Native freshwater fish are experiencing global declines. Determining what drives native fish resilience to disturbance is crucial to understanding their persistence in the face of multiple stressors. Fish colonisation ability may be one factor affecting population resilience after disturbance. We conducted displacement experiments in headwater streams in Wyoming, USA, to evaluate mottled sculpin (Cottus bairdii) and mountain sucker (Catostomus platyrhynchus) colonisation ability. Specifically, we (1) determined whether fish could colonise sites rapidly after displacement, (2) evaluated site-level factors affecting colonisation, and (3) compared species-level differences in movement and colonisation capabilities. Mountain sucker recovered to pre-displacement abundances within 6–11 weeks, but mottled sculpin were still at slightly reduced abundances. For both species, the majority of colonists were unmarked new individuals and size–structure was similar to pre-displacement size–structure. Fish colonisation was best predicted by pre-displacement abundance and an interaction between per cent riparian cover and species identity. The slower colonisation rate of mottled sculpin may relate to movement ability as average daily movement rate and movement extent were significantly greater for mountain sucker. Our results demonstrate that colonisation is one mechanism allowing fish populations to be resilient in the face of disturbance and that species' traits provide insight into fish colonisation capabilities. Experimental approaches provide mechanistic insight into colonisation dynamics, enhancing our understanding of native fish resilience in degraded stream ecosystems and their response to restoration actions.
","language":"English","publisher":"Wiley","doi":"10.1111/eff.12634","usgsCitation":"Alford, S.L., and Walters, A.W., 2022, Rapid colonisation post-displacement contributes to native fish resilience: Ecology of Freshwater Fish, v. 31, no. 2, p. 347-357, https://doi.org/10.1111/eff.12634.","productDescription":"11 p.","startPage":"347","endPage":"357","ipdsId":"IP-119943","costCenters":[{"id":200,"text":"Coop Res Unit Seattle","active":true,"usgs":true}],"links":[{"id":436054,"rank":0,"type":{"id":30,"text":"Data Release"},"url":"https://doi.org/10.5066/P9Z0W4IK","text":"USGS data release","linkHelpText":"Fish movement and colonization in the Wyoming Range 2018-2019"},{"id":396490,"type":{"id":24,"text":"Thumbnail"},"url":"https://pubs.usgs.gov/thumbnails/outside_thumb.jpg"}],"country":"United States","state":"Wyoming","otherGeospatial":"Green River basin","geographicExtents":"{\n \"type\": \"FeatureCollection\",\n \"features\": [\n {\n \"type\": \"Feature\",\n \"properties\": {},\n \"geometry\": {\n \"type\": \"Polygon\",\n \"coordinates\": [\n [\n [\n -110.93994140625,\n 41.04621681452063\n ],\n [\n -108.6328125,\n 41.04621681452063\n ],\n [\n -108.6328125,\n 42.24478535602799\n ],\n [\n -110.93994140625,\n 42.24478535602799\n ],\n [\n -110.93994140625,\n 41.04621681452063\n ]\n ]\n ]\n }\n }\n ]\n}","volume":"31","issue":"2","noUsgsAuthors":false,"publicationDate":"2021-09-12","publicationStatus":"PW","contributors":{"authors":[{"text":"Alford, Samantha L.","contributorId":280179,"corporation":false,"usgs":false,"family":"Alford","given":"Samantha","email":"","middleInitial":"L.","affiliations":[{"id":40829,"text":"uwy","active":true,"usgs":false}],"preferred":false,"id":836085,"contributorType":{"id":1,"text":"Authors"},"rank":1},{"text":"Walters, Annika W. 0000-0002-8638-6682 awalters@usgs.gov","orcid":"https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8638-6682","contributorId":4190,"corporation":false,"usgs":true,"family":"Walters","given":"Annika","email":"awalters@usgs.gov","middleInitial":"W.","affiliations":[{"id":200,"text":"Coop Res Unit Seattle","active":true,"usgs":true}],"preferred":true,"id":836084,"contributorType":{"id":1,"text":"Authors"},"rank":2}]}} ,{"id":70229535,"text":"70229535 - 2022 - Urban proximity while breeding is not a predictor of perfluoroalkyl substance contamination in the eggs of brown pelicans","interactions":[],"lastModifiedDate":"2022-03-10T15:48:32.467149","indexId":"70229535","displayToPublicDate":"2021-09-09T09:43:09","publicationYear":"2022","noYear":false,"publicationType":{"id":2,"text":"Article"},"publicationSubtype":{"id":10,"text":"Journal Article"},"seriesTitle":{"id":3352,"text":"Science of the Total Environment","active":true,"publicationSubtype":{"id":10}},"title":"Urban proximity while breeding is not a predictor of perfluoroalkyl substance contamination in the eggs of brown pelicans","docAbstract":"Identifying sources of exposure to chemical stressors is difficult when both target organisms and stressors are highly mobile. While previous studies have demonstrated that populations of some organisms proximal to urban centers may display increased burdens of human-created chemicals compared to more distal populations, this relationship may not be universal when applied to organisms and stressors capable of transboundary movements. We examined eggs of brown pelicans (Pelecanus occidentalis), a nearshore seabird with daily movements ranging from local to 50 km and annual migrations ranging from year-round residency to 1500 km. Thirty-six eggs from three breeding colonies located at increasing distances to a major urban center (Charleston, South Carolina, USA) were analyzed for concentrations of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). Areas of high use for each colony during the breeding season were also assessed via the tracking of adult pelicans from each colony using GPS-PTT satellite transmitters and overlapped with measures of relative urbanization via land cover data. We report potentially significant ∑PFAS concentrations in the eggs of pelicans (175.4 ± 120.1 ng/g w wt. SD), driven largely by linear perfluorooctane sulfonate (n-PFOS) (48–546 ng/g w wt.). Residues of the precursor compound perfluorooctane sulfonamide (FOSA) were also present in pelican eggs, suggesting continued exposure of local wildlife beyond implemented phaseouts of some PFAS. For most analytes, egg concentrations did not exhibit a significant spatial structure despite some differentiation in high-use areas unlike similar data for another regional apex predator, the bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus). We suggest that the partially migratory nature of brown pelicans during the non-breeding season, combined with daily ranges that may extend to 50 km from local point sources, may have homogenized exposure across individuals. Charleston likely remains a major source for PFAS in the overall region, however, given the high concentrations observed as well as known releases of PFAS in the nearshore environment.
