Congruence among multiple indices of habitat preference for species facing human-induced rapid environmental change: A case study using the Brewer's sparrow
Max Carlin, Anna D. Chalfoun
2022, Ecological Society Bulletin (3)
Accurate evaluations of habitat preference are key to understanding optimal conditions for wildlife survival and reproduction. Habitat selection, however, usually is evaluated using a single index of preference, and congruence among multiple, relevant indices of preference is examined rarely.We assessed the concordance between...
Identifying key stressors driving biological impairment in freshwater streams in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, USA
Rosemary M. Fanelli, Matthew J. Cashman, Aaron J. Porter
2022, Environmental Management (70) 926-949
Biological communities in freshwater streams are often impaired by multiple stressors (e.g., flow or water quality) originating from anthropogenic activities such as urbanization, agriculture, or energy extraction. Restoration efforts in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, USA seek to improve biological conditions in 10% of freshwater tributaries and...
Evolutionary dynamics inform management interventions of a hanging garden obligate, Carex specuicola
Kenneth James Chapin, Matthew R Jones, Daniel E. Winkler, Glenn Rink, Robert Massatti
2022, Frontiers in Conservation Science (3)
Uncovering the historical and contemporary processes shaping rare species with complex distributions is of growing importance due to threats such as habitat destruction and climate change. Species restricted to specialized, patchy habitat may persist by virtue of life history characteristics facilitating ongoing gene flow and dispersal, but they could also...
Regional models do not outperform continental models for invasive species
Catherine S. Jarnevich, Helen Sofaer, Peder Engelstad, Pairsa Belamaric
2022, NeoBiota (77) 1-22
Aim: Species distribution models can guide invasive species prevention and management by characterizing invasion risk across space. However, extrapolation and transferability issues pose challenges for developing useful models for invasive species. Previous work has emphasized the importance of including all available occurrences in model estimation, but managers attuned to...
One hundred years of cobalt production in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Andrew L. Gulley
2022, Resources Policy (79)
Cobalt is an indispensable element for the manufacture of strategic technologies including advanced batteries, jet engines, rare-earth permanent magnets, petroleum catalysts, and tool parts that enable construction, manufacturing, and mining. Cobalt routinely scores high in mineral supply risk assessments due to the concentration of...
Hydrologic restoration decreases greenhouse gas emissions from shrub bog peatlands in southeastern US
Luise Armstrong, Ariane Peralta, Ken Krauss, N. Cormier, Rebecca Moss, Eric Soderholm, Aaron McCall, Christine Pickens, Marcelo Ardon
2022, Wetlands (42)
Peatlands play a disproportionate role in the global carbon cycle. However, many peatlands have been ditched to lower the water table and converted into agriculture, which contributes to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Hydrologic restoration of drained peatlands could offset greenhouse gas emissions from these actions, but field examples that consider...
Tapwater exposures, effects potential, and residential risk management in Northern Plains Nations
Paul M. Bradley, Kristin M. Romanok, Kelly L. Smalling, Michael J. Focazio, Robert Charboneau, Christine Marie George, Ana Navas-Acien, Marcia O’Leary, Reno Red Cloud, Tracy Zacher, Sara E. Breitmeyer, Mary C. Cardon, Christa K. Cuny, Guthrie Ducheneaux, Kendra Enright, Nicola Evans, James L. Gray, David E. Harvey, Michelle L. Hladik, Leslie K. Kanagy, Keith A. Loftin, R. Blaine McCleskey, Elizabeth Medlock-Kakaley, Shannon M. Meppelink, Joshua F. Valder, Christopher P. Weis
2022, Environmental Science and Technology Water (2) 1772-1788
In the United States (US), private-supply tapwater (TW) is rarely monitored. This data gap undermines individual/community risk-management decision-making, leading to an increased probability of unrecognized contaminant exposures in rural and remote locations that rely on private wells. We assessed point-of-use (POU) TW in three northern plains Tribal Nations, where ongoing...
Status of landbirds in the National Park of American Samoa
Seth Judge, Richard J. Camp, Visa Vaivai, Patrick J. Hart
2022, Pacific Science (76) 139-156
The National Park of American Samoa (NPSA) was surveyed in 2011 and 2018 using point-transect distance sampling to estimate trends in landbird distribution, composition, population density, and abundance. Surveys were conducted within the Ta‘ū Unit and Tutuila Unit, each on separate islands of American Samoa. We detected a total of...
