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20 Pág. Departamento de Medio Ambiente y Agronomía​, Restoration of degraded drylands is urgently needed to mitigate climate change, reverse desertification and secure livelihoods for the two billion people who live in these areas. Bold global targets have been set for dryland restoration to restore millions of hectares of degraded land. These targets have been questioned as overly ambitious, but without a global evaluation of successes and failures it is impossible to gauge feasibility. Here we examine restoration seeding outcomes across 174 sites on six continents, encompassing 594,065 observations of 671 plant species. Our findings suggest reasons for optimism. Seeding had a positive impact on species presence: in almost a third of all treatments, 100% of species seeded were growing at first monitoring. However, dryland restoration is risky: 17% of projects failed, with no establishment of any seeded species, and consistent declines were found in seeded species as projects matured. Across projects, higher seeding rates and larger seed sizes resulted in a greater probability of recruitment, with further influences on species success including site aridity, taxonomic identity and species life form. Our findings suggest that investigations examining these predictive factors will yield more effective and informed restoration decision-making., We would like to thank the supporters of the Global Arid Zone Project. The intellectual and energetic input of the network participants made this work possible. We also acknowledge the many employers and funding agencies that supported projects and the authors’ time in preparing this work and contributing data to the GAZP database. Please note that any use of trade, firm or product names is for descriptive purposes only and does not imply endorsement by the US Government

Background Small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS) are replacing or supplementing manned aircraft and ground-based surveys in many animal monitoring situations due to better coverage at finer spatial and temporal resolutions, access, cost, bias, impacts, safety, efficiency, and logistical benefits. Various sUAS models and sensors are available with varying features and usefulness depending on survey goals. However, justification for selection of sUAS and sensors are not typically offered in published literature and existing reviews do not adequately cover past and current sUAS applications for animal monitoring nor their associated sUAS model and sensor technologies, taxonomic and geographic scope, flight conditions and considerations, spatial distributions of sUAS applications, and reported technical difficulties. We outline a systematic map protocol to collect and consolidate evidence pertaining to sUAS monitoring of animals. Our systematic map will provide a useful synthesis of current applications of sUAS-animal related studies and identify major knowledge clusters (well-represented subtopics that are amenable to full synthesis by a systematic review) and gaps (unreported or underrepresented topics that warrant additional primary research) that may influence future research directions and sUAS applications. Methods Our systematic map will investigate the current state of knowledge using an accurate, comprehensive, and repeatable search. We will find relevant peer-reviewed and grey literature as well as dissertations and theses using online publication databases, Google Scholar, and by request through a professional network of collaborators and publicly available websites. We will use a tiered approach to article exclusion with eligible studies being those that monitor (i.e., identify, count, estimate, etc.) terrestrial vertebrate animals. Extracted data concerning sUAS, sensors, animals, methodology, and results will be recorded in Microsoft Access. We will query and catalogue evidence in the final database to produce tables, figures, and geographic maps to accompany a full narrative review that answers our primary and secondary questions.

Insects are critical components of terrestrial ecosystems and are often considered ecosystem engineers. Due to the vast amount of ecosystem services they provide, because statistically valid samples can be captured in short durations, and because they respond rapidly to environmental change, insects have been used as indicators of restoration success and ecosystem functionality. In Wyoming (USA), thousands of acres of land surface has been disturbed to extract natural resources. While traditional reclamation practices of these lands focused on site stabilization and weed control, more recent efforts have been made to restore ecosystem services. It has been suggested that a spatial and temporal mosaic of flowering species will benefit insect populations. In this study, we compared early seral reclamation sites (i.e., well pads undergoing interim reclamation) to reference areas at two points within a growing season. We found reference ecosystems were devoid of forb species, while one year old reclaimed sites contained late-season blooming Rocky Mountain beeplant (Cleome serrulata) and three-four year old well pads contained early-season blooming perennial forb species, mainly western yarrow (Achillea millefolium). We compared insect abundance and family richness on 6 well pads with early season perennial forbs and 6 well pads with the late season annual forb, Rocky Mountain beeplant to insect communities on adjacent reference areas. A total of 237 insects were found on early season reclaimed sites compared to 84 on reference sites, while 858 insects were found on late season reclaimed sites compared to 40 on reference sites. Insect abundance and family richness was significantly higher on reclaimed well pads compared to reference areas at both points in the growing season. We also found interesting differences in abundance at family levels.

Biodiversity decline is widely considered a critical global environmental threat. In the western United States, land surface disturbance associated with oil and gas development is considered a top ...

1 Pág. Correción errata., In the version of this Article originally published, the surname of author Tina Parkhurst was incorrectly written as Schroeder. This has now been corrected.