","language":"English","publisher":"Elsevier","doi":"10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.150110","usgsCitation":"Wilkinson, B.P., Robuck, A., Lohman, R., Pickard, H.M., and Jodice, P.G., 2022, Urban proximity while breeding is not a predictor of perfluoroalkyl substance contamination in the eggs of brown pelicans: Science of the Total Environment, v. 803, 150110, 11 p., https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.150110.","productDescription":"150110, 11 p.","ipdsId":"IP-126746","costCenters":[{"id":198,"text":"Coop Res Unit Atlanta","active":true,"usgs":true}],"links":[{"id":449715,"rank":0,"type":{"id":40,"text":"Open Access Publisher Index Page"},"url":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.150110","text":"Publisher Index Page"},{"id":396995,"type":{"id":24,"text":"Thumbnail"},"url":"https://pubs.usgs.gov/thumbnails/outside_thumb.jpg"}],"country":"United States","state":"South Carolina","city":"Charleston","geographicExtents":"{\n \"type\": \"FeatureCollection\",\n \"features\": [\n {\n \"type\": \"Feature\",\n \"properties\": {},\n \"geometry\": {\n \"type\": \"Polygon\",\n \"coordinates\": [\n [\n [\n -80.36911010742188,\n 32.48196313217176\n ],\n [\n -80.30868530273438,\n 32.46690196868371\n ],\n [\n -79.7662353515625,\n 32.690243035492266\n ],\n [\n -79.66049194335938,\n 32.856518010109546\n ],\n [\n -79.76211547851562,\n 32.99714648628775\n ],\n [\n -79.95574951171875,\n 33.14100094401691\n ],\n [\n -80.08758544921874,\n 33.17204260575893\n ],\n [\n -80.32791137695312,\n 32.923402043498875\n ],\n [\n -80.36911010742188,\n 32.48196313217176\n ]\n ]\n ]\n }\n }\n ]\n}","volume":"803","noUsgsAuthors":false,"publicationStatus":"PW","contributors":{"authors":[{"text":"Wilkinson, B. P.","contributorId":279808,"corporation":false,"usgs":false,"family":"Wilkinson","given":"B.","email":"","middleInitial":"P.","affiliations":[{"id":7084,"text":"Clemson University","active":true,"usgs":false}],"preferred":false,"id":837776,"contributorType":{"id":1,"text":"Authors"},"rank":1},{"text":"Robuck, A. R.","contributorId":288354,"corporation":false,"usgs":false,"family":"Robuck","given":"A. R.","affiliations":[{"id":6922,"text":"University of Rhode Island","active":true,"usgs":false}],"preferred":false,"id":837777,"contributorType":{"id":1,"text":"Authors"},"rank":2},{"text":"Lohman, R.","contributorId":288356,"corporation":false,"usgs":false,"family":"Lohman","given":"R.","email":"","affiliations":[{"id":6922,"text":"University of Rhode Island","active":true,"usgs":false}],"preferred":false,"id":837778,"contributorType":{"id":1,"text":"Authors"},"rank":3},{"text":"Pickard, H. M.","contributorId":288357,"corporation":false,"usgs":false,"family":"Pickard","given":"H.","email":"","middleInitial":"M.","affiliations":[{"id":16811,"text":"Harvard University","active":true,"usgs":false}],"preferred":false,"id":837779,"contributorType":{"id":1,"text":"Authors"},"rank":4},{"text":"Jodice, Patrick G.R. 0000-0001-8716-120X","orcid":"https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8716-120X","contributorId":219852,"corporation":false,"usgs":true,"family":"Jodice","given":"Patrick","middleInitial":"G.R.","affiliations":[{"id":198,"text":"Coop Res Unit Atlanta","active":true,"usgs":true}],"preferred":true,"id":837780,"contributorType":{"id":1,"text":"Authors"},"rank":5}]}} ,{"id":70236993,"text":"70236993 - 2022 - Effect of fixing earthquake depth in ShakeAlert algorithms on performance for intraslab earthquakes","interactions":[],"lastModifiedDate":"2022-09-27T12:23:25.206911","indexId":"70236993","displayToPublicDate":"2021-09-08T07:21:02","publicationYear":"2022","noYear":false,"publicationType":{"id":2,"text":"Article"},"publicationSubtype":{"id":10,"text":"Journal Article"},"seriesTitle":{"id":3372,"text":"Seismological Research Letters","onlineIssn":"1938-2057","printIssn":"0895-0695","active":true,"publicationSubtype":{"id":10}},"title":"Effect of fixing earthquake depth in ShakeAlert algorithms on performance for intraslab earthquakes","docAbstract":"We investigate whether assuming a fixed shallow depth in the ShakeAlert network‐based earthquake early warning system is sufficient to produce accurate ground‐motion based alerts for intraslab earthquakes. ShakeAlert currently uses a fixed focal depth of 8 km to estimate earthquake location and magnitude. This is an appropriate way to reduce computational costs without compromising alert accuracy in California, where earthquakes typically occur on shallow crustal faults. In the Pacific Northwest (PNW), however, the most common moderate‐magnitude events occur within the subducting Juan de Fuca slab at depths between ∼35 and 65 km. Using a dataset of seismic recordings from 37 Mw 4.5+ intraslab earthquakes from the PNW and Chile, we replay events through the Earthquake Point‐Source Integrated Code and eqInfo2GM algorithms to estimate source parameters and compute modified Mercalli intensity (MMI) alert threshold contours. Each event is replayed twice—once using a fixed 8 km depth and a second time using the actual catalog earthquake depth. For each depth scenario, we analyze MMI III and IV contours using various performance metrics to determine the number of correctly alerted sites and measure warning times. We determine that shallow depth replays are more likely to produce errors in location estimates of greater than 50 km if the event is located outside of a seismic network. When located within a seismic network, shallow and catalog depth replays have similar epicenter estimates. Results show that applying catalog earthquake depth does not improve the accuracy of magnitude estimates or MMI alert threshold contours, or increase warning times. We conclude that using a fixed shallow earthquake depth for intraslab earthquakes will not significantly impact alert accuracy in the PNW.
