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IntroductionThe Everglades Depth Estimation Network (EDEN) provides scientists and resource managers with regional maps of daily water levels and depths in the freshwater part of the Greater Everglades landscape. The EDEN domain includes all or parts of five Water Conservation Areas, Big Cypress National Preserve, Pennsuco Wetlands, and Everglades National...

Hierarchical frameworks are useful constructs when exploring landscape- and local-scale factors affecting patterns of vegetation in riparian areas. In drylands, which have steep environmental gradients and high habitat heterogeneity, landscape-scale variables, such as climate, can change rapidly along a river's course, affecting the relative influence of environmental variables at different...

The development and use of automated species-detection technologies, such as acoustic recorders, for monitoring wildlife are rapidly expanding. Automated classification algorithms provide a cost- and time-effective means to process information-rich data, but often at the cost of additional detection errors. Appropriate methods are necessary to analyse such data while dealing...

Infectious disease was an important driver of historic declines and extirpations of bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) in North America and continues to impede population restoration and management. Domestic sheep have long been linked to pneumonia outbreaks in bighorn sheep and this association has now been confirmed in 13 captive...

Terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) has been shown to enable an efficient, precise, and non-destructive inventory of vegetation structure at ranges up to hundreds of meters. We developed a method that leverages TLS collections with machine learning techniques to model and map canopy cover and biomass of several classes of short-stature...

Population structure, distribution, abundance, and dispersal arguably underpin the entire field of animal ecology, with consequences for regional species persistence, and provision of ecosystem services. Divergent migration behaviours among individuals or among populations is an important aspect of the ecology of highly-mobile animals, allowing populations to exploit spatially- or temporally-distributed...

The islands of East Melanesia have generated key insights into speciation processes and community assembly. However, when and how these islands began to form, emerge and accumulate endemic taxa remains poorly understood. Here, we show that two divergent lineages within the world’s most diverse genus of geckos (Cyrtodactylus) occur in...

Identification of suitable habitats, where invasive species can establish, is an important step towards controlling their spread. Accurate identification is difficult for new or slow invaders because unoccupied habitats may be suitable, given enough time for dispersal, while occupied habitats may prove to be unsuitable for establishment.To identify the suitable...

A database called the “Comprehensive Resource Database” (CRD) was prepared to support U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) assessments of technically recoverable hydrocarbons that might result from the injection of miscible or immiscible carbon dioxide (CO2) for enhanced oil recovery (EOR). The CRD was designed by INTEK Inc., a consulting company under...

Identifying areas where deteriorating sewer infrastructure is in close proximity to surface waterways is needed to map likely connections between sewers and streams. We present a method to estimate sewer installation year and deterioration status using historical maps of the sewer network, parcel-scale property assessment data, and pipe material. Areas...

Water levels around river mouths are intrinsically determined by sea level and river discharge. If storm-associated coastal water-level anomalies coincide with extreme river discharge, landscapes near river mouths will be flooded by the hydrodynamic interactions of these two water masses. Unfortunately, the temporal relationships between ocean and river water masses...

Previous studies of lake trout, Salvelinus namaycush, spawning habitat in the Laurentian Great Lakes have used time- and labour-intensive survey methods and have focused on areas with historic observations of spawning aggregations and on habitats prejudged by researchers to be suitable for spawning. As an alternative, we used fine-scale acoustic telemetry...

The increased availability of global datasets and technologies such as global hydrologic models and the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites have resulted in a growing number of global-scale assessments of water availability using simple indices of water stress. Developed initially for surface water, such indices are increasingly used...

Due to cultural eutrophication and global climate change, an exponential increase in the number and extent of hypoxic zones in marine and freshwater ecosystems has been observed in the last few decades. Hypoxia, or low dissolved oxygen (DO) concentrations, can produce strong negative ecological impacts and, therefore, is a management...

Soil organic matter (SOM) supports the Earth's ability to sustain terrestrial ecosystems, provide food and fiber, and retains the largest pool of actively cycling carbon. Over 75% of the soil organic carbon (SOC) in the top meter of soil is directly affected by human land use. Large land areas have...

One of the greatest limiting factors of studies designed to obtain growth, movement, and survival in small-bodied fishes is the selection of a viable tag. The tag must be relatively small with respect to body size as to impart minimal sub-lethal effects on growth and mobility, as well as be...

Emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) are a salient threat to many animal taxa, causing local and global extinctions, altering communities and ecosystem function. The EID chytridiomycosis is a prominent driver of amphibian declines, which is caused by the fungal pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd). To guide conservation policy, we developed a predictive decision-analytic model...

Extensive high-severity fires are creating large shrubfields in many dry conifer forests of the interior western USA, raising concerns about forest-to-shrub conversion. This study evaluates the role of disturbance in shrubfield formation, maintenance and succession in the Jemez Mountains, New Mexico. We compared the environmental conditions of extant Gambel oak...

Populus deltoides is considered to be a weak resprouter and highly susceptible to wildfire, but few post-wildfire studies have tracked P. deltoides response and resprouting within the Great Plains of North America. Following a wildfire in southwestern Kansas, U.S.A., we surveyed burned and unburned areas of a cottonwood riparian forest along the Cimarron...

The Antarctic Dry Valleys represent a unique environment where it is possible to study dry permafrost overlaying an ice-rich permafrost. In this paper, two opposing mechanisms for ice table stability in University Valley are addressed: i) diffusive recharge via thin seasonal snow deposits and ii) desiccation via salt deposits in...

The movements of animals are limited by evolutionary constraints and ecological processes and are strongly influenced by the medium through which they travel. For flying animals, variation in atmospheric conditions is critically influential in movement. Obligate soaring birds depend on external sources of updraft more than do other flying species,...

Stabilization of SOM (soil organic matter) is regulated in part by sorption and desorption reactions happening at mineral surfaces, as well as precipitation and dissolution of organo-metal complexes. Fe and Al hydroxides play a particularly significant role in SOM stabilization in soils due to their ubiquitous distribution and their highly reactive surface...

Simple screening approaches for the neurotoxicant methylmercury (MeHg) in aquatic ecosystems may be helpful in risk assessments of natural resources. We explored the development of such an approach in the Adirondack Mountains of New York, USA, a region with high levels of MeHg bioaccumulation. Thirty-six perennial streams broadly representative of...

Integrating spatially explicit biogeophysical and remotely sensed data into regression-tree models enables the spatial extrapolation of training data over large geographic spaces, allowing a better understanding of broad-scale ecosystem processes. The current study presents annual gross primary production (GPP) and annual ecosystem respiration (RE) for 2000–2013 in several short-statured vegetation...

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