Using movement to inform conservation corridor design for Mojave desert tortoise.

Background: Preserving corridors for movement and gene flow among populations can assist in the recovery of threatened and endangered species. As human activity continues to fragment habitats, characterizing natural corridors is important in establishing and maintaining connectivity corridors within the anthropogenic development matrix. The Mojave desert tortoise () is a threatened species occupying a variety of habitats in the Mojave and Colorado Deserts.

Multiyear monitoring of survival following mitigation-driven translocation of a long-lived threatened reptile.

Translocation is used by managers to mitigate the negative impacts of development on species. Moving individuals to a new location is challenging, and many translocation attempts have failed. Robust, posttranslocation monitoring is therefore important for evaluating effects of translocation on target species.

Circuit-theory applications to connectivity science and conservation.

Conservation practitioners have long recognized ecological connectivity as a global priority for preserving biodiversity and ecosystem function. In the early years of conservation science, ecologists extended principles of island biogeography to assess connectivity based on source patch proximity and other metrics derived from binary maps of habitat. From 2006 to 2008, the late Brad McRae introduced circuit theory as an alternative approach to model gene flow and the dispersal or movement routes of organisms.

Management thresholds stemming from altered fire dynamics in present-day arid and semi-arid environments.

Changes in fire frequency, size, and severity are driving ecological transformations in many systems. In arid and semi-arid regions that are adapted to fire, long-term fire exclusion by managers leads to declines in fire frequency, altered fire size distribution, and increased proportion of high severity fires. In arid and semi-arid systems where fire was historically rare, factors such as invasion by highly combustible non-native plants elevate fire frequency and size, elevating mortality of native species.

Discriminating patterns and drivers of multiscale movement in herpetofauna: The dynamic and changing environment of the Mojave desert tortoise.

Changes to animal movement in response to human-induced changes to the environment are of growing concern in conservation. Most research on this problem has focused on terrestrial endotherms, but changes to herpetofaunal movement are also of concern given their limited dispersal abilities and specialized thermophysiological requirements. Animals in the desert region of the southwestern United States are faced with environmental alterations driven by development (e.

A new model of landscape-scale fire connectivity applied to resource and fire management in the Sonoran Desert, USA.

Understanding where and when on the landscape fire is likely to burn (fire likelihood) and the predicted responses of valued resources (fire effects) will lead to more effective management of wildfire risk in multiple ecosystem types. Fire is a contagious and highly unpredictable process, and an analysis of fire connectivity that incorporates stochasticity may help predict fire likelihood across large extents. We developed a model of fire connectivity based on electrical circuit theory, which is a probabilistic approach to modeling ecological flows.