Understanding the efficacy of passive (reduction or cessation of environmental stress) and active (typically involving planting or seeding) restoration strategies is important for the design of successful revegetation of degraded riparian habitat, but studies explicitly comparing restoration outcomes are uncommon. We sampled the understory herbaceous plant community of 103 riparian sites varying in age since restoration (0 to 39 years) and revegetation technique (active, passive, or none) to compare the utility of different approaches on restoration success across sites. We found that landform type, percent shade, and summer flow helped explain differences in the understory functional community across all sites. In passively restored sites, grass and forb cover and richness were inversely related to site age, but in actively restored sites forb cover and richness were inversely related to site age. Native cover and richness were lower with passive restoration compared to active restoration. Invasive species cover and richness were not significantly different across sites. Although some of our results suggest that active restoration would best enhance native species in degraded riparian areas, this work also highlights some of the context-dependency that has been found to mediate restoration outcomes. For example, since the effects of passive restoration can be quite rapid, this approach might be more useful than active restoration in situations where rapid dominance of pioneer species is required to arrest major soil loss through erosion. As a result, we caution against labeling one restoration technique as better than another. Managers should identify ideal restoration outcomes in the context of historic and current site characteristics (as well as a range of acceptable alternative states) and choose restoration approaches that best facilitate the achievement of revegetation goals.
The West Coast of the United States experienced variable and sometimes highly unusual oceanographic conditions between 2012 and 2015. In particular, a warm mass of surface water known as the Pacific Warm Anomaly (popularly as "TheBlob") impinged on s...
Stabeno, P. J.; Duffy-Anderson, J. T.; Eisner, L. B.; Farley, E. V.; Heintz, R. A.; Mordy, C. W.;
Published Date:
2017
Source:
PLOS ONE
Description:
From 2007 to 2013, the southeastern Bering Sea was dominated by extensive sea ice and below-average ocean temperatures. In 2014 there was a shift to reduced sea ice on the southern shelf and above-average ocean temperatures. These conditions continue...
Buildings and the atmosphere are intrinsically connected via cooling and heating systems. Global climate is projected to grow warmer, with an increasing fraction of the population living in urban centers. This introduces the challenge for new approac...
Fortune, S. M. E.; Koski, W. R.; Higdon, J. W.; Trites, A. W.; Baumgartner, M. F.; Ferguson, S. H.;
Published Date:
2017
Source:
PLOS ONE
Description:
Bowhead whales (Balaena mysticetus) have a nearly circumpolar distribution, and occasionally occupy warmer shallow coastal areas during summertime that may facilitate molting. However, relatively little is known about the occurrence of molting and as...
Sub-seasonal to seasonal weather and hydrological forecasts have the potential to provide vital information for a variety of water-related decision makers. Here, we investigate the skill of four sub-seasonal forecast models from phase-2 of the North ...
Chen, F.; Xu, X. Y.; Barlage, M.; Rasmussen, R.; Shen, S. H.; Miao, S. G.; Zhou, G. S.;
Published Date:
2018
Source:
Environmental Research Letters
Description:
Irrigation modifies land-surface water and energy budgets, and also influences weather and climate. However, current earth-system models, used for weather prediction and climate projection, are still in their infancy stage to consider irrigation effe...
Taylor, B. L.; Rojas-Bracho, L.; Moore, J.; Jaramillo-Legorreta, A.; Hoef, J. M. V.; Cardenas-Hinojosa, G.; Nieto-Garcia, E.; Barlow, J.; Gerrodette, T.; Tregenza, N.; Thomas, L.; Hammond, P. S.;
Published Date:
2017
Source:
Conservation Letters
Description:
The number of Mexico's endemic porpoise, the vaquita (Phocoena sinus), is collapsing primarily due to bycatch in illegal gillnets set for totoaba (Totoaba macdonaldi), an endangered fish whose swim bladders are exported to China. Previous research es...
Carbon uptake by the oceans and terrestrial biosphere regulates atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration and affects Earth's climate, yet global carbon cycle projections over the next century are highly uncertain. Here, we quantify and isolate the so...