Influenza A viruses (IAVs) deposited by wild birds into the environment may lead to sporadic mortality events and economically costly outbreaks among domestic birds. There is a paucity of information, however, regarding the persistence of infectious IAVs within the environment following deposition. In this investigation, we assessed the persistence of 12 IAVs that were present in the cloaca and/or oropharynx of naturally infected ducks. Infectivity of these IAVs were monitored over approximately one year when held in five water types: (1) distilled water held in the lab at 4 ºC and (2–5) filtered surface water from each of four Alaska sites and maintained in the field at ambient temperature. By evaluating infectivity of IAVs in ovo following sample retrieval at four successive time points, we observed successive declines in IAV infectivity through time. Many viruses persisted for extended periods, as evidenced by ≥ 25% of IAVs remaining infectious in replicate samples for each treatment type through three sampling time points (144–155 days post-sample collection) and two viruses remaining viable in a single replicate sample each when tested upon collection at a fourth time point (361–377 days post-sample collection). The estimated probability of persistence of infectious IAVs in all five water types was estimated to be between 0.25–0.75 during days 50–200 post-sample collection as inferred through Kaplan-Meier survival analysis. Our results provide evidence that IAVs may remain infectious for extended periods, up to or even exceeding one year, when maintained in surface waters under ambient temperatures. Therefore, wetlands may represent an important medium in which infectious IAVs may reside outside of a biotic reservoir.
","language":"English","publisher":"Elsevier","doi":"10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.150078","usgsCitation":"Ramey, A.M., Reeves, A.B., Lagasse, B.J., Patil, V.P., Hubbard, L.E., Kolpin, D., McCleskey, R., Repert, D.A., Stallknecht, D., and Poulson, R., 2022, Evidence for interannual persistence of infectious influenza A viruses in Alaska wetlands: Science of the Total Environment, v. 803, 150078, 9 p., https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.150078.","productDescription":"150078, 9 p.","ipdsId":"IP-130156","costCenters":[{"id":117,"text":"Alaska Science Center Biology WTEB","active":true,"usgs":true},{"id":36532,"text":"Central Midwest Water Science Center","active":true,"usgs":true},{"id":37947,"text":"Upper Midwest Water Science Center","active":true,"usgs":true}],"links":[{"id":449722,"rank":1,"type":{"id":40,"text":"Open Access Publisher Index Page"},"url":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.150078","text":"Publisher Index Page"},{"id":436056,"rank":0,"type":{"id":30,"text":"Data Release"},"url":"https://doi.org/10.5066/P98L6ASV","text":"USGS data release","linkHelpText":"Temporal Viral Viability Data from Avian Influenza A Viruses Maintained in Alaska Wetlands Under Experimental and Environmental Conditions"},{"id":388876,"type":{"id":24,"text":"Thumbnail"},"url":"https://pubs.usgs.gov/thumbnails/outside_thumb.jpg"}],"country":"United States","state":"Alaska","otherGeospatial":"Bluebill Lake, Izembek National Wildlife Refuge, Proxy Pond, Red Salmon Lake, Rescue Lake","geographicExtents":"{\n \"type\": \"FeatureCollection\",\n \"features\": [\n {\n \"type\": \"Feature\",\n \"properties\": {},\n \"geometry\": {\n \"type\": \"Polygon\",\n \"coordinates\": [\n [\n [\n -163.44085693359375,\n 55.076794905148105\n ],\n [\n -163.42437744140625,\n 55.020149969057954\n ],\n [\n -163.3392333984375,\n 55.06421406528486\n ],\n [\n -163.32000732421875,\n 55.02802211299252\n ],\n [\n -163.19091796875,\n 55.03431871502809\n ],\n [\n -163.157958984375,\n 55.079939497082805\n 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0000-0002-7526-0726 areeves@usgs.gov","orcid":"https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7526-0726","contributorId":167362,"corporation":false,"usgs":true,"family":"Reeves","given":"Andrew","email":"areeves@usgs.gov","middleInitial":"B.","affiliations":[{"id":114,"text":"Alaska Science Center","active":true,"usgs":true},{"id":117,"text":"Alaska Science Center Biology WTEB","active":true,"usgs":true}],"preferred":true,"id":822618,"contributorType":{"id":1,"text":"Authors"},"rank":2},{"text":"Lagasse, Benjamin Joel 0000-0003-2565-5284","orcid":"https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2565-5284","contributorId":247509,"corporation":false,"usgs":true,"family":"Lagasse","given":"Benjamin","email":"","middleInitial":"Joel","affiliations":[{"id":117,"text":"Alaska Science Center Biology WTEB","active":true,"usgs":true}],"preferred":true,"id":822628,"contributorType":{"id":1,"text":"Authors"},"rank":3},{"text":"Patil, Vijay P. 0000-0002-9357-194X vpatil@usgs.gov","orcid":"https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9357-194X","contributorId":203676,"corporation":false,"usgs":true,"family":"Patil","given":"Vijay","email":"vpatil@usgs.gov","middleInitial":"P.","affiliations":[{"id":117,"text":"Alaska