Habitat loss, overexploitation, and numerous other stressors have caused global declines in apex predators. This "trophic downgrading" has generated widespread concern because of the fundamental role that apex predators can play in ecosystem functioning, disease regulation, and biodiversity maintenance. In attempts to combat declines, managers have conducted reintroductions, imposed stricter ha...

Fire suppression allows tree species that are intolerant of fire stress to increase their distribution, potentially resulting in disruption of historical species-environmental relationships. To measure changes between historical General Land Office surveys (1815 to 1850) and current USDA Forest Inventory and Assessment surveys (2004 to 2008), we compared composition, distribution, and site fact...

1. Methods for assessing habitat sensitivity to human impacts are needed to gauge the sustainability of existing impacts, develop spatial management plans and support meaningful environmental impact assessments. These methods should be quantitative, validated, repeatable and applicable at the scales of impact and management. 2. Existing methods for assessing the sensitivity of marine habitats t...

In cooperating systems such as grids [4] and collaborative streaming analysis [2], autonomous sites can establish “agreements” to arrange access to remote resources for a period of time [1]. The determination of which resources to reserve to accomplish a task need not be known a priori, because there exist multiple plans for accomplishing the same task and they may require access to different r...