Samuel D. Fuhlendorf

Oklahoma State University | Oklahoma State · Department of Natural Resource Ecology and Management

The increasing threats to grassland ecosystems from land-use/land-cover change, disturbances, and invasive species underscore the importance of monitoring grassland plant diversity. While most remote sensing studies have mainly focused on quantifying α-diversity (diversity within communities), less attention has been given to remotely estimating β-...

The sustainability of grazed rangelands can be improved by adopting innovative management practices that enhance the ecological resilience, productivity, and long-term viability of rangeland ecosystems. This study applied a bivariate Multiple Indicator–Multiple Causation model to examine how landowner characteristics are associated with their perce...

Invasive plants are threats to biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, and services. Previous studies have reported that the impacts of biological invasions on ecosystem characteristics can be scale- and ecosystem-dependent. Current methods to assess the impacts of biological invasions have mainly focused on traditional field observations, limiting th...

By 1985, approximately 400,000 ha of the keystone species Shinnery oak's ( Quercus havardii ) historic distribution had been eliminated for agricultural purposes across the southwestern United States. These trends indicate a need for targeted conservation and restoration efforts, especially considering the increased attention received for its role...

Background The southeastern United States consists of diverse ecosystems, many of which are fire-dependent. Fires were common during pre-European times, and many were anthropogenic in origin. Understanding how prescribed burning practices in use today compare to historic fire regimes can provide perspective and context on the role of fire in critic...

Invasive plants can alter ecosystem composition, structure and function, which in turn may have significant impacts on plant diversity. Although the impacts of biological invasions on plant diversity have been studied in previous literature, results have been inconsistent and occasionally counterintuitive. The crux of the matter is that most of the...

Conservation translocations are frequently inhibited by extensive dispersal after release, which can expose animals to dispersal‐related mortality or Allee effects due to a lack of nearby conspecifics. However, translocation‐induced dispersals also provide opportunities to study how animals move across a novel landscape, and how their movements are...

Wetlands provide many ecosystem services and functions, including critical stopover habitat for numerous migratory bird species. Yet, loss and degradation of wetlands due to land use and land cover changes have greatly reduced wetland extent worldwide, leading to declines of many migratory shorebirds globally. In the Western Hemisphere, wetlands of...

Herbivores and fire are important consumers of plant biomass that influence vegetation structure, nutrient cycling, and biodiversity globally. Departures from historic biomass consumption patterns due to wild herbivore losses, livestock proliferation, and altered fire regimes can have critical ecological consequences. We set out to (i) understand h...

The Rio Grande wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo intermedia) is a popular game species throughout the southcentral United States. It has experienced recent population declines in some areas of its distribution, though the cause is not clear. To better understand Rio Grande wild turkey (hereafter, turkey) ecology and inform management, we attached Gl...

Camera traps are an important noninvasive tool used by scientists to monitor wildlife efficiently and at reduced costs. New camera trap features improve performance and encourage increased use by researchers and the public. Cellular transmission of image data, which provides users the ability to digitally receive images instead of retrieving or dow...

Fire is a fundamental ecological process in rangeland ecosystems. Fire drives patterns in both abiotic and biotic ecosystem functions that maintain healthy rangelands, making it an essential tool for both rangeland and wildlife management. In North America, humanity’s relationship with fire has rapidly changed and shifted from an era of coexistence...

Invasive species are generally managed across rangelands to achieve livestock productivity and biodiversity maintenance objectives. The invasive legume Lespedeza cuneata (Dum. Cours.) G. Don. is managed across much of the Great Plains with aerially applied herbicides that target broadleaf forbs and dormant season (late March- early April) fire. It...

Sympatry is a common consequence of niche differentiation and can exist as broad sympatry (shared geographical region) or direct sympatry (i.e., syntopy [shared resource patch]). Syntopy may be highly dynamic, particularly in environments that experience stochastic events that increase variability in abiotic conditions and vegetation. We examined h...

Arthropod consumption provides amino acids to invertebrates and vertebrates alike, but not all amino acids in arthropods may be digestible as some are bound in the exoskeleton. Consumers may not be able to digest exoskeleton in significant amounts or avoid it entirely (e.g., extraoral digestion). Hence, measures that do not separate digestible amin...

