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- Disturbances shape assemblages and spatial patterns of flora and fauna across the globe, with many disturbances increasing in severity and extent because of anthropogenic climate change and changes in land use. Accurate disturbance mapping and attribution can aid conservation science and decision-making in this era of rapid environmental change, but doing so remains challenging at fine resolutions and broad spatial scales. Here we demonstrate a novel approach for integrating remote sensing products with the US Forest Service’s (USFS) Forest Activity Tracking System (FACTS) to map forest...AuthorsH. Anu Kramer, Elizabeth M. Ng, Jason M. Winiarski, Alexander Koltunov, Michèle R. Slaton, Gavin M. Jones, M. Zachariah PeeryKeywordsSourceForest Ecology and ManagementYear2026
- As human activity increases worldwide, many ecologists have focused on how anthropogenic linear features (ALFs) such as roads and fences impact and disrupt animal space-use behavior and how this disruption could potentially affect population viability. The properties of an animal’s occurrence distribution (OD), namely its size, shape, and habitat associations, reflect the animal’s balance of costs and benefits and thus can act as indirect indicators of behavioral optimality. Measuring deviations from theoretical space-use optimality can provide insight into the non-lethal effects of ALFs...AuthorsRonan Hart, Simona Picardi, Tal AvgarKeywordsSourceMovement EcologyYear2026
- Climate change, expanding human ignitions, and increased fuels from fire exclusion are driving increases in area burned and fire severity in dry conifer forests of the western United States. Increasing area burned is occurring against the backdrop of a large fire deficit caused by over a century of fire exclusion. A key land management question is whether historically frequent fire regimes can be restored. Accurate estimates of historical annual area burned (prior to circa 1900) are necessary to evaluate modern area burned (after circa 1900), but are difficult to derive, and have rarely...AuthorsC. A. Farris, E. Q. Margolis, Jose Iniguez, D. A. Falk, K. G. Gerow, C. H. Baisan, C. D. Allen, T. W. SwetnamKeywordsSourceEcosphereYear2026
- Climate change and fire exclusion have changed disturbance regimes in forest ecosystems globally. In many seasonally dry forests, fuels management can mitigate severe wildfire behavior and create more resilient forests. Yet concern that fuels management might simplify forests and adversely impact biodiversity, particularly older forest associated species, has constrained the pace and scale of fuels management efforts. The California spotted owl (Strix occidentalis occidentalis), emblematic of this conundrum, will likely face local and widespread extirpation if wildfires continue to...AuthorsKate McGinn, Gavin M. Jones, H. Anu Kramer, Sheila A. Whitmore, Jason M. Winiarski, Elizabeth Ming-Yue Ng, Connor M. Wood, Sarah C. Sawyer, Craig Thompson, M. Zachariah PeeryKeywordsSourceForest Ecology and ManagementYear2026
- Wildfire has been a fundamental component of ecosystem dynamics for millennia. However, climate change, fire suppression, and land use practices have produced larger, more severe, and more frequent fires that threaten a range of wildlife species. Land managers in some fire‐prone forest systems use fuels reduction treatments, including prescribed burning and mechanical thinning, to reduce vegetation density and the risk of large, high‐severity fires. The strategy is to create forest landscapes that are more resilient to wildfire, which in turn will lessen the negative impact of uncharacteris...AuthorsKate McGinn, M. Zachariah Peery, John J. Keane, Kevin Roberts, Brian Dotters, Sheila A. Whitmore, William J. Berigan, Lief R. Gallagher, Paula A. Shaklee, Thomas E. Munton, Ronan Hart, R. J. Gutiérrez, Gavin M. JonesKeywordsSourceWildlife MonographsYear2026
