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Kurt D. Fausch

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Across the western Great Plains of North America, groundwater pumping for irrigated agriculture has depleted regional aquifers that sustain stream flow for native fishes. Although declines in Great Plains stream discharge owing to groundwater pumping are widely documented, spatial and temporal patterns in stream intermittency across this broad landscape have yet to be quantified. Successful management of native Great Plains stream fishes into the future will require an explicit understanding of the distribution and abundance of habitats, as well as the connections among those habitats across the region. The goal of this study was to provide critical information and decision-support tools to enhance conservation...
Parent Project: Range-Wide Climate Vulnerability Assessment for Threatened Bull Trout Publication Abstract: Forecasts of species distributions under future climates are inherently uncertain, but there have been few attempts to describe this uncertainty comprehensively in a probabilistic manner. We developed a Monte Carlo approach that accounts for uncertainty within generalized linear regression models (parameter uncertainty and residual error), uncertainty among competing models (model uncertainty), and uncertainty in future climate conditions (climate uncertainty) to produce site-specific frequency distributions of occurrence probabilities across a species’ range. We illustrated the method by forecasting suitable...
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Mapping and Predicting Groundwater-Mediated Hydrologic Connectivity for Great Plains Prairie Rivers and Streams
Groundwater pumping for irrigated agriculture has depleted regional aquifers that sustain habitat for native fishes in the western Great Plains of North America. Depleted surface stream flow is implicated in the decline of 69% of endemic Great Plains fishes, including conservation priority species such as the Arkansas River shiner Notropis girardi. Species declines are likely to continue as water demands increase. Knowledge of spatial patterns of hydrologic connectivity and rates and magnitude of fragmentation through time will help prioritize areas for native fish conservation. We propose to use groundwater-surface water models to document and map the spatiotemporal distribution of flowing and intermittent stream...
Categories: Data, Project; Types: Map Service, OGC WFS Layer, OGC WMS Layer, OGC WMS Service; Tags: 2013, CO-01, CO-02, CO-03, CO-04, All tags...
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