Science Center Biology WTEB","active":true,"usgs":true}],"preferred":false,"id":822620,"contributorType":{"id":1,"text":"Authors"},"rank":4},{"text":"Hubbard, Laura E. 0000-0003-3813-1500 lhubbard@usgs.gov","orcid":"https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3813-1500","contributorId":4221,"corporation":false,"usgs":true,"family":"Hubbard","given":"Laura","email":"lhubbard@usgs.gov","middleInitial":"E.","affiliations":[{"id":37947,"text":"Upper Midwest Water Science Center","active":true,"usgs":true}],"preferred":true,"id":822629,"contributorType":{"id":1,"text":"Authors"},"rank":5},{"text":"Kolpin, Dana W. 0000-0002-3529-6505","orcid":"https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3529-6505","contributorId":204154,"corporation":false,"usgs":true,"family":"Kolpin","given":"Dana W.","affiliations":[{"id":589,"text":"Toxic Substances Hydrology Program","active":true,"usgs":true},{"id":35680,"text":"Illinois-Iowa-Missouri Water Science Center","active":true,"usgs":true},{"id":351,"text":"Iowa Water Science Center","active":true,"usgs":true}],"preferred":true,"id":822622,"contributorType":{"id":1,"text":"Authors"},"rank":6},{"text":"McCleskey, R. Blaine 0000-0002-2521-8052","orcid":"https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2521-8052","contributorId":205663,"corporation":false,"usgs":true,"family":"McCleskey","given":"R. Blaine","affiliations":[{"id":37277,"text":"WMA - Earth System Processes Division","active":true,"usgs":true},{"id":5044,"text":"National Research Program - Central Branch","active":true,"usgs":true},{"id":503,"text":"Office of Water Quality","active":true,"usgs":true}],"preferred":true,"id":822623,"contributorType":{"id":1,"text":"Authors"},"rank":7},{"text":"Repert, Deborah A. 0000-0001-7284-1456 darepert@usgs.gov","orcid":"https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7284-1456","contributorId":2578,"corporation":false,"usgs":true,"family":"Repert","given":"Deborah","email":"darepert@usgs.gov","middleInitial":"A.","affiliations":[{"id":36183,"text":"Hydro-Ecological Interactions Branch","active":true,"usgs":true},{"id":5044,"text":"National Research Program - Central Branch","active":true,"usgs":true},{"id":37464,"text":"WMA - Laboratory & Analytical Services Division","active":true,"usgs":true},{"id":38175,"text":"Toxics Substances Hydrology Program","active":true,"usgs":true}],"preferred":true,"id":822624,"contributorType":{"id":1,"text":"Authors"},"rank":8},{"text":"Stallknecht, David E.","contributorId":225107,"corporation":false,"usgs":false,"family":"Stallknecht","given":"David E.","affiliations":[{"id":36701,"text":"Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study, Department of Population Health, College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Georgia","active":true,"usgs":false}],"preferred":false,"id":822630,"contributorType":{"id":1,"text":"Authors"},"rank":9},{"text":"Poulson, Rebecca L.","contributorId":198807,"corporation":false,"usgs":false,"family":"Poulson","given":"Rebecca L.","affiliations":[{"id":7125,"text":"Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study, College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, USA.","active":true,"usgs":false}],"preferred":false,"id":822631,"contributorType":{"id":1,"text":"Authors"},"rank":10}]}} ,{"id":70231633,"text":"70231633 - 2022 - Nearshore microfossil assemblages in a Caribbean reef environment show variable rates of recovery following Hurricane Irma","interactions":[],"lastModifiedDate":"2022-05-18T13:52:57.365425","indexId":"70231633","displayToPublicDate":"2021-09-07T07:14:32","publicationYear":"2022","noYear":false,"publicationType":{"id":2,"text":"Article"},"publicationSubtype":{"id":10,"text":"Journal Article"},"seriesTitle":{"id":3369,"text":"Sedimentology","active":true,"publicationSubtype":{"id":10}},"title":"Nearshore microfossil assemblages in a Caribbean reef environment show variable rates of recovery following Hurricane Irma","docAbstract":"Modern microfossil distributions reflect site-specific habitats and provide an opportunity to assess sediment transport pathways in the nearshore environment. When applied to overwash deposits in the geological record, they provide insight into sediment provenance and transport, factors important for understanding patterns of frequency and intensity of past storms and tsunamis. Modern distribution studies are rare and often the first established ones occur immediately after an overwash event as part of a post-event field survey. This is problematic because it is unclear what effect overwash events have on nearshore microfossil assemblages and what time interval is necessary for them to return to pre-event conditions. This study documents the impacts of Hurricane Irma on nearshore sediments off the coast of Anegada, British Virgin Islands, using distributions of Homotrema rubrum, an encrusting foraminifer with a defined provenance in coral reefs. At four sampling intervals spanning two years, from six months pre-Hurricane Irma to eighteen months after, surface sediment was collected from three transects on the northern and southern shores of the island. Partitioning Around Medoids cluster analysis revealed that Hurricane Irma introduced an influx of well-preserved fragments into the reef flat and made the sediments more uniform, limiting the foraminifer’s utility as a known sediment transport indicator. The mixing of sediments along the two northern transects (reef proximal) persisted for seven to eighteen months before returning to near pre-hurricane conditions. However, the southern transect (absence of reef), where Homotrema rubrum concentrations are significantly less, failed to recover within the time period assessed by this study, indicating a variable recovery period between Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea facing shorelines. Results from this study suggest that a waiting period of at least eighteen months after a major storm is recommended before collecting surface sediment from the nearshore environments of reef-dominated coastlines.
