Publications
Below are publications associated with the Southwest Biological Science Center's research.
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Filter Total Items: 1397
A toolbox for improving reclamation success: Joint USGS-BLM report establishes best management practices for oil and gas operations, monitoring methods, and standards
The U. S. Geological Survey, in partnership with the Bureau of Land Management, recently published an oil and gas reclamation techniques and methods report that provides land managers and oil and gas operators specific guidance and best management practices for development impacts, successfully reclaiming disturbed lands during and after oil and gas activities. Resource inventory...
Authors
Michael Duniway, Meredith A. Hartwell
Hotspots of biogeochemical activity linked to aridity and plant traits across global drylands
Perennial plants create productive and biodiverse hotspots, known as fertile islands, beneath their canopies. These hotspots largely determine the structure and functioning of drylands worldwide. Despite their ubiquity, the factors controlling fertile islands under conditions of contrasting grazing by livestock, the most prevalent land use in drylands, remain virtually unknown. Here we...
Authors
David J. Eldridge, Jingyi Ding, Josh Dorrough, Manuel Delgado-Baquerizo, Osvaldo E. Sala, Nicolas Gross, Yoann Le Bagousse-Pinguet, Max Mallen-Cooper, Hugo Saiz, Sergio Asensio, Victoria Ochoa, Beatriz Gozalo, Emilio Guirado, Miguel Garcia-Gomez, Enrique Valencia, Jaime Martínez-Valderrama, César Plaza, Mehdi Abedi, Negar Ahmadian, Rodrigo J. Ahumada, Julio M. Alcántara, Fateh Amghar, Luísa Azevedo, Farah Ben Salem, Miguel Berdugo, Niels Blaum, Bazartseren Boldgiv, Matthew A. Bowker, Donaldo Bran, Chongfeng Bu, Rafaella Canessa, Andrea P. Castillo-Monroy, Ignacio Castro, Patricio Castro-Quezada, Simone Cesarz, Roukaya Chibani, Abel Augusto Conceição, Anthony Darrouzet-Nardi, Yvonne C. Davila, Balázs Deák, Paloma Díaz-Martínez, David A. Donoso, Andrew J. Dougill, Jorge Durán, Nico Eisenhauer, Hamid Ejtehadi, Carlos Ivan Espinosa, Alex Fajardo, Mohammad Farzam, Ana Foronda, Jorgelina Franzese, Lauchlan H. Fraser, Juan J. Gaitán, Katja Geissler, Sofía Laura Gonzalez, Elizabeth Gusmán-Montalván, Rosa Mary Hernández, Norbert Hölzel, Frederic Mendes Hughes, Oswaldo Jadan, Anke Jentsch, Mengchen Ju, Kudzai F. Kaseke, Melanie Köbel, Anika Lehmann, Pierre Liancourt, Anja Linstädter, Michelle A. Louw, Quanhui Ma, Mancha Mabaso, Gillian Maggs-Kölling, Thulani P. Makhalanyane, Oumarou Malam Issa, Eugene Marais, Mitchel P. McClaran, Betty J. Mendoza, Vincent Mokoka, Juan P. Mora, Gerardo Moreno, Seth Munson, Alice Nunes, Gabriel Oliva, Gaston R. Oñatibia, Brooke Bossert Osborne, Guadalupe Peter, Pierre Margerie, Yolanda Pueyo, Raul Emiliano Quiroga, Sasha Reed, Ana Rey, Pedro J. Rey, Víctor Manuel Reyes Gómez, Victor Rolo, Matthias C. Rillig, Peter C. le Roux, Jan Christian Ruppert, Ayman Salah, Phokgedi Julius Sebei, Anarmaa Sharkhuu, Ilan Stavi, Colton R. A. Stephens, Alberto L. Teixido, Andrew David Thomas, Katja Tielbörger, Silvia Torres Robles, Samantha K. Travers, Orsolya Valkó, Liesbeth van den Brink, Frederike Velbert, Andreas von Heßberg, Wanyoike Wamiti, Deli Wang, Lixin Wang, Glenda M Wardle, Laura Yahdjian, Eli Zaady, Yuanming Zhang, Xiaobing Zhou, Fernando T. Maestre
Modeling the impacts of Glen Canyon Dam operations on Colorado River resources
At the time of this report, the Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation) is writing two supplemental Environmental Impact Statements (sEIS ) and a new Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) that will analyze the effects of changing water flow out of Glen Canyon Dam (GCD) (U.S. Department of Interior, 2024). These actions have the potential to affect downstream resources, including threatened...
