In the Great Plains, playas are critical wetland habitats for migratory birds and a source of recharge agriculturally-important High Plains aquifer. The temporary wetlands exhibit complex hydrology, filling rapidly via local rain storms then drying through evaporation groundwater infiltration. Using long short-term memory (LSTM) neural network to account these processes, we modeled playa inunda...

Ceratoides lanata (Pursh) J.T. Howell is a shrub with numerous annual branchlets from the family Chenopodiaceae and is widely distributed in brackish water playas of northern Utah. Seeds had no dormancy, and about 90% of the seeds germinated in nonsaline control. Seed germination decreased with the increase in salinity, and more than 10% of the seeds germinated at 900 mmol/L NaCl. Almost all se...

BACKGROUND Fairy shrimps (Anostraca), tadpole shrimps (Notostraca), clam shrimps (Spinicaudata), algae (primarily filamentous blue-green algae [cyanobacteria]), and suspended organic particulates are dominant food web components of the seasonally inundated pans and playas of the western Mojave Desert in California. We examined the extent to which these branchiopods controlled algal abundance an...