A5056320412- Rangeland and Wildlife Management
- Remote Sensing in Agriculture
- Species Distribution and Climate Change
- Ecology and Vegetation Dynamics Studies
- Plant Water Relations and Carbon Dynamics
- Land Use and Ecosystem Services
- Remote Sensing and LiDAR Applications
- Rangeland Management and Livestock Ecology
- Wildlife Ecology and Conservation
- Soil erosion and sediment transport
- Aeolian processes and effects
- Soil Geostatistics and Mapping
- Climate change impacts on agriculture
- Plant and animal studies
- Ruminant Nutrition and Digestive Physiology
- Ecology and biodiversity studies
- Tree-ring climate responses
- Ecosystem dynamics and resilience
- Bioenergy crop production and management
- Soil Carbon and Nitrogen Dynamics
- Image Retrieval and Classification Techniques
- AI in cancer detection
- Forest ecology and management
- Forest Management and Policy
- Amphibian and Reptile Biology
Agricultural Research Service
2013-2024
New Mexico State University
2015-2024
Society For Range Management
2022
United States Department of Agriculture
2010-2021
Ecological Society of America
2016-2020
Economic Research Service
2019
Jornada Basin Long Term Ecological Research
2018
Sierra Nevada Corporation (United States)
2016
University of Arizona
2005-2014
University of Arkansas at Fayetteville
2005
Rangeland comprises as much 70% of the Earth's land surface area. Much this vast space is in very remote areas that are expensive and often impossible to access on ground. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have great potential for rangeland management. UAVs several advantages over satellites piloted aircraft: they can be deployed quickly repeatedly; less costly safer than aircraft; flexible terms flying height timing missions; obtain imagery at sub-decimeter resolution. This hyperspatial...
Identifying factors that may be responsible for regulating the size of animal populations is a cornerstone in understanding population ecology. The main are thought to influence either resources (bottom‐up), or predation (top‐down), interspecific competition (parallel). However, there highly variable and often contradictory results regarding their relative strengths influence. These varied interpreted as indicating “shifting control” among three factors, complex, nonlinear relationship...
Woody plant abundance is widely recognized to have increased in savannas and grasslands worldwide. The lack of information on the rates, dynamics, extent increases shrub a major source uncertainty assessing how this vegetation change has influenced biogeochemical cycles. Projecting future consequences woody cover ecosystem function will require knowledge where present-day stands lies relative realizable maximum for given soil type within bioclimatic region. We used time-series aerial...
Transitions from semiarid grassland to shrubland states are among the most widely recognized examples of regime shifts in terrestrial ecosystems. Nonetheless, processes causing grassland–shrubland transitions and their consequences incompletely understood. We challenge several misconceptions about these desert grasslands, including that (a) they currently controlled by local livestock grazing drought events, (b) represent severe land degradation, (c) restoration is impossible....
Nutrient recycling is fundamental to sustainable agricultural systems, but few mechanisms exist ensure that surplus manure nutrients from animal feeding operations are transported for use on nutrient-deficient croplands. As a result, concentrate in locations where they can threaten environmental health and devalue as fertilizer resource. This study advances the concept of "manureshed" – lands surrounding onto which be redistributed meet environmental, production, economic goals. Manuresheds...
Near surface (i.e., camera) and satellite remote sensing metrics have become widely used indicators of plant growing seasons. While robust linkages been established between field ecosystem exchange in many land cover types, assessment how well remotely-derived season start end dates depict conditions arid ecosystems remain unknown. We evaluated the correspondence measures (SOS; leaves unfolded canopy greenness >0) (EOS) for two widespread species southwestern U.S. with those estimated...
Globally, grasslands, covering about 40% of the Earth's land area, are vital for supporting important ecosystem functions, services, and livelihoods millions humans. Currently, grassland degradation is a major threat to maintenance ecological services,1Bardgett R.D. Bullock J.M. Lavorel S. et al.Combatting global degradation.Nat. Rev. Earth Environ. 2021; 2: 720-735Crossref Scopus (47) Google Scholar food security, sustainable development, directly hinders efforts with meeting goals targets...
