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USGS2023

Elevation, canopy cover and grass cover structure patterns of seedling establishment in a subtropical post-fire restoration

Ecological restoration is beneficial to ecological communities in this era of large-scale landscape change and ecological disruption. However, restoration outcomes are notoriously variable, which makes fine-scale decision-making challenging. This is true for restoration efforts that follow large fires, which are increasingly common as the climate changes. Post-fire restoration efforts, like tree planting and seeding have shown mixed success, though the causes of the variation in restoration outcomes remain unclear. Abiotic factors such as elevation and fire severity, as well as biotic factors, such as residual canopy cover and abundance of competitive understorey grasses, can vary across a burned area and may all influence the success of restoration efforts to re-establish trees following forest fires. We examined the effect of these factors on the early seedling establishment of a tree species—māmane ( Sophora chrysophylla )—in a subtropical montane woodland in Hawaiʻi. Following a human-caused wildfire, we sowed seeds of māmane as part of a restoration effort. We co-designed a project to examine māmane seedling establishment. We found that elevation was of overriding importance, structuring total levels of plant establishment, with fewer seedlings establishing at higher elevations. Residual canopy cover was positively correlated with seedling establishment, while cover by invasive, competitive understorey grasses very weakly positively correlated with increased seedling establishment. Our results point to specific factors structuring plant establishment following a large fire and suggest additional targeted restoration actions within this subtropical system. For example, if greater native woody recruitment is a management goal, then actions could include targeted seed placement at lower elevations where establishment is more likely, increased seeding densities at high elevation where recruitment rates are lower, and/or invasive grass removal prior to seeding. Such actions may result in faster native ecosystem recovery, which is a goal of local land managers.

Hawaii↗

USGS2020

Bridging the research-management gap: Landscape ecology in practice on public lands in the western United States

The field of landscape ecology has grown and matured in recent decades, but incorporating landscape science into land management decisions remains challenging. Many lands in the western United States are federally owned and managed for multiple uses, including recreation, conservation, and energy development. We argue for stronger integration of landscape science into the management of these public lands. We open by outlining the relevance of landscape science for public land planning, management, and environmental effects analysis, including pertinent laws and policies. We identify challenges to integrating landscape science into public land management, including the multijurisdictional nature and complicated spatial pattern of public lands, the capacity of agencies to identify and fill landscape science needs, and public perceptions about the meaning of landscape approaches to management. We provide several recent examples related to landscape monitoring, restoration, reclamation, and conservation in which landscape science products were developed specifically to support decision-making. We close by highlighting three actions - elevating the importance of science-management partnerships dedicated to coproducing actionable landscape science products, identifying where landscape science could foster efficiencies in the land-use planning process, and developing scenario-based landscape models for shrublands - that could improve landscape science support for public land planners and managers.

Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New↗

USGS2019

Development and implementation of an empirical habitat change model and decision support tool for estuarine ecosystems

Widespread land use change in coastal ecosystems has led to a decline in the amount of habitat available for fish and wildlife, lower production of ecosystem goods and services, and loss of recreational and aesthetic value. This has prompted global efforts to restore the natural hydrologic regimes of developed shorelines, especially resource-rich estuaries, but the resilience of these restored ecosystems in the face of accelerated sea-level rise (SLR) remains uncertain. We implemented a Mo nitoring-based S imulation of A ccretion i n C oastal E s tuaries (MOSAICS) in R statistical software to address uncertainty in the resilience of modified estuarine habitats, using the Nisqually River Delta in the Pacific Northwest USA as a case study. MOSAICS is a spatially explicit model with a numerical foundation that uses empirical monitoring datasets to forecast habitat change in response to rising tidal levels. Because it accounts for the crucial ecomorphodynamic feedbacks between tidal inundation, vegetative growth, and sediment accretion, MOSAICS can be used to determine whether alternative management scenarios, such as enhanced sediment inputs, will bolster estuarine resilience to SLR. Under moderate SLR (0.62 m), the model predicted that a two-fold increase in mean daily suspended sediment during the rainy season was sufficient to maintain Nisqually’s emergent marshes through 2100, but under high SLR (1.35 m) MOSAICS indicated that greater sediment additions would be necessary to prevent submergence. A comparison between a restored marsh with subsided and high-elevation areas and a relict marsh demonstrated that the subsided restoration area was highly susceptible to SLR. Findings from the MOSAICS model highlight the importance of a site’s initial elevation, capacity for producing above and belowground biomass, and suspended sediment availability when considering management actions in estuaries and other coastal ecosystems.

