Riparian buffers, the strips of vegetation along banks of rivers and streams, have been proposed as a key instrument to protect water quality in the United States. Riparian buffers impose a restriction on the use of private property limiting harvest and development, but buffers can also provide…

The predicted continuation of strong drying and warming trends in the southwestern United States underlies the associated prediction of increased frequency, area, and severity of wildfires in the coming years. As a result, the management of wildfires and fire effects on public lands will…

A case-study approach is used to track research funding decisions made by the private seed sector. The three cases chosen provide a range of intellectual property protection (IPP) environments, crops, and companies, namely, (1) wheat in the United States and the European Union, (2) rootworm-…

This paper reviews the literature on economic development as it relates to indigenous people in the United States and Canada, and focuses on how institutions affect economic development of reservation and reserve economies. Evidence shows that strong property rights to reservation and reserve…

Previous studies have found that urbanization often decreases net primary production (NPP), an important integrative measure of ecosystem functioning. In arid environments, however, urbanization may boost productivity by introducing highly productive plant communities and weakening the coupling…

The central and eastern United States is an important food and timber production region and could potentially be a large-scale carbon sink. These characteristics are functions of the human management of the landscape and favorable soil and climate conditions. Large-scale assessments of carbon…

Local land-use policy is increasingly being recognized as fundamental to biodiversity conservation in the United States. Many planners and conservation scientists have called for broader use of planning and regulatory tools to support the conservation of biodiversity at local scales. Yet little…

As rural landscapes experience increasing levels of residential development, the persistence of species that rely on them will depend on informed planning and management decisions. An understanding of habitat requirements is essential for setting priorities and developing landscape-level plans…

Excessive loading of sediment and nutrients to rivers is a major problem in many parts of the United States. In this study, we tested the non-parametric Seasonal Kendall (SEAKEN) trend model and the parametric USGS Quality of Water trend program (QWTREND) to quantify trends in water quality of…

Indigenous people inhabit approximately 85% of areas designated for biodiversity conservation worldwide. They also continue to struggle for recognition and preservation of cultural identities, lifestyles, and livelihoods--a struggle contingent on control and protection of traditional lands and…

Natural and anthropogenic processes are causing extensive and rapid ecological, social, and economic changes in arid and semiarid ecosystems worldwide. Nowhere are these changes more evident than in the Great Basin of the western United States, a region of 400,000 km² that largely is managed by…