We examined the hypothesis that adapting to ecosystem change on working landscapes can be enhanced by supporting the place‐based stewardship values of landowners. On the basis of responses to a survey of more than 500 landowners across a landscape dominated by working lands, we clustered landowners into five groups based on their sense of place mea...

Feral horse (Equus caballus) and burro (Equus asinus) management is a complex socioecological issue in the western United States. This complexity is partly due to divergent views regarding these animals: they are viewed as national treasures by some but as invasive pests by others. Feral equids are mandated as one of multiple uses on federal public...

Invasive species are suspected to be major contributors to biodiversity declines worldwide. Counterintuitively, however, invasive species effects are likely scale dependent and are hypothesized to be positively related to biodiversity at large spatial scales. Past studies investigating the effect of invasion on biodiversity have been mostly conduct...

Abstract Recent declines in eastern wild turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo silvestris) have prompted increased interest in management and research of this important game species. However, the mechanisms underlying these declines are unclear, leaving uncertainty in how best to manage this species. Foundational to effective management of wildlife species...

Climate change is predicted to increase the intensity and frequency of weather extremes (e.g., extreme heat and drought), which will likely affect wildlife species in significant ways. Maintaining landscape heterogeneity has been suggested as a potential conservation strategy to buffer animals from weather extremes. Because animal movement influenc...

Patch-burn grazing, a combination of fire and grazing, has been identified as a novel approach to maintaining biodiversity in the Great Plains of the United States. Many ranchers, however, are not aware of the practice and very few of them had adopted it on their land. Utilizing the data obtained from a survey of landowners residing in the southern...

Recent declines in eastern wild turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo silvestris) has prompted increased interest in management and research of this important game species. However, the mechanisms underlying these declines are unclear, leaving uncertainty in how best to manage this species. Foundational to effective management of wildlife species is underst...

El factor principal de fracaso de la anidación en aves terrestres es la depredación, especialmente en especies que anidan en el suelo y son vulnerables a un gremio diverso de depredadores. Sin embargo, las descripciones de cómo ocurren las interacciones complejas depredador-presa, que llevan en última instancia al fracaso de la anidación, son escas...

Animal movement patterns are affected by complex interactions between biotic and abiotic landscape conditions, and these patterns are being altered by weather variability associated with a changing climate. Some animals, like the American plains bison (Bison bison L.; hereafter, plains bison), are considered keystone species, thus their response to...

Invasive species management is promoted as a general practice to maintain rangeland biodiversity and mitigate livestock performance losses (e.g., weight gain) stemming from invasive-species effects (e.g., competitive exclusion of palatable forages). It is hypothesized that altering fire-timing (e.g., moving from early to late-growing season burning...

Grassland ecosystems are under threat globally, primarily due to land-use and land-cover changes that have adversely affected their biodiversity. Given the negative ecological impacts of biodiversity loss in grasslands, there is an urgent need for developing an operational biodiversity monitoring system that functions in these ecosystems. In this p...

Studies of thermal selection by organisms, including fishes, are common and provide data that are useful for conservation and management. Advances in temperature sensing technology have improved these studies; however, the benefits of new technology (e.g., increased accuracy and greater deployment flexibility) should be carefully considered and com...

Globally, grasslands have been heavily degraded, more so than any other biome. Grasslands of the eastern U.S. are no exception to this trend and, consequently, native biota associated with the region’s >20 million ha of agricultural grasslands are under considerable stress. For example, grassland associated breeding bird populations have declined p...

Woody plant encroachment in grasslands represents one of the greatest challenges for global biodiversity conservation. Furthermore, this is a social-ecological problem, where human activity and behavior have resulted in significant changes in ecological processes that control woody plants, and failure to fully recognize the role of human activity h...

In any natural area, the seasonally changing needs and interactions of each individual species from the microbiota to plants, invertebrates, and vertebrates are largely unknown. Completing individual management plans and actions for every species is patently unachievable. Accepting this complexity and uncertainty, we submit that returning the forma...

