Elizabeth Leigh Kalies

Journal Article Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews · November 1, 2025 The widespread expansion of solar energy generation promises to help mitigate global-scale threats from climate change while potentially impacting biodiversity at local scales. Developers must attempt to maximize solar energy production while minimizing co ... Full text Cite

Sustainability trade-offs across modeled floating solar waterscapes of the Northeastern United States

Journal Article Cell Reports Sustainability · January 1, 2025 Expansion of floating photovoltaic (FPV) solar systems provides a low-conflict renewable energy option to help mitigate climate change while sparing land, but potential sustainability trade-offs remain unquantified. We compare the technical potential of ma ... Full text Cite

Combining camera trap surveys and IUCN range maps to improve knowledge of species distributions.

Journal Article Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology · June 2024 Reliable maps of species distributions are fundamental for biodiversity research and conservation. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) range maps are widely recognized as authoritative representations of species' geographic limits, ye ... Full text Cite

Low impact siting for wind power facilities in the Southeast United States

Journal Article Wind Energy · December 1, 2023 Although installed wind power generation capacity in the United States reached 132 GW in 2021, more than quadruple the capacity in 2008, a noticeable void exists in the Southeast. Scant wind power development in this region is due to relatively poorer wind ... Full text Cite

Remotely sensed habitat quality index reliably predicts an umbrella species presence but not demographic performance: A case study with open pine forests and red-cockaded woodpeckers

Journal Article Ecological Indicators · October 1, 2023 Remote sensing data can be a powerful and cost-effective method for determining the extent, composition, and structure of ecosystems across large areas. To use this tool for effective conservation of individual species, we need to test the assumption that ... Full text Cite

Solar Energy-driven Land-cover Change Could Alter Landscapes Critical to Animal Movement in the Continental United States.

Journal Article Environmental science & technology · August 2023 The United States may produce as much as 45% of its electricity using solar energy technology by 2050, which could require more than 40,000 km2 of land to be converted to large-scale solar energy production facilities. Little is known about how ... Full text Cite

Global camera trap synthesis highlights the importance of protected areas in maintaining mammal diversity

Journal Article Conservation Letters · March 1, 2022 The establishment of protected areas (PAs) is a central strategy for global biodiversity conservation. While the role of PAs in protecting habitat has been highlighted, their effectiveness at protecting mammal communities remains unclear. We analyzed a glo ... Full text Cite

An overview of Lepidopteran Herbivory on North American pitcher plants (Sarracenia), with a novel observation of feeding on Sarracenia flava

Journal Article Journal of the Lepidopterists Society · August 1, 2020 Full text Cite

Using best available science information: Determining best and available

Journal Article Journal of Forestry · September 20, 2018 Public land and natural resource management policies in the United States commonly require the use of "best available science information" (BASI) in planning and implementing management activities. However, there is little direction on what constitutes BAS ... Full text Cite

Cross-discipline evidence principles for sustainability policy.

Journal Article Nature sustainability · September 2018 Evidence-based approaches to sustainability challenges must draw on knowledge from the environment, development and health communities. To be practicable, this requires an approach to evidence that is broader and less hierarchical than the standards often ... Full text Cite

Evidence-Based Causal Chains for Linking Health, Development, and Conservation Actions.

Journal Article Bioscience · March 2018 Sustainability challenges for nature and people are complex and interconnected, such that effective solutions require approaches and a common theory of change that bridge disparate disciplines and sectors. Causal chains offer promising approaches to achiev ... Full text Open Access Cite

Does hunting or hiking affect wildlife communities in protected areas?

Journal Article Journal of Applied Ecology · February 1, 2017 Managed public wild areas have dual mandates to protect biodiversity and provide recreational opportunities for people. These goals could be at odds if recreation, ranging from hiking to legal hunting, disrupts wildlife enough to alter their space use or c ... Full text Cite

A multispecies occupancy model for two or more interacting species

Journal Article Methods in Ecology and Evolution · October 1, 2016 Species occurrence is influenced by environmental conditions and the presence of other species. Current approaches for multispecies occupancy modelling are practically limited to two interacting species and often require the assumption of asymmetric intera ... Full text Cite

Tamm Review: Are fuel treatments effective at achieving ecological and social objectives? A systematic review

Journal Article Forest Ecology and Management · September 1, 2016 The prevailing paradigm in the western U.S. is that the increase in stand-replacing wildfires in historically frequent-fire dry forests is due to unnatural fuel loads that have resulted from management activities including fire suppression, logging, and gr ... Full text Cite

