The herbarium of the University of Nevada, Reno is two herbaria combined under one roof: The herbarium of the Nevada Agricultural Experiment Station (acronym NESH) from the College of Agriculture and the herbarium of the Biology Department (acronym RENO) in the College of Arts and Sciences. They were fully integrated in 1978 and operate as one unit using the acronym RENO (Holmgren, et al., 1990). (full article)
Art Shapiro and Matthew Forister, an insect ecologist at the University of Nevada, Reno, gathered data from the North American Butterfly Association, which has coordinated community scientist butterfly counts across the United States for more than 42 years. The duo also incorporated 15 years of data from iNaturalist, a web portal that collects sightings of plants and animals, including butterflies. In all, the researchers tracked the fates of 450 butterfly species from 70 locations in the western United States. (full article)
High-elevation forests provide essential services to ecological and anthropogenic communities. Because they occupy environments near or beyond the physiological tolerances of other tree species, they provide irreplaceable wildlife habitat and stabilize snowpack, serving as the primary Great Basin water source. (full article)
The Elko County Range Livestock Sector may be impacted changes in public land management policies such as the designation of sage grouse habitat. Public land management policy issues such as the potential designation of the sage grouse as an endangered species or reductions in grazing permits because of drought will impact the economic viability of the Elko County range livestock industry. (full article)
Climate change and human actions, such as fire suppression, have altered fuel characteristics and fire regimes in dryland systems like the Great Basin. Wildfire activity has also increased in response to non-native plant invasions and climate-driven shifts in plant cover. (full article)
Pinyon-juniper woodlands occupy over 100 million acres of the western United States and are among the most important vegetation types occurring in the dryland ecosystems of the Intermountain West. (full article)