Rapid environmental change is altering the selective pressures experienced by marine species. While adaptation to local environmental conditions depends on a balance between dispersal and natural selection across the seascape, the spatial scale of ad...
Andruszkiewicz, E. A.; Starks, H. A.; Chavez, F. P.; Sassoubre, L. M.; Block, B. A.; Boehm, A. B.;
Published Date:
2017
Source:
PLOS ONE
Description:
Molecular analysis of environmental DNA (eDNA) can be used to assess vertebrate biodiversity in aquatic systems, but limited work has applied eDNA technologies to marine waters. Further, there is limited understanding of the spatial distribution of v...
The United States Virgin Islands are comprised of two separate insular platforms separated by the deep water Anegada Passage. Although managed by the same regulations, as one fishery, several physical and spatial differences exist between the two nor...
Krause, D. J.; Hinke, J. T.; Perryman, W. L.; Goebel, M. E.; LeRoi, D. J.;
Published Date:
2017
Source:
PLOS ONE
Description:
Measurements of body size and mass are fundamental to pinniped population management and research. Manual measurements tend to be accurate but are invasive and logistically challenging to obtain. Ground-based photogrammetric techniques are less invas...
Cameron, M. F.; Frost, K. J.; Ver Hoef, J. M.; Breed, G. A.; Whiting, A. V.; Goodwin, J.; Boveng, P. L.;
Published Date:
2018
Source:
PLOS ONE
Description:
The first year of life is typically the most critical to a pinniped's survival, especially for Arctic phocids which are weaned at only a few weeks of age and left to locate and capture prey on their own. Their seasonal movements and habitat selection...
Wallace, J. C.; Youngblood, J. E.; Port, J. A.; Cullen, A. C.; Smith, M. N.; Workman, T.; Faustman, E. M.;
Published Date:
2018
Source:
PLOS ONE
Description:
Whole-metagenome sequencing (WMS) has emerged as a powerful tool to assess potential public health risks in marine environments by measuring changes in microbial community structure and function in uncultured bacteria. In addition to monitoring publi...
Everett, M. V.; Park, L. K.; Berntson, E. A.; Elz, A. E.; Whitmire, C. E.; Keller, A. A.; Clarke, M. E.;
Published Date:
2016
Source:
PLOS ONE
Description:
Deep-sea corals are a critical component of habitat in the deep-sea, existing as regional hotspots for biodiversity, and are associated with increased assemblages of fish, including commercially important species. Because sampling these species is so...
Young, H.; Nigro, K.; McCauley, D. J.; Ballance, L. T.; Oleson, E. M.; Baumann-Pickering, S.;
Published Date:
2017
Source:
PLOS ONE
Description:
Understanding trophic relationships among marine predators in remote environments is challenging, but it is critical to understand community structure and dynamics. In this study, we used stable isotope analysis of skin biopsies to compare the isotop...
Vogt, D. M.; Becker, K. P.; Phillips, B. T.; Graule, M. A.; Rotjan, R. D.; Shank, T. M.; Cordes, E. E.; Wood, R. J.; Gruber, D. F.;
Published Date:
2018
Source:
PLOS ONE
Description:
Soft robotics is an emerging technology that has shown considerable promise in deep-sea marine biological applications. It is particularly useful in facilitating delicate interactions with fragile marine organisms. This study describes the shipboard ...
The annual return of beluga whales, Delphinapterus leucas, to traditional seasonal locations across the Arctic may involve migratory culture, while the convergence of discrete summering aggregations on common wintering grounds may facilitate outbreed...
Waters, Charles D.; Hard, Jeffrey J.; Brieuc, Marine S. O.; Fast, David E.; Warheit, Kenneth I.; Knudsen, Curtis M.; Bosch, William J.; Naish, Kerry A.;
Published Date:
2018
Source:
Evol Appl. 2018 Jul; 11(6): 853–868.
Description:
A novel application of genomewide association analyses is to use trait‐associated loci to monitor the effects of conservation strategies on potentially adaptive genetic variation. Comparisons of fitness between captive‐ and wild‐origin individu...