eDNAoccupancy: An R package for multi-scale occupancy modeling of environmental DNA data
Robert Dorazio, Richard A. Erickson
2017, Molecular Ecology Resources (18) 368-380
In this article we describe eDNAoccupancy, an R package for fitting Bayesian, multi-scale occupancy models. These models are appropriate for occupancy surveys that include three, nested levels of sampling: primary sample units within a study area, secondary sample units collected from each primary unit, and replicates of each secondary sample...
Biological relevance of streamflow metrics: Regional and national perspectives
Daren M. Carlisle, Theodore E. Grantham, Ken Eng, David M. Wolock
2017, Freshwater Science (36) 927-940
Protecting the health of streams and rivers requires identifying ecologically significant attributes of the natural flow regime. Streamflow regimes are routinely quantified using a plethora of hydrologic metrics (HMs), most of which have unknown relevance to biological communities. At regional and national scales, we evaluated which of 509 commonly used...
The role of deep-water sedimentary processes in shaping a continental margin: The Northwest Atlantic
David C. Mosher, D.C. Campbell, J.V. Gardner, D.J.W. Piper, Jason Chaytor, M. Rebesco
2017, Marine Geology (393) 245-259
The tectonic history of a margin dictates its general shape; however, its geomorphology is generally transformed by deep-sea sedimentary processes. The objective of this study is to show the influences of turbidity currents, contour currents and sediment mass failures on the geomorphology of the deep-water northwestern Atlantic margin...
Modeling of high‐frequency seismic‐wave scattering and propagation using radiative transfer theory
Yuehua Zeng
2017, Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (107) 2948-2962
This is a study of the nonisotropic scattering process based on radiative transfer theory and its application to the observation of the M 4.3 aftershock recording of the 2008 Wells earthquake sequence in Nevada. Given a wide range of recording distances from 29 to 320 km, the data provide a unique opportunity...
Future scenarios of land change based on empirical data and demographic trends
Benjamin M. Sleeter, Tamara Wilson, Ethan Sharygin, Jason T. Sherba
2017, Earth's Future (5) 1068-1083
Changes in land use and land cover (LULC) have important and fundamental interactions with the global climate system. Top-down global scale projections of land use change have been an important component of climate change research; however, their utility at local to regional scales is often limited. The goal of this...
Bias correction of bounded location errors in presence-only data
Trevor J. Hefley, Brian M. Brost, Mevin Hooten
2017, Methods in Ecology and Evolution (8) 1566-1573
Location error occurs when the true location is different than the reported location. Because habitat characteristics at the true location may be different than those at the reported location, ignoring location error may lead to unreliable inference concerning species–habitat relationships.We explain how a transformation known in the...
Safari Science: Assessing the reliability of citizen science data for wildlife surveys
Cara Steger, Bilal Butt, Mevin Hooten
2017, Journal of Applied Ecology (54) 2053-2062
Protected areas are the cornerstone of global conservation, yet financial support for basic monitoring infrastructure is lacking in 60% of them. Citizen science holds potential to address these shortcomings in wildlife monitoring, particularly for resource-limited conservation initiatives in developing countries – if we can account for the...
Population trends, survival, and sampling methodologies for a population of Rana draytonii
Gary M. Fellers, Patrick M. Kleeman, David A.W. Miller, Brian J. Halstead
2017, Journal of Herpetology (51) 567-573
Estimating population trends provides valuable information for resource managers, but monitoring programs face trade-offs between the quality and quantity of information gained and the number of sites surveyed. We compared the effectiveness of monitoring techniques for estimating population trends of Rana draytonii (California Red-legged Frog) at Point Reyes National Seashore,...
Response of anurans to wetland restoration on a midwestern agriculture landscape
Paul E. Bartelt, Robert W. Klaver
2017, Journal of Herpetology (51) 504-514
Since the early 1990s, >5,000 ha of historic wetlands (and adjacent prairie) have been restored on the row-crop agricultural landscape of Winnebago County, Iowa, USA. From 2008–2011, we surveyed 22 of these sites for probabilities of occupancy and colonization by Boreal Chorus Frogs (BCF; Pseudacris maculata), Northern Leopard Frogs (NLF; Lithobates pipiens),...