Desertification is often characterized by the replacement of mesophytic grasses with xerophytic shrubs. Livestock grazing considered a key driver shrub encroachment, although most evidence anecdotal or confounded other factors. Mapping velvet mesquite (Prosopis velutina) shrubs in and out exclosures 1932, 1948, 2006 semiarid grasslands southeastern Arizona, USA, afforded opportunity to quantify livestock effects on proliferation over 74 years absence fire test widespread assumption that...
Plant phenology—timing of seasonal life cycle events—is a primary control on ecosystem productivity. Phenology data can be used to design better management systems by adjusting the timing grazing or managed burns relative growth stages key species and planning restoration activities, such as targeted grazing. Tower-mounted digital cameras (phenocams) provide cost-effective way collect capture phenology metrics for vegetation greenness. Phenocam greenness values canopy-level in real time...
Abstract Vegetation change in drylands can influence wind erosion and sand dust storms (SDS) with far‐reaching consequences for Earth systems society. Although vegetation is recognized as an important control on SDS, the interactions are not well described at landscape level or context of dryland ecosystem change. The transition sites from one ecological state to another (e.g., grassland shrubland) typically associated changes composition, cover, structure vegetation, which drag partitioning...
Abstract. Vegetation phenology plays a significant role in driving seasonal patterns land-atmosphere interactions and ecosystem productivity, is key factor to consider when modeling or investigating ecological land-surface dynamics. To integrate research ultimately requires the application of carefully curated quality controlled phenological datasets that span multiple years include wide range different ecosystems plant functional types. By using digital cameras record images canopies every...
Mahalanobis Distance (D2) Statistic is a multivariate statistical method that has been used to model habitats occupied by wildlife and plant species. The output, whether standardized squared distance or probability values, represents the similarity of given set values with those an optimum habitat configuration defined exclusively sites where species interest known occur. Typically, all principal components nonzero eigenvalues are calculate D2 values. We partitioned into contributions from...
Abstract Frequency and severity of extreme climatic events are forecast to increase in the 21st century. Predicting how managed ecosystems may respond extremes is intensified by uncertainty associated with knowing when, where, long effects will be manifest an ecosystem. In water‐limited high inter‐annual variability rainfall, it important able distinguish responses that result from seasonal fluctuations rainfall long‐term directional increases or decreases precipitation. A tool successfully...
Effective measurement of seasonal variations in the timing and amount production is critical to managing spatially heterogeneous agroecosystems a changing climate. Although numerous technologies for such measurements are available, their relationships one another at continental extent unknown. Using data collected from across Long-Term Agroecosystem Research (LTAR) network other networks, we investigated correlations among key metrics representing primary production, phenology, carbon fluxes...
Near-surface cameras, such as those in the PhenoCam network, are a common source of ground truth data modelling and remote sensing studies. Despite having locations across numerous agricultural sites, few studies have used near-surface cameras to track unique phenology croplands. Due management activities, crops do not natural vegetation cycle which many phenological extraction methods based on. For example, field may experience abrupt changes due harvesting tillage throughout year. A single...
Proliferation of woody plants in grasslands and savannas is a persistent problem globally. This widely observed shift from grass to shrub dominance rangelands worldwide has been heterogeneous space time largely due cross-scale interactions among soils, climate, land-use history. Our objective was use hierarchical framework evaluate the relationship between spatial patterns soil properties long-term dynamics northern Chihuahuan Desert New Mexico, USA. To meet this objective, patch 1937 2008...
The Earth is a complex system comprising many interacting spatial and temporal scales. We developed transdisciplinary data-model integration (TDMI) approach to understand, predict, manage for these dynamics that focuses on spatiotemporal modeling cross-scale interactions. Our employs human-centered machine-learning strategies supported by data science (DSIS). Applied ecological problems, our integrates knowledge (a) biological processes, (b) heterogeneity in the land surface template, (c)...