Diel and seasonal rhythms affect an animal's environment and life history. Understanding how these rhythms influence movement increases our knowledge on how animals adjust to changing resources, environmental conditions, and risk to their survival. To better understand how diel and seasonal rhythms affect animals, we evaluated movements of Northern...

Variation in the relative abundance and biomass of arthropods has important potential consequences for insectivores. We studied the influence of temporal variation and habitat management (i.e., burning and strip-disking) on the availability of potential arthropod prey for brooding northern bobwhites (Colinus virginianus) in the mixed-grass prairie...

Fire refugia and patchiness are important to the persistence of fire‐sensitive species and may facilitate biodiversity conservation in fire‐dependent landscapes. Playing the role of ecosystem engineers, large herbivores alter vegetation structure and can reduce wildfire risk. However, herbivore effects on the spatial variability of fire and the per...

Global climate change is causing increased climate extremes threatening biodiversity and altering ecosystems. Climate is comprised of many variables including air temperature, barometric pressure, solar radiation, wind, relative humidity, and precipitation that interact with each other. As movement connects various aspects of an animal's life, unde...

The challenge of conserving viable habitat while simultaneously predicting how land cover may geographically shift with future climate change has put pressure on ecologists and policy‐makers to develop near‐term (several years to a decade) ecological and geospatial predictions. This is particularly relevant for endangered species as ranges adjust t...

Movement and selection are inherently linked behaviors that form the foundation of a species' space‐use patterns. Anthropogenic development in natural ecosystems can result in a variety of behavioral responses that can involve changes in either movement (speed or direction of travel) or selection (resources used), which in turn may cause population...

Lespedeza cuneata (sericea lespedeza; hereafter "sericea") is an invasive species brought to the U.S. from East Asia in the 1890s to be used as forage. However, it has now become a growing ecological and economic threat in grasslands of several states in the U.S. southern Great Plains including Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska. Here, we dem...

Prescribed fire is a management strategy for limiting or reducing woody plant invasion on grasslands and savannas. However, in dense mature woody stands several fires may be necessary to overcome woody dominance and facilitate grassland restoration. Here we determined if a concentrated series of fires could stimulate recovery of C4 perennial grasse...

As effects of climate change intensify, there is a growing need to understand thermal properties of landscapes and their influence on wildlife. A key thermal property of landscapes is vegetation structure and composition. Management approaches can alter vegetation and consequently the thermal landscape, potentially resulting in underappreciated con...

Management for invasive species is usually done with the intent of maintaining or enhancing one or several ecosystem services. On rangeland landscapes, management is often focused on provisioning services (e.g., livestock) but can also include maintaining biodiversity. Rangeland landscapes are often large and complex, suggesting understanding the i...

Woody plant encroachment – the conversion of open grasslands and savannas to woodlands – represents one of the gravest threats to grassland biomes worldwide. This is especially true for the Great Plains of the US. We contend that the widespread adoption of pyric herbivory (the synergistic application of fire and grazing) and mixed‐species grazing (...

Insectivores gain macronutrients and elements from consuming arthropod prey, but must also deal with indigestible components (i.e., exoskeleton) of prey. For example, avian chicks (e.g., northern bobwhites; Colinus virginianus) have limited gut space, and ingesting prey with relatively higher proportions of indigestible components may impact assimi...

Vector‐borne diseases (VBDs) impact human and animal health globally, and their ecology and transmission are affected by human‐caused ecosystem and biome transitions. Woody plant encroachment (WPE), a top driver of biome and land cover transitions in grasslands and savannas of the world, greatly changes abiotic conditions, vegetation and animal pop...

In this era of global environmental change and rapid regime shifts, managing core areas that species require to survive and persist is a grand challenge for conservation. Wildlife monitoring data are often limited or local in scale. The emerging ability to map and track spatial regimes (i.e., the spatial manifestation of state transitions) using ad...

All animals must select sites to rest and may spend a large portion of their lives doing so. Despite the importance of this period in their daily activity budget, we lack information about rest/roost ecology for most animals, including the imperiled lesser prairie-chicken (Tympanuchus pallidicinctus; hereafter “LEPC”). Therefore, we sought to ident...