Thermal adaptation and phenotypic plasticity in a warming world: Insights from common garden experiments on Alaskan sockeye salmon
Morgan M. Sparks, Peter A. H. Westley, Jeffrey A. Falke, Thomas P. Quinn
2017, Global Change Biology (23) 5203-5217
An important unresolved question is how populations of coldwater-dependent fishes will respond to rapidly warming water temperatures. For example, the culturally and economically important group, Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.), experience site-specific thermal regimes during early development that could be disrupted by warming. To test for thermal local adaptation and heritable phenotypic...
A Bayesian method for assessing multiscalespecies-habitat relationships
Erica F. Stuber, Lutz F. Gruber, Joseph J. Fontaine
2017, Landscape Ecology (32) 2365-2381
ContextScientists face several theoretical and methodological challenges in appropriately describing fundamental wildlife-habitat relationships in models. The spatial scales of habitat relationships are often unknown, and are expected to follow a multi-scale hierarchy. Typical frequentist or information theoretic approaches often suffer under collinearity in multi-scale studies, fail...
Streamflow characteristics from modelled runoff time series: Importance of calibration criteria selection
Sandra Poole, Marc Vis, Rodney Knight, Jan Seibert
2017, Hydrology and Earth System Sciences (21) 5443-5457
Ecologically relevant streamflow characteristics (SFCs) of ungauged catchments are often estimated from simulated runoff of hydrologic models that were originally calibrated on gauged catchments. However, SFC estimates of the gauged donor catchments and subsequently the ungauged catchments can be substantially uncertain when models are calibrated using traditional approaches based on...
Efficacy of time-lapse photography and repeated counts abundance estimation for white-tailed deer populations
Allison Keever, Conor P. McGowan, Stephen S. Ditchkoff, S.A. Acker, J. Barry Grand, Chad H. Newbolt
2017, Mammal Research (62) 413-422
Automated cameras have become increasingly common for monitoring wildlife populations and estimating abundance. Most analytical methods, however, fail to account for incomplete and variable detection probabilities, which biases abundance estimates. Methods which do account for detection have not been thoroughly tested, and those that have been tested were compared to...
Projecting species’ vulnerability to climate change: Which uncertainty sources matter most and extrapolate best?
Valerie Steen, Helen Sofaer, Susan K. Skagen, Andrea J. Ray, Barry R. Noon
2017, Ecology and Evolution (7) 8841-8851
Species distribution models (SDMs) are commonly used to assess potential climate change impacts on biodiversity, but several critical methodological decisions are often made arbitrarily. We compare variability arising from these decisions to the uncertainty in future climate change itself. We also test whether certain choices offer improved skill for extrapolating...
Management of arthropod pathogen vectors in North America: Minimizing adverse effects on pollinators
Howard S. Ginsberg, Timothy A. Bargar, Michelle L. Hladik, Charles Lubelczyk
2017, Journal of Medical Entomology (54) 1463-1475
Tick and mosquito management is important to public health protection. At the same time, growing concerns about declines of pollinator species raise the question of whether vector control practices might affect pollinator populations. We report the results of a task force of the North American Pollinator Protection Campaign (NAPPC) that...
Free-ranging domestic cats (Felis catus) on public lands: estimating density, activity, and diet in the Florida Keys
Michael V. Cove, Beth Gardner, Theodore R. Simons, Roland Kays, Allan F. O’Connell
2017, Biological Invasions (20) 344
Feral and free-ranging domestic cats (Felis catus) can have strong negative effects on small mammals and birds, particularly in island ecosystems. We deployed camera traps to study free-ranging cats in national wildlife refuges and state parks on Big Pine Key and Key Largo in the Florida Keys, USA,...
Integrating the effects of salinity on the physiology of the eastern oyster, Crassostrea virginica, in the northern Gulf of Mexico through a Dynamic Energy Budget model
Romain Lavaud, Megan K. LaPeyre, Sandra M. Casas, C. Bacher, Jerome F. La Peyre
2017, Ecological Modelling (363) 221-233
We present a Dynamic Energy Budget (DEB) model for the eastern oyster, Crassostrea virginica, which enables the inclusion of salinity as a third environmental variable, on top of the standard foodr and temperature variables. Salinity changes have various effects on the physiology of oysters, potentially altering filtration and respiration rates, and...