A meta-analysis of management effects on forest carbon storage

Journal Article Journal of Sustainable Forestry · July 3, 2016 Forest management can have substantial impacts on ecosystem carbon storage, but those effects can vary significantly with management type and species composition. We used systematic review methodology to identify and synthesize effects of thinning and/or b ... Full text Cite

Cats are Rare Where Coyotes Roam

Journal Article Journal of Mammalogy · October 1, 2015 Domestic cats (Felis catus) have caused the extinction of many island species and are thought to kill many billions of birds and mammals in the continental United States each year. However, the spatial distribution and abundance of cats and their risk to o ... Full text Cite

Implications of diameter caps on multiple forest resource responses in the context of the four forests restoration initiative: Results from the forest vegetation simulator

Journal Article Journal of Forestry · March 1, 2015 Meeting multiple resource objectives, such as increasing resilience to climate change, while simultaneously increasing watershed health, conserving biodiversity, protecting old-growth, reducing the risk of catastrophic wildfire, and promoting ecosystem hea ... Full text Cite

Effectiveness of fuel reduction treatments: Assessing metrics of forest resiliency and wildfire severity after the Wallow Fire, AZ

Journal Article Forest Ecology and Management · December 5, 2014 Landscape-scale wildfire has occurred in higher frequencies across the planet. Fuel reduction treatments to fire-adapted systems have been shown to reduce the impact to human values-at-risk. However, few studies have examined if these treatments contribute ... Full text Cite

Projecting current and future location, quality, and connectivity of habitat for breeding birds in the Great Basin

Journal Article Ecosphere · July 21, 2014 We estimated the current location, quality, and connectivity of habitat for 50 species of breeding birds in four mountain ranges in the central Great Basin (Lander, Nye, and Eureka Counties, Nevada) and projected the future location, quality, and connectiv ... Full text Cite

Stand structure and breeding birds: Implications for restoring ponderosa pine forests

Journal Article Journal of Wildlife Management · August 1, 2013 Fire-adapted forests in the western United States have dramatically departed from the natural or evolutionary environment over the past century because of fire suppression, logging, grazing, and other management practices. In particular, most southwestern ... Full text Cite

Small mammal community maintains stability through compensatory dynamics after restoration of a ponderosa pine forest

Journal Article Ecosphere · September 2012 Ecosystem stability has been of increasing interest in the past several decades as it helps predict the consequences of anthropogenic disturbances on ecosystems. Species may exhibit stability through compensation, with greatly fluctuating populatio ... Full text Cite

Predator occupancy rates in a thinned ponderosa pine forest, Arizona: A pilot study

Journal Article Wildlife Society Bulletin · June 1, 2012 Throughout northern Arizona, USA, forest thinning in ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) forests has become a common practice to reduce the threat of stand-replacing wildfire and to increase plant and animal diversity across the landscape. To determine how th ... Full text Cite

Do thinning and/or burning treatments in western USA ponderosa or Jeffrey pine-dominated forests help restore natural fire behavior?

Journal Article Forest Ecology and Management · April 1, 2012 We carried out a systematic review and meta-analysis of the effects of forest thinning and burning treatments on restoring fire behavior attributes in western USA pine forests. Ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) and Jeffrey pine (Pinus jeffreyi), with co-occ ... Full text Cite

Community occupancy responses of small mammals to restoration treatments in ponderosa pine forests, northern Arizona, USA.

Journal Article Ecological applications : a publication of the Ecological Society of America · January 2012 In western North American conifer forests, wildfires are increasing in frequency and severity due to heavy fuel loads that have accumulated after a century of fire suppression. Forest restoration treatments (e.g., thinning and/or burning) are being designe ... Full text Cite

Wildlife responses to thinning and burning treatments in southwestern conifer forests: A meta-analysis

Journal Article Forest Ecology and Management · January 25, 2010 After a century of fire suppression, conifer forests in the western United States have dramatically departed from conditions that existed prior to Euro-American settlement, with heavy fuel loads and an increased incidence of wildfire. To reduce this threat ... Full text Cite

Alternative dynamic regimes and trophic control of plant succession

Journal Article Ecosystems · June 1, 2006 Ecological succession has been the subject of intense study and debate throughout the history of ecology as conceptualizations of process were proposed and refined. Modern concepts view ecological succession as largely driven by bottom-up resource competit ... Full text Cite