One of the highest priority invasive species at both Yosemite and Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks is Holcus lanatus L. (common velvetgrass), a perennial bunchgrass that invades mid-elevation montane meadows. Despite velvetgrass being a high priority species, there is little information…

Estuaries provide vital habitat to a wide variety of fish species, so understanding how human activities impact estuarine habitats has important implications for management and conservation of fish stocks. We used nationwide datasets on anthropogenic disturbance to perform a quantitative…

Climate change has the potential to influence avian population dynamics through nest-fate sensitivity to temperatures during the breeding season. Nest fate also varies across spatially heterogeneous habitat, and changing land uses may independently introduce stressors on reproductive outcome.…

Ecological restoration is increasingly called on to provide ecosystem services (ES) valuable to humans, as well as to benefit biodiversity and improve wildlife habitat. Where mechanisms to pay for ES exist, they may serve as incentives to embark on habitat restoration projects. We evaluated the…

The Brook Trout Salvelinus fontinalis is an important species of conservation concern in the eastern USA. We developed a model to predict Brook Trout population status within individual stream reaches throughout the species’ native range in the eastern USA. We utilized hierarchical logistic…

The fate of ecosystem services (ESS) in the United States depends on the actions of private landowners and operators (‘farmers’). This work uses a mixed qualitative and quantitative method to understand farmer knowledge of ESS and willingness to manage lands from an ESS perspective. Fourteen…

AIMS: Critical assessment of the connection between units of the habitat type system and physiographic, climatic and soil factors in interior western United States land classifications. LOCATION: Interior western United States including Utah, SE Idaho, W Wyoming and Colorado, N Arizona, NW New…

The Hydrological Simulation Program-Fortran (HSPF), which is a hydrological and water-quality computer model that was developed by the United States Environmental Protection Agency, was employed to simulate runoff and nutrient export from a typical small watershed in a hilly eastern monsoon…

The coyote (Canis latrans) has dramatically expanded its range to include the cities and suburbs of the western US and those of the Eastern Seaboard. Highly adaptable, this newcomer’s success causes conflicts with residents, necessitating research to understand the distribution of coyotes in…

This paper analyzes the structure of water transactions using data on contract duration from California. Water rights in the western United States are transferred through short-term and long- term leases as well as permanent ownership contracts. We test predictions about the type of water…

Seeds of Success (SOS) is a national native seed collection program, led by the US Department of Interior Bureau of Land Management in partnership with numerous federal agencies and nonfederal organizations. The mission of the SOS is to collect wildland native seed for long-term germplasm…

For over a century the foundation of biological conservation has been the development of open space networks either through outright public land acquisition or appropriate management of private lands. Because both approaches come with significant trade-offs, it is critical to understand which…