Kyle A. Palmquist

Marshall University · Department of Biological Sciences

In the coming century, climate change is projected to impact precipitation and temperature regimes worldwide, with especially large effects in drylands. We use big sagebrush ecosystems as a model dryland ecosystem to explore the impacts of altered climate on ecohydrology and the implications of those changes for big sagebrush plant communities usin...

2018. STEPWAT2: an individual-based model for exploring the impact of climate and disturbance on dryland plant communities. Ecosphere 9(8): Abstract. The combination of climate change and altered disturbance regimes is directly and indirectly affecting plant communities by mediating competitive interactions, resulting in shifts in species compositi...

The probability of extreme weather events is increasing, with the potential for widespread impacts to plants, plant communities, and ecosystems. Reports of drought‐related tree mortality are becoming more frequent along with increasing evidence that drought accompanied by high temperatures is especially detrimental. Simultaneously, extreme large pr...

Dryland ecosystems may be especially vulnerable to expected 21st century increases in temperature and aridity because they are tightly controlled by moisture availability. However, climate impact assessments in drylands are difficult because ecological dynamics are dictated by drought conditions that are difficult to define and complex to estimate...

Plant community response to climate change will be influenced by individual plant responses that emerge from competition for limiting resources that fluctuate through time and vary across space. Projecting these responses requires an approach that integrates environmental conditions and species interactions that result from future climatic variabil...

Big sagebrush ecosystems are widespread across drylands of western North America and provide numerous services, but the abundance of these ecosystems has declined substantially and the future of these ecosystems is uncertain. As a result, characterizing potential areas for expansion of these ecosystems is important. Species distribution models of t...

Background Without periodic fire, fire-adapted plant communities across the Central Hardwood Forest Region (CHF) in the USA have undergone significant changes in forest structure and species composition, most notably a decrease in oak regeneration and herbaceous diversity and an increase in shade-tolerant, fire-sensitive tree species. In this study...

Precipitation events have been predicted and observed to become fewer, but larger, as the atmosphere warms. Water-limited ecosystems are especially sensitive to changes in water cycling, yet evidence suggests that productivity may either increase or decrease in response to precipitation intensification. Interactions among climate, soil properties,...

Livestock grazing is a globally important land‐use and has the potential to significantly influence plant community structure and ecosystem function, yet several critical knowledge gaps remain on the direction and magnitude of grazing impacts. Furthermore, much of our understanding of the long‐term effects on plant community composition and structu...

Estimating plant biomass in rangeland ecosystems is essential to understanding carbon cycling, impacts on natural resources, and ecological functioning or structure—all of which inform sustainable land management. However, biomass estimation has been relatively understudied for the sagebrush steppe of North America, one of the continent's most wide...

1. Simulation models are valuable tools for estimating ecosystem structure and function under various climatic and environmental conditions and disturbance regimes, and are particularly relevant for investigating the potential impacts of climate change on ecosystems. However, because computational requirements can restrict the number of feasible si...

Questions Ecological communities are controlled by multiple, interacting abiotic and biotic factors that influence the distribution, abundance, and diversity of species. These processes jointly determine resource availability, resource competition, and ultimately species richness. For many terrestrial ecosystems in dryland climates, soil water avai...

Assessing landscape patterns in climate vulnerability, as well as resilience and resistance to drought, disturbance, and invasive species, requires appropriate metrics of relevant environmental conditions. In dryland systems of western North America, soil temperature and moisture regimes have been widely utilized as an indicator of resilience to di...

Water is the most limiting and important natural resource in drylands where low precipitation, high evaporative demand, and drought events are common. Groundwater is the critical resource making it possible for human livelihoods to persist through the intra-annual dry periods in dryland ecosystems. Overexploitation of groundwater resources and the...

[Elsevier Share Link Full-Text Article Available: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1Yuq55WcHQ~ocP] Big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata Nutt.) plant communities are found in western North America and comprise a mix of shrubs, forbs, and grasses. Climate, topography, and soil water availability are important factors that shape big sagebrush stand stru...

A longer growing season with climate change is expected to increase net primary productivity of many rangeland types, especially those dominated by grasses, although responses will depend on local climate and soil conditions. Elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide may increase water use efficiency and productivity of some species. In many cases, incre...

Purpose: The purpose of the Carolina Vegetation Survey (CVS) is to provide a framework for characterization of natural plant communities throughout North and South Carolina and adjacent US states. The resulting classification supports scientific interpretation of vegetation pattern, biodiversity inventory, biodiversity monitoring, conservation effo...

Big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata Nutt.) plant communities are widespread in western North America and, similar to all shrub steppe ecosystems worldwide, are composed of a shrub overstory layer and a forb and graminoid understory layer. Forbs account for the majority of plant species diversity in big sagebrush plant communities and are important...