- Thousands of species across the globe are declining primarily due to habitat loss and conversion. Management actions aimed at habitat restoration can mitigate these effects, though the results are likely to vary across local habitat and climate conditions as well as throughout the lifetime of a species. Thus, it is imperative to examine how local habitat and climate context shape population responses to habitat management.In this study, we develop a modularized Bayesian population model that incorporates management, climate and habitat covariates for three life stages: egg, nestling and...AuthorsAna Miller‐ter Kuile, Kiona Ogle, Jonathan Dudley, Vicki A. Saab, Marilyn Wright, Jamie S. SanderlinKeywordsSourceJournal of Applied EcologyYear2026
- Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has nearly completed its infiltration within the tech spaces in our lives. Nowadays, you can seldom find an app on your smartphone or a piece of software on your computer that is not “AI-enabled”, offering shortcuts and summaries to save us time. Save me time, you say? Sign me up! As modern scientists, we find our time burdened with many tasks we’d like to avoid, which perhaps AI could take off our plates. That overdue annual report? Check. That cover letter to the Editor? Sure. Throughout history, advances in technology have created efficiencies...AuthorsGavin M. JonesSourceFrontiers in Ecology and the EnvironmentYear2026
- Understanding drivers of habitat loss and fragmentation can inform conservation policy and action. However, drivers vary across space and time, and complete datasets of potential drivers that align with time series of species habitat are rare. We developed a 38‐year time‐series of nesting/roosting habitat for the California spotted owl in the Sierra Nevada, CA, USA, and used a novel disturbance dataset to attribute habitat changes to potential drivers. We found that the total area of high‐quality nesting/roosting habitat declined by 43% between 1985 and 2022. Moreover, the average high‐qual...AuthorsRonan Hart, H. Anu Kramer, Josh Barry, M. Zachariah Peery, Stephanie Eyes, Craig Thompson, Sarah Sawyer, Gavin M. JonesKeywordsSourceConservation Science and PracticeYear2026
- The Convention on Biological Diversity’s Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) sets ambitious goals to protect and restore biodiversity. It includes a monitoring framework that mandates countries to track progress toward these goals using indicators that summarize biodiversity trends. Calculating indicators is challenging for countries because of fragmented biodiversity monitoring efforts, technical barriers, a lack of available data and tools, and capacity bottlenecks. The BON in a Box platform for biodiversity monitoring and indicator calculation, developed by the Group on...AuthorsJory Griffith, Jean-Michel Lord, Michael D Catchen, Maria Isabel Arce-Plata, F Guillaume Blanchet, Mathusan Chandramohan, M Camila Diaz-Corzo, Dominique Gravel, César Gutiérrez, Isabelle S Helfenstein, Sean Hoban, Jamie M Kass, Linda Laikre, Guillaume Larocque, Deborah M Leigh, Brian Leung, Alicia Mastretta-Yanes, Katie L Millette, Maria Alejandra Molina Berbeo, Dat Nguyen, Kari Norman, María Helena Olaya-Rodríguez, Simon Pahls, Kaitlyn Pereira, Pedro R Peres-Neto, Timothée Poisot, Laura J Pollock, Juan Carlos Rey-Velasco, Victor J Rincon-Parra, Claudia Roeoesli, François Rousseu, Lina María Sánchez-Clavijo, Meredith C Schuman, Oliver Selmoni, Jessica M da Silva, Erika Suarez-Valencia, Thilina D Surasinghe, Eren Turak, Luis Fernando Urbina, Sarah Valentin, Noah Wightman, Juan Zuloaga, Maria Cecilia Londoño, Andrew GonzalezKeywordsSourceBioScienceYear2026
- Mexican Spotted Owls (Strix occidentalis lucida) are a federally threatened subspecies of Spotted Owl that occupy forests and canyons across the Desert Southwest of the USA. While Mexican Spotted Owls in forest habitat are well studied, those occupying canyon habitats are underrepresented in the literature. We used data from callback surveys from 2001–2021 and autonomous recording units (ARUs) from 2019–2021 in a multi-method, multi-season occupancy model to assess long-term occupancy of 33 management units (called protected activity centers [PACs]) in Grand Canyon National Park. We...AuthorsKirsten Fuller, Gavin M. Jones, Miranda Terwilliger, Dana S. Reid, Jennyffer CruzKeywordsSourceJournal of Raptor ResearchYear2026