Heceta Bank is a large reef on the edge of the central Oregon continental shelf that supports a wide variety of commercial fisheries. Using the research submersible Delta, we studied fish abundances on Heceta Bank and the relationship between species composition of fish assemblages and bottom types. Cluster analysis indicated...
OBJECTIVES: Students, faculty, and staff at a Pacific Northwest public university were surveyed one year after
enactment of a smoke-free campus policy. Objectives were to assess levels of support for a smoke-free campus,
ascertain exposure levels to outdoor tobacco smoke, and identify correlates of policy support.
METHOD: A 2013 Web-based...
Despite the importance of fodder shrubs to small ruminant diets and production in arid and semi-arid ecosystems, they are often not considered when quantifying grazing land potential. This oversight is mainly due to the time consuming and costly traditional techniques used to estimate shrub biomass. The shrub fodder component should...
When large carnivores are extirpated from ecosystems that evolved with apex predators, these systems can change at the herbivore and plant trophic levels. Such changes across trophic levels are called cascading effects and they are very important to conservation. Studies on the effects of reintroduced wolves in Yellowstone National Park...
The biosonar system of dolphins and porpoises has been studied for about 5 decades and much has
been learned [Au,W.W. L. )1993). The Sonar of Dolphins (Springer, New York)]. Most experiments
have involved human-made targets; little is known about odontocetes’ echolocation of prey. To
address this issue, acoustic backscatter from...
Climate change poses known and unknown risks for coastal communities and also challenges for university faculty and local government staff who communicate about climate sciences. Conceived as a way to move beyond traditional models of science communication, this project involved public and private decision makers in specific at-risk communities in...
Marine prey often occur in hierarchical mosaics whereby small, high-density patches
are nested inside of larger, lower density aggregations. We tested the extent to which the foraging
behavior of a marine predator (northern fur seal Callorhinus ursinus) could be explained by the
hierarchical patch structure of a dominant prey species...
Little is known about biophysical controls on soil respiration in California’s Sierra Nevada oldgrowth, mixed-conifer forests. Using portable and automated soil respiration sampling units, we measured soil respiration rate (SRR) in three dominant patch types: closed canopy (CC), ceanothus-dominated patches (CECO), and open canopy (OC). SRR varied significantly among the...
During the 2008 and 2009 breeding seasons of murres Uria spp., we combined visual observations of these predators with active acoustics (sonar), fish trawls, zooplankton net tows, and hydrographic measurements in the area surrounding breeding colonies in the southeastern Bering Sea. We acoustically detected thousands of bubble trails that were...
The ability to estimate and monitor standing dead trees (snags) has been difficult due to their irregular and sparse distribution, often requiring intensive sampling methods to obtain statistically significant estimates. This study presents a new method for estimating and monitoring snags using neighborhood attribute filtered airborne discrete-return lidar data. The...