on No
Authors
Christopher R. Sherwood, Andrew C. Ritchie, Jin-Si R. Over, Christine J. Kranenburg, Jonathan Warrick, Jenna A. Brown, Wayne Wright, Alfredo Aretxabaleta, Sara Zeigler, Phillipe Alan Wernette, Daniel D. Buscombe, Christie Hegermiller