Trending against the grain: Bird population responses to expanding energy portfolios in the US Northern Great Plains.

Future global energy demand may be met through increased extraction of fossil fuels and production of renewable energy such as biofuels. Renewable energy from biofuels is often proposed as an environmentally friendly alternative to fossil fuels; however, impacts of renewable energy sources on wildlife populations have rarely been evaluated in working landscapes. We used North American Breeding Bird Survey data (1998 to 2021) to assess whether the joint effects of oil and gas and biofuel crop production explained grassland bird population declines.

Data integration reveals dynamic and systematic patterns of breeding habitat use by a threatened shorebird.

Incorporating species distributions into conservation planning has traditionally involved long-term representations of habitat use where temporal variation is averaged to reveal habitats that are most suitable across time. Advances in remote sensing and analytical tools have allowed for the integration of dynamic processes into species distribution modeling. Our objective was to develop a spatiotemporal model of breeding habitat use for a federally threatened shorebird (piping plover, Charadrius melodus).

Capturing Spatiotemporal Patterns in Presence-Absence Data to Inform Monitoring and Sampling Designs for the Threatened Dakota Skipper (Lepidoptera: Hesperiidae) in the Great Plains of the United States.

Declines among species of insect pollinators, especially butterflies, has garnered attention from scientists and managers. Often these declines have spurred governments to declare some species as threatened or endangered. We used existing presence-absence data from surveys for the threatened Dakota skipper Hesperia dacotae (Skinner) to build statistical maps of species presence that could be used to inform future monitoring designs.