Search USGS⌕ Search

Geology topics

Wynne Emily Moss

Publications and source records attributed to Wynne Emily Moss.

8 recordsLinked to original sources
USGS2026

Annual grass invasion is transforming the sagebrush biome’s songbird communities

Novel stressors like climate change and biological invasions alter ecological communities, resulting in changes to ecosystem services and biodiversity (that is, ecological transformation). Most ecological transformation research focuses on plants, but animals are likely affected by and plausibly mediate the extent, impact, and pace of transformations. In western North America, where invasive annual grasses are transforming sagebrush-steppe ecosystems, we quantified how transformation in vegetation drives songbird community change. We hypothesized that transformation of vegetation communities via invasion alters wildlife communities by favoring generalists over specialists, albeit with extinction debts that may temporarily obscure transformations’ consequences. Although local-scale songbird diversity increased with grass invasion, we found that this shift was accompanied by ongoing reorganization of songbird communities at larger scales (across the sagebrush biome), driven by heterogeneous impacts of invasion among species and guilds. Through our biome-wide analysis, we were also able to identify high-priority regions for conservation of sensitive songbird species. Our research provides evidence that wildlife communities are transforming alongside vegetation communities and offers insight into the approaches required to quantify nascent community turnover.

western United States↗
USGS2025

Drought and deluge— Opportunities for climate-change adaptation in US national parks

In a changing climate, resource management depends on anticipating changes and considering uncertainties. To facilitate effective decision making on public lands, we regionally summarized the magnitude and uncertainty of projected change in management-relevant climate variables for 332 national park units across the contiguous US. Temperature, frequency of extreme precipitation events, and drought exposure are all projected to increase within seven regions delineated in the US National Climate Assessment. In particular, the anticipated collective impacts of droughts and flooding events will lead to unique management challenges, including combinations of management actions that may seem inconsistent. Furthermore, uncertainty in the magnitude of change varied by region and climate variable considered, pointing to specific opportunities for prioritization, transferability, and innovation of climate adaptation regionally and at the park-unit scale.

conterminous United States↗
USGS2025

Applying the resist-accept-direct (RAD) framework to wildlife health management

Wildlife diseases can have substantial impacts on wildlife populations as well as on human and domestic animal health and well-being. Although many agencies and stakeholders share a goal of supporting wildlife health, reducing wildlife disease burden is complicated by a scarcity of effective interventions for wildlife, competition for funds, and conflicting priorities. As a result, agencies are unlikely to avoid the impacts of wildlife diseases in all contexts and need to evaluate where resisting disease is most feasible and beneficial. The resist–accept–direct (RAD) framework is a tool that assists natural resource managers in exploring and communicating about management interventions, including in situations where resisting ecological changes may not be possible. In the present article, we discuss how the RAD framework could be adapted to wildlife disease contexts to address several outstanding challenges in wildlife health management.

BioScience↗
USGS2025

Ecological scenarios: Embracing ecological uncertainty in an era of global change

Scenarios, or plausible characterizations of the future, can help natural resource stewards plan and act under uncertainty. Current methods for developing scenarios for climate change adaptation planning are often focused on exploring uncertainties in future climate, but new approaches are needed to better represent uncertainties in ecological responses. Scenarios that characterize how ecological changes may unfold in response to climate and describe divergent and surprising ecological outcomes can help natural resource stewards recognize signs of nascent ecological transformation and identify opportunities to intervene. Here, we offer principles and approaches for more fully integrating ecological uncertainties into the development of future scenarios. We provide examples of how specific qualitative and quantitative methods can be used to explore variation in ecological responses to a given climate future. We further highlight opportunities for ecological researchers to generate actionable projections that capture uncertainty in both climatic and ecological change in meaningful and manageable ways to support climate change adaptation decision making.

Nebraska↗
USGS2025

The effectiveness of harvest for limiting wildlife disease: Insights from 20 years of chronic wasting disease in Wyoming

Effective, practical options for managing disease in wildlife populations are limited, especially after diseases become established. Removal strategies (e.g., hunting or culling) are used to control wildlife diseases across a wide range of systems, despite conflicting evidence of their effectiveness. This is especially true for chronic wasting disease (CWD), an untreatable, fatal prion disease threatening cervid populations across multiple countries, for which recreational harvest has been suggested as an important disease control strategy. Using observational data to evaluate whether harvest effectively limits CWD prevalence has been difficult because statistical relationships between harvest and disease prevalence can arise from a causal effect of harvest (i.e., harvest's impacts on prevalence via changes in transmission or demographic structure) or from a number of alternative mechanisms. For instance, correlations between harvest and disease prevalence can also be driven by disease's impacts on population size and harvest (i.e., reverse causality) or from confounding variables (e.g., habitat or geographic location) that impact both harvest rates and disease prevalence. We analyzed two decades of surveillance data (2000–2021) from 10 mule deer herds in Wyoming, using statistical approaches informed by causal inference theory, to test for the effects of harvest on CWD prevalence. Herds with consistently high harvest pressure across 20 years had significantly lower prevalence. Our models predicted that harvesting 40% of adult males per year across 20 years would maintain prevalence below 5% on average, whereas if only 20% of males were harvested in each year, prevalence would increase to >30% by year 20. Moreover, shifting the relative harvest pressure within a herd over a shorter period (3 years) reduced subsequent prevalence, albeit to a smaller degree. Although high harvest is unlikely to completely eradicate CWD, our analysis suggests that maintaining hunting pressure on adult males is an important tactic for slowing CWD epidemics within mule deer herds. Our study also provides guidance for future analyses of longitudinal surveillance data, including the importance of demographic data and appropriate time lags.

Wyoming↗
USGS2024

Drought as an emergent driver of ecological transformation in the twenty-first century

Under climate change, ecosystems are experiencing novel drought regimes, often in combination with stressors that reduce resilience and amplify drought’s impacts. Consequently, drought appears increasingly likely to push systems beyond important physiological and ecological thresholds, resulting in substantial changes in ecosystem characteristics persisting long after drought ends (i.e., ecological transformation). In the present article, we clarify how drought can lead to transformation across a wide variety of ecosystems including forests, woodlands, and grasslands. Specifically, we describe how climate change alters drought regimes and how this translates to impacts on plant population growth, either directly or through drought's interactions with factors such as land management, biotic interactions, and other disturbances. We emphasize how interactions among mechanisms can inhibit postdrought recovery and can shift trajectories toward alternate states. Providing a holistic picture of how drought initiates long-term change supports the development of risk assessments, predictive models, and management strategies, enhancing preparedness for a complex and growing challenge.

BioScience↗