Insights into plant water uptake from xylem-water isotope measurements in two tropical catchments with contrasting moisture conditions
Jaivime Evaristo, Jeffrey J. McDonnell, Martha A. Scholl, L. Adrian Bruijnzeel, Kwok P. Chun
2016, Hydrological Processes (30) 3210-3227
Water transpired by trees has long been assumed to be sourced from the same subsurface water stocks that contribute to groundwater recharge and streamflow. However, recent investigations using dual water stable isotopes have shown an apparent ecohydrological separation between tree-transpired water and stream water. Here we present evidence for such...
Urban base flow with low impact development
Aditi Bhaskar, Dianna M. Hogan, Stacey A. Archfield
2016, Hydrological Processes (30) 3156-3171
A novel form of urbanization, low impact development (LID), aims to engineer systems that replicate natural hydrologic functioning, in part by infiltrating stormwater close to the impervious surfaces that generate it. We sought to statistically evaluate changes in a base flow regime because of urbanization with LID, specifically changes in...
Land use in the Northern Great Plains region of the U.S. influences the survival and productivity of honey bee colonies
Matthew Smart, Jeff S. Pettis, Ned H. Jr. Euliss, Marla S. Spivak
2016, Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment (230) 139-149
The Northern Great Plains region of the US annually hosts a large portion of commercially managed U.S. honey bee colonies each summer. Changing land use patterns over the last several decades have contributed to declines in the availability of bee forage across the region, and the future sustainability of the...
Carbon and energy fluxes in cropland ecosystems: a model-data comparison
E. Lokupitiya, A. Scott Denning, K. Schaefer, D. Ricciuto, R. Anderson, M. A. Arain, I. Baker, A. G. Barr, G. Chen, J.M. Chen, P. Ciais, D.R. Cook, M.C. Dietze, M. El Maayar, M. Fischer, R. Grant, D. Hollinger, C. Izaurralde, A. Jain, C.J. Kucharik, Z. Li, S. Liu, L. Li, R. Matamala, P. Peylin, D. Price, S. W. Running, A. Sahoo, M. Sprintsin, A.E. Suyker, H. Tian, Christina Tonitto, M.S. Torn, Hans Verbeeck, S.B. Verma, Y. Xue
2016, Biogeochemistry (128) 53-76
Croplands are highly productive ecosystems that contribute to land–atmosphere exchange of carbon, energy, and water during their short growing seasons. We evaluated and compared net ecosystem exchange (NEE), latent heat flux (LE), and sensible heat flux (H) simulated by a suite of ecosystem models at five agricultural eddy covariance flux...
The road to NHDPlus — Advancements in digital stream networks and associated catchments
Richard B. Moore, Thomas A. Dewald
2016, Journal of the American Water Resources Association (52) 890-900
A progression of advancements in Geographic Information Systems techniques for hydrologic network and associated catchment delineation has led to the production of the National Hydrography Dataset Plus (NHDPlus). NHDPlus is a digital stream network for hydrologic modeling with catchments and a suite of related geospatial data. Digital stream networks with...
Overwintering strategies of migratory birds: a novel approach for estimating seasonal movement patterns of residents and transients
Viviana Ruiz-Gutierrez, William L. Kendall, James F. Saracco, Gary C. White
2016, Journal of Applied Ecology (53) 1035-1045
Our understanding of movement patterns in wildlife populations has played an important role in current ecological knowledge and can inform landscape conservation decisions. Direct measures of movement can be obtained using marked individuals, but this requires tracking individuals across a landscape or multiple sites.We demonstrate how movements...
The Mississippi River: A place for fish
Harold Schramm, Brian Ickes
Yushun Chen, Duane Chapman, John Jackson, Daqing Chen, Zhongjie Li, Jack Kilgore, Quinton E. Phelps, Michael Eggleton, editor(s)
2016, Book chapter, Fishery Resources, Environment, and Conservation in the Mississippi and Yangtze (Changjiang) River Basins
The Mississippi River flows 3,734 km from its source at Lake Itasca, Minnesota to its outlet at the Gulf of Mexico. Along its course, it collects water from portions of two Canadian provinces and 41 % of the conterminous United States. Although greatly altered for navigation and flood control throughout...