Conflict of energies: Spatially modeling mule deer caloric expenditure in response to oil and gas development
Samuel Norton Chambers, Miguel L. Villarreal, Olivia Jane Marie Duane, Seth M. Munson, Erica Francis Stuber, Gayle L Tyree, Eric K Waller, Michael C. Duniway
2022, Landscape Ecology (37) 2947-2961
ContextWildlife avoid human disturbances, including roads and development. Avoidance and displacement of wildlife into less suitable habitat due to human development can affect their energy expenditures and fitness. The heart rate and oxygen uptake of large mammals varies with both natural aspects of their habitat (terrain, climate, predators,...
Sixty years of channel adjustments to dams in the two segments of the Missouri National Recreational River, South Dakota and Nebraska
Caroline M. Elliott, Robert B. Jacobson
2022, Scientific Investigations Report 2022-5087
The Missouri National Recreational River (MNRR) consists of two Missouri River segments managed by the National Park Service on the border of South Dakota and Nebraska. Both river segments are unchannelized and maintain much of their pre-dam channel form, but upstream dams have caused reductions in peak flow magnitudes and...
Understanding the Avian-Impact Offset Method—A tutorial
Jill A. Shaffer, Charles R. Loesch, Deborah A. Buhl
2022, Open-File Report 2022-1049
Biodiversity offsetting, or compensatory mitigation, is increasingly being used in temperate grassland and wetland ecosystems to compensate for unavoidable environmental damage from anthropogenic disturbances such as energy development and road construction. Energy-extraction and -generation facilities continue to proliferate across the natural landscapes of the United States, yet mitigation tools to...
Partial observability and management of ecological systems
Byron K. Williams, Ellie Brown
2022, Ecology and Evolution (12)
The actual state of ecological systems is rarely known with certainty, but management actions must often be taken regardless of imperfect measurement (partial observability). Because of the difficulties in accounting for partial observability, it is usually treated in an ad hoc fashion, or simply...
Avian influenza antibody prevalence increases with mercury contamination in wild waterfowl
Claire Stewart Teitelbaum, Josh T. Ackerman, Mason A. Hill, Jaqueline M. Satter, Michael L. Casazza, Susan E.W. De La Cruz, Walter M. Boyce, Evan James Buck, John M. Eadie, Mark P. Herzog, Elliott Matchett, Cory T. Overton, Sarah H. Peterson, Magdalena Plancarte, Andrew M. Ramey, Jeffery D. Sullivan, Diann Prosser
2022, Proceedings of the Royal Society B (289)
Environmental contamination is widespread and can negatively impact wildlife health. Some contaminants, including heavy metals, have immunosuppressive effects, but prior studies have rarely measured contamination and disease simultaneously, which limits our understanding of how contaminants and pathogens interact to influence wildlife health. Here, we measured mercury concentrations, influenza infection, influenza...
Balancing future renewable energy infrastructure siting and associated habitat loss for migrating whooping cranes
Kristen S. Ellis, Aaron T. Pearse, David A. Brandt, Mark T. Bidwell, Wade C. Harrell, Matthew J. Butler, Max Post van der Burg
Diana Hamilton, editor(s)
2022, Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution (10)
The expansion of human infrastructure has contributed to novel risks and disturbance regimes in most ecosystems, leading to considerable uncertainty about how species will respond to altered landscapes. A recent assessment revealed that whooping cranes (Grus americana), an endangered migratory waterbird species, avoid wind-energy infrastructure during migration. However, uncertainties regarding...
Bioclimatic variables dataset for baseline and future climate scenarios for climate change studies in Hawai'i
Lucas Fortini, Lauren R. Kaiser, Lulin Xue, Yaping Wang
2022, Data in Brief (45)
Gridded bioclimatic variables representing yearly, seasonal, and monthly means and extremes in temperature and precipitation have been widely used for ecological modeling purposes and in broader climate change impact and biogeographical studies. As a result of their utility, numerous sets of bioclimatic variables have been developed on a global scale...
Little bugs, big data, and Colorado River adaptive management: Preliminary findings from the ongoing bug flow experiment at Glen Canyon Dam
Theodore Kennedy, Anya Metcalfe, Bridget Deemer, Morgan Ford, Cheyenne Maxime Szydlo, Charles Yackulic, Jeffrey Muehlbauer
2022, Newsletter
The undammed Colorado River in Grand Canyon was characterized by spring snow-melt floods that sometimes exceeded 100,000 cubic feet per second (cfs). These were followed by occasional flash floods during summer monsoons, then by low flows from fall through early spring (Figure 1; Topping and others, 2003). This seasonally variable...
