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Nathan Piekielek

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Hydrological Analysis of Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem Montane Meadow Condition using MODIS data
Locating meadow study sitesMeadow centers as recorded in the ‘Copy of sitecords_areaelev from Caruthers thesis.xls’ file delivered by Debinski in November 2012 were matched to polygons as recorded in files ‘teton97map_area.shp’ and ‘gallatin97map_area.shp’ both also delivered by Debinski in November 2012.In cases where the meadow center did not fall within a meadow polygon, if there was a meadow polygon of the same meadow TYPE nearby (judgment was used here), the meadow center was matched with the meadow polygon of same meadow TYPE. In total, 29 of 30 Gallatin meadow sites and 21 of 25 Teton meadow sites were positively located.Identifying meadow pixels for analysisThe native MODIS 250-meter grid was reprojected...
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Science and Forecasting to Inform Implementation of the Greater Yellowstone Coordinating Committee’s Whitebark Pine Management Strategy
The goal of this project was to inform implementation of the Greater Yellowstone Coordinating Committee (GYCC) Whitebark Pine (WBP) subcommittee’s “WBP Strategy” based on climate science and ecological forecasting. Project objectives were to: 1. Forecast ecosystem processes and WBP habitat suitability across the Greater Yellowstone Area (GYA) under alternative IPCC future scenarios; 2. Improve understanding of possible response to future climate by analyzing WBP/climate relationships in past millennia; 3. Develop WBP management alternatives; 4. Evaluate the alternatives under IPCC future scenarios in terms of WBP goals, ecosystem services, and costs of implementation; and 5. Draw recommendations for implementation...
Abstract (from http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0111669): Projected climate change at a regional level is expected to shift vegetation habitat distributions over the next century. For the sub-alpine species whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis), warming temperatures may indirectly result in loss of suitable bioclimatic habitat, reducing its distribution within its historic range. This research focuses on understanding the patterns of spatiotemporal variability for future projected P.albicaulis suitable habitat in the Greater Yellowstone Area (GYA) through a bioclimatic envelope approach. Since intermodel variability from General Circulation Models (GCMs) lead to differing predictions...
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Locating meadow study sitesMeadow centers as recorded in the ‘Copy of sitecords_areaelev from Caruthers thesis.xls’ file delivered by Debinski in November 2012 were matched to polygons as recorded in files ‘teton97map_area.shp’ and ‘gallatin97map_area.shp’ both also delivered by Debinski in November 2012.In cases where the meadow center did not fall within a meadow polygon, if there was a meadow polygon of the same meadow TYPE nearby (judgment was used here), the meadow center was matched with the meadow polygon of same meadow TYPE. In total, 29 of 30 Gallatin meadow sites and 21 of 25 Teton meadow sites were positively located.Identifying meadow pixels for analysisThe native MODIS 250-meter grid was reprojected...
Abstract (from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320712002388): U.S. National Park Service land managers face a variety of challenges to preserving the biodiversity in their parks. A principle challenge is to minimize the impacts of surrounding land use on park condition and biodiversity. In the absence of ideal sets of data and models, the present study develops methods and results that demonstrate a coarse-filter approach to understanding the effects of land use change on habitat types for four pilot study-areas. The area of analysis for each park is defined by a protected-area-centered-ecosystem. Habitat types were defined by biophysical factors assumed to represent the distribution of vegetation...
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