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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.