Informational Resources

Abstract

There is a widespread view among land managers and others that the protected status of many forestlands in the western United States corresponds with higher fire severity levels due to historical restrictions on logging that contribute to greater amounts of biomass and fuel loading in less intensively managed areas, particularly after decades of fire suppression. This view has… | Read more |

See at USGS site here.

Thirty million people in the American West depend on snowmelt to grow food, slake their thirst, and run their towns, cities, and industries. Twenty-two million of them live in Southern California. As in many parts of the world, western water supplies are over-allocated and populations are growing. Increasing variability in precipitation—the primary impact of climate change on the hydrologic… | Read more |

Efforts to restore ecosystems often focus on reintroducing apex predators to re-establish coevolved relationships among predators, herbivores and plants. The preponderance of evidence for indirect effects of predators on terrestrial plant communities comes from ecosystems where predators have been removed. Far less is known about the consequences of their restoration. The effects of removal… | Read more |

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Office of Research and Development (ORD) has finalized the science report, Connectivity of Streams and Wetlands to Downstream Waters: A Review and Synthesis of the Scientific Evidence.

Encroachment of open woodlands by shrubs is a global phenomenon associated with marked changes in ecosystem structure and function. We measured sorptivity and steady-state infiltration at two supply potentials under shrubs and grasses and in their interspaces where shrubs were encroaching into grassland. Steady-state infiltration (ponded) and sorptivity were greater at the grassland than the… | Read more |

In this study, hydrological processes are evaluated to determine impacts of stream restoration in the West Turkey Creek, Chiricahua Mountains,… | Read more |

Obsolescence of environmental laws and regulations is unavoidable, and policies dealing with endangered species and ecosystem conservation often lag decades behind the relevant science. For example, endangered species laws and regulations and other conservation statutes typically fail to consider the interactions of strongly interacting species, probably because the importance of such… | Read more |

The black-footed ferret (Mustela nigripes) recovery program is an example of single-species manage- ment to preserve flora and fauna. We argue that conservationists must move beyond that approach for success. In 1988, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed a down-listing goal of 1500 adult black-footed ferrets in 10 wild populations by 2010. The recovery program has only reached 23% of… | Read more |

Ecologists have concluded that diversity per se in ecosystems is important to ecosystem function and ecological services. Meta-analyses of several hundred investigations showed that a loss of diversity negatively affected ecosystem function (Balvanera et al., 2006; Cardinale et al., 2006, 2011; Tilman, 2012). Specifically, research showed that loss of species diversity decreased productivity,… | Read more |

In recent years, people have interpreted scientific information about the black-tailed prairie dog (Cynomys ludovicianus) in various, and sometimes conflicting, ways. Political complexity around the relationship among black-tailed prairie dogs, agricultural interests, and wildlife has increased in recent years, particularly when prairie dogs occur on publicly owned lands leased to private… | Read more |

Overview

On Wednesday, September 11, 2013 Van Clothier from Stream Dynamics, Inc. met at city hall with Mayor John Mulcahy, City Manager Juan Fuentes, and Street Department supervisor Buster Smith. We discussed the damaging rainwater runoff situation and I gave a presentation on water harvesting techniques that could potentially help solve the problem. After about an hour I departed… | Read more |