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Introduction
Dr. Kupfer is a Professor in the Department of Geography at the Univ of South Carolina. His research couples field work with GIS, spatial analysis and modeling to explore the effects of landscape transformation, non-native species, climate change, and disturbances on plant and animal communities, often with a goal of promoting conservation and management on public lands. He is also the USC Consortium PI for the Southeast Climate Adaptation Science Center.
Current institution
Additional affiliations
August 1999 - May 2005
August 1994 - May 1999
August 2005 - present
Education
September 1988 - May 1994
Publications
Publications (84)
The pervasive influence of island biogeography theory on forest fragmentation research has often led to a misleading conceptualization of landscapes as areas of forest/habitat and 'non-forest/non-habitat' and an overriding focus on processes within forest remnants at the expense of research in the human-modified matrix. The matrix, however, may be...
Landscape pattern indicators or 'metrics' provide simple measures of landscape structure that can be easily calculated with readily available data and software. Unfortunately, the ecological relevance of many metrics (i.e. the relationship between metric values and the real-world ecological processes that they are meant to serve as proxies for) is...
Globally increasing wildfires have been attributed to anthropogenic climate change. However, providing decision makers with a clear understanding of how future planetary warming could affect fire regimes is complicated by confounding land use factors that influence wildfire and by uncertainty associated with model simulations of climate change. We...
Prescribed burning is a critical tool for managing wildfire risks and meeting ecological objectives, but its safe and effective application requires that specific meteorological criteria (a ‘burn window’) are met. Here, we evaluate the potential impacts of projected climatic change on prescribed burning in the south-eastern United States by applyin...
Urban trails and greenspaces have become ubiquitous features in cities, in part due to their ability to provide ecological benefits to the built-up environment. A major factor in their popularity is their potential to enhance habitat connectivity by bridging the gaps between remnant patches across urbanized areas, however, information on the struct...
Decades of human activities and fire suppression have adversely affected longleaf pine (Pinus palustris) ecosystems, which are home to high levels of diversity and endemism. These iconic ecosystems also now face challenges from urbanization and climate change, which will alter conservation outcomes over the remainder of the 21st century. To explore...
As of 2023, the use of prescribed fire to manage ecosystems accounts for more than 50% of area burned annually across the United States. Prescribed fire is carried out when meteorological conditions, including temperature, humidity, and wind speed are appropriate for its safe and effective application. However, changes in these meteorological varia...
The degree to which many benefits of national parks are realized hinges on public access. Traditional methods in estimating park visitation can be time-consuming, costly, and labor-intensive. Fortunately, the growing availability of ‘big data’ offers new opportunities for rapid and large-scale estimation. This study investigated the spatiotemporal...
Background
Projected trajectories of climate and land use change over the remainder of the twenty-first century may result in conditions and situations that require flexible approaches to conservation planning and practices. For example, prescribed burning is a widely used management tool for promoting longer-term resilience and sustainability in l...
Effective quantification of visitation is important for understanding many impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on national parks and other protected areas. In this study, we mapped and analyzed the spatiotemporal patterns of visitation for six national parks in the western U.S., taking advantage of large mobility records sampled from mobile devices an...
The extreme rainfall of October 2015 in South Carolina generated numerous dam failures and spawned the flood of record at most U.S. Geological Survey stream gauges. Detailed field sampling and systematic image analysis are used to document the immediate and sustained geomorphic adjustments at four failed dams within the urbanized Gills Creek waters...
Biogeographic regionalization, the categorization of geographical areas on the basis of their biotas, provides a valuable approach for understanding biogeographical and ecological patterns and processes and serves as a valuable tool in conservation management practices. Contemporary, quantitative approaches for delineating and mapping biogeographic...
The roots of landscape ecology are firmly planted in terrestrial environments, even though many of the fundamental organizing ideas in the discipline are at least as relevant to aquatic and riparian systems. For example, the first two volumes of the journal Landscape Ecology included just three papers that focused explicitly on riverine and floodpl...
Given expected changes in economic and population growth, urbanization will continue to transform landscapes in the Southeastern U.S. over the remainder of the 21st century. Urban sprawl increases connectivity among urban habitats while simultaneously fragmenting non-urban habitats such as forests and grasslands, which poses a range of challenges f...
Lateral hydrologic connectivity between a river and its floodplain is important for exchanges of organisms and materials that support healthy, functioning riverine ecosystems. We use a GIS-based distance, cost-weighted spatial model to measure the possible pathways and travel durations for fish migrating from a mainstem river channel to ten differe...
The 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens in southwest Washington State radically changed the physical and socio-economic landscapes of the region. The eruption destroyed the summit of the volcano, sending large amounts of debris into the North Fork Toutle River, and blocking the sole means of drainage from Spirit Lake 4 miles north of Mount St. Helens...