Sand shinnery oak (Quercus havardii) shrublands are estimated to have once occupied 5−7 million ha across the southwestern United States. As a result of herbicide and plowing, this endemic vegetation community has been significantly reduced in extent. Further, sand shinnery oak shrublands were historically maintained by relatively frequent fires, b...

Temperature has long been understood as a fundamental condition that influences ecological patterns and processes. Heterogeneity in landscapes that is structured by ultimate (climate) and proximate (vegetation, topography, disturbance events, and land use) forces serve to shape thermal patterns across multiple spatio-temporal scales. Thermal landsc...

Quantifying resource selection (an organism's disproportionate use of available resources) is essential to infer habitat requirements of a species, develop management recommendations, predict species responses to changing conditions, and improve our understanding of the processes that underlie ecological patterns. Because study sites, even within t...

Woodland expansion is a global challenge documented under varying degrees of disturbance, climate, and land ownership patterns. In North American rangelands, mechanical and chemical brush management practices and prescribed fire are frequently promoted by agencies and used by private landowners to reduce woody plant cover. We assess the distributio...

Insectivores gain macronutrients and elements from consuming arthropod prey, but must also deal with indigestible components (i.e., exoskeleton) of prey. For example, avian chicks (e.g. northern bobwhites; Colinus virginianus) have limited gut space, and ingesting prey with relatively higher proportions of indigestible components may impact assimil...

Habitat preference and usage by disease vectors are directly correlated with landscapes often undergoing anthropogenic environmental change. A predominant type of land use change occurring in the United States is the expansion of native and non-native woody plant species in grasslands, but little is known regarding the impact of this expansion on r...

The purpose of this summary is to present biometric ( body measurement) and demographic (population) data of northern bobwhite (Colinus virginianus) and scaled quail (Callipepla squamata) in western Oklahoma. In particular, this summary reports characteristics of quail reproduction. A summary of adult survival data can be found in publication P-105...

Many species are frequently faced with the decision about how to balance the use of thermal refuge against access to food resources. We evaluated the habitat use of female greater prairie chickens (Tympanuchus cupido) to assess the potential for trade-offs between thermal conditions and food resources during the habitat selection process. Our objec...

Operational satellite remote sensing products are transforming rangeland management and science. Advancements in computation, data storage and processing have removed barriers that previously blocked or hindered the development and use of remote sensing products. When combined with local data and knowledge, remote sensing products can inform decisi...

The American plains bison (Bison bison L.) is an iconic herbivore on North American grasslands, yet many questions surrounding their basic biology remain unanswered. We analyzed fine-resolution movement data (12 minutes) from two of the largest remaining prairie tracts in the Great Plains of North America to address whether bison movement and dista...

Temperature is increasingly recognized as an important component of wildlife habitat. Temperature is particularly important for avian nest sites, where extreme temperatures can influence adult behavior, embryonic development, and survival. For species inhabiting arid and semiarid climates, such as the scaled quail (Callipepla squamata), frequent ex...

Arthropods are abundant and diverse animals in many terrestrial food webs. In western Oklahoma, some shrublands are interspersed with discrete, dense thickets of tall, woody vegetation, known as mottes. Some of these shrublands are managed with prescribed burning. The goal of this study was to examine whether prescribed burning interacted with habi...

Heterogeneity has a critical influence on biodiversity and ecosystem processes. While the influence of heterogeneity on species diversity and abundance is well documented, how heterogeneity influences the distribution and arrangement of necessary resources across a landscape is still unclear. Heterogeneity in vegetation structure and composition is...

Soil moisture depletion during the growing season can induce plant water stress, thereby driving declines in grassland fuel moisture and accelerating curing. These drying and curing dynamics and their dependencies on soil moisture are inadequately represented in fire danger models. To elucidate these relationships, grassland fuelbed characteristics...

On the Ground •We surveyed residents across Oklahoma about their awareness of prescribed fire. •Most respondents expressed support for prescribed fire for managing rangelands. •Although there was support for prescribed fire, few individuals implemented it. •Of the several reasons given for not burning, the most common were lack of training, lack o...