Washington↗

USGS2004

Great Lakes clams find refuge from zebra mussels in restored, lake-connected marsh (Ohio)

Since the early 1990s, more than 95 percent of the freshwater clams once found in Lake Erie have died due to the exotic zebara mussel (Dreissena polymorpha). Zebra mussels attach themselves to native clams in large numbers, impeding the ability of the clams to eat and burrow. However, in 1996, we discovered a population of native clams in Metzger Marsh in western Lake Erie (about 50 miles [80 km] east of Toledo) that were thriving despite the longtime presence of zebra mussel in surrounding waters. At that time, Metzger Marsh was undergoing extensive restoration, including construction of a dike to replace the eroded barrier beach and of a water-control structure to maintain hydrologic connections with the lake (Wilcox and Whillans 1999). The restoration plan called for a drawdown of water levels to promote plant growth from the seedbank -- a process that would also destroy most of the clam population. State and federal resource managers recommended removing as many clams as possible to a site that was isolated from zebra mussels, and then returning them to the marsh after it was restored. We removed about 7,000 native clams in 1996 and moved them back to Metzger Marsh in 1999.

Ecological Restoration↗

USGS2026

Spatial variation in effectiveness and costs of sagebrush restoration treatments across the western United States

Natural resource managers strive to improve restoration efficiency across the vast network of public lands of the United States, seeking the best return on investment through innovation, geographic prioritization, and adaptive management. This challenge is exemplified by ecosystems dominated by sagebrush ( Artemisia spp.), which occur across the western United States and have been degraded by increasing wildfire frequency driven by invasive plant spread, among other factors. However, both costs and effectiveness of sagebrush restoration can vary spatially due to management practices in addition to biotic and abiotic factors, and characterizing this variation could inform broad-scale planning. We leveraged published models of sagebrush recovery and treatment costs to predict and evaluate cost-effectiveness of aerial and drill seeding Artemisia spp. across 429 718 km 2 that overlapped 12 US states. Compared to natural recovery, effectiveness for both methods was generally low, yet effectiveness was often greater, and costs were always greater, for drill than aerial seeding, resulting in slightly higher cost-effectiveness on average for drill seeding. Cost-effectiveness for both treatments increased near major roads and in areas with more repeated burns. Cost-effectiveness also increased with predisturbance cover of sagebrush but decreased with herbaceous cover. However, we also identified areas where aerial seeding was more cost-effective than drill seeding, particularly with greater slope. Our results provide spatially explicit estimates and potential mechanisms of cost-effectiveness for two common seeding methods for sagebrush, which can help prioritize limited resources, guide land use, and improve restoration efficiency and effectiveness across public rangelands of the western United States.

western United States↗

USGS2026

Habitat restoration efforts increase patch retention times in migratory mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus)

Mule deer ( Odocoileus hemionus ) populations have been declining across much of their range, often due to habitat alteration. Habitat alterations, including the introduction of non-native annual grasses and the expansion of pinyon–juniper (PJ) forests on sagebrush ecosystems, are changing resource availability compared to historical conditions. Extensive habitat restoration has been completed across the State of Utah to foster plant communities that better reflect historical conditions and optimal mule deer habitat. We investigated how patch retention times differ on eight different habitat restoration treatment types and random locations during summer and winter across the State of Utah, to evaluate the efficacy of restoration treatments for migratory mule deer, as retention time is expected to reflect resource availability. We developed seasonal moving-window Brownian Bridge Movement Models for individual mule deer ( n = 593 animals), and intersected occurrence distributions (OD) with habitat restoration treatments and randomly generated background landscape polygons. We quantified patch retention time as the number of days individuals’ OD overlapped treatment or random polygons during each season, using a Poisson regression. In winter sites treated to remove PJ, both with (56.5 days, 95% CI [29.3, 108.0]) and without seeding (55.3 days, 95% CI [29.1, 105.8]), as well as sagebrush restoration sites (59.0 days, 95% CI [30.6, 114.8]), had increased retention times when compared to the landscape average (41.9 days, 95% CI [20.7, 84.1]), with effects decreasing 5+ years post-treatment. Retention times in summer were longer across all treatment types in the 2–4-year post-treatment age class (37.5 days, 95% CI [26.3, 53.1]) compared to the landscape average (28.6 days, 95% CI [25.7, 31.8]). Our results demonstrate the positive effects of habitat restoration through increased patch retention times on mule deer winter and summer range and may suggest follow-up treatment 5+ years after initial treatment to maximize mule deer use.

