Sharon Montecino's Master's research on shorebirds got some well-deserved attention this week. Her work analyzing Intermountain West Shorebird Survey data was featured prominently in the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Living Bird Magazine, in a featured titled "Dry Times at Utah's Great Salt Lake Threaten a Crucial Migratory Stopover". The piece highlights how Sharon compared shorebird counts over the past four years with surveys in the 1990s, revealing declines in shorebirds with declines in wetland habitats. The article also captures Great Salt Lake's importance, with Sharon noting how the lake now supports more than half of all the shorebirds migrating through the Intermountain West each year.

The story was also picked up by Utah Public Radio, with a companion piece on Sharon's thesis research directly. Congratulations to Sharon on getting her science in front of such a wide audience! It's exactly the kind of work that will help inform conservation and management of wetlands in the Intermountain West, and the shorebirds that depend on it.

Read the full Living Bird article here, and the Utah Public radio episode here.

This summer, PhD student Michael Procko and our team continued monitoring aspen regeneration in Yellowstone National Park's Northern Range, building on a long-term dataset that dates back to 1999. At 113 unique aspen stands, we measured stem density, height, and browsing to track changes in recruitment and stand structure over time. Last year, we began deploying 30 camera traps in each of these stands to monitor herbivory at the species-level. We expanded these research efforts this year, deploying an additional 30 cameras. We also added a new genetic component to our summer monitoring this year, collecting leaf tissue from individual stems for genetic analyses that will hopefully provide insight to spatially heterogeneous aspen recovery across the Northern Range. Together, these efforts will help us better understand why some aspen stands are recovering, while others continue to struggle. Overall, this will aid in our efforts to better understand the long-term consequences of predator restoration on vegetation dynamics in the park.  

Congratulations to Sharon Montecino, who successfully defended her MS thesis, "Understanding the Impact of Environmental Change on Shorebird Abundance and Distribution Across the Intermountain West Over the Past 30 Years"! Sharon's research examined how shorebird populations across the Intermountain West, including at Great Salt Lake, have shifted in response to changes in surface water levels. Before coming to USU, Sharon earned a BS in Natural Resources Engineering from the University of Chile, served as a Coastal Solutions Fellow at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and coordinated the Waterbirds and Wetlands Program for the Chilean NGO ROC. Sharon was the first graduate student in the Clark-Wolf lab, and it's been a privilege to watch her grow as a scientist over the past few years. We're excited to see where her career takes her next!