Knowledge Neighborhoods

Examines how predator-prey dynamics, trophic cascades, and climate-driven range shifts shape aquatic invertebrate and amphibian communities in Rocky Mountain streams and wetlands, using experimental and field sampling methods.

Explores how yellow-bellied marmots and other small mammals navigate survival, social behavior, and life-history tradeoffs across decades of longitudinal field research in alpine Colorado.

Explores how hummingbirds and other pollinators shape the evolution of floral traits in Ipomopsis aggregata and related subalpine plants, using field experiments, mark-recapture, and reciprocal transplants to investigate pollinator-mediated selection, ecological speciation, and how climate change and disturbance alter these plant-pollinator dynamics.

Investigates how Rocky Mountain plants and butterflies adapt — or fail to adapt — to climate variability, snowmelt timing, and invasive host plants through genetic, physiological, and phenological mechanisms across elevational gradients.

Integrates remote sensing, geophysics, and hydrological modeling to understand how bedrock structure, snowmelt, and drought shape water flow through Colorado mountain watersheds.

Investigates how bumble bees and other pollinators choose among flowering plants in alpine meadows, and how factors like temperature, pollen quality, and nectar nutrition shape those interactions at Rocky Mountain field sites.

Integrates dense observational networks, remote sensing, and multi-scale modeling to advance weather and water prediction across the snow-dominated upper Colorado River Basin, with a focus on surface energy balance, soil moisture, and seasonal snowpack dynamics.

Investigates how snowpack, groundwater circulation, and subsurface flow interact across alpine terrain in the East River Watershed using integrated hydrological modeling, piezometer monitoring, and geochemical sampling.

Investigates how shifting seasonal timing under climate change disrupts synchrony between flowering plants and their pollinators in Rocky Mountain ecosystems, with particular attention to pollen-specialist bees, adaptation lags, and the reproductive consequences of mismatched co-flowering.

Investigates how climate warming reshapes plant communities, soil processes, and species interactions across mountain elevation gradients in subalpine and montane ecosystems.

Examines how adverse conditions during early development shape survival, body mass, and population dynamics in burrowing mammals such as ground squirrels and marmots, using methods including survival analysis, phylogenetic regression, and transient LTRE demographic analysis.

Investigates how ants, aphids, pollinators, and alpine plants interact through mutualism, competition, and symbiosis — and how climate change and biodiversity loss may disrupt these relationships in subalpine ecosystems.

Investigates how Rocky Mountain bird populations — including hummingbirds, woodpeckers, and cavity-nesting species — respond to aspen forest decline, climate disruption, and habitat fragmentation through long-term breeding surveys and insect sampling.

Integrates satellite-based snow tracking, climate downscaling, and field measurements of plant fitness to understand how changing snowpack and warming temperatures drive vegetation shifts across subalpine landscapes in the upper East River Valley.

Integrates multi-scale datasets, trait-based frameworks, and metabolic scaling theory to understand how plant functional traits mediate ecosystem responses to climate change, drawing on field sites in the Gunnison Basin alongside global comparative analyses.

Examines how environmental filtering, spatial clustering, and elevation gradients shape alpine plant community composition and trait diversity across the Gunnison Basin landscape.

Investigates the ecology and genetics of quaking aspen in the Gunnison Basin, linking cytotype variation and ploidy differences to drought stress responses, sudden aspen decline, and long-term stand dynamics through field monitoring, flow cytometry, and isotopic analysis.

Connects fisheries biology and aquatic ecology research with water management decisions affecting trout populations and stream habitats across the Gunnison Basin and Roaring Fork watersheds.

Integrates population genetics, nest success studies, and historical fire and harvest records to understand the ecology and long-term viability of Greater and Gunnison Sage-Grouse in sagebrush landscapes of western Colorado.

Integrates geologic mapping, cosmogenic dating, aeromagnetic surveying, and floodplain hydrostratigraphy to characterize the subsurface structure, sedimentary history, and earth surface processes of the Gunnison Basin region and surrounding mountain terrain.

Investigates how conifer-associated microbial communities and biogeochemical cycling in forest soils and sediments influence water quality and nutrient dynamics across mountain watersheds.

Combines dendrochronology, stable isotope analysis, and LiDAR-based forest inventory to investigate how Rocky Mountain conifers — including ponderosa pine, Douglas-fir, and Engelmann spruce — access water, grow, and respond to environmental change across elevation gradients in the Gunnison Basin.

