Brian Laub

The University of Texas at San Antonio | UTSA · Department of Integrative Biology

The hydrologic performance and cost-effectiveness of green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) in climates with highly variable precipitation is an important subject in urban stormwater management. We measured the hydrologic effects of two bioretention basins in San Antonio, Texas, a growing city in a region prone to flash flooding. Pre-construction, i...

The objective of this study was to assess the contribution of urban runoff in pollutant delivery to standing water pools within the Edwards Aquifer region of Texas. Grab samples of water were collected weekly over 5 months at one urban pool, one undeveloped pool, and one control pond that received minimal runoff. Samples were tested for nitrates, t...

Aim: To describe current ecological understanding of how best to restore river ecosystems toward self-sustainability and how ecological science is applied in practice. Main Concepts Covered: Process-based restoration, process based vs. state-based approach to restoration, restoring for river self-sustainability, restoration as part of watershed man...

Estrogen in streams threatens aquatic animals, especially where wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) effluent contributes to baseflow. We investigated total estrogen (E1+E2+E3) as estradiol equivalent (E2) and ethynylestradiol (EE2) concentration in Cibolo Creek (Cibolo), a groundwater-fed stream near San Antonio, TX, receiving effluent via two WWTP....

The Price River, a tributary to the Green River in the Upper Colorado River Basin, is a critically important river for native fish conservation. The lower Price River is used extensively by the federally-listed Colorado pikeminnow (Ptychocheilus lucius), razorback sucker (Xyrauchen texanus), and bonytail (Gila elegans) as well as the bluehead sucke...

Planting native riparian trees can help recover wildlife and fish habitat on a local scale, when full recovery of natural processes that sustain riparian ecosystems is infeasible. To help improve planting success, we determined which environmental factors and management practices most influenced survival of planted Populus fremontii (Fremont cotton...

We explored the conservation potential of tributaries in the upper Colorado River basin by modeling native fish species richness as a function of river discharge, temperature, barrier‐free length, and distance to nearest free‐flowing main‐stem section. We investigated a historic period prior to large‐scale water development and a contemporary perio...

In highly impaired watersheds, it is critical to identify both areas with desirable habitat as conservation zones and impaired areas with the highest likelihood of improvement as restoration zones. We present how detailed riparian vegetation mapping can be used to prioritize conservation and restoration sites within a riparian and instream habitat...

Across landscapes, riparian plant communities assemble under varying levels of disturbance, environmental stress, and resource availability, leading to the development of distinct riparian life-history guilds over evolutionary timescales. Identifying the environmental filters that exert selective pressures on specific riparian vegetation guilds is...

Persistence of many desert river species is threatened by a suite of impacts linked to water infrastructure projects that provide human water security where water is scarce. Many desert rivers have undergone regime shifts from spatially and temporally dynamic ecosystems to more stable systems dominated by homogenous physical habitat. Restoration of...

Across landscapes, riparian plant communities assemble under varying levels of disturbance, environmental stress, and resource availability, leading to the development of distinct riparian life-history guilds. Identifying the environmental filters that exert selective pressures and favor specific vegetation guilds within riverscapes is a critical s...

Across landscapes, riparian plant communities assemble under varying levels of disturbance, environmental stress, and resource availability, leading to the development of distinct riparian life-history guilds. Identifying the environmental filters that exert selective pressures and favor specific vegetation guilds within riverscapes is a critical s...

A critical decision in species conservation is whether to target individual species or a complex of ecologically similar species. Management of multispecies complexes is likely to be most effective when species share similar distributions, threats, and response to threats. We used niche overlap analysis to assess ecological similarity of 3 sensitiv...

Biased perspectives of fisheries researchers may hinder scientific progress and effective management if limiting factors controlling productivity go unrecognized. We investigated whether river and lake researchers used different approaches when studying salmonid production and whether any differences were ecologically supported. We assessed 564 pee...

Across landscapes, riparian plant communities assemble under varying levels of disturbance, environmental stress, and resource availability, leading to the development of distinct riparian life-history guilds. Identifying the environmental filters that exert selective pressures and favor specific vegetation guilds within riverscapes is a critical s...

Tamarisk removal is a widespread restoration practice on rivers in the southwestern USA, but impacts of removal on fish habitat have rarely been investigated. We examined whether tamarisk removal, in combination with a large spring flood, had the potential to improve fish habitat on the San Rafael River in southeastern Utah. We quantified habitat c...

Stream restoration is often employed in efforts to stabilize eroding channel banks. Banks are stabilized through a designed channel approach, which involves grading and armoring of stream banks using heavy machinery, or alternatively through planting of seedlings and saplings to establish forested riparian buffers. We hypothesized that designed cha...

Summary 1. Channel complexity is an important ecological property of stream systems and is often targeted for restoration in channelised urban streams. However, channel complexity is rarely defined explicitly, and little research on channel complexity has been conducted in streams in urban catchments that have not been directly channelised by human...

Worldwide, people are becoming aware of the degraded condition of many rivers, and they are increasingly turning to river restoration to help river systems return to a more natural state. As a result, restoration ecology is becoming an important science in the management of the rivers worldwide. In this article, we discuss the present state of rest...