Geology topics

Tara B. Bishop

Publications and source records attributed to Tara B. Bishop.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

USGS2026

Building resilience in dryland ecosystems: A climate adaptation strategy menu for pinyon–juniper woodlands

Pinyon–juniper (PJ) woodlands, one of the most extensive mature and old-growth woodland types in the Western United States, provide critical ecological, cultural, and economic benefits but face increasing threats from climate change, altered disturbance regimes, invasive species, and pests. We developed the PJ Woodland Climate Adaptation Management Menu, a decision support tool designed to guide adaptive, climate-informed management of PJ ecosystems, particularly within the Colorado Plateau ecoregion. The menu was created through an iterative, collaborative process involving literature review, integration of strategies from existing adaptation frameworks, and extensive input from scientists, land managers, and community partners during workshops and focus groups. The menu links specific, evidence-based approaches to each of six broad strategies, including soliciting community input, mitigating disturbance, enhancing and maintaining biodiversity, conserving ecotones, timing actions for optimal outcomes, and accepting climate-driven changes when appropriate. It is intended for use with the Adaptation Workbook to help managers connect local goals and climate vulnerabilities to tailored management tactics. Hypothetical scenarios demonstrate the menu’s application to contrasting PJ woodland conditions, from die-off events to old-growth maintenance. Lessons learned during development underscore the value of early stakeholder engagement, cross-sector collaboration, and balancing diverse ecological objectives. This menu offers a flexible, transferable framework to strengthen climate resilience in PJ woodlands and serves as a model that could improve adaptation planning in other dryland forest ecosystems.

Forests↗

USGS2026

Advances and applications of Unoccupied Aerial Systems (UAS) research in landscape ecology

Landscape ecologists have long depended on satellite and aerial remote sensing to address questions about landscape pattern and process, structure, and change (Foody 2023 ). Unoccupied aerial systems/vehicles (UAS/UAV, a.k.a. drones) technology is becoming an increasingly popular research tool in environmental sciences allowing scientists to generate low-cost, high-quality, and high-resolution imagery on demand that can be tailored to specific research questions. While satellite data are of a fixed resolution and temporal interval, UAS offer researchers control and flexibility to design studies and collect data at resolutions and scales that provide ecologically relevant information at finer spatial resolutions (e.g., < 30 cm) than what is currently available from satellite platforms (typically > 3m), thus helping capture objects such as individual plant canopies, micro-topography, and individual animals. Unlike satellites with fixed orbits, UAS can be deployed at more optimal temporal frequencies for ecological monitoring. We organized the special collection “Advances and Applications of Unoccupied Aerial Systems (UAS) Research in Landscape Ecology” to showcase the many ways that UAS tools and technologies are currently applied to advance landscape ecological research. When we announced the collection in 2023, only 11 papers published in the journal Landscape Ecology used UAS data, which was a notably small number compared to many other general ecology, environmental science and remote sensing journals. In an attempt to understand why UAS were not more widely used in landscape ecology and provide possible solutions, we published a review article (Villarreal et al. 2025) that identified the challenges, knowledge gaps, and obstacles for the adoption of UAS technologies in landscape ecology research. The main issues we identified include: (1) an abundance of UAS methods papers in the existing literature, with comparatively few studies demonstrating how UAS can be applied to address ecological questions; (2) a perceived scale mismatch between the geographic extent of UAS data collection (local) compared to larger study areas (landscapes) and a need to design robust scaling approaches to connect fine-scale UAS data with broader ecological patterns; and (3) a need for improved integration of UAS data with other commonly used remote sensing datasets including historical high resolution aerial imagery. Additionally, researchers new to UAS remote sensing may be discouraged or overwhelmed by the general lack of scientific consensus and standardized protocols for typical tasks such as data collection, vegetation classification, and change detection, as well as restrictive and/or confusing policy, regulatory, and legal issues surrounding UAS operations (Villarreal et al. 2025).

Landscape Ecology↗

USGS2025

Mapping ecological states in the upper Colorado River basin: Implications for fire management

Spatially explicit information on ecosystem dynamics that offers a mechanistic understanding of ecological processes can benefit environmental management. Broad-scale maps based on state-and-transition models provide valuable insight into transitions among ecological states resulting from specific drivers within areas sharing similar climatic and edaphic characteristics ecological sites (ES). We aimed to quantify ecological dynamics of two ES groups in the Upper Colorado River Basin from 1986 to 2022 through annual maps of ecological states and assess potential drivers of observed state change. This region comprises important sagebrush shrublands and pinyon-juniper woodlands affected by non-native annual grass invasion, wildfires, and drought-induced tree mortality. Using field-based and remote sensing data, we modeled vegetation states using random forest models and mapped the states annually from 1986 to 2022. To demonstrate the utility of the state maps for monitoring and management, we used this time series of maps to investigate the influences of fire and drought on state occurrence. Our findings revealed a statistically significant increase in states invaded by non-native annual species (Invaded state), which replaced Grassland and Shrubland states, while Shrubland states decreased significantly, transitioning to invaded and Woodland states. Invaded states had the highest likelihood of burning, followed by Woodlands. Drought was associated with increased area of Grassland and Bare states, but with decreased area of invaded and Shrubland states. These results indicate an accelerating fire cycle is potentially leading to ongoing regional environmental degradation. Despite increasing drought conditions during the study period, the invaded states continued to increase in area, indicating additional underlying mechanisms. Our reproducible, broad-scale, ecologically-driven state mapping process enhances understanding of how drought, fire, and invasion by non-native plants can transform semiarid landscapes of the western USA.

Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming↗