In coastal marine ecosystems, the depletion of dissolved oxygen can cause behavioral and distributional shifts of organisms and thereby alter ecological processes. We used the spatio‐temporal variation in the onset and intensity of low dissolved oxygen in Hood Canal, WA to investigate consequences of seasonally reduced oxygen on fish‐zooplankton predator‐prey interactions. By simultaneously monitoring

Nutrient pollution from human activities remains a common problem facing stream ecosystems. Identifying ecological responses to phosphorus and nitrogen can inform decisions affecting the protection and management of streams and their watersheds. Diatoms are particularly useful because they are a highly diverse group of unicellular algae found in nearly all aquatic environments and are sensitive responders

In many savannah regions of Africa, pronounced seasonal variability in rainfall results in wildlife being restricted to floodplains and other habitats adjacent to permanent surface water in the dry season. During the wet season, rainfall fills small‐scale, ephemeral water sources that allows wildlife to exploit forage and other resources far from permanent surface water. These water sources remain

While provision of in‐stream habitat complexity remains common practice in efforts to restore streams, the evidence of positive effects on in‐stream communities is inconsistent. In streams of urban catchments, where both reach‐scale habitat manipulation and catchment‐scale actions to ameliorate the disturbance regime of urban stormwater runoff are common management responses, clearer understanding

Over the past two decades, there have been numerous calls to make ecology a more predictive science through direct empirical assessments of ecological models and predictions. While the widespread use of model selection using information criteria has pushed ecology towards placing a higher emphasis on prediction, few attempts have been made to validate the ability of information criteria to correctly

Anthropogenic impacts on riverine systems have, in part, led to management concerns regarding the population status of species using these systems. In an effort to assess the efficacy of restoration actions, and in order to improve monitoring of species of concern, managers have turned to PIT (passive integrated transponder) tag studies with in‐stream detectors to monitor movements of tagged individuals

Ecological networks can provide insight into how biodiversity loss and changes in species interactions impact the delivery of ecosystem services. In agroecosystems that vary in management practices, quantifying changes in ecological network structure across gradients of local and landscape composition can inform both the ecology and function of productive agroecosystems. In this study, we examined

Invasive mammalian predators can cause the decline and extinction of vulnerable native species. Many invasive mammalian predators are dietary generalists that hunt a variety of prey. These predators often rely upon olfaction when foraging, particularly at night. Little is understood about how prey odor cues are used to inform foraging decisions. Prey cues can vary spatially and temporally in their

The concept of alternate stable states is important in ecological theory and models, but the application and implementation of these models have the potential to make significant future advances in the field of patterned landscapes. The bi‐stable, ridge and slough landscape is a central feature of Everglades restoration and provides an important opportunity to test stable state theory with multistate

Assessing species establishment risk is an important task used for informing biosecurity activities aimed at preventing biological invasions. Propagule pressure is a major contributor to the probability of invading species establishment; however, direct assessment of numbers of individuals arriving is virtually never possible. Inspections conducted at borders by biosecurity officials record counts

Butterfly Monitoring Schemes (BMSs) engage the public in conservation and provide data sets that cover broad geographical areas over long timescales. Most existing BMSs are in temperate climates; however, the Israeli Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (BMS‐IL), established in 2009, is a notable exception as it encompasses a large climatic gradient from Euro‐Siberian through Mediterranean to hyper‐arid regions

The degree to which predation is an additive versus compensatory source of mortality is fundamental to understanding the effects of predation on prey populations and evaluating the efficacy of predator management actions. In the Columbia River basin, USA, predation by Caspian terns (Hydroprogne caspia ) on U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA)‐listed juvenile salmonids (smolts; Oncorhynchus spp.) has led

Forests of the western U.S. are undergoing substantial stress from fire exclusion and increasing effects of climate change, altering ecosystem functions and processes. Changes in broad‐scale drivers of forest community composition become apparent in their effect on survivorship and regeneration, driving demographic shifts. Here we take a community functional approach to forest demography, by investigating

As tropical savannas are undergoing rapid conversion to other land uses, native C3‐C4 vegetation mixtures are often transformed to C3‐ or C4‐dominant systems, resulting in poorly understood changes to the soil carbon (C) cycle. Conventional models of the soil C cycle are based on assumptions that more labile components of the heterogenous soil organic C (SOC) pool decompose at faster rates. Meanwhile

Community assembly is the process by which local communities are organized and maintained from the regional species pool. Understanding processes of insect assembly are of interest in ‘shrinking’ cities where vacant land has become abundant as a result of protracted economic decline and population loss. Vacant land represents a viable conservation space for insects such as beetles that contribute to

