John Withey

The Evergreen State College · Graduate Program on the Environment (MES degree)

Consistent with a warming climate, birds are shifting the timing of their migrations, but it remains unclear to what extent these shifts have kept pace with the changing environment. Because bird migration is primarily cued by annually consistent physiological responses to photoperiod, but conditions at their breeding grounds depend on annually var...

Significance Land-use change affects the provision of ecosystem services and wildlife habitat. We project land-use change from 2001 to 2051 for the contiguous United States under two scenarios reflecting continuation of 1990s trends and high crop demand more reflective of the recent past. These scenarios result in large differences in land-use traj...

Land-use change is a major cause of wildlife habitat loss. Understanding how changes in land-use policies and economic factors can impact future trends in land use and wildlife habitat loss is therefore critical for conservation efforts. Our goal here was to evaluate the consequences of future land-use changes under different conservation policies...

Efficient conservation planning requires knowledge about conservation targets, threats to those targets, costs of conservation and the marginal return to additional conservation efforts. Systematic conservation planning typically only takes a small piece of this complex puzzle into account. Here, we use a return-on-investment (ROI) approach to prio...

Characteristics of buildings and land cover surrounding buildings influence the number of bird-window collisions, yet little is known about whether bird-window collisions are associated with urbanization at large spatial scales. We initiated a continent-wide study in North America to assess how bird-window collision mortality is influenced by build...

The yearly cycles in vegetation greenness are among the most important drivers of ecosystem processes. Predictive models for the timing of vegetation greenup and senescence are crucial for understanding how biological communities respond to global change. Greenup timing is closely tied to climate and also tracks yearly variability in temperature, a...

Conserving forests to provide ecosystem services and biodiversity will be a key environmental challenge as society strives to adapt to climate change. The ecosystem services and biodiversity that forests provide will be influenced by the behaviors of numerous individual private landowners as they alter their use of forests in response to climate ch...

Expanding the network of protected areas is a core strategy for conserving biodiversity in the face of climate change. Here, we explore the impacts on reserve network cost and configuration associated with planning for climate change in the USA using networks that prioritize areas projected to be climatically suitable for 1460 species both today an...

Single species conservation unites disparate partners for the conservation of one species. However, there are widespread concerns that single species conservation biases conservation efforts towards charismatic species at the expense of others. Here we investigate the extent to which sage grouse (Centrocercus sp.) conservation, the largest public-p...

Proportion of species distributions held within PACs. (PDF)

Proportional coverage under Zonation scenarios, by species. (PDF)

Proportion of species distributions held within PACs, by taxon. (PDF)

Proportion of species distribution falling outside study region. (PDF)

Species-area curves for the four Zonation scenarios. (PDF)

Proportion of distribution at risk, by species. (PDF)

Climate change will markedly alter the structure and function of ecosystems, with important implications for land management. Yet scientists' ability to predict future ecological conditions is hampered by uncertainty in both climate projections and ecological responses to climate change. More data are now available – from small-scale experimental r...

The US Endangered Species Act (ESA) regulates what landowners, land managers, and industry can do on lands occupied by listed species. The ESA does this in part by requiring the designation of habitat within each listed species’ range considered critical to their recovery. Critics have argued that critical habitat (CH) designation creates significa...

Chapter 23 in T.E Lovejoy and L. Hannah, eds., 2019. Biodiversity and Climate Change: Transforming the Biosphere. New Haven: Yale University Press.

The US Endangered Species Act (ESA) regulates what landowners and land managers can do on lands occupied by listed species. The act does this in part through the designation of habitat areas considered critical to the recovery of listed species. Critics have argued that the designation of critical habitat (CH) has substantial economic impacts on la...

We determine the effect of the US Endangered Species Act's Critical Habitat designation on land use change from 1992 to 2011. We find that the rate of change in developed land (constructed material) and agricultural land is not significantly affected by Critical Habitat designation. Therefore, Sections 7 and 9 of the Endangered Species Act do not a...

Background/Question/Methods Migratory birds, given their ability to move long distances, might be expected to be among the most adaptable to climate change. However, birds must anticipate climatic conditions of their distant breeding grounds from their wintering grounds, which is complicated by greater climatic change at higher latitudes. While f...

