Matthew A. Williamson's research while affiliated with Boise State University and other places

... Common algorithms that classify land use land cover [168,[191][192][193][194][195][196][197][198][199][200][201], detect and monitor the general urban environments [202][203][204][205][206][207][208][209][210], air quality assessment and pollution hotspot identification [211][212][213][214], and extract the percentage of impervious surfaces [181,[215][216][217][218][219][220][221][222][223][224][225][226][227] are widely applied in this aspect of urban studies. This is understandable since the practices are a natural extension of applying remote sensing techniques to study natural environments. ...

... On the other hand, after decades of government policies promoting this trend, scholars and policymakers are now encouraging rural resource users to rebuild community cooperation to better adapt to climate challenges (Mcallister, 2012;Ulambayar & Fernández-Giménez, 2019;Qi & Li, 2021). Therefore, adaptation to climate change requires CBNRM institutions that encourage adaptive behaviour across multiple scales, from individual actors to communities (Siders, 2019;Dressel et al., 2020;Vallury et al., 2022), and that also act to increase efforts to build bridging networks with other communities, markets, and the government (Fernández-Giménez et al., 2015;Robinson et al., 2021). ...

... The datasets of the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) can be regarded as an ideal evaluation reference. NEON provides exciting nationwide, coordinated, multitemporal, and high-quality LiDAR and field survey data collected at 81 sites across 21 eco-climate domains spanning 30 years from the Airborne Observation Platform (AOP) and Terrestrial Observation System (TOS) [27][28][29]. The advantages of wide distribution and consistency of NEON's AOP and TOS observations make their datasets valuable for the assessment and cross-site comparison of satellite products. ...

... In contrast, with a relatively low risk of financial loss in settlements and agroforests, people likely safely avoided elephants. Human responses and underlying attitudes toward wildlife can therefore show variation across space and can strongly shape movement patterns and connectivity across conservation landscapes (11,18). Conservation strategies can follow this pattern, focusing on reducing crop depredation through different means (reviewed in ref. 10) while working closely with stakeholders to ensure continual safe passage of elephants in agroforests and human settlements. ...

... Both experiments and models suggest that warming will exacerbate cheatgrass invasion in some parts of its range (Bradley 2009, Zelikova et al. 2013Compagnoni and Adler 2014;Blumenthal et al. 2016). Enhancing ecosystem resistance to cheatgrass invasion is often only possible through the application of herbicides that suppress its germination and kill seedlings, although targeted grazing also shows some promise (e.g., Bailey et al. 2019;Porensky et al. 2021). Successful application of both tools relies on accurate understanding of cheatgrass phenology and how it will shift with changes in climate and weather (Young and Clements 2000;Donaldson and Germino 2022). ...

... Large study areas will have many species with a variety of movement traits and resource needs, such that areas important for connectivity for one species may not be important for others [6]. Despite this challenge, the need to halt the decline of biodiversity is urgent, and therefore strategic approaches are required to capture the connectivity needs for multiple species [7,8]. In general, those needs can either be captured "downstream", by producing species-specific connectivity models for several species and then combining the results into a single connectivity map, or "upstream" by producing a single connectivity model that is assumed to capture the needs of multiple species [9]. ...

... On reflection, the strive towards a balanced coexistence has had an impact on wildlife governance, leading institutions to take into account investigations and monitoring of biodiversity, when making decisions about wildlife conservation. Governance models are now required to implement sustainable management plans, and wildlife policy instruments through the use of ecological knowledge, and organized comprehensive data acquisition (Corona et al. 2011;Waetje and Shilling 2017;Carter et al. 2020). The use of information system databases has become an essential tool in a context of widespread use of portable devices, and online internet access. ...

... Our regional model indicated that population growth had a similar impact to fire frequency and precipitation, two widely recognized biophysical drivers of rangeland condition. Nevertheless, impacts of population growth were small relative to the effect of temperature (Balch et al., 2013;Williamson et al., 2020;Rigge, Shi, et al., 2021). The results of our county-level analysis are consistent with that of our full sample, and provide further evidence that human population growth was strongly associated with lower rangeland condition. ...

... Our analytical approach used data for ecosystem conditions and hypothesized drivers covering broad spatial and temporal scales. Taking a broad scale approach is important because ecosystems are increasingly stressed by multiple, interacting biophysical and social factors that induce subtle, but widespread, changes in ecosystem condition over long time periods (Maestre et al., 2016;Jones et al., 2019). We found that while rangeland condition declined over the entire study period, it increased in the last decade (i.e., 2008-2018). ...

... Earlier pre-fire results indicate that grazing treatments reduced standing biomass (dominated by invasive species) by 30%-50%, herbicide treatments reduced biomass even further, and targeted spring grazing in combination with seeding of diverse mixes at high rates could result in the establishment of native perennial grasses (Porensky et al., 2018). However, pre-fire litter cover, invasive species cover and invasive species density were not significantly impacted by our grazing or seeding treatments (Porensky et al., 2018). ...