This research investigated how the strength of vegetation-soil-topography couplings varied along a gradient of biogeomorphic succession in two distinct fluvial systems: a forested river floodplain and a coastal salt marsh creek. The strength of couplings was quantified as tri-variance, which was calculated by correlating three singular axes, one ea...
The floodplains of large Coastal Plain rivers in the southeastern U.S. are important long-term storage sites for alluvial sediment and nutrients. Yet considerable uncertainty surrounds sediment dynamics on many large river floodplains and, in particular, the local scale factors that affect the flux of sediment and nutrients from rivers onto their f...
The increasing availability of telemetry data with high spatial and temporal resolution promises to greatly advance scientific understandings of the movement patterns of individual organisms across space and time. The amount of data provided by such methods, however, can be challenging to analyze and interpret. In this study, we present a new appro...
Abandoned meanders are former river meanders cut-off from the active channel that occur in the floodplain in various stages of infilling. Their compositional diversity, ecological function, and persistence are highly variable in space and time. This study examines the spatial variability of vegetation dynamics, logging history, and hydrogeomorphic...
Regression based method to analyze common and unique variances of multiple data blocks.
Ecologists, particularly those engaged in biogeomorphic studies, often seek to connect data from three or more domains. Using three-block partial least squares regression, we present a procedure to quantify and define bi-variance and tri-variance of data blocks related to plant communities, their soil parameters, and topography. Bi-variance indicat...
An understanding of the factors controlling the permanent and episodic links between the main stem of a river and the ecosystems of its alluvial floodplain is necessary for evaluating the influence of modern river processes on floodplain ecology and habitat diversity and for the successful implementation of flow regimes that meet human needs for wa...
Background/Question/Methods
Floodplain forests once characterized most major alluvial river valleys in the southeastern U.S. Due to widespread clearing for agriculture and timber harvest, these bottomland hardwood forests now cover a fraction of their potential extent. Management has become important for maintaining ecologically functioning floodp...
Landscape ecologists have increasingly turned to the use of landscape graphs in which a landscape is represented as a set of nodes (habitat patches) connected by links representing inter-patch-dispersal. This study explores the use of a graph-based regionalization method, Graph-based REgionalization with Clustering And Partitioning (GraphRECAP), to...
PURPOSE: Managers of southeastern reservoirs have been challenged by the introduction of non-native aquatic plants and subsequent ecological consequences. The authors of this technical note have linked avian vacuolar myelinopathy (AVM), a disease killing waterbirds and raptors, to an epiphytic cyanobacterium which grows primarily on nonindigenous s...
An understanding of the factors controlling the permanent and episodic links between the main stem of a river and the various waterbodies lying in its alluvial floodplain is critical for evaluating the influence of modern river processes on floodplain ecology and habitat diversity, and for the successful implementation of flow regimes that meet hum...
Technological advances have created new opportunities for defining and mapping ecological and biogeographical regions on the basis of quantitative criteria while generating a need for studies that evaluate the sensitivity of ecoregionalizations to clustering methods and approaches. In this study, we used a novel regionalization algorithm, regionali...
Assessing and monitoring the ecological integrity of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems is a vital component of effective water resource management, sustainable land use planning, and biodiversity protection and management. Our objective was to quantify, evaluate and map measures of ecological condition and vulnerability for 32 sub-basins in South...
Aim Analyses of species distributions are complicated by various origins of spatial autocorrelation (SAC) in biogeographical data. SAC may be particularly important for invasive species distribution models (iSDMs) because biological invasions are strongly influenced by dispersal and colonization processes that typically create highly structured dis...
Canopy gaps create distinct microenvironments within the broader forest environment and provide a mechanism for regeneration and recruitment. In this study, we investigated patterns of sapling richness and composition in 40 canopy gaps in a secondary, mixed Quercus forest on the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee. We found that sapling richness was hi...
Successful management or restoration of southern floodplain forest ecosystems requires an understanding of how subtle changes in environmental conditions such as site hydroperiod affect species suitability as well as the importance of recruitment limitation. In this research, we examined the effects of elevation, modeled flood regime, soil conditio...
Studies of forest loss and fragmentation provide clear examples of the linkages between ecological pattern and process. Reductions in forest area lead to higher within-patch extinction rates, the eventual loss of area-sensitive species, and declines in species richness and diversity. Forest loss also results in increased isolation of remnants, lowe...
Data on vegetation composition and structure, soil and leaf nutrient pools, soil redox potential, and surface water hydrologic
connectivity were collected from floodplains along six river reaches in western Tennessee to examine the effects of channel
modifications on associated riparian systems. Comparisons among channelization treatments (non-chan...
