usgs_staff_profile:
meta: status_code: 200 timestamp: '2023-09-30T17:16:47.007848' url: https://www.usgs.gov/staff-profiles/barbara-kus profile: abstracts: [] affiliations: [] education: - Ph.D., Ecology, University of California, Davis, CA 1985 - M.S., Ecology, University of California, Davis, CA 1980 - B.S., Anthropology, University of California, Davis, CA 1977 - B.A., Zoology, University of California, Davis, CA 1977 email: barbara_kus@usgs.gov expertise_terms: [] honors: [] intro_statements: - Dr. Barbara Kus is a Research Ecologist with the Western Ecological Research Center. name: Barbara Kus name_qualifier: null orcid: 0000-0002-3679-3044 organization_link: https://www.usgs.gov/centers/werc organization_name: Western Ecological Research Center (WERC) personal_statement: Dr. Kus designs and conducts original field research on avian ecology and conservation to support science-based natural resource management in national and international contexts. Dr. Kus interacts closely with federal, state, and local resource managers and regulatory agencies to prioritize research needs, and design and conduct investigations to meet those needs. As a scientist broadly trained in ecology and evolutionary biology, she focuses her research on integrating management, which is typically short-term and threats-driven, with an evolutionary perspective that seeks longer-term sustainability of species and ecosystems through maintenance of evolutionary processes required for persistence. A theme of her research is that it is strategically long-term, yielding unique datasets that incorporate spatial and temporal patterns of response to environmental variability needed for this evolutionary perspective.RESEARCH INTERESTSEcology and Conservation of Endangered Riparian BirdsResponse of Riparian Bird Communities to Habitat RestorationEcology and Population Trends of Neotropical Migratory BirdsPopulation Genetic Structure of Endangered BirdsPost-wildfire Recovery of Riparian and Coastal Sage Scrub Bird Communities and Habitats professional_experience: [] title: Supervisory Research Ecologist