West Indian manatees (Trichechus manatus) are separated into two allopatric subspecies: the Florida manatee (T. m. latirostris) and the Antillean manatee (T. m. manatus). In the winter of 2020–2021, an adult manatee was sighted off the coast of Cancun, Quintana Roo, Mexico, in areas where Antillean manatees are not typically seen. The individual had distinct watercraft scars on its body, which were matched using photo-identification to a known male Florida manatee (PE424) that had been repeatedly photographed in Florida since 1998. This is the first record of a Florida manatee visiting the Mexican Caribbean. Previous reports of individuals from this subspecies in Cuba, combined with genetic evidence, suggest some level of connectivity among geographically separated manatee populations.
We present the first evidence of along-distance movement by amanatee from Florida to the Yucatan Peninsula (Quintana Roo, Mexican Caribbean).
This case, previous reports of Florida manatees in Cuba, and genetic evidence, suggest acertain degree of genetic mixture among the two subspecies.
Vernal pools of the northeastern United States provide important breeding habitat for amphibians but may be sensitive to droughts and climate change. These seasonal wetlands typically fill by early spring and dry by mid-to-late summer. Because climate change may produce earlier and stronger growing-season evapotranspiration combined with increasing droughts and shifts in precipitation timing, management concerns include the possibility that some pools will increasingly become dry earlier in the year, potentially interfering with amphibian life-cycle completion. In this context, a subset of pools that continue to provide wetland habitat later into the year under relatively dry conditions might function as ecohydrologic refugia, potentially supporting species persistence even as summer conditions become warmer and droughts more frequent. We used approximately 3,000 field observations of inundation from 449 pools to train machine-learning models that predict the likelihood of pool inundation based on pool size, day of the year, climate conditions, short-term weather patterns, and soil, geologic, and landcover attributes. Models were then used to generate predictions of pool wetness across five seasonal time points, three short-term weather scenarios, and four sets of downscaled climate projections. Model outputs are available through a website allowing users to choose the inundation thresholds, time points, weather scenarios, and future climate projections most relevant to their management needs. Together with long-term monitoring of individual pools at the site scale, this regional-scale study can support amphibian conservation by helping to identify which pools may be most likely to function as ecohydrologic refugia from droughts and climate change.
The 2019
Environmental water management often benefits from a risk-based approach where information on the area of interest is characterized, assembled, and incorporated into a decision model considering uncertainty. This includes prior information from literature, field measurements, professional interpretation, and data assimilation resulting in a decision tool with a posterior uncertainty assessment accounting for prior understanding and what is learned through model development and data assimilation. Model construction and data assimilation are time consuming and prone to errors, which motivates a repeatable workflow where revisions resulting from new interpretations or discovery of errors can be addressed and the analyses repeated efficiently and rigorously. In this work, motivated by the real world application of delineating risk-based (probabilistic) sources of water to supply wells in a humid temperate climate, a scripted workflow was generated for groundwater model construction, data assimilation, particle-tracking and post-processing. The workflow leverages existing datasets describing hydrogeology, hydrography, water use, recharge, and lateral boundaries. These specific data are available in the United States but the tools can be applied to similar datasets worldwide. The workflow builds the model, performs ensemble-based history matching, and uses a posterior Monte Carlo approach to provide probabilistic capture zones describing source water to wells in a risk-based framework. The water managers can then select areas of varying levels of protection based on their tolerance for risk of potential wrongness of the underlying models. All the tools in this workflow are open-source and free, which facilitates testing of this repeatable and transparent approach to other environmental problems.