Using the North American Breeding Bird Survey to assess broad-scale response of the continent's most imperiled avian community, grassland birds, to weather variability
Jessica Gorzo, Anna M. Pidgeon, Wayne E. Thogmartin, Andrew J. Allstadt, Volker C. Radeloff, Patricia J. Heglund, Stephen J. Vavrus
2016, The Condor (118) 502-512
Avian populations can respond dramatically to extreme weather such as droughts and heat waves, yet patterns of response to weather at broad scales remain largely unknown. Our goal was to evaluate annual variation in abundance of 14 grassland bird species breeding in the northern mixed-grass prairie in relation to annual...
sbtools: A package connecting R to cloud-based data for collaborative online research
Luke Winslow, Scott Chamberlain, Alison P. Appling, Jordan S. Read
2016, The R Journal (8) 387-398
The adoption of high-quality tools for collaboration and reproducible research such as R and Github is becoming more common in many research fields. While Github and other version management systems are excellent resources, they were originally designed to handle code and scale poorly to large text-based or binary datasets. A...
Comment on “Geochemistry of buried river sediments from Ghaggar Plains, NW India: Multi-proxy records of variations in provenance, paleoclimate, and paleovegetation patterns in the late quaternary” by Ajit Singh, Debajyoti Paul, Rajiv Sinha, Kristina J. Thomsen, Sanjeev Gupta
Peter D. Clift, Liviu Giosan, Amy E. East
2016, Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology (455) 65-67
Singh et al. (2016) published a geochemical record of sediment compositions from the flood plain of the Ghaggar River in western India and use the changing provenance, particularly as traced by Nd isotope composition, to reconstruct how erosion patterns have changed over the past 100 k.y. In doing so they...
Advancing environmental flow science: Developing frameworks for altered landscapes and integrating efforts across disciplines.
Shannon K. Brewer, Ryan A. McManamay, Andrew D. Miller, Robert Mollenhauer, Thomas A. Worthington, Tom Arsuffi
2016, Environmental Management (58) 175-192
Environmental flows represent a legal mechanism to balance existing and future water uses and sustain non-use values. Here, we identify current challenges, provide examples where they are important, and suggest research advances that would benefit environmental flow science. Specifically, environmental flow science would benefit by (1) developing approaches...
Development and assessment of indices to determine stream fish vulnerability to climate change and habitat alteration
Nicholas A. Sievert, Craig P. Paukert, Yin-Phan Tsang, Dana M. Infante
2016, Ecological Indicators (67) 403-416
Understanding the future impacts of climate and land use change are critical for long-term biodiversity conservation. We developed and compared two indices to assess the vulnerability of stream fish in Missouri, USA based on species environmental tolerances, rarity, range size, dispersal ability and on the average connectivity of the streams...
Multispecies cccupancy modeling as a tool for evaluating the status and distribution of Darters in the Elk River, Tennessee
Kathryn M. Potoka, Colin P. Shea, Phillip William Bettoli
2016, Transactions of the American Fisheries Society (145) 1110-1121
Sixteen darter species, including the federally endangered Boulder Darter Etheostoma wapiti, are known to occur in the Elk River, a large, flow-regulated tributary of the Tennessee River, Tennessee–Alabama. Since the construction of Tims Ford Dam (TFD) in 1970, habitat modification caused by cold, hypolimnetic water releases and peak-demand hydropower generation...
Field scale test of multi-dimensional flow and morphodynamic simulations used for restoration design analysis
Richard R. McDonald, Jonathan M. Nelson, Ryan L. Fosness, Peter O. Nelson
George Constantinescu, Marcelo H. Garcia, Dan Hanes, editor(s)
2016, Conference Paper, RiverFlow 2016
Two- and three-dimensional morphodynamic simulations are becoming common in studies of channel form and process. The performance of these simulations are often validated against measurements from laboratory studies. Collecting channel change information in natural settings for model validation is difficult because it can be expensive and under most channel forming...
Measuring, interpreting, and responding to changes in coral reefs: A challenge for biologists, geologist, and managers
Caroline S. Rogers, Jeff Miller
Dennis K. Hubbard, Caroline S. Rogers, Jere H. Lipps, George D. Stanley Jr., editor(s)
2016, Book chapter, Coral reefs at the crossroads
What, exactly, is a coral reef? And how have the world’s reefs changed in the last several decades? What are the stressors undermining reef structure and function? Given the predicted effects of climate change, do reefs have a future? Is it possible to “manage” coral reefs for resilience?...
Transmission of influenza reflects seasonality of wild birds across the annual cycle
Nichola J. Hill, Brandt W. Meixell, Eric J. Ma, Mark S. Lindberg, Walter M. Boyce, Jonathan A. Runstadler
2016, Ecology Letters (19) 915-925
Influenza A Viruses (IAV) in nature must overcome shifting transmission barriers caused by the mobility of their primary host, migratory wild birds, that change throughout the annual cycle. Using a phylogenetic network of viral sequences from North American wild birds (2008–2011) we demonstrate a shift from intraspecific to interspecific transmission...