Rangeland ecosystems cover 3.6 billion hectares globally with 239 million hectares located in the United States. These ecosystems are critical for maintaining global ecosystem services. Monitoring vegetation in these ecosystems is required to assess rangeland health, to gauge habitat suitability for wildlife and domestic livestock, to combat invasive weeds, and to elucidate temporal environmental changes. Although rangeland ecosystems cover vast areas, traditional monitoring techniques are often time-consuming and cost-inefficient, subject to high observer bias, and often lack adequate spatial information. Image-based vegetation monitoring is faster, produces permanent records (i.e., images), may result in reduced observer bias, and inherently includes adequate spatial information. Spatially balanced sampling designs are beneficial in monitoring natural resources. A protocol is presented for implementing a spatially balanced sampling design known as balanced acceptance sampling (BAS), with imagery acquired from ground-level cameras and unmanned aerial systems (UAS). A route optimization algorithm is used in addition to solve the 'travelling salesperson problem' (TSP) to increase time and cost efficiency. While UAS images can be acquired 2-3x faster than handheld images, both types of images are similar to each other in terms of accuracy and precision. Lastly, the pros and cons of each method are discussed and examples of potential applications for these methods in other ecosystems are provided.

1. This study utilised an associative analysis (AA) technique named market basket analysis (MBA) to investigate whether particular grasshopper (Orthoptera: Acrididae) species associations are common during outbreaks (>9.6 grasshoppers m⁻²) that last >3 years. This study is the first of its kind to use MBA on animal communities. 2. A subset of the 17 years of grasshopper density data from the Wyoming Grasshopper Survey Dataset was used to explore associations among grasshopper species. 3. Associations of certain species were found with over 80% confidence. Life‐history traits of those species commonly found together were examined and compared (a posteriori), creating opportunities to hypothesise certain ecological relationships (e.g. interspecific competition, indirect mutualism) for future studies. 4. This case study shows that further MBA analysis of grasshopper assemblages should prove useful in discovering ecological relationships of grasshopper species during outbreaks. Preliminary examples are demonstrated.

On the Ground: Greater sage-grouse are the species of concern in the largest conservation effort in US history and have populations spanning 11 western states. Restoration of sage-grouse habitat will assist these conservation efforts. It is known that forbs are critical to sage-grouse diets, but only isolated studies have measured forbs in the diet at a species- or genera-specific level and little is known about sage-grouse preference to forbs. Research has shown that local seed sources promote successful reestablishment of vegetation communities, although commercial seed sources for forb species used in sage-grouse diet often are lacking. We make suggestions for selecting forb species and improving seed sources for sage-grouse conservation.

This paper will highlight the need for database creation and management associated with large-scale land reclamation and ecosystem restoration projects and suggests considerations for future improv...

A database framework was constructed with the purpose of creating a restoration decision management tool by compiling oil and gas pad reclamation data to identify successful restoration practices. Pre-existing data were secured from public and private databases from two Wyoming production fields in the Greater Green River Basin: Jonah Infill and Moxa Arch. The framework includes tables for measurements of reclamation practices (e.g., soil handling methods and amendments, seeding mix and timing, and weed management), geographical and climate data (e.g., precipitation, slope, aspect, elevation, and temperature) and monitoring data (e.g., vegetation composition and structure along with soil analysis and grazing). Microsoft Access and ESRI ArcGIS were employed to build the reclamation database for consistent and reliable data storage, manipulation, and retrieval. Short-term goals of the project were to quantify disturbance and reclamation efforts and to evaluate the reclamation status of individual well pads. Long-term goals of the project are to deliver: (1) an operational framework to analyze and isolate trends leading to reclamation success and failure, (2) a strong decision management tool for limiting uncertainty and estimating associated risk under variable environmental conditions, (3) to evaluate regulatory standards for reclamation, and (4) to offer a flexible and sharable database that allows for additional data input from diverse sources. Database performance was found to be dependent on data consistency and validity. Querying populated data along with uniting imported data has revealed multiple strengths and weaknesses with the database framework. Additional

This study evaluated the influence of instructional bias on severity ratings of children's disfluencies. Normal speaking children were trained to simulate specific types of disfluency and severity judgments were made by judges who had been exposed to instructional bias. The 75 judges who participated in the study were divided into three groups of 25 each and were given a bias “toward stuttering,” bias “toward fluency,” and a “neutral” bias toward neither perceptual set. Both univariate and multivariate analyses were employed for data analysis. Although predictable differences were found between the specific types of speech disfluency, no significant differences were found for the experimental bias conditions. These findings, based on molecular analyses, differ from previous results based on molar speech samples. Molecular approaches to understanding the nature of stuttering were found to be powerful modes of assessment, and it is suggested that the type of disfluency emitted by children may be more important than the instructional bias or perceptual set of the listener.

This study investigated whether some types of disfluency are perceived as more severe than others and if listener groups differ in their perception of severity for some disfluency types. Three normal speaking children were trained to produce eight types of disfluency and one sample of fluency. The experimental tape, consisting of three examples for each of the eight disfluency types and of fluency, was presented auditorily to 40 judges divided into four groups of 10 each: parents of stutterers, parents of nonstutterers, speech clinicians, and elementary school teachers. The judges rated the disfluency and fluency on a 15-point severity continuum, divided into four nominal categories of Fluent, Normal Disfluency, Mild Stuttering, Moderate Stuttering, and Severe Stuttering. Results showed that although listener groups did not significantly differ in their severity ratings, the specific types of disfluency did differ significantly. The type of disfluency emitted by a speaker is apparently more salient in perceiving and judging disfluency than the type of listener making the judgment.