Hydrogeomorphic models (HGM) for wetland classification and functional assessment have been developed for several regions in the United States. However, validation of models is lacking, even though models are already in use and the general idea is that each is a working model, developing over time with new ideas and information. We examined the HGM...
In an effort to clarify vegetation gradients in a Mississippi Embayment Coastal Plain forest, we classified sixty-one forest stands in Natchez Trace State Forest (NTSF). Ten dominance types were delineated from cluster analysis that matched seven alliances of The Nature Conservancy's (TNC) National Vegetation Classification System. Ordination analy...
We compared the spatial characteristics of fire severity patches within individual fire "runs" (contiguous polygons burned during a given day) resulting from a 72,000 ha fire in central Idaho in 1994. Our hypothesis was that patch characteristics of four fire severity classes (high, moderate, low, and unburned), as captured by five landscape metric...
To clarify broad-scale patterns and controls of treefall directionality from Hurricane Katrina, we examined fall directions across a 4,500 km(2) landscape mosaic in southern Mississippi using georeferenced, planar-rectified aerial photographs. Analyses using directional statistics, measures of local spatial autocorrelation, and general linear model...
Understanding and predicting the ways in which large and intense hurricanes affect ecosystem structure, composition and function
is important for the successful management of coastal forest ecosystems. In this research, we categorized forest damage resulting
from Hurricane Katrina into four classes (none, low, moderate, heavy) for nearly 450 plots...
The results of predictive vegetation models are often presented spatially as GIS-derived surfaces of vegetation attributes across a landscape or region, but spatial information is rarely included in the model itself. Geographically weighted regression (GWR), which extends the traditional regression framework by allowing regression coefficients to v...
Theoretical and applied research on the ecological consequences of deforestation has focused on the remnants of habitat in relative isolation, but recent thinking has theorized more realistic conditions in which the areas of altered habitat are not completely destroyed, in which they recover and the connectivity of the landscape changes, and in whi...
Landscape metrics are a standard tool in the study and monitoring of landscape pattern and change, but their statistical properties and behaviour across a range of classification schemes and landscapes, as well as their sensitivity to changing landscape patterns, are still not fully understood. We therefore investigated the sensitivity of 24 metric...
Because of the linkages among ecological pattern, function and process, policy makers and land managers have increasingly sought measures of landscape pattern that may be used to quantify and monitor changes in forest cover associated with forest fragmentation at national or multinational scales. In this paper, I provide a brief overview of the pro...
We examined forest structure and composition in four watersheds in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness Area, Idaho and Montana, to better understand the complexity of successional processes following stand-replacing fires in subalpine forest ecosystems. Dendrochronological analyses of more than 1,100 trees were used to identify the timing of establish...
Aim To determine how responses of an established velvet mesquite ( Prosopis velutina Woot.) population to a 2002 wildfire were shaped by grazing and non‐native herbaceous species invasions, both of which influenced fire behaviour.
Location The study was conducted on contiguous ranches (one actively grazed by cattle, one that had not been grazed sin...
This study examines whether vegetation and soils sampled in slash-and-burn fields in an agricultural landscape near Indian Church, Belize varied as a function of cropping status (in use, 1–2 year fallow, 3–10 year fallow) and distance to older forest (adjacent to or >150m from forest). Multi-response permutation procedures (MRPPs) indicated that sp...
This study examines whether vegetation and soils sampled in slash-and-burn fields in an agricultural landscape near Indian Church, Belize varied as a function of cropping status (in use, 1-2 year fallow, 3-10 year fallow) and distance to older forest (adjacent to or >150 m from forest). Multi-response permutation procedures (MRPPs) indicated that s...
We carried out a multiple-scale assessment of biotic resources within Natchez Trace State Forest (NTSF) in western Tennessee, focusing on the relation between biotic communities and seven previously developed ecological land types (ELT, based on topography and soils). We wanted to test the functional ability of ELTs for biodiversity stewardship. Wo...
We are now in the midst of a biological extinction event that rivals the great events of prehistory. Unlike previous events, however, the current threats to biodiversity are related to human activities, including habitat loss, degradation, fragmentation, and the introduction of invasive species. Along with scientists from other disciplines, geograp...
In this report, we described three distinct eras of timber harvest in defining the logging history of the preserve. Each era was characterized by methods and approaches that reflected the technological, political, and economic context of the period.
Researchers studying forest edge effects in fragmented landscapes have begun to move beyond merely documenting changes along the edge itself to examining the dynamic influences that edges may have on processes in adjacent areas. One such “edge-mediated effect” is the influence that edges may have on canopy gap replacement processes within the fores...
Lateral migrations of river meanders create transient, spatially transgressive edges where the advancing cut- bank edge encroaches upon interior floodplain forest communities. This spatial movement of edge toward the forest interior should initiate directional changesin species composition within a forest plot as it is affect- ed by a changing micr...