Incorporating population viability models into species status assessment and listing decisions under the U.S. Endangered Species Act
Conor P. McGowan, Nathan Allan, Jeff Servoss, Shaula J. Hedwall, Brian Wooldridge
2017, Global Ecology and Conservation (12) 119-130
Assessment of a species' status is a key part of management decision making for endangered and threatened species under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. Predicting the future state of the species is an essential part of species status assessment, and projection models can play an important role in developing predictions....
Estimating occupancy and abundance using aerial images with imperfect detection
Perry J. Williams, Mevin Hooten, Jamie N. Womble, Michael R. Bower
2017, Methods in Ecology and Evolution (8) 1679-1689
Species distribution and abundance are critical population characteristics for efficient management, conservation, and ecological insight. Point process models are a powerful tool for modelling distribution and abundance, and can incorporate many data types, including count data, presence-absence data, and presence-only data. Aerial photographic images are a natural tool...
Magnetotelluric imaging of lower crustal melt and lithospheric hydration in the Rocky Mountain Front transition zone, Colorado, USA
D. W. Feucht, Anne F Sheehan, Paul A. Bedrosian
2017, Journal of Geophysical Research B: Solid Earth (122) 9489-9510
We present an electrical resistivity model of the crust and upper mantle from two‐dimensional (2‐D) anisotropic inversion of magnetotelluric data collected along a 450 km transect of the Rio Grande rift, southern Rocky Mountains, and High Plains in Colorado, USA. Our model provides a window into the modern‐day lithosphere beneath the...
Predicting landscape effects of Mississippi River diversions on soil organic carbon sequestration
Hongqing Wang, Gregory D. Steyer, Brady Couvillion, Holly J. Beck, John M Rybczyk, Victor H. Rivera-Monroy, Ken W. Krauss, Jenneke M. Visser
2017, Ecosphere (8)
Large Mississippi River (MR) diversions (peak water flow >1416 m3/s and sediment loads >165 kg/s) have been proposed as part of a suite of coastal restoration projects and are expected to rehabilitate and rebuild wetlands to alleviate the significant historic wetland loss in coastal Louisiana. These coastal wetlands are undergoing increasing eustatic...
Comparing measurement response and inverted results of electrical resistivity tomography instruments
Andrew D. Parsekian, Niels Claes, Kamini Singha, Burke J. Minsley, Bradley Carr, Emily Voytek, Ryan Harmon, Andy Kass, Austin Carey, Drew Thayer, Brady Flinchum
2017, Journal of Environmental & Engineering Geophysics (22) 249-266
In this investigation, we compare the results of electrical resistivity measurements made by six commercially available instruments on the same line of electrodes to determine if there are differences in the measured data or inverted results. These comparisons are important to determine whether measurements made between different instruments are consistent....
Examining the occupancy–density relationship for a low-density carnivore
Daniel W. Linden, Angela K. Fuller, J. Andrew Royle, Matthew P. Hare
2017, Journal of Applied Ecology (54) 2043-2052
The challenges associated with monitoring low-density carnivores across large landscapes have limited the ability to implement and evaluate conservation and management strategies for such species. Non-invasive sampling techniques and advanced statistical approaches have alleviated some of these challenges and can even allow for spatially explicit estimates of density,...
Marine infectious disease ecology
Kevin D. Lafferty
2017, Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics (48) 473-496
To put marine disease impacts in context requires a broad perspective on the roles infectious agents have in the ocean. Parasites infect most marine vertebrate and invertebrate species, and parasites and predators can have comparable biomass density, suggesting they play comparable parts as consumers in marine food webs. Although some...
Lidar-revised geologic map of the Des Moines 7.5' quadrangle, King County, Washington
Rowland W. Tabor, Derek B. Booth
2017, Scientific Investigations Map 3384
This map is an interpretation of a modern lidar digital elevation model combined with the geology depicted on the Geologic Map of the Des Moines 7.5' Quadrangle, King County, Washington (Booth and Waldron, 2004). Booth and Waldron described, interpreted, and located the geology on the 1:24,000-scale topographic map of the...