Increasing human population size and mobility have accelerated the translocation of nonnative species globally, which has become a major threat to conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Introduced species can disrupt species interactions of the recipient ecosystem, triggering systemwide events, and amplify or dampen effects of existing pressures. We show how two pervasive intercontinental

Estimates of historical disturbance patterns are essential to guide forest management aimed at ensuring the sustainability of ecosystem functions and biodiversity. However, quantitative estimates of various disturbance characteristics required in management applications are rare in longer‐term historical studies. Thus, our objectives were to: (1) quantify past disturbance severity, patch size, and

As the climate warms, drought will increasingly occur under elevated temperatures, placing forest ecosystems at growing risk of extensive dieback and mortality. In some cases, increases in tree density following early 20th‐century fire suppression may exacerbate this risk. Treatments designed to restore historical stand structure and enhance resistance to high‐severity fire might also alleviate drought

Agricultural land‐use is typically associated with high stream nutrient concentrations and increased nutrient loading to lakes. For lakes, evidence for these associations mostly comes from studies on individual lakes or watersheds that relate concentrations of nitrogen (N) or phosphorus (P) to aggregate measures of agricultural land‐use, such as the proportion of land used for agriculture in a lake's

Rising temperatures are leading to permafrost thaw over vast areas of the northern hemisphere. In the Canadian Arctic, permafrost degradation is causing significant changes in surface water quality due to the release of solutes that can alter conductivity, water clarity, and nutrient levels. For this study, we examined how changes in water quality associated with permafrost thaw might impact zooplankton

There are currently thousands of offshore platforms in place for oil and gas extraction worldwide, and decommissioning efforts over the next 3 decades are estimated to cost more than $200 billion USD. As platforms reach the end of their useful lifetime, operators and regulatory agencies will assess the environmental impact of potential decommissioning strategies. Among the many factors that will be

Scientists have many cultural tropes about how peer review goes awry, some of which are standing jokes. In my [Schimel’s] research group, we’ll often laugh over beers about a terrible internet video with the line “It’s reviewer three, it’s always reviewer three”, around the idea that the third reviewer, called in when the first two don’t agree, is always the one who kills a paper! There are serious

Seminatural grasslands are important biodiversity hotspots, but they are increasingly degraded by intensive agriculture. Grassland restoration is considered to be promising in halting the ongoing loss of biodiversity, but this evaluation is mostly based on plant communities. Insect herbivores contribute substantially to grassland biodiversity and to the provisioning of a variety of ecosystem functions

Populations of African savannah elephants (Loxodonta africana) have been declining due to poaching, human-elephant conflict, and habitat loss. Understanding the causes of these declines could aid in stabilizing elephant populations. We used data from the Great Elephant Census, a 19-country aerial survey of savannah elephants conducted in 2014 and 2015, to examine effects of a suite of variables on

Predation can have substantial and long-term effects on the population dynamics of ecologically important prey. Diverse predator assemblages, however, may produce stabilizing (i.e., 'portfolio') effects on prey mortality when consumption varies asynchronously among predators. We calculated spatiotemporal variation in predation on a dominant forage species to a) quantify synchrony and portfolio effects

We used a recently published, open-access data set of U.S. streamwater nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) concentrations to test whether watershed land use differentially influences N and P concentrations, including the relative availability of dissolved and particulate nutrient fractions. We tested the hypothesis that N and P concentrations and molar ratios in streams and rivers of the United States

Wildlife diseases pose a substantial threat to the provisioning of ecosystem services. We use a novel modeling approach to study the potential loss of these services through the imminent introduction of chronic wasting disease (CWD) to elk populations in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE). A specific concern is that concentrating elk at feedgrounds may exacerbate the spread of CWD, whereas eliminating

Spatial optimization approaches that were originally developed to help conservation organizations determine protection decisions over small spatial scales are now used to inform global or continental scale priority setting. However, the different decision contexts involved in large-scale resource allocation need to be considered. We present a continuous optimization approach in which a decision-maker

The characterization of species' environmental niches and spatial distribution predictions based on them are now central to much of ecology and conservation, but implicitly requires decisions about the appropriate spatial scale (i.e., grain) of analysis. Ecological theory and empirical evidence suggest that range-resident species respond to their environment at two characteristic, hierarchical spatial

Many forests in dry mountain regions are characterized by a lower elevational treeline. Understanding the controls on the position of lower treeline is important for predicting future forest distributional shifts in response to global environmental change. Lower treelines currently at their climate limit are expected to be more sensitive to changing climate, whereas lower treelines constrained by non‐climatic

