Non-linear responses of glaciated prairie wetlands to climate warming
W. Carter Johnson, Brett Werner, Glenn R. Guntenspergen
2016, Climatic Change (134) 209-223
The response of ecosystems to climate warming is likely to include threshold events when small changes in key environmental drivers produce large changes in an ecosystem. Wetlands of the Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) are especially sensitive to climate variability, yet the possibility that functional changes may occur more rapidly with...
A linear relationship between wave power and erosion determines salt-marsh resilience to violent storms and hurricanes
Nicoletta Leonardi, Neil K. Ganju, Sergio Fagherazzi
2016, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (113) 64-68
Salt marsh losses have been documented worldwide because of land use change, wave erosion, and sea-level rise. It is still unclear how resistant salt marshes are to extreme storms and whether they can survive multiple events without collapsing. Based on a large dataset of salt marsh lateral erosion rates collected...
The international scale of the groundwater issue
Michael Fienen, Muhammad Arshad
2016, Book chapter, Integrated groundwater management
Throughout history, and throughout the world, groundwater has been a major source of water for sustaining human life. Use of this resource has increased dramatically over the last century. In many areas of the world, the balance between human and ecosystem needs is difficult to maintain. Understanding the international scale...
Integrated groundwater management: An overview of concepts and challenges
Anthony J. Jakeman, Olivier Barreteau, Randall J. Hunt, Jean-Daniel Rinaudo, Andrew Ross
Anthony J. Jakeman, Olivier Barreteau, Randall J. Hunt, Jean-Daniel Rinaudo, Andrew Ross, editor(s)
2016, Book chapter, Integrated groundwater management
Managing water is a grand challenge problem and has become one of humanity’s foremost priorities. Surface water resources are typically societally managed and relatively well understood; groundwater resources, however, are often hidden and more difficult to conceptualize. Replenishment rates of groundwater cannot match past and current rates of depletion in...
Ecohydrology and Its Relation to Integrated Groundwater Management
Randall J. Hunt, Masaki Hayashi, Okke Batelaan
2016, Book chapter, Integrated Groundwater Management
In the twentieth century, groundwater characterization focused primarily on easily measured hydraulic metrics of water storage and flows. Twenty-first century concepts of groundwater availability, however, encompass other factors having societal value, such as ecological well-being. Effective ecohydrological science is a nexus of fundamental understanding derived from two scientific disciplines: (1)...
Significance of beating observed in earthquake responses of buildings
Mehmet Çelebi, S. F. Ghahari, E. Taciroglu
2016, Conference Paper, 16th U.S.-Japan-New Zealand Workshop on the Improvement of Structural Engineering and Resiliency
The beating phenomenon observed in the recorded responses of a tall building in Japan and another in the U.S. are examined in this paper. Beating is a periodic vibrational behavior caused by distinctive coupling between translational and torsional modes that typically have close frequencies. Beating is prominent in the prolonged...
Aquatic carbon cycling in the conterminous United States and implications for terrestrial carbon accounting
David Butman, Sarah M. Stackpoole, Edward G. Stets, Cory P. McDonald, David W. Clow, Robert G. Striegl
2016, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (113) 58-63
Inland water ecosystems dynamically process, transport, and sequester carbon. However, the transport of carbon through aquatic environments has not been quantitatively integrated in the context of terrestrial ecosystems. Here, we present the first integrated assessment, to our knowledge, of freshwater carbon fluxes for the conterminous United States, where 106 (range:...
Groundwater regulation and integrated planning
Philippe Quevauviller, Okke Batelaan, Randall J. Hunt
2016, Book chapter
The complex nature of groundwater and the diversity of uses and environmental interactions call for emerging groundwater problems to be addressed through integrated management and planning approaches. Planning requires different levels of integration dealing with: the hydrologic cycle (the physical process) including the temporal dimension; river basins and aquifers (spatial...
Estimating abundance
Chris Sutherland, J. Andrew Royle
2016, Book chapter, Reptile ecology and conservation: A handbook of techniques
This chapter provides a non-technical overview of ‘closed population capture–recapture’ models, a class of well-established models that are widely applied in ecology, such as removal sampling, covariate models, and distance sampling. These methods are regularly adopted for studies of reptiles, in order to estimate abundance from counts of marked individuals...
