Treesearch

Background: The movement behavior of an animal is determined by extrinsic and intrinsic factors that operate at multiple spatio-temporal scales, yet much of our knowledge of animal movement comes from studies that examine only one or two scales concurrently. Understanding the drivers of animal movement across multiple scales is crucial for understanding the fundamentals of movement ecology, predicting changes in distribution, describing disease dynamics, and identifying efficient methods of wildlife conservation and management. Methods: We obtained over 400,000 GPS locations of wild pigs...

Knowledge of population density is necessary for effective management and conservation of wildlife, yet rarely are estimators compared in their robustness to effects of ecological and observational processes, which can greatly influence accuracy and precision of density estimates. In this study, we simulate biological and observational processes using empirical data to assess effects of animal scale of movement, true population density, and probability of detection on common density estimators. We also apply common data collection and analytical techniques in the field and evaluate their...

As a result of substantial ecological and economic damage attributed to wild pigs (Sus scrofa), there is international interest in using pharmaceutical baits to control populations. To assess the efficacy and specificity of baiting programs, chemical biomarkers can be used to evaluate uptake of pharmaceutical baits. Rhodamine B (RB) is known to be an effective biomarker in wild pigs. However, significant data gaps exist regarding the minimum effective dosage and persistence of RB in wild pigs. We used a controlled double‐blind study experiment conducted in spring of 2014 on the Savannah...

Effects of cypress knee roughness on flow resistance and discharge estimates of the Turkey Creek watershed. In this study effects of cypress knees as vegetation resistance factor on Turkey Creek watershed discharge calculation were analyzed. The Turkey Creek watershed is a 3rd order stream system draining an approximate area of 5,240 ha. It is located at 33°08' N latitude and 79°47' W longitude, approximately 60 km north-west of City of Charleston in South Carolina (USA). Turkey Creek (WS 78) is typical of other watersheds in the south Atlantic coastal plain. In the case of Turkey Creek...

Quantifying species-habitat relationships provides guidance for establishment of recovery standards for endangered species, but research on forest bird habitat has been limited by availability of fine-grained forest structure data across broad extents. New tools for collection of data on forest bird response to fine-grained forest structure provide opportunities to evaluate habitat thresholds for forest birds. We used LiDAR-derived estimates of habitat attributes and resource selection to evaluate foraging habitat thresholds for recovery of the federally endangered red-cockaded woodpecker...

Current research has shown that urban trees can contribute significantly to stormwater volume control by retaining rainfall in the canopy of trees and increasing infiltration. The potential role of urban trees for stormwater design was evaluated at a proof-of-concept level for a planning study of part of the University of Wisconsin (UW)—Madison campus in 2016. There is currently no regulatory stormwater performance credit for trees in Wisconsin, and the effects of urban trees are not simulated by WinSLAMM or other common design models. The purpose of this project is to demonstrate a simple...

The consistent sporadic transmission of West Nile Virus (WNV) in the city of New Orleans justifies the need for distribution risk maps highlighting human risk of mosquito bites. We modeled the influence of biophysical and socioeconomic metrics on the spatio-temporal distributions of presence/vector-host contact (VHC) ratios of WNV vector, Culex quinquefasciatus, within their flight range. Biophysical and socioeconomic data were extracted within 5-km buffer radii around sampling localities of gravid female Culex quinquefasciatus. The spatio-temporal correlations between VHC data and 33...

Weather is an important factor for air quality. While there have been increasing attentions to long-term (monthly and seasonal) air pollution such as regional hazes from land-clearing fires during El Niño, the weather-air quality relationships are much less understood at long-term than short-term (daily and weekly) scales. This study is aimed to fill this gap through analyzing correlations between meteorological variables and air quality at various timescales. A regional correlation scale was defined to measure the longest time with significant correlations at a substantial large number of...

New forests are expanding around the world. In many regions, regrowth rates are surpassing deforestation rates, resulting in “forest transitions,” or net gains in forest cover. Typically measured only in terms of aggregate“'forest cover” change, these new forests are ecologically distinct from each other and from those originally cleared. We ask, what are the ecological attributes, goods, and services we might expect from different pathways of forest recovery? To address this question, we proposed a typology of forest transitions that reflects both their social drivers and ecological...

The recreational opportunities available across landscapes of the Southern United States can be broad and diverse, and collectively are considered a subset of cultural ecosystem services. In describing the settings of recreational opportunities, a number of methods have been proposed that are based in part on geographic information and that can be facilitated by geographical analyses. Presented here are two expedient and cost-effective methods for assessing the recreation supply potential of large, heavily-roaded areas that are situated mainly with privately-owned land in the Southern...