Explores how grasshoppers, skipper butterflies, and other insects move across fragmented landscapes, maintain hybrid zones, and respond to assisted migration, drawing on decades of population genetics and ecological research in Colorado and beyond.

Examines the reproductive biology, thermal physiology, body size variation, and community ecology of burying beetles (Nicrophorus investigator) across mountain elevational gradients using field experiments and pitfall trapping.

Investigates how variation in snowmelt timing shapes flowering phenology and pollination synchrony among alpine plants in the Crested Butte region, using experimental snowmelt manipulation and intensive field monitoring.

Examines how undergraduate research experiences — including remote and field-based formats — support student learning, computational skill development, and retention in STEM fields.

Explores how Penstemon and co-flowering plants navigate pollinator competition, pollen transfer dynamics, and reproductive strategies such as bet-hedging and autonomous selfing across Rocky Mountain communities.

Connects atmospheric science — including plastic pollution fallout and moisture transport — with the ecology of endemic and threatened species across protected landscapes of the Colorado Plateau and southern Rockies.

Explores the ecology of subalpine plant communities in the Elk Mountains, connecting remote sensing methods for vegetation mapping with field studies of plant-pollinator interactions, particularly bee foraging behavior on wildflowers like green gentian.

Investigates how parasites and pathogens spread through animal populations — including rodents, birds, and mammals — using phylogenetic, microscopic, and transmission modeling methods across montane and floodplain study sites.

Connects a draft environmental assessment of remedial action near the Gunnison area with ecological research on plant-pollinator interactions and wildlife habitat, spanning transportation corridors, river systems, and disturbed project sites.

Investigates how sagebrush species respond to experimental warming and disturbance through measurements of leaf physiology, litter decomposition, and soil moisture dynamics in high-elevation shrubland ecosystems.

Investigates the population biology and pollination ecology of rare alpine plants — especially columbines and other high-elevation wildflowers — using herbarium collections, occurrence records, and field studies at sites like Emerald Lake and Mt. Baldy.

Investigates how cold adaptation, geographic isolation, and sexual selection drive genomic and behavioral divergence across Drosophila populations, using courtship song recording and isofemale line methods.

Explores the use of aquatic macroinvertebrates, particularly the giant stonefly, as biological indicators of trace element pollution including cadmium, molybdenum, and selenium in freshwater systems.

Explores how protozoans, ciliates, and plankton communities are spatially distributed and coexist across mountain and high-country water bodies in the Colorado Plateau region.

Investigates how DNA methylation patterns serve as molecular clocks to estimate biological age and explain extreme lifespan variation across mammals, with cetaceans like humpback and bowhead whales as key study species.

Investigates how riparian vegetation, soil development, and carbon and nitrogen cycling evolve over time in alpine and subalpine watersheds, linking glacial history and streamflow dynamics to ecological succession along river corridors.

Connects ecological research on rare and migratory species with bioeconomic frameworks for managing invasive species, drawing on phylogenetic diversity studies, IUCN assessment protocols, and floristic surveys from subalpine and wilderness landscapes.

Captures the 2020 field season at RMBL through the dual lens of COVID-19 safety protocols and ongoing ecological work in alpine patterned ground and riparian plant communities across the Gunnison Basin.

Bridges genomic studies of conifer adaptation using SNP genotyping with hydrological modeling of aspen-conifer forests and geomorphological analysis of Continental Divide mountain passes in the Colorado River Headwaters region.

Connects legal and policy scholarship on Colorado River water allocation with climate-driven aridity concerns, examining curtailment risks, adaptive management, and the long-term tension between western water rights and sustainable use.

Investigates how hemiparasitic Castilleja species select among host plants — including Potentilla — and how that selectivity shapes alpine plant community diversity.

Examines how native plant communities, including cow parsnip and wild strawberries, can be reestablished on mining-disturbed and degraded high-altitude sites through transplanting and managed revegetation techniques.

Combines GPS tracking, population census methods, and herbivore exclosure experiments to understand mule deer habitat use, migration, and the broader ecological effects of predator pressure on plant and animal communities.

Connects observed climate sensitivity in North American forests to projected 21st-century growth changes, including boreal greening and shifting climate zones.