Utah↗

USGS2018

Prairie reconstruction unpredictability and complexity: What is the rate of reconstruction failures?

The outcomes of prairie reconstructions are subject to both unpredictability and complexity. Prairie, tallgrass, and mixed grass reconstruction is defined as the planting of a native herbaceous seed mixture composed of multiple prairie species (10 or more) in an area where the land has been heavily cultivated or anthropogenically disturbed. Because of the unpredictability and complexity inherent in reconstructions, some outcomes end up being failures dominated by exotic species. We propose that these failures follow a fat-tailed distribution as found in other complex systems. Fat-tailed distributions follow the Pareto principle, where 80% of the time reconstructions work as expected but 20% of the time they are surprising and far from the typical response. Therefore, we suggest managers be informed that reconstruction failures follow fat-tailed distributions as opposed to assuming reconstructions are simple and predictable with few failures. Once managers realize failures are inherent in reconstructions, resources can be allocated to more effective methods of dealing with failures rather than working to perfect the predictability of reconstructions. We suggest implementing adaptive management, especially where unpredictability is high, as a way to learn from failures. Combining learning from adaptive management with a reconstruction design process, in which goals and constraints are iteratively adjusted, can be a way to deal with failures and develop better outcomes.

Ecological Restoration↗

USGS2004

Bioinvasive species and the preservation of cutthroat trout in the western United States: Ecological, social, and economic issues

The cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarki) was the only endemic salmonid species across most of the western United States, and it has severely declined largely due to introduction and bioinvasion by non-native salmonid species. However, the ecological, social, and economic consequences of cutthroat trout declines and replacement by non-native salmonid species are relatively minor, and measurable affects on ecosystem function are rare. Restoration efforts for cutthroat trout involve removal or control of bioinvasive salmonid species, but such efforts are costly, ongoing, and resisted frequently by segments of society. Cutthroat trout declines are of little concern to much of the public because they are valued similarly to non-native salmonids, and non-native salmonid species frequently have higher recreational values. Due to the low values placed on cutthroat trout relative to non-native salmonid species, net economic benefits of preserving cutthroat trout are equal to or less than those for non-native salmonids. Cutthroat trout provide a classic case of the consequences of biological invasion; however, other native species are faced with similar issues. We suggest that management agencies establish realistic goals to preserve native species within the context of ecological, social, and economic issues. ?? 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Environmental Science and Policy↗

USGS2024

Propensity score matching mitigates risk of faulty inferences in observational studies of effectiveness of restoration trials

Determining effectiveness of restoration treatments is an important requirement of adaptive management, but it can be non-trivial where only portions of large and heterogeneous landscapes of concern can be treated and sampled. Bias and non-randomness in the spatial deployment of treatment and thus sampling is nearly unavoidable in the data available for large-scale management trials, and the biophysical landscape characteristics underlying the bias are key but rare considerations in analyses of treatment effects. Treatment effects from large-scale management trials are typically estimated with multivariable regression (MVR) models. However, this method is unsuited to reliable estimations of treatment effects when treated and untreated areas differ in their underlying biophysical variability. An alternative to conventional regression is to use propensity score (PS) matching, which can limit the differences in confounding variables among treatment groups and assure the data collected or selected for analysis are more consistent with a randomized and unconfounded experiment. Thus, PS is expected to identify treatment effects more accurately. We used data from a large-scale monitoring effort of a megafire to evaluate the efficacy of PS matching in making inferences on treatment effects when treatments are applied non-randomly over a large heterogeneous area. We compared the resulting inference to both traditional MVR methods and to “naïve” methods that do not consider treatment allocation bias. Treatment effects varied between the different statistical methods for controlling selection bias and confounding biophysical factors. The PS-matched model revealed a weaker treatment effect of drill seeding and a greater effect of herbicide spraying on the cover of perennial bunchgrasses when compared to MVR or naïve modelled estimates. The inferences from the PS-matched model are considered more reliable because the treated and untreated plots are more similar in their underlying biophysical characteristics. Synthesis and applications . Failure to consider the non-random and selective deployment of restoration treatments by managers leads to faulty inference on their effectiveness. However, tools such as propensity-score matching can be used to remove the bias from analyses of the outcomes of management trials or to devise sampling plans that efficiently protect against the bias.