Ecologists are increasingly familiar with Bayesian statistical modeling and its associated Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methodology to infer about or to discover interesting effects in data. The complexity of ecological data often suggests implementation of (statistical) models with a commensurately rich structure of effects, including crossed or nested (i.e., hierarchical or multi‐level) structures

In recent years, considerable efforts have been made to restore turbid, phytoplankton‐dominated shallow lakes to a clear‐water state with high coverage of submerged macrophytes. Various dynamic lake models with simplified physical representations of vertical gradients, such as PCLake, have been used to predict external nutrient load thresholds for such nonlinear regime shifts. However, recent observational

Wood‐inhabiting fungal communities are a diverse and ecologically critical part of forest ecosystems, yet the spatial structure of fungal biodiversity in these ecosystems is largely unknown. Legislation allowed harvesting of deadwood from temperate rainforests on conservation lands in New Zealand following Cyclone Ita in 2014. Harvesting guidelines specified widely spread harvesting, on the assumption

Human demand for food, fiber, and space is accelerating the rate of change of land cover and land use. Much of the world now consists of a matrix of natural forests, managed forests, agricultural cropland, and urbanized plots. Expansion of domestic energy production efforts in the United States is one driver predicted to influence future land‐use and land management practices across large spatial scales

Species loss is occurring globally at unprecedented rates, and effective conservation planning requires an understanding of landscape characteristics that determine biodiversity patterns. Habitat heterogeneity is an important determinant of species diversity, but is difficult to measure across large areas using field‐based methods that are costly and logistically challenging. Satellite image texture

In tropical rainforests, trees size and number density are influenced by disturbance history, soil, topography, climate, and biological factors that are difficult to predict without detailed and widespread forest inventory data. Here, we quantify tree size-frequency distributions over an old-growth wet tropical forest at the La Selva Biological Station in Costa Rica by using an individual tree crown

California’s Central Valley, USA is a critical component of the Pacific Flyway despite loss of more than 90% of its wetlands. Moist soil seed (MSS) wetland plants are now produced by mimicking seasonal flooding in managed wetlands to provide an essential food resource for waterfowl. Managers need MSS plant area and productivity estimates to support waterfowl conservation, yet this remains unknown at

Dryland ecosystems occur worldwide and play a prominent, but potentially shifting, role in global biogeochemical cycling. Widespread woody plant proliferation, often associated with declines in palatable grasses, has jeopardized livestock production in drylands and prompted attempts to reduce woody cover by chemical or mechanical means. Woody encroachment also has the potential to significantly alter

Chytridiomycosis has been a key driver of global frog declines and extinctions, particularly for high‐altitude populations across Australia and the Americas. While recent evidence shows some species are recovering, the extent of such recoveries and the mechanisms underpinning them remain poorly resolved. We surveyed the historical latitudinal and elevational range of four Australian rainforest frogs

Restoration and rehabilitation are globally implemented to improve ecosystem condition but often without tracking treatment expenditures relative to ecological outcomes. We evaluated the cost‐effectiveness of widely conducted woody plant and herbaceous invasive plant removals and seeding treatments in drylands of the western United States from 2004 to 2018 to determine how land managers can optimize

Indigenous rights, knowledge, and value systems are linked inextricably to the lands, waters, and non-human beings that form the environments of Indigenous Peoples. Across the globe, the rights of Indigenous peoples are being formally recognized and as a result, efforts are being made to include Indigenous Knowledge and value systems in environmental policy and decision making. Scientists and decision

While more and more studies are exploring the application of remote sensing in assessing biodiversity for different ecosystems, most consider biodiversity at one point in time. Using several remote sensing-based metrics, we asked how well remote sensing can detect biodiversity (both α- and β-diversity) in a prairie grassland across time using airborne hyperspectral data collected in two successive

Riverscape genetics, which applies concepts in landscape genetics to riverine ecosystems, lack appropriate quantitative methods that address the spatial autocorrelation structure of linear stream networks and account for bidirectional gene flow. To address these challenges, we present a general framework for the design and analysis of riverscape genetic studies. Our framework starts with the estimation

Heterogeneity in quantity and quality of resources provided in the urban matrix may mitigate adverse effects of urbanization intensity on the structure of biotic communities. To assess this we quantified the spatial variation in butterfly richness and abundance along an impervious surface gradient using three measures of urban matrix quality: floral resource availability and origin (native vs. exotic

Reductions in management intensity are often proposed to support a broader range of beneficial ecosystem responses than traditional management approaches. However, few studies evaluate ecosystem responses across approaches. Also, managers lack information about how species traits mediate responses across management approaches, a potentially substantial source of spatial and temporal variation in population

