The Boys & Girls Clubs of South Park (BGCSP) is a youth service 501(c)3 serving Park County, Colorado. With over 60% of Park County?s workforce commuting to another county for employment the need for affordable out-of-school youth care is apparent, but the need for BGCSP goes further. These rural co

Phenology, or the timing of biological events, has been found to shift in response to changing climates and key environmental cues such as spring temperatures and snowmelt date. These phenological shifts have been observed to be particularly extreme in mid-to-high latitude alpine environments, like

The Pennsylvanian-Permian Paradox Basin is an asymmetrical basin on the Colorado Plateau (Figure 1.1) that has been studied for decades due to its unique geologic history and economic quantities of potash, petroleum, and minerals such as uranium, vanadium, radium, and copper. The basin has a complex

Pathogens can have strong negative effects on individual fitness that scale up to influence population dynamics. Because of this, understanding the ecological contexts that shape pathogen transmission and prevalence is critical for understanding community dynamics and ecosystem function. Puccinia mo

Understanding plant reproductive strategies is important for interpreting population dynamics and species resilience. We investigated the mating system, pollen limitation, and pollinator interactions of Geum triflorum (prairie smoke), a subalpine wildflower. Experiments took place at the Rokcky Moun

Climate change is putting montane plant species at risk that rely on historical patterns of precipitation and snowmelt timing. Floral traits, such as nectar production and morphology can be impacted by water availability. Hybridization of plants has the potential to provide adaptation to climate cha

Animal pollination represents one of the key innovations of the flowering plants, and constitutes

Deer are prolific herbivores that, if left to increase exponentially, could decimate populations of plants and possibly other herbivores. Due to the rapidly increasing abundance of deer, this is a risk that is getting ever closer to becoming a reality. This phenomenon is a concern for herbivores tha

Adaptation has been used as the framework to understand the power of

Effective water resources planning and management requires skillful decisions on multiyear or decadal timeframes. In basins such as the Colorado River Basin (CRB), streamflow is not stationary but exhibits variability that reflects teleconnections with large scale climate indices such as Atlantic Mu

Noisy, unpredictable sounds are often present in the vocalizations of fearful and stressed juvenile animals across many taxa. A variety of structural characteristics, called nonlinear acoustic phenomena, which include subharmonics, rapid frequency modulations, and deterministic chaos are responsible