Browsing by Author "Derner, Justin D."

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    A big data-model integration approach for predicting epizootics and population recovery in a keystone species
    Barrile, Gabriel M.; Augustine, David J.; Porensky, Lauren M.; Duchardt, Courtney J.; Shoemaker, Kevin T.; Hartway, Cynthia R.; Derner, Justin D.; Hunter, Elizabeth A.; Davidson, Ana D. (Wiley, 2023-02)
    Infectious diseases pose a significant threat to global health and biodiversity. Yet, predicting the spatiotemporal dynamics of wildlife epizootics remains challenging. Disease outbreaks result from complex nonlinear interactions among a large collection of variables that rarely adhere to the assumptions of parametric regression modeling. We adopted a nonparametric machine learning approach to model wildlife epizootics and population recovery, using the disease system of colonial black-tailed prairie dogs (BTPD, Cynomys ludovicianus) and sylvatic plague as an example. We synthesized colony data between 2001 and 2020 from eight USDA Forest Service National Grasslands across the range of BTPDs in central North America. We then modeled extinctions due to plague and colony recovery of BTPDs in relation to complex interactions among climate, topoedaphic variables, colony characteristics, and disease history. Extinctions due to plague occurred more frequently when BTPD colonies were spatially clustered, in closer proximity to colonies decimated by plague during the previous year, following cooler than average temperatures the previous summer, and when wetter winter/springs were preceded by drier summers/falls. Rigorous cross-validations and spatial predictions indicated that our final models predicted plague outbreaks and colony recovery in BTPD with high accuracy (e.g., AUC generally > 0.80). Thus, these spatially explicit models can reliably predict the spatial and temporal dynamics of wildlife epizootics and subsequent population recovery in a highly complex host-pathogen system. Our models can be used to support strategic management planning (e.g., plague mitigation) to optimize benefits of this keystone species to associated wildlife communities and ecosystem functioning. This optimization can reduce conflicts among different landowners and resource managers, as well as economic losses to the ranching industry. More broadly, our big data-model integration approach provides a general framework for spatially explicit forecasting of disease-induced population fluctuations for use in natural resource management decision-making.
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    Linking soil microbial community structure to potential carbon mineralization: A continental scale assessment of reduced tillage
    Rieke, Elizabeth L.; Cappellazzi, Shannon B.; Cope, Michael; Liptzin, Daniel; Mac Bean, G.; Greub, Kelsey L. H.; Norris, Charlotte E.; Tracy, Paul W.; Aberle, Ezra; Ashworth, Amanda; Banuelos Tavarez, Oscar; Bary, Andy, I; Baumhardt, R. L.; Borbon Gracia, Alberto; Brainard, Daniel C.; Brennan, Jameson R.; Briones Reyes, Dolores; Bruhjell, Darren; Carlyle, Cameron N.; Crawford, James J. W.; Creech, Cody F.; Culman, Steve W.; Deen, Bill; Dell, Curtis J.; Derner, Justin D.; Ducey, Thomas F.; Duiker, Sjoerd W.; Dyck, Miles F.; Ellert, Benjamin H.; Espinosa Solorio, Avelino; Fonte, Steven J.; Fonteyne, Simon; Fortuna, Ann-Marie; Foster, Jamie L.; Fultz, Lisa M.; Gamble, Audrey, V; Geddes, Charles M.; Griffin-LaHue, Deirdre; Grove, John H.; Hamilton, Stephen K.; Hao, Xiying; Hayden, Zachary D.; Honsdorf, Nora; Howe, Julie A.; Ippolito, James A.; Johnson, Gregg A.; Kautz, Mark A.; Kitchen, Newell R.; Kumar, Sandeep; Kurtz, Kirsten S. M.; Larney, Francis J.; Lewis, Katie L.; Liebman, Matt; Lopez Ramirez, Antonio; Machado, Stephen; Maharjan, Bijesh; Martinez Gamino, Miguel Angel; May, William E.; McClaran, Mitchel P.; McDaniel, Marshall D.; Millar, Neville; Mitchell, Jeffrey P.; Moore, Amber D.; Moore, Philip A.; Mora Gutierrez, Manuel; Nelson, Kelly A.; Omondi, Emmanuel C.; Osborne, Shannon L.; Osorio Alcala, Leodegario; Owens, Philip; Pena-Yewtukhiw, Eugenia M.; Poffenbarger, Hanna J.; Ponce Lira, Brenda; Reeve, Jennifer R.; Reinbott, Timothy M.; Reiter, Mark S.; Ritchey, Edwin L.; Roozeboom, Kraig L.; Rui, Yichao; Sadeghpour, Amir; Sainju, Upendra M.; Sanford, Gregg R.; Schillinger, William F.; Schindelbeck, Robert R.; Schipanski, Meagan E.; Schlegel, Alan J.; Scow, Kate M.; Sherrod, Lucretia A.; Shober, Amy L.; Sidhu, Sudeep S.; Solis Moya, Ernesto; St Luce, Mervin; Strock, Jeffrey S.; Suyker, Andrew E.; Sykes, Virginia R.; Tao, Haiying; Trujillo Campos, Alberto; Van Eerd, Laura L.; Verhulst, Nele; Vyn, Tony J.; Wang, Yutao; Watts, Dexter B.; William, Bryan B.; Wright, David L.; Zhang, Tiequan; Morgan, Cristine L. S.; Honeycutt, C. Wayne (Pergamon-Elsevier, 2022-05)