Journal of Applied Ecology↗

USGS2016

Overwintering strategies of migratory birds: a novel approach for estimating seasonal movement patterns of residents and transients

Our understanding of movement patterns in wildlife populations has played an important role in current ecological knowledge and can inform landscape conservation decisions. Direct measures of movement can be obtained using marked individuals, but this requires tracking individuals across a landscape or multiple sites. We demonstrate how movements can be estimated indirectly using single-site, capture–mark–recapture (CMR) data with a multi-state open robust design with state uncertainty model (MSORD-SU). We treat residence and transience as two phenotypic states of overwintering migrants and use time- and state-dependent probabilities of site entry and persistence as indirect measures of movement. We applied the MSORD-SU to data on eight species of overwintering Neotropical birds collected in 14 countries between 2002 and 2011. In addition to entry and persistence probabilities, we estimated the proportions of residents at a study site and mean residence times. We identified overwintering movement patterns and residence times that contrasted with prior categorizations of territoriality. Most species showed an evidence of residents entering sites at multiple time intervals, with transients tending to enter between peak resident movement times. Persistence and the proportion of residents varied by latitude, but were not always positively correlated for a given species. Synthesis and applications . Our results suggest that migratory songbirds commonly move among habitats during the overwintering period. Substantial proportions of populations appear to be comprised of transient individuals, and residents tend to persist at specific sites for relatively short periods of time. This information on persistence and movement patterns should be explored for specific habitats to guide landscape management on the wintering grounds, such as determining which habitats are conserved or restored as part of certification programmes of tropical agroforestry crops. We suggest that research and conservation efforts on Neotropical migrant songbirds focus on identifying landscape configurations and regional habitat networks that support these diverse overwintering strategies to secure full life cycle conservation.

Journal of Applied Ecology↗

USGS2015

The Everglades Depth Estimation Network (EDEN) surface-water model, version 2

The Everglades Depth Estimation Network (EDEN) is an integrated network of water-level gages, interpolation models that generate daily water-level and water-depth data, and applications that compute derived hydrologic data across the freshwater part of the greater Everglades landscape. The U.S. Geological Survey Greater Everglades Priority Ecosystems Science provides support for EDEN in order for EDEN to provide quality-assured monitoring data for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan. The EDEN surface-water model, version 2 (V2), interpolates water-level data from a network of 240 gages to generate gridded daily water-level surfaces for the freshwater domain of the Everglades. When these spatiotemporal continuous surfaces are combined with EDEN’s digital elevation model of ground surface, derived hydrologic data provide scientists and water managers working in the Everglades with data necessary to analyze ecological and biotic responses to hydrologic changes in the Everglades. Derived datasets include water depth, recession rates, days since last dry, water-surface slopes, and hydroperiod. The V2 model includes enhancements from the previous model (version 1; V1) to accommodate changes in the water-level gage network, adjustments to water-level data, improved understanding of the flow dynamics (particularly near canals), and installation of an elevation benchmark network. Enhancements to the V2 model included Expansion of the EDEN domain: The model domain was expanded to include a part of southern Big Cypress National Preserve and northwestern Everglades National Park upstream of the marsh mangrove wetlands, thus completing the coastal connection along the southwestern boundary of the model; and Development of subdomain models: To account for insufficient water-control structure gage data at some subbasin boundaries, subdomain models were developed for five subdomains, and the resulting water-level surfaces were merged to generate the final water-level surface. Model performance statistics show a general improvement in the V2 model as compared to the V1 model. Overall, the root mean squared error (RMSE) was reduced by 2.42 centimeters (cm) to 4.68 cm. In Water Conservation Area 3A North and Water Conservation Area 3B, the RMSE was reduced by 10.88 and 9.15 cm, respectively. In addition to evaluating model performance statistics, 2-cm water-level maps were generated and evaluated for irregular contours that would indicate a potential problem either with data input or water-level estimates. Three applications of the EDEN-modeled water surfaces and other EDEN datasets are presented in the report to show how scientists and resource managers are using EDEN datasets to analyze biological and ecological responses to hydrologic changes in the Everglades. The biological responses of two important Everglades species, alligators and wading birds, to changes in hydrology are described. The effects of hydrology on fire dynamics in the Everglades are also discussed.

