Jennifer M Cartwright

Improving species status assessments under the U.S. Endangered Species Act and implications for multispecies conservation challenges worldwide

Despite its successes, the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA) has proven challenging to implement due to funding limitations, workload backlog, and other problems. As threats to species survival intensify and as more species come under threat, the need for the ESA and similar conservation laws and policies in other countries to function efficiently has grown. Attempts by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) to streamline ESA decisions include multispecies recovery plans and habitat conservation plans. We address species status assessment (SSA), a USFWS process to inform ESA decisions from listing to recovery, within the context of multispecies and ecosystem planning. Although existing SSAs have a single-species...

Categories: Publication; Types: Citation

Vernal Pool Inundation Models

This website provides an application for exploring modeling results from a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) project titled Mapping Climate Change Resistant Vernal Pools in the Northeastern U.S. The purpose of this project was to improve understanding of the factors that control inundation patterns in vernal pools of the northeastern United States, so as to identify pools that might function as hydrologic refugia under climate change.

Final Report: Clarifying Science Needs for Southeastern Grasslands

Grasslands are important to the biodiversity of the southeastern United States and face a range of threats. Owing to decades of fire suppression, land-use change, and other human activities, total reduction of southeastern grasslands is estimated at 90%, upwards to 100% for some grassland types. Emerging threats to grasslands include climate change and invasive species. In response to these threats, grassland managers and researchers from across the Southeast, led by the Southeastern Grasslands Initiative and the U.S. Geological Survey, organized a multi-stakeholder workshop in January 2020 to provide a scientific needs assessment for grassland species and communities of conservation concern in the southeastern...

Categories: Publication; Types: Citation

The DEM geomorphology toolbox: tools for geomorphic and hydrologic analysis of digital elevation models, version 1.0

The DEM Geomorphology Toolbox enables users to derive geomorphic and hydrologic information from raster-based digital elevation models (DEMs). This toolbox contains the following tools: (1) Add Culverts, (2) Bank Slope, (3) Channel Depth, (4) Channel Slope, (5) Flow Network, (6) Rough Terrain, and (7) Slope-Area Index. Each tool includes detailed user instructions concerning data inputs, parameter settings, default settings, and output files. Please consult the DEM Geomorphology Toolbox Metadata and Instructional Guide for details.

This data release includes data-processing scripts, data products, and associated metadata for a study to model the hydrology of several hundred vernal pools (i.e., seasonal pools or ephemeral wetlands) across the northeastern United States. More information on this study is available from the project website. This data release consists of several components: (1) an input dataset and associated metadata document ("pool_inundation_observations_and_climate_and_landscape_data"); (2) an annotated R script which processes the input dataset, performs inundation modeling, and generates model predictions ("annotated_R_script_for_pool_inundation_modeling.R"); and (3) a model prediction dataset and associated metadata document...

Categories: Data; Types: Map Service, OGC WFS Layer, OGC WMS Layer, OGC WMS Service; Tags: Hydrology, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, All tags... New Jersey, New York, Northeast CASC, Other Water, Pennsylvania, USGS Science Data Catalog (SDC), Water Resources, Water, Coasts and Ice, West Virginia, Wetlands, environment, hydrology, inlandWaters, vernal pools, wetland ecosystems, Fewer tags