    Potential carbon mineralization (Cmin) is a commonly used indicator of soil health, with greater Cmin values interpreted as healthier soil. While Cmin values are typically greater in agricultural soils managed with minimal physical disturbance, the mechanisms driving the increases remain poorly understood. This study assessed bacterial and archaeal community structure and potential microbial drivers of Cmin in soils maintained under various degrees of physical disturbance. Potential carbon mineralization, 16S rRNA sequences, and soil characterization data were collected as part of the North American Project to Evaluate Soil Health Measurements (NAPESHM). Results showed that type of cropping system, intensity of physical disturbance, and soil pH influenced microbial sensitivity to physical disturbance. Furthermore, 28% of amplicon sequence variants (ASVs), which were important in modeling Cmin, were enriched under soils managed with minimal physical disturbance. Sequences identified as enriched under minimal disturbance and important for modeling Cmin, were linked to organisms which could produce extracellular polymeric substances and contained metabolic strategies suited for tolerating environmental stressors. Understanding how physical disturbance shapes microbial communities across climates and inherent soil properties and drives changes in Cmin provides the context necessary to evaluate management impacts on standardized measures of soil microbial activity.
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    Managing for the middle: rancher care ethics under uncertainty on Western Great Plains rangelands
    Wilmer, Hailey; Fernández‑Giménez, María E.; Ghajar, Shayan; Taylor, Peter Leigh; Souza, Caridad; Derner, Justin D. (2019-12)
    Ranchers and pastoralists worldwide manage and depend upon resources from rangelands (which support indigenous vegetation with the potential for grazing) across Earth's terrestrial surface. In the Great Plains of North America rangeland ecology has increasingly recognized the importance of managing rangeland vegetation heterogeneity to address conservation and production goals. This paradigm, however, has limited application for ranchers as they manage extensive beef production operations under high levels of social-ecological complexity and uncertainty. We draw on the ethics of care theoretical framework to explore how ranchers choose management actions. We used modified grounded theory analysis of repeated interviews with ranchers to (1) compare rancher decision-making under relatively certain and uncertain conditions and (2) describe a typology of practices used to prioritize and choose management actions that maintain effective stewardship of these often multi-generational ranches. We contrast traditional decision-making frameworks with those described by interviewees when high levels of environmental and market uncertainty or ecological complexity led ranchers toward use of care-based, flexible and relational frameworks for decision-making. Ranchers facing complexity and uncertainty often sought "middle-ground" strategies to balance multiple, conflicting responsibilities in rangeland social-ecological systems. For example, ranchers' care-based decision-making leads to conservative stocking approaches to "manage for the middle," e.g. to limit risk under uncertain weather and forage availability conditions. Efforts to promote heterogeneity-based rangeland management for biodiversity conservation through the restoration of patch burn grazing and prairie dog conservation will require increased valuation of ranchers' care work.