Lauren Kuehne

Omfishient Consulting

River health assessments have been conducted around the world using differing principles and methods. This paper seeks to bring these efforts together to craft a way forward for indicators that would be suitable beyond the local to the global scale.

Rivers are the arteries of human civilisation and culture, providing essential goods and services that underpin water and food security, socioeconomic development and climate resilience. They also support an extraordinary diversity of biological life. Human appropriation of land and water together with changes in climate have jointly driven rapid d...

Professional societies and scientists cannot ignore the overwhelming data associated with increased sustainability, access, global participation, diversity, equity and inclusion associated with switching to virtual conferences. But tradition and attachment to norms create a strong pull toward legacy formats, meaning we may miss the opportunities to...

Every year, field excursions engage students of ecology in experiential learning that results in wide‐ranging and well‐documented pedagogical benefits. Much less appreciated, however, is the potential for these excursions to contribute long‐term data that advance scientific knowledge and natural resource management. Here we explore this potential b...

The Olympic mudminnow (Novumbra hubbsi) is a small freshwater fish, endemic to western Washington State. Although the species is listed as a Washington sensitive species, the lack of routine monitoring has resulted in poor understanding of population dynamics over time needed to support management and conservation actions. Olympic mudminnow commonl...

Disruptive events can trigger societal transformations with beneficial outcomes. For scientific professions, the COVID-19 pandemic triggered a comprehensive shift from in-person workshops, seminars, and conferences to the use of virtual formats for research and knowledge dissemination. Despite the merits of virtual conferencing being advocated sinc...

• Olympic mudminnow (Novumbra hubbsi) is the only endemic freshwater fish species in Washington State and is limited to south-western and northern coastal wetlands there. Population decline has led to its listing as state ‘Sensitive’, while recent genetic analysis has identified north coast populations as a sub-group of potential concern because of...

Efficient management of invasive species benefits from understanding patterns of persistence and change over time. In this study, we compare distribution and abundance of the invasive macrophyte parrotfeather (Myriophyllum aquaticum) in an unregulated river system between the time near its presumed introduction and 20 years later. Initial surveys w...

Military operations may result in noise impacts on surrounding communities and wildlife. A recent transition to more powerful military aircraft and a national consolidation of training operations to Whidbey Island, WA, USA, provided a unique opportunity to measure and assess both in-air and underwater noise associated with military aircraft. In-air...

In the course of multi-year studies testing control options for non-native parrotfeather (Myriophyllum aquaticum (Vell.) Verdcourt), we documented sustained herbivory by a native leaf-feeding beetle Galerucella nymphaea (Linnaeus) (Chrysomelidae) in two different river systems in southwestern and central western Washington State, USA. This research...

Environmental DNA (eDNA) analysis offers a promising tool for rapid and early detection of aquatic plant invasive species, but currently suffers from substantial unknowns that limit its widespread use in monitoring programs. We conducted the first study to test the factors related to eDNA-based detectability of 2 invasive aquatic plants, Egeria den...

Brazilian elodea (Egeria densa) is an invasive freshwater plant that demonstrates widespread ecological impacts in freshwater ecosystems and causes substantial economic damage. Here, we developed an environmental DNA assay for detection of E. densa to provide resource managers with a tool for early detection, identification, and monitoring of invas...

The chapter describes the describes the ecology, morphology, reproduction, distribution, behavior, taxonomy, conservation, and the fossil record of the esociform fishes. Although the number of living species of Esociformes is relatively small, they are remarkable for their diverse adaptations, habits and habitats.

The 1972 Clean Water Act (CWA) provided crucial environmental protections, spurring research and corresponding development of a network of expertise that represents critical human capital in freshwater conservation. We used social network analysis to evaluate collaboration across organizational types and ecosystem focus by examining connections bet...

We examined historical and contemporary trends for a suite of groundfish species in Puget Sound, Washington, USA, to ask how the groundfish community has responded following shifts in fishing regulations, climate, food web, and a growing human population in the surrounding watershed. We used contemporary data (1990-2017) from a standardized annual...