High elevation Fraser fir (Abies fraseri) forests of the Southern Appalachians have undergone widespread mortality since the introduction of the balsam woolly adelgid in the 1950s. Resulting changes in ecosystem pattern and process (e.g., stand dynamic processes) have greatly affected floral and faunal communities. In this project, we integrated fi...
The purpose of this study was to provide baseline data on floodplain forest structure, composition, and function that would be needed to predict and monitor the consequences of a proposed stream restoration project. This project would involve the "dechannelization" of Stokes Creek, a stream in western Tennessee that was channelized and leveed in th...
We examined six river reaches in western Tennessee over a two-year period to determine how channel alteration affected floodplain hydrology and nutrient pools. Four sites, two depression and two non-depression, were established on the floodplains of each river, and data on vegetation, water table depth, redox potential, and soil and leaf nutrient p...
This study sought to develop a modified change vector analysis (CVA) using normalized multidate data from Landsat TM to examine spruce-fir ecosystems. The introduction of the balsan woolly adelgid (Adelges piceae) to the Great Smoky Mountains in the late 1950s resulted in widespread mortality of Fraser fir (Abies fraseri), prompting the need for re...
The purpose of this research was to develop a model that could be used to provide a spatial representation of uneven-aged silvicultural treatments on forest crown area. We began by developing species-specific linear regression equations relating tree DBH to crown area for eight bottomland tree species at White River National Wildlife Refuge, Arkans...
In an effort to aid future research and forest management decisions, we incorporated data on forest type, soils and topography into a geographic information systems (GIS)-based ecological land classification system for Natchez Trace State Forest (NTSF) in western Tennessee. The area is still recovering from the effects of cultivation, logging, fore...
This study sought to develop a modified change vector analysis (CVA) using normalized multidate data from Landsat TM to examine spruce–fir ecosystems. The introduction of the balsam woolly adelgid (Adelges piceae) to the Great Smoky Mountains in the late 1950s resulted in widespread mortality of Fraser fir (Abies fraseri), prompting the need for re...
In this study, non-spatial and spatial components of heterogeneity were contrasted for a mid-successional forest (55 years old) and an adjacent primary forest in western Tennessee. Analyses of size-class frequencies showed that whereas all size classes were well represented in the primary forest, the second-growth stand was marked by a greater numb...
In this research, we attempt to quantify the factors structuring woody species composition within forest gaps in the interior of Hueston Woods Nature Preserve, Ohio. Our results indicate that composition is related not only to factors commonly cited in other studies, including disturbance history, topographic position, and environmental factors (e....
The adverse effects of agricultural non-point source pollution (e.g., sediment, nitrogen, phosphorous) on water quality are widely recognized and documented. Riparian vegetation, however, can help to filter out these pollutants by detaining or processing the pollutants. In this study, we estimate the effectiveness and adequacy of riparian buffers i...
Because of the difficulties involved with separating natural fluctuations in climatic variables from possible directional changes related to human activities (e.g., heightened atmospheric CO2 concentrations related to fossil fuel consumption), some researchers have focused on developing alternative indicators to detect hypothesized climate changes....
To discern the effects of edge age, orientation, and adjacent vegetation structure on forest-edge composition, I surveyed and compared woody species composition in the forest interior and in edges located along roads encircling and bisecting Hueston Woods Nature Preserve, an old-growth beech-maple forest in southwestern Ohio. Among-habitat comparis...
Many theories of forest succession imply that terrestrial plant community composition within a region tends to converge toward a climax community. That is, given similar climatic and edaphic conditions, succession at different sites within an area will lead to comparable species compositions, a pattern referred to as successional convergence.
In th...
The growing recognition that spatial scale and heterogeneity affect ecological processes has focused heightened attention over the last decade on principles from the field of landscape ecology. Landscape ecologists, drawing on principles from a diverse array of disciplines and fields, including physical and human geography, focus explicitly on the...
Lateral migrations of river meanders create transient, spatially transgressive edges where the advancing cutbank edge encroaches upon interior floodplain forest communities. This spatial movement of edge toward the forest interior should initiate directional changes in species composition within a forest plot as it is affected by a changing microcl...
Actively meandering rivers advance into mature floodplain vegetation, resulting in the continual creation and destruction of cutbank edges across a floodplain with successive channel advancements. To examine specific changes in vegetation initiated by the lateral migration of a river channel, we quantify the structure and composition of woody trees...
Leaf litter and woody debris are important sources of carbon for stream ecosystems, but the patterns of such inputs are variable. To clarify the processes that may lead to such variations, we modified a computer simulation model of forest dynamics to record the production, transport, and decomposition of leaf litter and woody debris given condition...