Earthquake magnitudes are widely relied upon measures of earthquake size. Although moment magnitude (
Subsidence and accelerated sea level rise impact nesting area availability and flood probabilities of breeding islands for colonial nesting waterbirds. In 2017 and 2018, we monitored 855 nests of four species of colonial nesting waterbirds on Rabbit Island, LA, to determine factors affecting nest and chick success. Based on logistic exposure models of nests, tricolored herons had the greatest likelihood of survival to hatch (mean (95% confidence interval)) (77% (65.9–83.1%)), followed by brown pelicans (70% (59.9–98.5%)), roseate spoonbills (70% (38.9–83.8%)), and Forster’s terns (12% (10.7–12.2%)). Likelihood of survival to fledge was highest for tricolored herons (32% (12.8–40.7%)), followed by brown pelicans (28% (19.5–28.6%)), roseate spoonbills (47% (43.7–53.3%)), and Forster’s terns (0% (0.005–0.01%)). Nesting strategy and nest timing impacted survival rate; however, the effect depended on timing of inundation events as the timing of inundation events varied across years. Flooding was the primary cause of nest failure for most species. In 2003–2012, rapid expansion in brown pelican colony numbers and significant chick production occurred at Rabbit Island, but hydrologic records indicate no island inundation occurred during the breeding season from the beginning of the hydrologic record (2006) through 2011. Thus, our results contrast with those of previous studies conducted under different hydrologic conditions and demonstrate the challenges of short-term studies informing coastal restoration in a system that is influenced by multi-year to multi-decadal climatic cycles.
Earthquake hazards in the U.S. Pacific Northwest (PNW) are increased by the presence of deep sedimentary basins that amplify and prolong ground shaking. To better understand basin and site effects on ground motions, we compile a database of recordings from crustal and intraslab earthquakes. We process 8028 records with magnitudes from 3.5 to 6.8 and hypocentral depths up to 62 km to compute Fourier amplitude spectra of ground acceleration for frequencies of 0–20 Hz. We compute residuals relative to the Bayless and Abrahamson (2019; hereafter, BA18) ground‐motion model and perform a series of linear, crossed, mixed‐effects regressions. In addition to estimating the bias, event, and site terms, we incorporate groupings for broad regionalized site response in three different regions (Seattle basin, Puget Lowland, non‐Puget Lowland), for effects from seismotectonic regime (crustal and intraslab sources), and for interactions between the regions and seismotectonic regimes. We find that the scaling of site response with respect to VS30 (time‐averaged shear‐wave velocity from the surface to a depth of 30 m) and to basin depth indicators Z1.0 and Z2.5 (depths to the 1.0 and 2.5 km/s shear‐wave velocity horizons) is generally consistent with BA18; however, the region terms display strong spatial amplification patterns. For frequencies less than 5 Hz, the Seattle basin amplifies ground motions up to a factor of four, relative to the non‐Puget Lowland, with a maximum amplification around near 0.5 Hz. Sites in the Puget Lowland amplify low frequencies up to a factor of 2.5. At higher frequencies (f>5 Hz), the Puget Lowland and Seattle basin show regional deamplification of ground motions, with the smallest average amplification factor of 0.65 occurring at 10.0 Hz. Although we observe slight differences in the seismotectonic regime terms, we find that the region terms are significantly more important for modeling earthquake hazard in the PNW.
Regional scale forest distribution models are important tools for biogeography and understanding the structure of forest communities in space. These models take climate and geographic variables as input and are therefore helpful for long-term decision support and climate adaptation planning. Generally, local processes of tree germination and seedling survival are resolved probabilistically with explanatory variables such as elevation, latitude, exposure, soil type, moisture availability, climate and weather inputs and `trained’ using landscape and regional presence-absence data and machine learning techniques. How seeds are distributed in these models, that is, determining the dispersal kernel, is far more problematic. The challenge is that variables conditioning vertebrate seed dispersal (motility and probability of utilization or caching in response to cover type) are not represented in large scale distribution models, and in fact vary on scales (10-100 meters) that are much smaller than the smallest pixel size for the distribution model (1-10 kilometers). We present a homogenized seed digestion kernel (HSDK) which incorporates this scale separation. Homogenization naturally links highly variable small-scale processes (like seed foraging and caching by birds and rodents) with large scale effects (like dispersal of seeds over tens of kilometers). We develop a homogenization strategy to predict seed dispersal on landscape scales, analytically linking small-scale variables (landscape fraction cover by tree type, gut residence times and cover type utilization by frugivorous birds) with large scale behaviors. Closed form approximations are developed in two dimensions for two limiting cases of seed handling behavior, and the approach is illustrated using landscape data and piñon-pine dispersal in a 630,000 square kilometer region in the southwestern US.