Estimating abundance: Chapter 27
J. Andrew Royle
2016, Book chapter, Reptile ecology and conservation: A handbook of techniques
This chapter provides a non-technical overview of ‘closed population capture–recapture’ models, a class of well-established models that are widely applied in ecology, such as removal sampling, covariate models, and distance sampling. These methods are regularly adopted for studies of reptiles, in order to estimate abundance from counts of marked individuals...
The role of science through a century of elk and habitat management at Rocky Mountain National Park
Therese L. Johnson, Linda Zeigenfuss, N. Thompson Hobbs, John A. Mack
2016, Park Science (32) 70-72
Over the past century elk (Cervus elaphus) management in Rocky Mountain National Park has evolved along with NPS policy, social values, and an improved understanding of the role of elk in the ecosystem. Science has played an important part in shaping management approaches through the application of monitoring and research (Monello...
State-and-transition models: Conceptual versus simulation perspectives, usefulness and breadth of use, and land management applications
Louis Provencher, Leonardo Frid, Christina Czembor, Jeffrey T. Morisette
2016, Book chapter, Exotic brome-grasses in arid and semiarid ecosystems of the western US
State-and-Transition Simulation Modeling (STSM) is a quantitative analysis method that can consolidate a wide array of resource management issues under a “what-if” scenario exercise. STSM can be seen as an ensemble of models, such as climate models, ecological models, and economic models that incorporate human dimensions and management options. This...
Deathcore, creativity, and scientific thinking
David G. Angeler, Shana M. Sundstrom, Craig R. Allen
2016, Research Ideas and Outcomes (2) 1-6
BackgroundMajor scientific breakthroughs are generally the result of materializing creative ideas, the result of an inductive process that sometimes spontaneously and unexpectedly generates a link between thoughts and/or objects that did not exist before. Creativity is the cornerstone of scientific thinking, but scientists in academia are...
Polyoxyethylene tallow amine, a glyphosate formulation adjuvant: Soil adsorption characteristics, degradation profile, and occurrence on selected soils from agricultural fields in Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, and Missouri
Daniel L. Tush, Michael T. Meyer
2016, Environmental Science & Technology (50) 5781-5789
Polyoxyethylene tallow amine (POEA) is an inert ingredient added to formulations of glyphosate, the most widely applied agricultural herbicide. POEA has been shown to have toxic effects to some aquatic organisms making the potential transport of POEA from the application site into the environment an important concern. This study characterized...
Discontinuities concentrate mobile predators: Quantifying organism-environment interactions at a seascape scale
Christina G. Kennedy, Martha E. Mather, Joseph M. Smith, John T. Finn, Linda A. Deegan
2016, Ecosphere (7)
Understanding environmental drivers of spatial patterns is an enduring ecological problem that is critical for effective biological conservation. Discontinuities (ecologically meaningful habitat breaks), both naturally occurring (e.g., river confluence, forest edge, drop-off) and anthropogenic (e.g., dams, roads), can influence the distribution of highly mobile organisms that have land- or seascape...
CDMetaPOP: An individual-based, eco-evolutionary model for spatially explicit simulation of landscape demogenetics
Erin L. Landguth, Andrew Bearlin, Casey Day, Jason B. Dunham
2016, Methods in Ecology and Evolution (8) 4-11
1. Combining landscape demographic and genetics models offers powerful methods for addressing questions for eco-evolutionary applications.2. Using two illustrative examples, we present Cost–Distance Meta-POPulation, a program to simulate changes in neutral and/or selection-driven genotypes through time as a function of individual-based movement, complex spatial population dynamics, and multiple and...
Some contrasting biostratigraphic links between the Baker and Olds Ferry Terranes, eastern Oregon
Merlynd K. Nestell, Charles D. Blome
2016, Micropaleontology (61) 389-417
New stratigraphic and paleontologic data indicate that ophiolitic melange windows in the Olds Ferry terrane of eastern Oregon contain limestone blocks and chert that are somewhat different in age than those present in the adjacent Baker terrane melange. The melange windows in the Olds Ferry terrane occur as inliers in...