Florida↗

USGS2022

Both real-time and long-term environmental data perform well in predicting shorebird distributions in managed habitat

Highly mobile species, such as migratory birds, respond to seasonal and inter-annual variability in resource availability by moving to better habitats. Despite the recognized importance of resource thresholds, species distribution models typically rely on long-term average habitat conditions, mostly because large-extent, temporally-resolved, environmental data are difficult to obtain. Recent advances in remote sensing make it possible to incorporate more frequent measurements of changing landscapes; however, there is often a cost in terms of model building and processing and the added value of such efforts is unknown. Our study tests whether incorporating real-time environmental data increases the predictive ability of distribution models, relative to using long-term average data. We developed and compared distribution models for shorebirds in California's Central Valley based on high temporal resolution (every 16-days), and 17-year long-term average, surface water data. Using abundance-weighted boosted regression trees, we modeled monthly shorebird occurrence as a function of surface water availability, crop type, wetland type, road density, temperature, and bird data source. While modeling with both real-time and long-term average data provided good fit to withheld validation data (0.79 < AUC < 0.89 across taxa), there were small differences in model performance. The best models incorporated long-term average conditions and spatial pattern information for real-time flooding (e.g. perimeter-area ratio of real-time water bodies). There was not a substantial difference in the performance of real-time and long-term average data models within time periods when real-time surface water differed substantially from the long-term average (specifically during drought years 2013-2016) and in intermittently flooded months or locations. Spatial predictions resulting from the models differed most in the southern region of the study area where there is lower water availability, fewer birds, and lower sampling density. Prediction uncertainty in the southern region of the study area highlights the need for increased sampling in this area. Because both sets of data performed similarly, the choice of which data to use may depend on the management context. Real-time data may ultimately be best for guiding dynamic, adaptive conservation actions whereas models based on long-term averages may be more helpful for guiding permanent wetland protection and restoration.

Ecological Applications↗

USGS2019

Operationalizing resilience and resistance concepts to address invasive grass-fire cycles

Plant invasions can affect fuel characteristics, fire behavior, and fire regimes resulting in invasive plant-fire cycles and alternative, self-perpetuating states that can be difficult, if not impossible, to reverse. Concepts related to general resilience to disturbance and resistance to invasive plants provide the basis for managing landscapes to increase their capacity to reorganize and adjust following fire, while concepts related to spatial resilience provide the basis for managing landscapes to conserve resources and habitats and maintain connectivity. New, spatially explicit approaches and decision-tools enable managers to understand and evaluate general and spatial resilience to fire and resistance to invasive grasses across large landscapes in arid and semi-arid shrublands and woodlands. These approaches and tools provide the capacity to locate management actions strategically to prevent development of invasive grass-fire cycles and maintain or improve resources and habitats. In this review, we discuss the factors that influence fire regimes, general and spatial resilience to fire, resistance to invasive annual grasses, and thus invasive grass-fire cycles in global arid and semi-arid shrublands and woodlands. The Cold Deserts, Mediterranean Ecoregion, and Warm Deserts of North America are used as model systems to describe how and why resilience to disturbance and resistance to invasive annuals differ over large landscapes. The Cold Deserts are used to illustrate an approach and decision tools for prioritizing areas on the landscape for management actions to prevent development of invasive grass-fire cycles and protect high value resources and habitats and for determining effective management strategies. The concepts and approach herein represent a paradigm shift in the management of these ecosystems, which allows managers to use geospatial tools to identify resilience to disturbance and resistance to invasive plants in order to target conservation and restoration actions where they will provide the greatest benefits.

Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution↗

USGS2025

C4 photosynthesis, trait spectra, and the fast-efficient phenotype

It has been 60 years since the discovery of C 4 photosynthesis, an event that rewrote our understanding of plant adaptation, ecosystem responses to global change, and global food security. Despite six decades of research, one aspect of C 4 photosynthesis that remains poorly understood is how the pathway fits into the broader context of adaptive trait spectra, which form our modern view of functional trait ecology. The C 4 CO 2 -concentrating mechanism supports a general C 4 plant phenotype capable of fast growth and high resource-use efficiencies. The fast-efficient C 4 phenotype has the potential to operate at high productivity rates, while allowing for less biomass allocation to root production and nutrient acquisition, thereby providing opportunities for the evolution of novel trait covariances and the exploitation of new ecological niches. We propose the placement of the C 4 fast-efficient phenotype near the acquisitive pole of the world-wide leaf economic spectrum, but with a pathway-specific span of trait space, wherein selection shapes both acquisitive and conservative adaptive strategies. A trait-based perspective of C 4 photosynthesis will open new paths to crop improvement, global biogeochemical modeling, the management of invasive species, and the restoration of disturbed ecosystems, particularly in grasslands.

New Phytologist↗

USGS2018

Sediment accretion and carbon storage in constructed wetlands receiving water treated with metal-based coagulants

In many regions of the world, subsidence of organic rich soils threatens levee stability and freshwater supply, and continued oxidative loss of organic matter contributes to greenhouse gas production. To counter subsidence in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta of northern California, we examined the feasibility of using constructed wetlands receiving drainage water treated with metal-based coagulants to accrete mineral material along with wetland biomass, while also sequestering carbon in wetland sediment. Nine field-scale wetlands were constructed which received local drainage water that was either untreated (control), or treated with polyaluminum chloride (PAC) or iron sulfate (FeSO4) coagulants. After 23 months of flooding and coagulant treatment, sediment samples were collected near the inlet, middle, and outlet of each wetland to determine vertical accretion rates, bulk density, sediment composition, and carbon sequestration rates. Wetlands treated with PAC had the highest and most spatially consistent vertical accretion rates (~6 cm year-1), while the FeSO4 wetlands had similarly high accretion rates near the inlet but rates similar to the untreated wetland (~1.5 cm year-1) at the middle and outlet sites. The composition of the newly accreted sediment in the PAC and FeSO4 treatments was high in the added metal (aluminum and iron, respectively), but the percent metal by weight was similar to native soils of California. As has been observed in other constructed wetlands, the newly accreted sediment material had lower bulk densities than the native soil material (0.04-0.10 g cm-3 versus 0.2-0.3 g cm-3), suggesting these materials will consolidate over time. Finally, this technology accelerated carbon burial, with rates in PAC treated wetland (0.63 kg C m-2 yr-1) over 2-fold greater than the untreated control (0.28 kg C m-2 yr-1). This study demonstrates the feasibility of using constructed wetlands treated with coagulants to reverse subsidence by accreting the resulting organo-metal flocculent and storing carbon at rates exceeding untreated wetlands. Management and design questions remain for how to best integrate this technology into heavily subsided land to lower the risks and consequences associated with levee failure, improve water quality, and ultimately restore these lands to tidal wetlands.

California↗

USGS2022

A statistical framework for modelling migration corridors

1. Management of animal populations requires spatially explicit knowledge of movement corridors, such as those used during seasonal migrations. GPS tracking data allows for mapping of corridors from directly observed movements, providing important insights, but tracking data is absent for many populations. 2. We developed a novel statistical corridor modeling approach that predicts movement corridors from cost-distance movement models fit directly to migration tracking data. Unlike existing predictive approaches, this does not require the ad-hoc transformation of habitat suitability surfaces into resistance surfaces. We tested the ability of the approach to recover parameters used to generate simulated movements. We then used GPS data from three migrating mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) herds in Idaho and Wyoming to model corridors as a function of elevation, slope, aspect, percent shrub, date of peak green-up, snow-off date, and human footprint. We assessed the predictive ability of the fitted models using validation tracks from the same herd as well as from the other herds. 3. The approach reproduced parameters used to generate the simulated movements, predicted the corridors used by migratory populations, and described the direction, magnitude, and confidence levels of the effects of environmental variables on corridors. The effects environmental variables had on corridors differed depending on the herd. Within-herd validation indicated that fitted corridor models are more accurate at predicting migration corridors than null models, and cross-herd validation indicated that fitted models for some herds accurately predicted the observed migrations of other herds. 4. In addition to the practical benefit of mapping corridors for management, our statistical corridor modeling framework sets the stage for evaluating fundamental questions about the fitness tradeoffs, navigation, learning, fidelity, and movement constraints that influence migratory and other corridor-generating behavior. Models of predictive corridors can inform management and planning for the conservation of migrations across taxa, including the potential restoration of corridors. Our corridor modeling approach is also readily applied to non-migratory animal movements.

