Like many arid and semiarid regions, the Great Basin of the western United States is undergoing major ecological, social, and economic changes that are having widespread detrimental effects on the structure, composition, and function of native ecosystems. The causes of change are highly…
This paper addresses water scarcity issues in the American West and examines the allocation of water through the appropriative rights system and the extent markets are used to reallocate water from low- to high-valued uses. The unique physical properties of water make it difficult to bound and…
This paper reports the results of a study that explores the relationship between farm woodland owners' stated intentions for owning woodland, and the structure and composition of these woodlands in the states of Illinois, Indiana and Iowa in the upper Midwest of the United States. Data from…
Lactation can have significant costs to individual and population-level productivity because of the high energetic demands it places on dams. Because the difference in condition between lactating and dry Rocky Mountain elk (Cervus elaphus nelsoni) cows tends to disappear as nutritional quality…
The availability of timber in the United States depends largely on forest management and investment decisions of nonindustrial private forest landowners since they hold the largest share of forest land in the nation. Since NIPF landowners are so diverse, there is a need to better understand the…
The composition of a landscape is a fundamental indicator in land-cover pattern assessments. The objective of this paper was to evaluate a landscape composition indicator called 'landscape mosaic' as a framework for interpreting land-cover dynamics over a 9-year period in a 360,000 km2…
Local forest landowner associations and broader peer-to-peer learning efforts have received attention-particularly in the United States of America-as ways to increase landowner engagement in forest planning and management. Unlike traditional technical assistance and outreach, knowledge is…
Local governments in the United States use a wide range of tools to preserve rural landscapes. Some of these tools, like the purchase or transfer of development rights, are generally welcomed by farmers and other large landowners. Other tools, like increasing the minimum lot size in a town’s…
Japanese clematis, a herbaceous to woody vine native to Asia, has been widely used for landscaping in the southeastern United States and is now a naturalized and invasive in Florida. Herbicides that contain the active ingredients fluroxypyr, glyphosate, imazapic, metsulfuron, or triclopyr,…
The extent to which woody vegetation exhibits more expansive community structures and different relationships with environmental variables than herbaceous plants is poorly understood in savannas and barrens worldwide, especially those with shallow soils. We explored this question in oak barrens…
The emerging biofuel sector has drawn great interest as an alternative source of fuel for transportation. The expansion of biofuels greatly impacts world agricultural markets, since currently, the primary feedstocks for ethanol and biodiesel production are field crops and their derived products…
United States policy makers are promoting bio-fuels as an economic development opportunity, especially for rural America. A USDA study claims that developments in energy production from biomass could increase profits for agricultural commodity producers. However, as William Heffernan and his…