Does resolution of flow field observation influence apparent habitat use and energy expenditure in juvenile coho salmon?
Desiree D. Tullos, Cara Walter, Jason B. Dunham
2016, Water Resources Research (52) 5938-5950
This study investigated how the resolution of observation influences interpretation of how fish, juvenile Coho Salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch), exploit the hydraulic environment in streams. Our objectives were to evaluate how spatial resolution of the flow field observation influenced: (1) the velocities considered to be representative of habitat units; (2) patterns...
Spawning and hatching of endangered Gila Chub in captivity
Andrew A. Schultz, Scott A. Bonar
2016, North American Journal of Aquaculture (78) 279-283
Information on reproductive characteristics of the endangered Gila Chub Gila intermedia is largely limited and qualitative, and culture techniques and requirements are virtually unknown. Here we provide the first published data on spawning and selected reproductive and developmental characteristics of Gila Chub. Fish were brought to the laboratory in March...
Damage and recovery assessment of the Philippines' mangroves following Super Typhoon Haiyan
Jordan Long, Chandra Giri, Jurgene H. Primavera, Mandar Trivedi
2016, Marine Pollution Bulletin (109) 734-743
We quantified mangrove disturbance resulting from Super Typhoon Haiyan using a remote sensing approach. Mangrove areas were mapped prior to Haiyan using 30 m Landsat imagery and a supervised decision-tree classification. A time sequence of 250 m eMODIS data was used to monitor mangrove condition prior to, and following, Haiyan. Based on...
Desert bighorn sheep lambing habitat: Parturition, nursery, and predation sites
Rebekah C. Karsch, James W. Cain III, Eric M. Rominger, Elise J. Goldstein
2016, Journal of Wildlife Management (80) 1069-1080
Fitness of female ungulates is determined by neonate survival and lifetime reproductive success. Therefore, adult female ungulates should adopt behaviors and habitat selection patterns that enhance survival of neonates during parturition and lactation. Parturition site location may play an important role in neonatal mortality of desert bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis...
The influence of vegetation cover on debris-flow density during an extreme rainfall in the northern Colorado Front Range
Francis K. Rengers, Luke McGuire, Jeffrey A. Coe, Jason W. Kean, Rex L. Baum, Dennis M. Staley, Jonathan W. Godt
2016, Geology (44) 823-826
We explored regional influences on debris-flow initiation throughout the Colorado Front Range (Colorado, USA) by exploiting a unique data set of more than 1100 debris flows that initiated during a 5 day rainstorm in 2013. Using geospatial data, we examined the influence of rain, hillslope angle, hillslope aspect, and vegetation...
Observations and modeling of fjord sedimentation during the 30 year retreat of Columbia Glacier, AK
Katherine B Love, Bernard Hallet, Thomas L. Pratt, Shad O’Neel
2016, Journal of Glaciology (62) 778-793
To explore links between glacier dynamics, sediment yields and the accumulation of glacial sediments in a temperate setting, we use extensive glaciological observations for Columbia Glacier, Alaska, and new oceanographic data from the fjord exposed during its retreat. High-resolution seismic data indicate that 3.2 × 108 m3 of...
Structured decision making for managing pneumonia epizootics in bighorn sheep
Sarah N. Sells, Michael S. Mitchell, Victoria L. Edwards, Justin A. Gude, Neil J. Anderson
2016, Journal of Wildlife Management (80) 957-969
Good decision-making is essential to conserving wildlife populations. Although there may be multiple ways to address a problem, perfect solutions rarely exist. Managers are therefore tasked with identifying decisions that will best achieve desired outcomes. Structured decision making (SDM) is a method of decision analysis used to identify the most...
Population characteristics and the suppression of nonnative Burbot
Zachary B. Klein, Michael C. Quist, Darren T. Rhea, Anna C. Senecal
2016, North American Journal of Fisheries Management (36) 1006-1017
Burbot Lota lota were illegally introduced into the Green River, Wyoming, drainage and have since proliferated throughout the system. Burbot in the Green River pose a threat to native species and to socially, economically, and ecologically important recreational fisheries. Therefore, managers of the Green River are interested in implementing a...
Smokey comes of age: Unmanned aerial systems for fire management
Dirac Twidwell, Craig R. Allen, Carrick Detweiler, James Higgins, Christian Laney, Sebastian Elbaum
2016, Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment (14) 333-339
During the past century, fire management has focused on techniques both to protect human communities from catastrophic wildfire and to maintain fire-dependent ecological systems. However, despite a large and increasing allocation of resources and personnel to achieve these goals, fire management objectives at regional to global scales are not being...