This report summarizes the results from a climate change adaptation workshop focused on the Pioneer Mountains – Craters of the Moon landscape in south-central Idaho. The objective of the workshop was to collaborate with landscape managers to apply results from the Pacific Northwest climate change vulnerability assessment (PNWCCVA) to on-the-ground...

This report summarizes the results from a climate change adaptation workshop focused on the Columbia Plateau landscape in eastern Washington and parts of Idaho and Oregon. The objective of the workshop was to collaborate with landscape managers to apply results from the Pacific Northwest climate change vulnerability assessment (PNWCCVA) to on-the-g...

The conservation community is divided over the proper objective for conservation, with one faction focused on ecosystem services that contribute to human well-being and another faction focused on the intrinsic value of biodiversity. Despite the underlying difference in philosophy, it is not clear that this divide matters in a practical sense of gui...

Background/Question/Methods Land-use change due to human population and economic growth has been one of the major drivers of environmental change over the last 100 years. As a result native habitats have been reduced and fragmented, causing a loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Evaluating how alternative policies can affect the trajectory...

Land-use change significantly contributes to biodiversity loss, invasive species spread, changes in biogeochemical cycles, and the loss of ecosystem services. Planning for a sustainable future requires a thorough understanding of expected land use at the fine spatial scales relevant for modeling many ecological processes and at dimensions appropria...

The conversion of forests and farmlands to human settlements has negative impacts on many native species, but also provides resources that some species are able to exploit. American Crows (Corvus brachyrhynchos), one such exploiter, create concern due to their impact as nest predators, disease hosts, and cultural harbingers of evil. We used various...

Despite the fact that forests in urban areas play multiple and often conflicting roles, research and management efforts are typically geared towards a single role or purpose. Urban ecology addresses this multiplicity of function by viewing human and natural systems in urban areas not as separate entities, but as interacting components of an integra...

Nest predation may influence habitat selection by birds at multiple spatial scales. We blended population and community ecology to investigate this possibility for 15 species of forest songbirds and their diurnal nest predators (corvids and sciurids) in 28 1 km(2) sites near Seattle, Washington, from 1998 to 2004. We determined whether songbirds we...

Nest predation may influence habitat selection by birds at multiple spatial scales. We blended population and community ecology to investigate this possibility for 15 species of forest songbirds and their diurnal nest predators (corvids and sciurids) in 28 1 km2 sites near Seattle, Washington, from 1998 to 2004. We determined whether songbirds were...

Climatic and landscape patterns have been associated with both relative mosquito abundance and transmission of mosquito-borne illnesses in many parts of the world, especially warm and tropical climes. To determine if temperature, precipitation, or degree of urbanization were similarly important in the number of potential mosquito vectors for West N...

A widely held belief is that only through interdisciplinarity can academics effectively address today's complex ecological problems, because these problems demand cross-disciplinary efforts and specialized knowledge from natural and social scientists. Innovative interdisciplinary research and curricula have been created to train a new generation of...

American Crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos) populations are increasing across North America, often at high rates in urban areas. A monthly survey of American Crows in the Seattle Christmas Bird Count (CBC) circle suggested that winter counts reflected American Crow abundance at other times of the year, so we used CBC results for American Crows as a measu...

Few models evaluate the effects of forest management options on wildlife habitat and incorporate temporal and spatial trends in forest growth. Moreover, existing habitat models do not explicitly consider economic trade-offs or allow for landscape level projections. To address these concerns, we linked standard wildlife habitat suitability models wi...

Important benefits of radio tagging of animals are the accuracy, precision, and completeness of resulting observations. Accurate inference in radiotelemetry depends on unbiased observations. Remotely gathered location estimates differ in precision and accuracy from visual observations. Moreover, behavior is influenced by the act of tagging or track...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2006. Land cover change, particularly the conversion of native forest habitat to human settlements, is a major driver of ecological impacts in the Puget Sound region. American Crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos) abundance and use values, as measured by a utilization distribution, responded positively to the amoun...