In the face of a rapidly changing climate, spring-fed habitats are increasingly vulnerable to numerous threats. Botanical inventories provide valuable information to assess the conservation value of desert springs, and can serve as indicators to document changing conditions, including the proportion of native vs. nonnative taxa, diversity of life forms present that influence structure and function of ecosystems, species persistence and longevity, and the proportion of taxa that are rare and sensitive to land use change. Here we evaluate plant species composition and richness within and between springs, and evaluate botanical diversity with respect to physical parameters including hydrology and geography. We find that desert springs collectively support a large proportion of plant diversity, or nearly 22% of the total vascular plant diversity known within the California desert in only 0.000005% of the total land area. The springs we sampled are highly dissimilar in plant species composition, thus, restoration and management activities likely need to be highly individualized and site specific. Monitoring and inventory programs can increase opportunities for restoration and protection by providing information to assess warning signs of habitat degradation, such as changing species composition and local extirpation of wetland-dependent species.

White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) impact the ecological integrity of eastern deciduous forests by modifying plant community composition and structure. Previous studies have shown that overabundant deer can negatively impact the recruitment and persistence of both woody and herbaceous plants. However, the strength and nature of these interactions can depend on habitat context. Forest edges provide favorable habitat for deer along with many introduced plant species, and have the potential to modify the nature of deer impacts. Here, we explore whether forest edges shape the impacts of deer on plant communities within the forest landscape. Specifically, we excluded deer, or, alternatively, allowed deer access, in plots along the edge and within the interior of two northern hardwood forests. Background deer abundance in these forests was approximately 6–12 individuals per km². After eight years of exclusion, we surveyed plant communities within plots to assess the impacts of deer on plant community composition across the forested landscape. We found that the impacts of deer were robust across habitat context within the forest, with relatively weak impacts on cover and richness of both native and introduced species. Edge habitat, on the other hand, had strong impacts on cover of both native and introduced species, as well as woody and herbaceous species, but the magnitude of these impacts was variable across the two forest sites. This work suggests that deer can have modest impacts when at relatively low densities, and that these effects can be consistent across forest habitat types, while forest fragmentation and subsequent generation of edge habitat can be an important driver of composition in the forest understory.

Guadalupe fescue (Festuca ligulata Swallen) is an endangered perennial grass species that is endemic to the Sky Island conifer-oak forests and piñonoak-juniper woodlands of the northern Sierra Madre Oriental. Little is known about the habitat requirements, population dynamics, or reproductive ecology of this species. We assessed aspects of the demography, habitat preferences, and germination rates of Guadalupe fescue in two Sky Island sites on each side of the US–Mexico border: the Chisos Mountains of Big Bend National Park (BIBE) in Texas, USA, and the Maderas del Carmen Protected Area (MCPA) in Coahuila, Mexico. Through field and greenhouse measurements, we evaluated the plant vigor, reproductive capacity, and environmental growing conditions of 422 plants (323 in BIBE and 99 in MCPA). Our results reveal that Guadalupe fescue is a very rare species growing within a narrow elevational range (2066–2394 m) on rocky microsites with relatively open canopy and forest floor conditions, compared to the range of available local habitats. For collected seeds, the mean fill rate was 54% (31% for BIBE and 61% for MCPA) and overall germination rate was 14% (8% at BIBE and 33% at MCPA). These results provide important baseline ecological data on Guadalupe fescue, which is critical for informing endangered species recovery planning and restoration activities aimed at bolstering this species' population size.

The Natural Protected Areas (NPA) network is one of Mexico's main biodiversity conservation strategies. However, comparisons between the biodiversity observed inside and around this conservation instrument have rarely been performed in the country, not even for groups of fauna such as medium and large mammals (weight > 0.5 kg). Aspects of diversity and abundance of medium and large mammals were determined inside the Cañon del Usumacinta Flora and Fauna Protection Area (inside NPA) and in unprotected areas surrounding the NPA (outside NPA) through 72 camera trap stations (41 stations inside and 31 outside NPA). We obtained 1333 records of medium and large mammals of 23 species inside the NPA, while 663 records of 22 species were obtained outside the NPA. The expected species richness, diversity, and species composition by camera station were similar between interior NPA and exterior NPA. Likewise, the shape of the rank-abundance curves was similar inside and outside the NPA but not in the species order. Also, we found differences among the mean weight of the species registered by the camera station with larger species captured in the interior of the NPA. Our results showed that although the diversity of medium- and large-sized mammals is similar between the interior and exterior of the NPA, the conservation actions carried out in the interior of the NPA allow the larger mammal species (generally exposed to subsistence hunters) to be more detectable within the NPA than outside. It is necessary to determine which programs helped reduce the pressure on the largest mammals in the NPA, to maintain their operation and extend it to other NPAs of the region.