Street trees are public resources planted in a municipality’s right‐of‐way and are a considerable component of urban forests throughout the world. Street trees provide numerous benefits to people. However, many metropolitan areas have a poor understanding of the value of street trees to wildlife, which presents a gap in our knowledge of conservation in urban ecosystems. Greater Los Angeles (LA) is

Although ecosystems respond to global change at regional to continental scales (i.e., macroscales), model predictions of ecosystem responses often rely on data from targeted monitoring of a small proportion of sampled ecosystems within a particular geographic area. In this study, we examined how the sampling strategy used to collect data for such models influences predictive performance. We subsampled

Automated recognition is increasingly used to extract species detections from audio recordings; however, the time required to manually review each detection can be prohibitive. We developed a flexible protocol called 'validation prediction' that uses machine learning to predict whether recognizer detections are true or false positives and can be applied to any recognizer type, ecological application

Although three-dimensional (3D) seismic surveys have improved the success rate of exploratory drilling for oil and gas, the impacts have received little scientific scrutiny, despite affecting more area than any other oil and gas activity. To aid policy-makers and scientists, we reviewed studies of the landscape impacts of 3D-seismic surveys in the Arctic. We analyzed a proposed 3D-seismic program in

Both dispersal and niche-based factors can impose major barriers on tree establishment. Our understanding of how these factors interact to determine recruitment rates is based primarily on findings from mature tropical forests, despite the fact that a majority of tropical forests are now secondary. Consequently, factors influencing seed limitation and the seed-to-seedling transition (STS) in disturbed

Fire suppression has increased stand density and risk of severe, stand‐replacing wildfire in lower elevation dry conifer forests of western North America, threatening ecological function. The U.S. Forest Service’s Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (CFLRP) aims to mitigate impacts to ecological function, while mandating effectiveness monitoring to verify restoration success. Expected

Adult flower-visiting insects feed on nectar and pollen and partly collect floral resources to feed their larvae. The reduction in food availability has therefore been proposed as one of the main causes for the drastic decline in flower-visiting insects in Central Europe. We compared the current (2012-2017) abundances of food plants of different groups of flower-visiting insects to that of 1900-1930

The North American Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) provides data that can be used in complex, multiscale analyses of population change, while controlling for scale‐specific nuisance factors. Many alternative models can be fit to the data, but most model selection procedures are not appropriate for hierarchical models. Leave‐one‐out cross‐validation (LOOCV), in which relative model fit is assessed by omitting

Climate change poses an intensifying threat to many bird species and projections of future climate suitability provide insight into how species may shift their distributions in response. Climate suitability is characterized using ecological niche models (ENMs), which correlate species occurrence data with current environmental covariates and project future distributions using the modeled relationships

Climate change-amplified temperature anomalies pose an imminent threat to coral reef ecosystems. While much focus has been placed on the effects of heat stress on scleractinian corals-including bleaching, mortality, and loss of reef structural complexity-and many studies have documented changes to reef fish communities arising indirectly from shifts in benthic composition, the direct impacts of heat

Microclimatic conditions change dramatically as forests age and impose strong filters on community assembly during succession. Light availability is the most limiting environmental factor in tropical wet forest succession; by contrast, water availability is predicted to strongly influence tropical dry forest (TDF) successional dynamics. While mechanisms underlying TDF successional trajectories are

Effective environmental management hinges on efficient and targeted monitoring, which in turn should adapt to increasing disturbance regimes that now characterize most ecosystems. Habitats and biodiversity of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef (GBR), the world’s largest coral reef ecosystem, are in declining condition, prompting a review of the effectiveness of existing coral monitoring programs. Applying

The eelgrass Zostera marina is an important foundation species of coastal areas in the Northern Hemisphere, but is continuing to decline, despite management actions. The development of new management tools is therefore urgent in order to prioritize limited resources for protecting meadows most vulnerable to local extinctions and identifying most valuable present and historic meadows to protect and

Individual traits such as body mass can serve as early warning signals of changes in the fitness prospects of animal populations facing environmental impacts. Here, taking advantage of a 19‐yr monitoring, we assessed how individual, population, and environmental factors modulate long‐term changes in the body mass of Canarian Egyptian vultures. Individual vulture body mass increased when primary productivity

Populations of invasive species often spread heterogeneously across a landscape, consisting of local populations that cluster in space but are connected by dispersal. A fundamental dilemma for invasive species control is how to optimally allocate limited fiscal resources across local populations. Theoretical work based on perfect knowledge of demographic connectivity suggests that targeting local populations