Woody plant reinvasion shortens the lifespan of grassland restoration treatments.

An important question in restoration ecology is whether restored ecological regimes are more vulnerable to transitions back to a degraded state. In woody-invaded grasslands, high-intensity fire can collapse woody plant communities and induce a shift back to a grass-dominated regime. Yet, legacies from woody-dominated regimes often persist and it remains unclear whether restored regimes are at heightened vulnerability to reinvasion.

Spatial and temporal activity patterns among sympatric tree-roosting bat species in an agriculturally dominated great plains landscape.

In agroecosystems, bats can provide a critical ecosystem service by consuming night-flying insect pests. However, many bats also face intense population pressures from human landscape modification, global change and novel diseases. To better understand the behavioral activity of different bat species with respect to space, time, habitat, and other bat species in this environment, we investigated species correlations in space and time over row crop agricultural fields.

Impact of Eastern Redcedar encroachment on water resources in the Nebraska Sandhills.

Worldwide, tree or shrub dominated woodlands have encroached into herbaceous dominated grasslands. While very few studies have evaluated the impact of Eastern Redcedar (redcedar) encroachment on the water budget, none have analyzed the impact on water quality. In this study, we evaluated the impact of redcedar encroachment on the water budget in the Nebraska Sand Hills and how the decreased streamflow would increase nitrate and atrazine concentrations in the Platte River.

Next-generation technologies unlock new possibilities to track rangeland productivity and quantify multi-scale conservation outcomes.

Historically, relying on plot-level inventories impeded our ability to quantify large-scale change in plant biomass, a key indicator of conservation practice outcomes in rangeland systems. Recent technological advances enable assessment at scales appropriate to inform management by providing spatially comprehensive estimates of productivity that are partitioned by plant functional group across all contiguous US rangelands. We partnered with the Sage Grouse and Lesser Prairie-Chicken Initiatives and the Nebraska Natural Legacy Project to demonstrate the ability of these new datasets to quantify multi-scale changes and heterogeneity in plant biomass following mechanical tree removal, prescribed fire, and prescribed grazing.