Publications

Ecosystem services provide an instinctive way to understand the trade-offs associated with natural resource management. However, despite their apparent usefulness, several hurdles have prevented ecosystem services from becoming deeply embedded in environmental decision-making. Ecosystem service studies vary widely in focal services, geographic extent, and in methods for defining and measuring serv

The Northeastern section of the United States, known as New England, has seen vast changes in land cover and human population over the past 3 centuries. Much of the region is forested; grasslands and other open-land cover types are less common, but provide habitat for many species that are currently declining in abundance and distribution. New England also consists of some of the most densely popu

Animal movements and habitat selection within the home range, or microhabitat selection, can provide insights into habitat requirements, such as foraging and area requirements. The King Rail (Rallus elegans) is a wetland bird of high conservation concern in the United States, but little is known about its movements, habitats, or demography. King Rails (n = 34) were captured during the 2010–2011 br

Managing water storage and withdrawals in many reservoirs requires establishing seasonal targets for water levels (i.e., rule curves) that are influenced by regional precipitation and diverse water demands. Rule curves are established as an attempt to balance various water needs such as flood control, irrigation, and environmental benefits such as fish and wildlife management. The processes and ch

Barrier islands and coastal beach systems provide nesting habitat for marine and estuarine turtles. Densely settled coastal areas may subsidize nest predators. Our purpose was to inform conservation by providing a greater understanding of habitat-based risk factors for nest predation, for an estuarine turtle. We expected that habitat conditions at predated nests would differ from random locations

We developed a spatial capture–recapture model to evaluate survival and activity centres (i.e., mean locations) of tagged individuals detected along a linear array. Our spatially explicit version of the Cormack–Jolly–Seber model, analyzed using a Bayesian framework, correlates movement between periods and can incorporate environmental or other covariates. We demonstrate the model using 2010 data f

Soil surface temperature is a critical boundary condition for the simulation of soil temperature by environmental models. It is influenced by atmospheric and soil conditions and by vegetation cover. In sophisticated land surface models, it is simulated iteratively by solving surface energy budget equations. In ecosystem, permafrost, and hydrology models, the consideration of soil surface temperatu

Fire is an important factor controlling the composition and thickness of the organic layer in the black spruce forest ecosystems of interior Alaska. Fire that burns the organic layer can trigger dramatic changes in the underlying permafrost, leading to accelerated ground thawing within a relatively short time. In this study, we addressed the following questions. (1) Which factors determine post-fi

Translocations are frequently used to increase the abundance and range of endangered fishes. One factor likely to affect the outcome of translocations is fish movement. We introduced embryos from five Westslope Cutthroat Trout Oncorhynchus clarkii lewisi populations (both hatchery and wild) at five different locations within a fishless watershed. We then examined the movement of age‐1 and age‐2 fi

Although much remains to be learned about the Arctic and its component processes, many of the most urgent scientific, engineering, and social questions can only be approached through a broader system perspective. Here, we address interactions between components of the Arctic System and assess feedbacks and the extent to which feedbacks (1) are now underway in the Arctic; and (2) will shape the fut

Soil consumption of atmospheric methane plays an important secondary role in regulating the atmospheric CH4 budget, next to the dominant loss mechanism involving reaction with the hydroxyl radical (OH). Here we used a process-based biogeochemistry model to quantify soil consumption during the 20th and 21st centuries. We estimated that global soils consumed 32–36 Tg CH4 yr−1 during the 1990s. Natur

We quantified microscale flow forces and their ability to entrain the freshwater polychaete, Manayunkia speciosa, the intermediate host for 2 myxozoan parasites (Ceratomyxa shasta and Parvicapsula minibicornis) that cause substantial mortalities in salmonid fishes in the Pacific Northwest. In a laboratory flume, we measured the shear stress associated with 2 mean flow velocities and 3 substrates a