Potentiometric surface and water-level difference maps of selected confined aquifers in Southern Maryland and Maryland’s Eastern Shore, 1975-2015
Stephen E. Curtin, Andrew W. Staley, David C. Andreasen
2016, Report
Key Results This report presents potentiometric-surface maps of the Aquia and Magothy aquifers and the Upper Patapsco, Lower Patapsco, and Patuxent aquifer systems using water levels measured during September 2015. Water-level difference maps are also presented for these aquifers. The water-level differences in the Aquia aquifer are shown using groundwater-level data...
Conservation planning for the Colorado River in Utah
Christine Rasmussen, Patrick B. Shafroth
2016, Report
Strategic planning is increasingly recognized as necessary for providing the greatest possible conservation benefits for restoration efforts. Rigorous, science-based resource assessment, combined with acknowledgement of broader basin trends, provides a solid foundation for determining effective projects. It is equally important that methods used to prioritize conservation investments are simple and...
Rapid environmental change drives increased land use by an Arctic marine predator
Todd C. Atwood, Elizabeth L. Peacock, Melissa A. McKinney, Kate Lillie, Ryan H. Wilson, David C. Douglas, Pat Terletzky, Susanne Miller
2016, PLoS ONE (6)
In the Arctic Ocean’s southern Beaufort Sea (SB), the length of the sea ice melt season (i.e., period between the onset of sea ice break-up in summer and freeze-up in fall) has increased substantially since the late 1990s. Historically, polar bears (Ursus maritimus) of the SB have mostly remained on...
Testing and use of radar water level sensors by the U.S. Geological Survey
Janice M. Fulford
2016, Report, Manual on sea level: Measurement and interpretation Volume V: Radar gauges
The United States Geological Survey uses water-level (or stage) measurements to compute streamflow at over 8000 stream gaging stations located throughout the United States (waterwatch.usgs.gov, 2016). Streamflow (or discharge) is computed at five minute to hourly intervals from a relationship between water level and discharge that is uniquely determined for...
Prioritizing landscapes for longleaf pine conservation
J. Barry Grand, Kevin J. Kleiner
2016, Cooperator Science Series FWS/CSS-119-2016
We developed a spatially explicit model and map, as a decision support tool (DST), to aid conservation agencies creating or maintaining open pine ecosystems. The tool identified areas that are likely to provide the greatest benefit to focal bird populations based on a comprehensive landscape analysis. We used NLCD 2011,...
Deserts
Jayne Belnap, Robert H. Webb, Todd Esque, Matthew L. Brooks, Lesley A. DeFalco, James A. MacMahon
2016, Book chapter, Ecosystems of California
The deserts of California (Lead photo, Fig. 1) occupy approximately 38% of California’s landscape (Table 1) and consist of three distinct deserts: the Great Basin Desert, Mojave Desert, and Colorado Desert, the latter of which is a subdivision of the Sonoran Desert (Brown and Lowe 1980). The wide range of...
Loamy, two-storied soils on the outwash plains of southwestern lower Michigan: Pedoturbation of loess with the underlying sand
Michael D. Luehmann, Brad G. Peter, Christopher B. Connallon, Randall J. Schaetzl, Samuel J. Smidt, Wei Liu, Kevin A. Kincare, Toni A. Walkowiak, Elin Thorlund, Marie S. Holler
2016, Annals of the American Association of Geographers (106) 551-572
Soils on many of the outwash plains in southwestern Michigan have loamy upper profiles, despite being underlain by sand-textured outwash. The origin of this upper, loamy material has long been unknown. The purpose of this study is to analyze the spatio-textural characteristics of these loamy-textured sediments to ascertain their origin(s)....
U-Pb, Re-Os, and Ar/Ar geochronology of rare earth element (REE)-rich breccia pipes and associated host rocks from the Mesoproterozoic Pea Ridge Fe-REE-Au deposit, St. Francois Mountains, Missouri
John N. Aleinikoff, David Selby, John F. Slack, Warren C. Day, Renee M. Pillers, Michael A. Cosca, Cheryl Seeger, C. Mark Fanning, Iain Samson
2016, Economic Geology (111) 1883-1914
Rare earth element (REE)-rich breccia pipes (600,000 t @ 12% rare earth oxides) are preserved along the margins of the 136-million metric ton (Mt) Pea Ridge magnetite-apatite deposit, within Mesoproterozoic (~1.47 Ga) volcanic-plutonic rocks of the St. Francois Mountains terrane in southeastern Missouri, United States. The breccia pipes cut the...