Global loss of biodiversity is a well-known concern for conservationists and managers, but detailed spatial maps of local biodiversity for use by local managers are often lacking. We used a suite of existing species distribution models to calculate spatial variation in low-elevation species richness across Clark County, Nevada, USA, comprising much of the eastern Mojave Desert. We then used a macroecological model to estimate true latent low-elevation biodiversity across the county, correcting for potential taxonomic bias in the estimates of species richness. We found that species richness and biodiversity tended to be higher along the Muddy and Virgin Rivers and in the Las Vegas valley. Biodiversity was positively associated with flat, rocky landforms, low elevation, late seasonal greenup, and lower differences between winter and summer temperature. We present a brief example for local managers to apply the new publicly available low-elevation species richness and biodiversity spatial layers.

In northern hardwood forests, white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) impact both tree regeneration and groundlayer composition, leading to a dominance of American beech (Fagus grandifolia), an unpalatable species, as well as a reduction of preferred groundlayer species. Deer become especially problematic in areas with beech bark disease, such as at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. We analyzed datasets from Sleeping Bear Dunes, collected in 2009 and 2018, to assess vegetation change in three management units: a mainland unit with a long history of deer occupancy, and two islands, one with high deer pressure and one with no known history of permanent deer presence. For each unit, we tested for change in species richness and mean coefficient of conservatism. We also examined the groundlayer, testing for change in indices of abundance and size of preferred and avoided species. Finally, we compared regeneration of palatable and unpalatable tree species. We found increased nonnative species richness, decreased number and abundance of preferred herbaceous species, as well as decreased height of a preferred species. We also detected increased sapling density of beech while that of palatable species declined. Our data provide further evidence of the impacts of white-tailed deer on the forest understory. Management goals should focus on maintaining deer densities at or below 5 deer km^–2 in order to promote growth of the full suite of herbaceous species typical of the region and habitat and to allow adequate regeneration of the overstory.

Protected areas rarely are large enough to encompass the ecological processes that affect them. Accordingly, some authors call for cooperative management of multiple jurisdictions within protected area-centered ecosystems (PACEs) to sustain landscape-scale processes and maximize connectivity and ecosystem service flows. However, over time, differing land use and disturbance histories between adjoining jurisdictions may lead to divergence in plant community composition or structure along administrative boundaries, thus reducing landscape connectivity within PACEs. We tested this hypothesis by measuring evidence of human disturbance and occurrence of nonnative plant species along boundaries between protected areas and multiple-use lands in the California PACEs surrounding Lassen Volcanic and Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks. Invasive plants were found in about half of sampled units at Sequoia & Kings Canyon, but occurrence was rare at Lassen Volcanic and above 2000 m in both PACEs. We found no significant differences in invasive plant occurrence or human disturbance along boundaries between adjoining jurisdictions, and correlations between disturbance and invasive plant detections were not significant except in U.S. Forest Service non-wilderness lands. The overall low rate of detection in this study limited the power of statistical tests, and may be largely due to the high average elevation of sampling locations. Cooperative invasive plant management already occurs at times within these PACEs, and its continued use may be useful for maintaining a relatively invader-free environment under future conditions.

Aquatic macrophytes provide essential food and habitat for all levels of aquatic life, as well as have a critical role in nutrient cycling. Many aquatic macrophytes are submerged for part or all of their life cycle, which makes them difficult, time-consuming, and expensive to sample. During a study of two lakes, Bednesti and Berman, in northern British Columbia, Canada, we developed a nondestructive, cost-effective, and time-sensitive sampling methodology for aquatic macrophytes. With two people sampling in a single boat, 90 randomly selected sample sites with four transects each were completed over five 4-hr sampling periods. This methodology produced presence/absence data, which would be an effective methodology for monitoring aquatic macrophyte populations in freshwater environments. The technique allowed us to identify aquatic macrophytes at a species level, regardless of emergent or submergent growing patterns. This technique was used to study the impacts of residential development on freshwater aquatic macrophyte communities and provided useful and easily obtainable data for that purpose. Natural resource and conservation fields may find this technique useful to monitor aquatic environments for specific, rare, or invasive aquatic macrophyte species in an efficient and cost-effective manner.

The Heartland Inventory and Monitoring Network uses a scaled plot design for vegetation monitoring. Redesign of aging field plot frames resulted in easier to use equipment. The new designs were aimed at improving measurement precision to reduce sources of nonsampling relocation error. Although sampling sites are permanently monumented at the corners, the center point of subplots is measured from these fixed corners. Increasing confidence in long-term monitoring data through consistent plot deployment will increase the value of that data. The 1 m² circular plot uses flexible PVC tubing with a PVC pipe inserted and fastened for deployment or coiled for transportation. The redesigned 10 m² plot delineation device for woodlands utilized a swivel mounted on a threaded rod. Upgrades to aging field gear improved field operations by increasing precision during plot deployment.