Ecological Processes

The Colorado Plateau, centered around the four corners area of the Southwest, and includes much of Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico, is a large and important component of U.S. drylands. This important home to mountains, desert basins, dramatic canyons, arid woodlands, and grasslands is also one of North America’s most rapidly warming hot spots, with rates of warming of up to 2-3° C within...

Relict forests (i.e., forests unable to reestablish after disturbance) may develop in the southeastern U.S. in future predicted extreme climates of temperature, flooding, and drought, according to the International Panel on Climate Change.

Understanding potential changes in ecological, social, and climate systems can help managers and decision makers take actions to ensure that natural landscapes and human communities remain healthy and are able to provide essential ecosystem services now and in the future.

Beyond the impacts to jobs and business activities, economics can play an important role in understanding the return on project investments by studying the benefits of project outcomes to society.

Developing effective living shoreline restoration projects that can withstand hurricanes and storms requires a better understanding of how restoration structures reduce the impact of wave and current energy on marsh edges in estuaries and bays. Without this knowledge, existing living shoreline projects and adaptive management measures are more likely to fail, decreasing the possibility for long...

The USGS conducts research on marine wildlife, habitats, and processes to provide science to inform our partners as they make decisions relative to species status, resource use, and human activities.

The President's 2010 Budget provided $475 million for a new interagency Great Lakes restoration initiative, which targets the most significant problems in the region, including invasive aquatic species (like zebra and quagga mussels), non-point source pollution, and contaminated sediment. This initiative uses outcome-oriented performance goals and measures to target the most significant problems...

Rangelands are natural ecosystems where the native vegetation consists predominantly of grasses, grass-like plants, forbs, or shrubs. Rangelands include natural grasslands, savannas, shrublands, oak and pinyon-juniper woodlands, many deserts, tundra, alpine communities, marshes, and wet meadows.

Whereas the other themes of the Contaminant Ecology Research Program focus on where, why, and how contaminants cycle and bioaccumulate in ecological systems, this theme is focused on determining what happens at environmentally relevant concentrations.

Disturbance is an important process in most natural communities, shaping ecosystem composition, structure, and function. Studying and quantifying natural disturbance regimes (e.g., fire) often reveal complex relationships with climate, vegetation, and topography, as well as with other disturbance agents (e.g., insects and wind). Characterizing and quantifying past disturbances regimes is also key...

FRESC scientists investigate whole-system processes and relationships across space and time in order to advance understanding of natural, managed, and disturbed ecosystems. This includes research, monitoring, remote sensing, modeling, and synthesis to describe the patterns of change across landscapes and the biological and physical processes that generate them.

Desert landscapes are rapidly changing due to increases in invasive plant species, frequency of wildfires, urban and energy development, recreational use, military training, and climate variation. Dr. Todd Esque, USGS researchers, and collaborators are working together to investigate these changes and provide managers with key information that can be used to manage natural resources more...