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David Swanson

This project established a permafrost monitoring network in this region, providing a baseline of permafrost thermal regimes for assessing future change at a total of 26 automated monitoring stations. Stations have collected year-round temperature data from the active layer and the permafrost starting from the summer of 2011. The strong correspondence between spatial variability in permafrost thermal regime and an existing ecotype map allowed for the development of a map of ‘permafrost thermal classes’ for the broader study region. Further, the annual temperature data was used to calibrate models of soil thermal regimes as a function of climate, providing estimates of both historic and future permafrost thermal regimes...
This project established a permafrost monitoring network in this region, providing a baseline of permafrost thermal regimes for assessing future change at a total of 26 automated monitoring stations. Stations have collected year-round temperature data from the active layer and the permafrost starting from the summer of 2011. The strong correspondence between spatial variability in permafrost thermal regime and an existing ecotype map allowed for the development of a map of ‘permafrost thermal classes’ for the broader study region. Further, the annual temperature data was used to calibrate models of soil thermal regimes as a function of climate, providing estimates of both historic and future permafrost thermal regimes...
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Projecting Long-Term Landscape Change Along the Missouri River: Implications for Cottonwood Forests and Songbird Populations
Cottonwood forests are in decline becasue of losses from land use conversion and reduced regeneration from river regulation. Projecting lon-term implications of current trends and policies, or alterations of these, will help to identify the importance and scale of restoration activities needed to offset losses. This project developed a landscape dynamic model to project future (eig. 25, 50, 100 year) trends in cottonwood forst area and age distribution for four remnant floodplain reches on the Missouri River, based on recent rates (or alternative scenarios) of land use change, cottonwood recruitment, and succession. For two reaches, these changes are used to project the effects onabundances of selected songbird...
This project established a permafrost monitoring network in this region, providing a baseline of permafrost thermal regimes for assessing future change at a total of 26 automated monitoring stations. Stations have collected year-round temperature data from the active layer and the permafrost starting from the summer of 2011. The strong correspondence between spatial variability in permafrost thermal regime and an existing ecotype map allowed for the development of a map of ‘permafrost thermal classes’ for the broader study region. Further, the annual temperature data was used to calibrate models of soil thermal regimes as a function of climate, providing estimates of both historic and future permafrost thermal regimes...
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The goal of this project was to develop a landscape dynamics model to project future trends in forest area, age class distribution, and forest type (cottonwood vs. non-cottonwood) for four remnant floodplain segments on the Missouri River and, for two river segments, project effects of forest changes on abundances of forest bird species. These four river segments have not been channelized or inundated by reservoirs and thus still retain some of the natural abiotic and biotic processes of the Missouri River as it existed before human alteration. Fluvial geomorphic processes on all four, however, were significantly altered by the construction of six dams on the main stem of the river in the mid twentieth century....
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