All Publications

As human impacts from wildfires mount, there is a pressing need to understand why structures are lost in destructive fires. Despite growing research on factors contributing to structure loss, fewer studies have focused on why some fires are destructive and others are not. We characterized overall differences between fires that resulted in structure loss (“destructive fires”) and those that did not

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill caused extensive injury to natural resources in the Gulf of Mexico, and Gavia immer (common loon) were negatively affected from the spill. The Open Ocean Trustee Implementation Group funded the project Restoration of Common Loons in Minnesota to restore common loons lost to the spill. In 2020–21, priority lakes in an eight-county region in north-central Minnesota we

Metabarcoding of environmental DNA (eDNA) provides more comprehensive, efficient, and non-invasive sampling of biological communities than conventional methods. However, limitations of metabarcoding include taxon-specific biases in amplification and sequencing that distort assessments of community composition. Further, hyper-abundant species may disproportionately affect community composition asse

Surveys and monitoring for the coastal Cactus Wren (Campylorhynchus brunneicapillus) were completed in San Diego County between March 2015 and July 2019. A total of 383 plots were surveyed across 3 genetic clusters (Otay, Lake Jennings, and Sweetwater/Encanto). From 2015 to 2019, 317 plots were surveyed 8 times (twice per year in 2015, 2017–19). Additional plots were added in later years as wrens

Extreme heat is one of the most important pathways illustrating the connection between climate and human health, and climate change is expected to exacerbate this public health issue. This study first used a case-crossover analysis to characterize the historical (1980–2018) association between summertime heat and non-traumatic mortality in Washington State. A separate analysis was conducted for ea

Coastal ecosystems are increasingly threatened by anthropogenic stressors such as harmful algal blooms and hypoxia projected to intensify through the combined effects of eutrophication and warming. As a major terrestrial nitrogen (N) source to the ocean, rivers play a critical role in shaping both coastal and global biogeochemical cycling. Combining an enhanced-resolution (1/4°), global ocean ph

The Glacier Bay area in southeastern Alaska and British Columbia, encompassing Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, has experienced rapid glacier retreat since the end of the Little Ice Age in the mid-1800s. The impact that rapid deglaciation has had on the slope stability of valley walls and on the sedimentation of fans and deltas adjacent to fjords and inlets is an ongoing research topic. Usi

The re-vegetation of mining wastes with native plants is a comparatively low-cost solution for mine reclamation. However, re-vegetation fails when extreme pH values, low organic matter, or high concentrations of phytotoxic elements inhibit plant establishment and growth. Our aim was to determine whether the combined addition of municipal waste compost and diazotrophic endophytes (i.e., microorgani

ContextAgricultural land-use conversion has fragmented prairie wetland habitats in the Prairie Pothole Region (PPR), an area with one of the most wetland dense regions in the world. This fragmentation can lead to negative consequences for wetland obligate organisms, heightening risk of local extinction and reducing evolutionary potential for populations to adapt to changing environments.Objectives

This study employs the hedonic pricing method and a rich spatial and temporal dataset from two counties in Washington, USA to determine the effect of the 2009 Nisqually Restoration project (NRP) on housing prices in adjacent communities. The NRP restored 308 hectares of wetlands via dike removal in the Billy Frank Jr. Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge (NNWR), leading to improvements in salmon and

Streamflow drought is a recurring challenge, and understanding spatiotemporal patterns of past droughts is needed to manage future water resources. We examined regional patterns in streamflow drought metrics and compared these metrics to low flow timing and magnitude using long-term daily records for 555 minimally disturbed watersheds. For each streamgage, we calculated streamflow drought duration

The National Gap Analysis Project created species habitat distribution models for all terrestrial vertebrates in the United States to support conservation assessments and explore patterns of species richness. Those models link species to specific habitats throughout the range of each species. For most vertebrates, there are not enough occurrence data to drive inductive, range-wide species habitat