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Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center (NOROCK)

Home

We hope you will enjoy learning about the variety of ecosystems and species we are studying throughout the United States. Our scientists work on diverse issues such as fish and wildlife conservation, invasive species and wildlife disease, energy development, climate and ecosystem change, and much more. Click on Science to begin exploring the places we go and the species and landscapes we study.

Featured Research

Featured Research

Explore one of NOROCK's many current research projects.

Brucellosis

NOROCK in the News

NOROCK in the News

Click here for the most recent media and news on NOROCK science.

Montana Trout

News

Date published: December 4, 2018

IGBST Public Notifications and Resources

As part of ongoing efforts required under the 2016 Yellowstone Grizzly Bear Conservation Strategy to monitor the population of grizzly bears in the Yellowstone Ecosystem, the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team (IGBST) captures and monitors grizzly bears for research and monitoring purposes. Here you will find capture notifications for the 2018 field season.

Date published: October 26, 2018

A Unified Research Strategy for Disease Management

As wildlife diseases increase globally, an understanding of host-pathogen relationships can elucidate avenues for management and improve conservation efficacy. Amphibians are among the most threatened groups of wildlife, and disease is a major factor in global amphibian declines.

Date published: September 28, 2018

Large-scale Review of Amphibian Species and Community Response to Climate Change

Amphibian species and community richness has been declining in North America and climate change may play a role in these declines. Global climate change has led to a range shift of many wildlife species and thus understanding how these changes in species distribution can be used to predict amphibian community responses that may improve conservation efforts.

Publications

Year Published: 2018

Development of new information to inform fish passage decisions at the Yale and Merwin hydro projects on the Lewis River, Washington—Final report, 2018

The reintroduction of extirpated salmonids to historically occupied areas is becoming increasingly common as a conservation and recovery strategy. Often, reintroductions are implemented after the factors that originally led to species extirpation have been reduced, eliminated, or mitigated. For anadromous Oncorhynchus spp. (Pacific salmon) and O....

Al-Chokhachy, Robert K.; Clark, Christopher L.; Sorel, Mark H.; Beauchamp, David A.
Al-Chokhachy, R., Clark, C.L., Sorel, M.H., and Beauchamp, D.A., 2018, Development of new information to inform fish passage decisions at the Yale and Merwin hydro projects on the Lewis River, Washington—Final report, 2018: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2018–1190, 206 p., https://doi.org/10.3133/ofr20181190.

Year Published: 2018

Impacts of nonnative Brown Trout on Yellowstone Cutthroat Trout in a tributary stream

Nonnative trout are a considerable threat to native salmonids, yet our understanding of the mechanisms behind interspecific interactions remains limited. We evaluated the impacts of nonnative Brown Trout Salmo salar on a population of Yellowstone Cutthroat Trout Oncorhynchus clarkii bouvieri in Montana. We contrasted diets,...

Al-Chokhachy, Robert K.; Sepulveda, Adam J.

Year Published: 2018

Extreme value-based methods for modeling elk movements

Species range shifts and the spread of diseases are both likely to be driven by extreme movements, but are difficult to statistically model due to their rarity. We propose a statistical approach for characterizing movement kernels that incorporate landscape covariates as well as the potential for heavy-tailed distributions. We used a spliced...

Wijeyakulasuriya, Dhanushi A.; Hanks, Ephraim M.; Shaby, Benjamin A.; Cross, Paul C.