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Peter C Ibsen

Physical Scientist
Email: pibsen@usgs.gov
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The decline of the iconic monarch butterfly in North America has motivated research on the impacts of land use and land cover (LULC) change and climate variability on monarch habitat and population dynamics. We investigated spring and fall trends in LULC, milkweed and nectar resources over a 20-year period, and ~30 years of climate variables in Mexico and Texas, a key region supporting spring and fall migration during monarchs annual life cycle. We estimated a 2.9% decline in milkweed in Texas, but little to no change in Mexico. Fall and spring nectar resources declined <1% in both countries. Vegetation greenness increased in both the fall and spring in Mexico while the other climate variables, for both countries,...
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Reducing Wildfire Risk While Maintaining Critical Monarch Habitat Along the California Coast
The California Coast has hundreds of tree groves where dual management practices aim to reduce the risk of fire and to conserve habitat for overwintering monarch butterflies. As the climate changes, longer high-intensity droughts can increase mortality and/or limb loss in grove trees which causes an accumulation of fire-prone fuels. Moreover, these trees provide the critical habitat for overwintering monarch butterflies. Every year only certain trees in certain groves accumulate clusters of thousands of monarch butterflies. Should trees die or important roosting branches collapse, monarchs may not return in the future. The overall goal of this project is to understand how the dual management goals of fire management...
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Semi-arid urban environments are undergoing an increase in air temperatures, both in average temperatures and in the frequency and intensity of extreme heat events. Within cities, different varieties of urban landcovers (ULC) and their densities influence local air temperatures, either mitigating or increasing heat. Currently, understanding how various combinations of ULCs influence air temperature at the block to neighborhood scale is limited due to the complexities of urban energy balances at small scales. We quantified how ULC influences air temperature at 60 m resolution for day and nighttime climate normals and heatwaves, by integrating data from microclimate temperature sensor networks and high-resolution...
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