Collateral damage: Anticoagulant rodenticides pose threats to California condors
Garth Herring, Collin A. Eagles-Smith, Rachel Wolstenholme, Alacia Welch, Chris West, Barnett A. Rattner
2022, Environmental Pollution (311)
Anticoagulant rodenticides (ARs) are widespread environmental contaminants that pose risks to scavenging birds because they routinely occur within their prey and can cause secondary poisoning. However, little is known about AR exposure in one of the rarest avian scavengers in the world, the California condor (Gymnogyps californianus). We assessed AR exposure in...
Seasonal activity patterns of bats in high-elevation conifer sky islands
Corinne A. Diggins, W. Mark Ford
2022, Acta Chiropterologica (24) 91-101
In the southern Appalachian Mountains of the southeastern USA, bat communities in high-elevation habitats tend to be relatively under-surveyed. High-elevation habitats may provide important habitat to certain species (i.e., migratory tree bats), and may serve as climate refugia during droughts or high temperatures. We conducted an opportunistic acoustic survey of...
Application of tail transmitters for tracking feral horses as an alternative to radio collars
Sarah R. B. King, Kathryn A. Schoenecker
2022, Wildlife Society Bulletin (46)
Radio collars have been used to examine the spatial ecology of all North American ungulates, but are rarely used on feral horses due to concerns that they may cause injury. Due to public concerns for animal welfare, an alternative to radio collars for tracking feral horses, particularly stallions, over the...
Water-quality conditions and constituent loads, water years 2013–19, and water-quality trends, water years 1983–2019, in the Scituate Reservoir drainage area, Rhode Island
Alana B. Spaetzel, Kirk Smith
2022, Scientific Investigations Report 2022-5043
The Scituate Reservoir is the primary source of drinking water for more than 60 percent of the population of Rhode Island. From October 1, 1982, to September 30, 2019, water years (WYs) 1983–2019 (a water year is the period between October 1 and September 30 and is designated by the...
Effects of an early mass-flowering crop on wild bee communities and traits in power line corridors vary with blooming plants and landscape context
Brianne Du Clos, Francis A. Drummond, Cyndy Loftin
2022, Landscape Ecology (37) 2619-2634
ContextPower line corridors have been repeatedly assessed as habitat for wild bees; however, few studies have examined them as bee habitat relative to nearby crop fields and surrounding landscape context.ObjectivesWe surveyed bee communities in power line corridors near to and isolated from lowbush blueberry fields in...
Optimizing survey design for shasta salamanders (Hydromantes spp.) to estimate occurrence in little-studied portions of their range
Brian J. Halstead, Patrick M. Kleeman, Graziella Vittoria DiRenzo, Jonathan P. Rose
2022, Journal of Herpetology (56) 218-228
Shasta salamanders (collectively, Hydromantes samweli, H. shastae, and H. wintu; hereafter, Shasta salamander) are endemic to northern California in the general vicinity of Shasta Lake reservoir. Although generally associated with limestone, they have repeatedly been found in association with other habitats, calling into question the distribution of the species...
Numbers and presence of guarding dogs affect wolf and leopard predation on livestock in northeastern Iran
Mahmood Soofi, Mobin Soufi, Andy Royle, Matthias Waltert, Igor Khorozyan
2022, Basic and Applied Ecology (64) 147-156
Livestock predation can pose socio-economic impacts on rural livelihoods and is the main cause of retaliatory killings of carnivores in many countries. Therefore, appropriate interventions to reduce livestock predation, lower conflict and promote coexistence are needed. Livestock guarding dogs have been traditionally used to reduce predation, yet details regarding the...
Plague circulation in small mammals elevates extinction risk for the endangered Peñasco least chipmunk
Amanda R. Goldberg, David A. Eads, Dean E. Biggins
2022, Global Ecology and Conservation (38)
Wildlife diseases are a major concern for species survival around the world. Vector-borne diseases, in particular, are problematic for both humans and wildlife. Plague is an introduced disease to North America where many species have low natural resistance to infection by the causative bacterium, Yersinia pestis. Plague in the United...
Reestablishing a foundational species: limitations on post-wildfire sagebrush seedling establishment
Robert Arkle, David S. Pilliod, Matthew J. Germino, Michelle I. Jeffries, Justin L. Welty
2022, Ecosphere (13)
Improving post-wildfire restoration of foundational plant species is crucial for conserving imperiled ecosystems. We sought to better understand the initial establishment of sagebrush (Artemisia sp.), a foundational shrubland species over a vast area of western North America, in the first 1–2 years post-wildfire, a critical time period for population recovery. Field data...