Large floodplain rivers (LFRs) are currently threatened by high levels of human alteration, and utilization is expected to grow. Assessments to determine ecological condition should address the specific environmental features of these unique ecosystems, while conservation management requires balancing maintenance of good ecological condition with t...

Washington State's only endemic fish, Olympic mudminnow (Novumbra hubbsi), was listed as state "Sensitive" in 1999 due to a small range and concern about population declines and threats, including impacts from nonnative competitors and predators. We investigated the trophic ecology of Olympic mudminnow to identify habitat and foraging specializatio...

Mounting evidence supports health and well-being benefits associated with nature experiences, while also highlighting race- and class-based inequalities in access and exposure. We synthesized the literature on nature contact by Latinos in the United States to assess the state of knowledge and strategically identify research needs to improve outcome...

One of the most influential environmental laws in the US – the 1972 Clean Water Act – included the visionary objective of maintaining and restoring aquatic ecological integrity. However, the efficacy of the Act depends on how integrity is assessed. Reviewing the assessment literature for fresh waters over the past 40 years, we found evidence of met...

Grant and fellowship proposal writing are key skills for professionals in scientific and research-driven fields, and early exposure and training in proposal writing substantially benefit early career scientists. Here, we present a framework for a student-led workshop for graduate fellowships that is built upon four years of implementation at the Un...

Natural resource agencies are increasingly required to prioritise management of multiple non-native aquatic plants (macrophytes) in freshwater ecosystems. Characterising the consequences of invasions for ecological processes and corresponding ecosystem services is fundamental to this decision-making process, but requires an understanding of impacts...

The Olympic Mudminnow Novumbra hubbsi is a highly endemic freshwater fish found only in Washington State, where their distribution is limited to low-elevation wetland habitats. The distributional extent of the Olympic Mudminnow is well established, but local and watershed environmental features associated with their presence or absence within the r...

Coastal ecosystems face a variety of natural and anthropogenic influences, raising questions about mechanisms by which species abundance and composition change over time. We examined these questions by synthesizing 6 surface-trawling efforts in greater Puget Sound, Washington (USA), spanning 40 yr, and then determining changes in forage fish abunda...

At first blush, the notion of lay summaries seems a simple idea with admirable aims: Scientists write summaries of journal articles emphasizing the broad significance of research in accessible language. However, viewed from an ivory tower that has been besieged by an increasing amount of paperwork , scientists could easily regard lay summaries as j...

We review and summarize the ecology and conservation status of the group of fishes commonly known as “mudminnows” (formerly known as the family Umbridae but recently reclassified as Esocidae), consisting of only five species distributed on three continents. These small-bodied fish—residing in freshwater habitats and exhibiting limited mobility—ofte...

Development of skills in science communication is a well-acknowledged gap in graduate training, but the constraints that accompany research (limited time, resources, and knowledge of opportunities) make it challenging to acquire these proficiencies. Furthermore, advisors and institutions may find it difficult to support graduate students adequately...

Unlabelled: BACKGROUND/METHODOLOGY: A significant implication of increasing urbanization is anthropogenic noise pollution. Although noise is strongly associated with disruption of animal communication systems and negative health effects for humans, the study of these consequences at ecologically relevant spatial and temporal scales (termed soundsc...

Rapid environmental change in freshwater ecosystems has created a need to understand the interactive effects of multiple stressors, with temperature and invasive predators identified as key threats to imperiled fish species. We tested the separate and interactive effects of water temperature and predation by non-native smallmouth bass (Micropterus...

1. Non-native predators might inflict proportionally higher mortality on prey that have no previous experience of them, compared to species that have coexisted with the predator for some time. 2. We tested whether juvenile Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) were less able to recognise a non-native than a native predator, by investigating beh...

Predator-prey interactions are mediated by multiple abiotic factors such as habitat availability, water quality, refuge, and temperature; all of these factors vary both naturally and in response to ongoing changes in human land use and regional climate. For freshwater fishes, the impacts of temperature are particularly vital to understand given pro...