Authors
Charles B. Yackulic, Lucas S. Bair, Drew Elliot Eppehimer, Gerard Lewis Salter, Bridget Deemer, Bradley J. Butterfield, Alan Kasprak, Joshua J. Caster, Helen Fairley, Paul E. Grams, Bryce Anthony Mihalevich, Emily C. Palmquist, Joel B. Sankey
Fishes move to transient local refuges, not persistent landscape refuges during river drying experiment
Anthropogenically driven flow intermittency is increasing in freshwater streams, with important implications for the management and conservation of aquatic ecosystems. Because most freshwater fishes are mobile, they are expected to emigrate from intermittent reaches, but this may not be true in streams transitioning from perennial to intermittent. Here, we attempt to determine if...
Authors
Thomas P. Archdeacon, Eric J. Gonzales, Charles B. Yackulic
Estimating migration timing and abundance in partial migratory systems by integrating continuous antenna detections with physical captures
Many populations migrate between two different habitats (e.g. wintering/foraging to breeding area, mainstem–tributary, river–lake, river–ocean, river–side channel) as part of their life history. Detection technologies, such as passive integrated transponder (PIT) antennas or sonic receivers, can be placed at boundaries between habitats (e.g. near the confluence of rivers) to detect...
Authors
Maria C. Dzul, William L. Kendall, Charles B. Yackulic, D.R. Van Haverbeke, P. Mackinnon, K. Young, Michael J. Pillow, Joseph E Thomas
Inoculated biocrust cover and functions diverged over a gradient of soil textures and water availability
Restoring biological crust (biocrust) in disturbed drylands is challenging due to the difficult environmental conditions, such as limited soil moisture, low soil nutrients, and extreme temperatures, that impede growth. Understanding how the key components of biocrust—mosses, lichens, and cyanobacteria—react to different environmental factors informs the optimal timing, locations, and...
Authors
Kristina E. Young, Sasha Reed, Michael Morton, Matthew A. Bowker
Multiple stressors mediate the effects of warming on leaf decomposition in a large regulated river
Predicting how increasing temperatures interact with other global change drivers to influence the structure and dynamics of Earth's ecosystems is a primary challenge in ecology. Our study made use of multiple simultaneous “natural experiments” to examine how rapid warming, declining nutrients, invasive consumers, and riparian invasive species management interact to influence leaf...
Authors
Eric Arthur Scholl, Kyle R. Hanus, Tyler Gardner, Theodore A. Kennedy
Annotated bibliography of scientific research relevant to oil and gas reclamation best management practices in the western United States, published from 1969 through 2020
Integrating recent scientific knowledge into management decisions supports effective natural resource management and can lead to better resource outcomes. However, finding and accessing scientific knowledge can be time consuming and costly. To assist in this process, the U.S. Geological Survey has created a series of annotated bibliographies on topics of management concern for lands in...
Authors
Rebecca K. Mann, Molly L. McCormick, Seth Munson, Hillary F. Cooper, Lee C. Bryant, Jared K. Swenson, Laura A. Johnston, Savannah L. Wilson, Michael Duniway
Estimating multivariate ecological variables at high spatial resolution using a cost-effective matching algorithm
Simulation models are valuable tools for estimating ecosystem response to environmental conditions and are particularly relevant for investigating climate change impacts. However, because of high computational requirements, models are often applied over a coarse grid of points or for representative locations. Spatial interpolation of model output can be necessary to guide decision-making...
Authors
Rachel R. Renne, Daniel Rodolphe Schlaepfer, Kyle A. Palmquist, William K. Lauenroth, John Bradford
Climate-induced tree-mortality pulses are obscured by broad-scale and long-term greening
Vegetation greening has been suggested to be a dominant trend over recent decades, but severe pulses of tree mortality in forests after droughts and heatwaves have also been extensively reported. These observations raise the question of to what extent the observed severe pulses of tree mortality induced by climate could affect overall vegetation greenness across spatial grains and...
Authors
Yuchao Yan, Shilong Piao, William R. Hammond, Anping Chen, Songbai Hong, Xu Hao, Seth Munson, Ranga B. Myneni, Craig Allen
Rising water temperature in rivers: Ecological impacts and future resilience
Rising water temperatures in rivers due to climate change are already having observable impacts on river ecosystems. Warming water has both direct and indirect impacts on aquatic life, and further aggravates pervasive issues such as eutrophication, pollution, and the spread of disease. Animals can survive higher temperatures through physiological and/or genetic acclimation, behavioral...
Authors
Matthew S. Johnson, Lindsey K. Albertson, Adam C. Algar, Stephen J. Dugdale, Patrick M. Edwards, Judy England, Christopher Gibbins, So Kazama, Daisuke Komori, Andrew Maccoll, Eric Arthur Scholl, Robert L. Wilby, Fabio de Oliveira Roque, Paul J. Wood
Risk to campsites from debris flows and flash floods project update
No abstract available.
Authors
Erica Paige Byerley, Paul E. Grams, Tom Gushue, Shannon Leigh Sartain