Reclamation is an application of treatment(s) following disturbance to promote succession and accelerate the return of target conditions. Previous studies have framed reclamation in the context of succession by studying its effectiveness in reestablishing late-successional plant communities. Reestablishment of plant communities is especially import...

Ecohydrological responses to climate change will exhibit spatial variability and understanding the spatial pattern of ecological impacts is critical from a land management perspective. To quantify climate change impacts on spatial patterns of ecohydrology across shrub steppe ecosystems in North America, we asked the following question: How will cli...

Big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata Nutt.) ecosystems provide habitat for sagebrush-obligate wildlife species such as the Greater Sage-Grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus). The understory of big sagebrush plant communities is composed of grasses and forbs that are important sources of cover and food for wildlife. The grass component is well described...

Background Functional and phylogenetic diversity are increasingly used to infer the important community assembly processes that have structured local communities, which is one of the most fundamental issues in ecology. However, there are critical assumptions and pitfalls associated with these analyses, which can create ambiguity in interpreting re...

On the Ground: Thacker et al. compared two common techniques for assessing greater sage-grouse habitat: Daubenmire quadrats and line-point intercept sampling. Sampling only 16 Daubenmire quadrats may not have been adequate to support Thacker et al.'s assertion that line-point sampling yields higher cover values and that the two methods are not comp...

Disturbance is an important driver of plant community structure in many grasslands and woodlands, and alteration of disturbance regimes can have large consequences for species richness and composition. However, the response of vegetation to disturbance may change with environmental context. We resampled a unique, nested permanent vegetation plot da...

The stress-dominance hypothesis (SDH) is a model of community assembly predicting that the relative importance ofenvironmental filtering increases and competition decreases along a gradient of increasing environmental stress. Tests of the SDH at limited spatial scales have thus far demonstrated equivocal support and no prior study has assessed the...

QuestionsHow has plant species richness changed over two decades in one of the most species-rich savannas in North America? Is an altered disturbance regime, environmental stress, or both, driving these changes? In what ways can observations in this savanna inform management of other species-rich plant communities?LocationLongleaf pine savannas in...

This chapter examines species richness patterns in the herbaceous layer vegetation of forests and woodlands of southeastern North America. It demonstrates the changing importance of various drivers of species richness across environmental and geographic gradients and across vegetation types, and shows how the relative importance of those drivers va...

Background / Purpose: In 2008 the US Federal Geographic Data Committee adopted new standards for the US National Vegetation Classification (NVC) that mandate the use of a peer review process for evaluating proposed changes plus the use of plot data for documentation of the recognized vegetation types. In cooperation with the ESA Vegetation Panel...

Background / Purpose: To quantify the relative importance of ecological processes structuring plant biodiversity in the longleaf pine ecosystem. Main conclusion: Processes operating at local scales, namely soil properties, were most important in structuring both species richness and beta-diversity. However, regional and historical processes ex...

Background/Question/Methods In 2008 the US Federal Geographic Data Committee adopted new standards for the US National Vegetation Classification (NVC) that mandate the use of a peer review process for evaluating proposed changes plus the use of plot data for documentation of the recognized vegetation types. In cooperation with the ESA Vegetation...

Background/Question/Methods Recent research suggests that examination of functional and phylogenetic diversity will yield insight into processes shaping ecological communities. However, the type of data used to assess these patterns may influence the resulting conclusions. We investigated geographic variation in functional and phylogenetic diversi...

Background/Question/Methods Although ecologists have extensively documented how communities change along environmental gradients, understanding the ecological processes that create those patterns has been more elusive. Recent initiatives to move beyond taxonomic based assessments and incorporate functional trait and phylogenetic information into...

Background/Question/Methods The pine forests of the Atlantic coastal plain have undergone substantial changes in the composition and diversity of both plant and avifaunal communities as a result of human activities. Many native plant species within this ecosystem require bare, mineral soil for germination, yet decades of fire suppression has resu...

Background/Question/Methods Long-term vegetation change is driven by multiple processes with some well understood and others unknown. In an effort to provide a framework for assessing vegetation change we examined composition and diversity over time in three contrasting North Carolina ecosystem types. In the interest of assessing options for long-...

Background/Question/Methods For centuries, botanists, plant ecologists, and taxonomists have been fascinated with the high degree of biodiversity, endemism, and rarity associated with the Longleaf Pine ecosystem of the southeastern United States. While many studies have documented the importance of fire and edaphic properties in structuring speci...

Background/Question/Methods The US National Park Service has called for the establishment of All Taxa Biodiversity Inventories (ATBIs) as part of its Centennial Challenge Initiative. The goals of these surveys include cataloging taxa in the parks, discovering new species, and understanding ecological patterns of species distribution. The first ATB...