","language":"English","publisher":"Elsevier","doi":"10.1016/j.amc.2021.126591","usgsCitation":"Neupane, R.C., Powell, J., and Edwards, T., 2022, Connecting regional-scale tree distribution models with seed dispersal kernels: Applied Mathematics and Computation, v. 412, 126591, 17 p., https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amc.2021.126591.","productDescription":"126591, 17 p.","ipdsId":"IP-124972","costCenters":[{"id":200,"text":"Coop Res Unit Seattle","active":true,"usgs":true}],"links":[{"id":449740,"rank":0,"type":{"id":40,"text":"Open Access Publisher Index Page"},"url":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amc.2021.126591","text":"Publisher Index Page"},{"id":396921,"type":{"id":24,"text":"Thumbnail"},"url":"https://pubs.usgs.gov/thumbnails/outside_thumb.jpg"}],"volume":"412","noUsgsAuthors":false,"publicationStatus":"PW","contributors":{"authors":[{"text":"Neupane, Ram C.","contributorId":288149,"corporation":false,"usgs":false,"family":"Neupane","given":"Ram","email":"","middleInitial":"C.","affiliations":[{"id":61709,"text":"ta&m","active":true,"usgs":false}],"preferred":false,"id":837519,"contributorType":{"id":1,"text":"Authors"},"rank":1},{"text":"Powell, James A.","contributorId":288150,"corporation":false,"usgs":false,"family":"Powell","given":"James A.","affiliations":[{"id":28050,"text":"USU","active":true,"usgs":false}],"preferred":false,"id":837520,"contributorType":{"id":1,"text":"Authors"},"rank":2},{"text":"Edwards, Thomas C. Jr. 0000-0002-0773-0909 tce@usgs.gov","orcid":"https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0773-0909","contributorId":191916,"corporation":false,"usgs":true,"family":"Edwards","given":"Thomas C.","suffix":"Jr.","email":"tce@usgs.gov","affiliations":[{"id":200,"text":"Coop Res Unit Seattle","active":true,"usgs":true}],"preferred":false,"id":837518,"contributorType":{"id":1,"text":"Authors"},"rank":3}]}} ,{"id":70224338,"text":"70224338 - 2022 - Solutions in microbiome engineering: Prioritizing barriers to organism establishment","interactions":[],"lastModifiedDate":"2022-01-25T16:50:53.459975","indexId":"70224338","displayToPublicDate":"2021-08-21T07:11:49","publicationYear":"2022","noYear":false,"publicationType":{"id":2,"text":"Article"},"publicationSubtype":{"id":10,"text":"Journal Article"},"seriesTitle":{"id":9357,"text":"The ISME Journal: Multidisciplinary Journal of Microbial Ecology","active":true,"publicationSubtype":{"id":10}},"title":"Solutions in microbiome engineering: Prioritizing barriers to organism establishment","docAbstract":"Microbiome engineering is increasingly being employed as a solution to challenges in health, agriculture, and climate. Often manipulation involves inoculation of new microbes designed to improve function into a preexisting microbial community. Despite, increased efforts in microbiome engineering inoculants frequently fail to establish and/or confer long-lasting modifications on ecosystem function. We posit that one underlying cause of these shortfalls is the failure to consider barriers to organism establishment. This is a key challenge and focus of macroecology research, specifically invasion biology and restoration ecology. We adopt a framework from invasion biology that summarizes establishment barriers in three categories: (1) propagule pressure, (2) environmental filtering, and (3) biotic interactions factors. We suggest that biotic interactions is the most neglected factor in microbiome engineering research, and we recommend a number of actions to accelerate engineering solutions.
Two related concepts in restoration ecology include the relative interchangeability of biotic and abiotic restoration treatments for initiating recovery and bet hedging using multiple restoration approaches to increase the likelihood of favorable restoration outcomes. We used these concepts as a framework to implement a factorial experiment including biotic (outplanting greenhouse-grown individuals of three perennial species) and abiotic treatments (constructing microtopography or vertical mulch consisting of upright, dead plant material). These treatments were designed to stimulate native plant recruitment and reverse soil degradation at four disturbed sites in the Sonoran Desert, U.S.A. The first growing season after the restoration treatments was the driest of the last 47 years, and 100% of outplants died. While the biotic treatment failed, the vertical mulch abiotic treatment increased native shrub seedling cover at the driest site and reversed soil loss across sites by increasing soil accumulation by 6× to 2 cm/year. Results revealed that (1) inexpensive, minimal-input abiotic treatments outperformed resource-intensive biotic treatments; (2) the restoration effort withstood the total failure of a major component (outplanting) to nevertheless achieve key restoration benefits within 2–3 growing seasons; and (3) incorporating multiple treatment types served as a bet-hedging approach to buffer against treatment failures. Integrating minimal-input abiotic treatments in restoration warrants consideration given their low cost and bet-hedging potential.
Since late 2018, the US Geological Survey (USGS) ground failure (GF) earthquake product has provided publicly available spatial estimates of earthquake-triggered landslide and liquefaction hazards, along with the qualitative hazard and population exposure-based alerts for M > 6 earthquakes worldwide and in near real time (within ∼30 min). Earthquake losses are oftentimes greatly aggravated by the impacts due to ground failure, yet those particular events with dramatic additional losses have not, heretofore, been rapidly identifiable. The GF product now provides situational awareness about the potential extent and severity of ground failure in the crucial time period before direct observations are available. We describe our implementation of the GF product and the lessons learned from the earthquakes that have occurred since the GF product was released. We describe the product design process, the underlying GF models, the methods we have developed for modeling uncertainty, and the development of the alert levels. The GF product has been produced in near real time for 320 events over the 2-year period since its public implementation in late 2018 through early 2021. The majority of these events yielded the lowest level (green) alerts for all ground-failure types, with 25 resulting in elevated hazard or exposure to landslides and 47 for liquefaction. In a qualitative comparison between the GF product alerts and GF occurrence information, we found that the product succeeds at assigning appropriate alert levels in the majority of cases. Based on our experience with the product, we have identified the following priorities for future improvements: (1) refinements of the underlying probabilistic models to incorporate severity and explicitly model the type of landslide/liquefaction; (2) development of models for fatalities and economic losses due to ground failure; and (3) estimation of the impacts of ground failure on infrastructure.
