Research

Informing water sustainability decisions

How do we decide which water sustainability projects are worthwhile? We work closely with communities, NGOs and government decision-makers to find cost-effective conservation strategies. In Oklahoma, we work on incentive-based water conservation, wastewater reuse, and the restoration of aquatic ecosystem connectivity. In the Great Lakes, we focus on decision models for evaluating dam removals and road culvert upgrades to restore fish migrations; and on methods for prioritizing remediation efforts in ecosystems that are impacted by many different stressors.In both settings, we collaborate on the development of the large-scale spatial data sets of populations, habitats, threats and project costs that underlie our conservation models. We also collaborate with computer scientists and web developers to build web tools that bring powerful optimization models to decision-makers.

Infrastructure resilience and nature-based solutions

We all rely on roads, dams, power grids, and other infrastructure in our daily lives, but societies around the world are increasingly interested in limiting the environmental impacts of these projects. In many parts of North America, we also have a growing maintenance backlog of aging infrastructure. How can we continue to meet societal needs for infrastructure while minimizing environmental impacts? In our lab, we study infrastructure and ecosystems as coupled natural-human systems and look for strategies that are mutually beneficial to both infrastructure organizations and conservation groups. We focus on road networks and stream ecosystems in the Great Lakes and the Great Plains.

Impacts of global change on freshwater ecosystems

We all rely on roads, power grids, telecommunications networks and other infrastructure in our daily lives, but societies around the world are increasingly interested in limiting the environmental impacts of these projects. In many parts of North America, we also have a growing maintenance backlog of aging infrastructure. How can we continue to meet societal needs for infrastructure while minimizing environmental impacts? In our lab, we study infrastructure and ecosystems as coupled natural-human systems and look for strategies that are mutually beneficial to both infrastructure organizations and conservation groups. We focus on road networks and stream ecosystems in the Great Lakes and the Great Plains.

Social network science of conservation decision-makers

Conservation is fundamentally a social endeavor, and the success or failure of conservation initiatives often depends on the ways in which these iniatives spread through social networks of decision-makers, managers, water users, and communities. We use empirical data on social networks and simulation models to explore the conditions that cause conservation initiatives to spread widely, strategies for relationship-building and outreach, and the pros and cons of different management approaches (e.g., top-down vs. bottom-up).

Ecology of freshwater fishes

We have broad interests in the ecology and conservation of freshwater stream fishes. In Oklahoma, we focus on small rivers and streams in the Ozarks and Ouachita Mountains, where we conduct biodiversity surveys and investigate drivers of declining biodiversity. In other work, we focus on native and invasive fishes in tributaries of the North American Great Lakes. Our work there includes landscape-scale analysis and mapping of fish distributions to guide conservation investments, and work on the population ecology and spatial dynamics of invasive sea lampreys. We have a particular interest in migratory fishes, which support key ecosystem services and fisheries world-wide. We couple agent-based models and field data sets to ask: how do individual fish decide when and where to migrate, and what are the population-level consequences?