Idaho, Wyoming↗

USGS2014

Predicting foundation bunchgrass species abundances: Model-assisted decision-making in protected-area sagebrush steppe

Foundation species are structurally dominant members of ecological communities that can stabilize ecological processes and influence resilience to disturbance and resistance to invasion. Being common, they are often overlooked for conservation but are increasingly threatened from land use change, biological invasions, and over-exploitation. The pattern of foundation species abundances over space and time may be used to guide decision-making, particularly in protected areas for which they are iconic. We used ordinal logistic regression to identify the important environmental influences on the abundance patterns of bluebunch wheatgrass ( Pseudoroegneria spicata ), Thurber's needlegrass ( Achnatherum thurberianum ), and Sandberg bluegrass ( Poa secunda ) in protected-area sagebrush steppe. We then predicted bunchgrass abundances along gradients of topography, disturbance, and invasive annual grass abundance. We used model predictions to prioritize the landscape for implementation of a management and restoration decision-support tool. Models were fit to categorical estimates of grass cover obtained from an extensive ground-based monitoring dataset. We found that remnant stands of abundant wheatgrass and bluegrass were associated with steep north-facing slopes in higher and more remote portions of the landscape outside of recently burned areas where invasive annual grasses were less abundant. These areas represented only 25% of the landscape and were prioritized for protection efforts. Needlegrass was associated with south-facing slopes, but in low abundance and in association with invasive cheatgrass ( Bromus tectorum ). Abundances of all three species were strongly negatively correlated with occurrence of another invasive annual grass, medusahead ( Taeniatherum caput-medusae ). The rarity of priority bunchgrass stands underscored the extent of degradation and the need for prioritization. We found no evidence that insularity reduced invasibility; annual grass invasion represents a serious threat to protected-area bunchgrass communities. Our study area was entirely within the Wyoming big sagebrush ecological zone, understood to have inherently low resilience to disturbance and resistance to weed invasion. However, our study revealed important variation in abundance of the foundation species associated with resilience and resistance along the topographic-soil moisture gradient within this zone, providing an important foothold for conservation decision-making in these steppe ecosystems. We found the foundation species focus a parsimonious strategy linking monitoring to decision-making via biogeographic modeling.

Ecosphere↗

USGS2021

Forecasting ecological responses for wetland restoration planning in Florida's Everglades

The Everglades wetland was once a river of grass, with water flowing slowly through the sawgrass, southward across the landscape. As developers took hold of south Florida, water was sent away from the heart of the Everglades through canals and levees to protect the former wetland for residential and agricultural development. In the 1990s, planning began to restore the Everglades in what is the largest hydrologic restoration undertaking in the world. With billions of taxpayer dollars at stake, restoration planners benefit from forecasting tools to inform restoration planning. To meet this need, scientists developed predictive ecological models and other decision support tools tailored to this dynamic ecosystem as well as to the needs of restoration planning teams. Predictive modeling has been able to take advantage of well-understood relationships between species of interest and hydrologic dynamics in the Everglades. Recent modeling advances include multi-species approaches that consider interactions among species as well as explicit consideration of trade-offs among species from potential water management actions. Scientists are also starting to look at ecosystem-wide vulnerabilities with explicit consideration of future change such as sea level rise. Modeling tools and approaches continue to be refined to meet decision making needs for Everglades restoration. However, more work is needed to consider additional complexities of this dynamic wetland as well as to consider the broader socio-environmental system.

Florida↗