We develop semi-empirical ground motion models (GMMs) for peak ground acceleration, peak ground velocity, and 5%-damped pseudo-spectral accelerations for periods from 0.01 to 10 s, for the median orientation-independent horizontal component of subduction earthquake ground motion. The GMMs are applicable to interface and intraslab subduction earthquakes in Japan, Taiwan, Mexico, Central America, South America, Alaska, the Aleutian Islands, and Cascadia. The GMMs are developed using a combination of data inspection, data regression with respect to physics-informed functions, ground-motion simulations, and geometrical constraints for certain model components. The GMMs capture observed differences in source and path effects for interface and intraslab events, conditioned on moment magnitude, rupture distance, and hypocentral depth. Site effect and aleatory variability models are shared between event types. Regionalized GMM components include the model constant (that controls ground motion amplitude), anelastic attenuation, magnitude-scaling break point, linear site response, and sediment depth terms. We develop models for the aleatory between-event variability
Lakes process both terrestrial and aquatic organic matter, and the relative contribution from each source is often measured via ecosystem metabolism and terrestrial resource use in the food web (i.e., consumer allochthony). Yet, ecosystem metabolism and consumer allochthony are rarely considered together, despite possible interactions and potential for them to respond to the same lake characteristics. In this study, we compiled global datasets of lake gross primary production (GPP), ecosystem respiration (ER), and zooplankton allochthony to compare the strength and shape of relationships with physicochemical characteristics across a broad set of lakes. GPP was positively related to total phosphorus (TP) in lakes with intermediate TP concentrations (11–75 μg L−1) and was highest in lakes with intermediate dissolved organic carbon (DOC) concentrations. While ER and GPP were strongly positively correlated, decoupling occurred at high DOC concentrations. Lastly, allochthony had a unimodal relationship with TP and related variably to DOC. By integrating metabolism and allochthony, we identified similar change points in GPP and zooplankton allochthony at intermediate DOC (4.5–10 mg L−1) and TP (8–20 μg L−1) concentrations, indicating that allochthony and GPP may be coupled and inversely related. The ratio of DOC:nutrients also helped to identify conditions where lake organic matter processing responded more to autochthonous or allochthonous organic matter sources. As lakes globally face eutrophication and browning, predicting how lake organic matter processing will respond requires an updated paradigm that incorporates nonlinear dynamics and interactions.
The Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) of North America has experienced extreme changes in wetland habitat due to proliferation of invasive plants. Typha × glauca is a highly competitive hybrid between native T. latifolia and non-native T. angustifolia, and it is likely the predominant taxon in PPR wetlands. Genetics-based studies are limited, and distributions are poorly known for the first-generation (F1) hybrid and advanced-generation hybrids from F1 mating. Information pertaining to the distribution of T. × glauca could benefit efforts to understand the mechanisms of its spread and to develop management strategies to limit hybrid expansion and preserve progenitors. We used microsatellite markers of field-collected tissue samples from 131 wetlands spread over approximately 350,000 km2 in the PPR to assess the distribution of hybrid T. × glauca relative to its parental species and to examine the prevalence of F1 hybrids and advanced-generation hybrids. Typha × glauca was found in over 80% of wetlands throughout the PPR, compared to 26 and 18% of wetlands with T. latifolia and T. angustifolia, respectively. Advanced-generation hybrids were more common than F1 hybrids, suggesting that hybridization is not a recent phenomenon. Hybrids were significantly taller than T. latifolia, indicating heterosis. Only 7% of sampled individual genets were pure T. latifolia. These results suggest that T. × glauca is pervasive throughout the PPR and may spread independently of both parents. In addition, limited prevalence of native T. latifolia indicates the need for active management to preserve the species.
Imidacloprid is among the most used pesticides worldwide and there are toxicity concerns for nontarget organisms. Accurate and sensitive methods are necessary to quantitate imidacloprid concentrations in biological matrices to better understand their fate and effects. Here we evaluated an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) kit for the analysis of imidacloprid in biological samples. Following the dosing of Japanese quail (Coturnix japonica) with imidacloprid-treated wheat seeds, plasma, liver, and fecal matter samples were analyzed by ELISA and compared to previous analyses that employed liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). Imidacloprid metabolites—5-OH-imidacloprid, imidacloprid-olefin, imidacloprid-urea, desnitro-imidacloprid, and 6-chloronicotinic acid—were tested for their cross-reactivity to antibodies within the commercial imidacloprid ELISA kit. The two major metabolites, 5-OH-imidacloprid and imidacloprid-olefin, showed cross-reactivities of 0.93–26 %. ELISA and LC-MS/MS results were positively correlated but there was poor agreement in concentrations: plasma and fecal matter imidacloprid concentrations were higher by ELISA, whereas liver imidacloprid concentrations were higher by LC-MS/MS. Matrix interferences observed in analyses were minimized by the application of matrix-matched calibration curves. ELISA provided an effective screening tool for imidacloprid in these biological matrices, but the presence of cross-reactants confounded results. Confirmation of ELISA results by more selective techniques (e.g., LC-MS/MS) is suggested for complex samples.