Accounting for the fraction of carcasses outside the searched area in the estimation of bird and bat fatalities at wind energy facilities
Daniel Dalthorp, Manuela Huso, Mark Dalthorp, Jeffrey Mintz
2024, Techniques and Methods 7-A3
Accurate estimation of bird and bat mortality at wind energy facilities requires accounting for carcasses that lie outside the search plots because they lie beyond the search radius or in areas within the search radius that remain unsearched due to sub-optimal search conditions such as thick vegetation, rough or dangerous...
Adult green sturgeon (Acipenser medirostris) movements in the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta, California, December 2020–January 2023
Amy C. Hansen, Summer M. Burdick, Ryan P. Johnson, Robert D. Chase, Michael J. Thomas
2024, Open-File Report 2024-1025
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers American River Watershed Common Features project (ACRF) seeks to reduce flood risk for the City of Sacramento, California, and surrounding areas. The project includes levee-remediation measures to address seepage, stability, erosion, and height concerns as well as the widening of the Sacramento Weir and...
Quantifying the relative importance of biotic and abiotic factors in landscape-based models of stream fish distributions
Christopher A. Custer, Douglas P. Fischer, Geoffrey Smith, Aaron Henning, Megan Kepler Schall, Matthew K. Shank, Timothy A. Wertz, Daniel A. Isermann
2024, Community Ecology (25) 145-196
Lotic fish species distributions are frequently predicted using remotely sensed habitat variables that characterize the adjacent landscape and serve as proxies for instream habitat. Recent advancements in statistical methodology, however, allow for leveraging fish assemblage data when predicting distributions. This is important because assemblage composition likely provides better information about...
Late-Quaternary surface displacements on accretionary wedge splay faults in the Cascadia Subduction Zone: Implications for megathrust rupture
Anna Ledeczi, Madeleine C. Lucas, Harold Tobin, Janet Watt, Nathaniel C. Miller
2024, Seismica (2)
Because splay faults branch at a steep dip angle from the plate-boundary décollement in an accretionary wedge, their coseismic displacement can potentially result in larger tsunamis with distinct characteristics compared to megathrust-only fault ruptures, posing an enhanced hazard to coastal communities. Elsewhere, there is evidence of coseismic slip on splay...
NEWTS1.0: Numerical model of coastal Erosion by Waves and Transgressive Scarps
Rose Elizabeth Palermo, J. Taylor Perron, Jason M. Soderblom, Samuel P. D. Birch, Alexander G. Hayes, Andrew D. Ashton
2024, Geoscientific Model Development (17) 3433-3445
Models of rocky-coast erosion help us understand the physical phenomena that control coastal morphology and evolution, infer the processes shaping coasts in remote environments, and evaluate risk from natural hazards and future climate change. Existing models, however, are highly complex, are computationally expensive, and depend on many input parameters; this...
Thick- and thin-skinned contractional styles and the tectonic evolution of the northern Sangre de Cristo Mountains, Colorado, USA
David A. Lindsey, Jonathan Caine
2024, Geosphere (20) 678-710
The Sangre de Cristo Mountains of southern Colorado and northern New Mexico, USA, contain an unusual combination of thick- and thin-skinned contractional structures involving both basement and cover rocks in the Laramide Rocky Mountain foreland. These structures are truncated by down-faulted extensional basins to the east and west. Together with...
Double take: Ingestion of two rats by a juvenile Burmese Python (Python bivittatus) in Big Cypress National Preserve, FL, USA
Teah M. Evers, Andrea F. Currylow, Mark Robert Sandfoss, Lisa Marie McBride, Christina M. Romagosa, Wesley W. Boone, Jacquelyn C. Guzy, Gretchen Erika Anderson, Kristen Hart, Matthew McCollister, Amy A. Yackel Adams
2024, Reptiles and Amphibians (31)
No abstract available....
Simulation of hydrodynamics and water temperature in a 21-mile reach of the upper Illinois River, Illinois, 2020–22
Michael R. Ament, David C. Heimann
2024, Scientific Investigations Report 2024-5025
This report describes the development of a CE-QUAL-W2 river hydrodynamics and temperature model of a 21-mile reach of the Illinois River including a 3-mile reach of a major tributary, the Fox River. Model outputs consist of streamflow, water velocity, water-surface elevation, and water-temperature time series that can be used to...
Are researchers citing their data? A case study from the U.S. Geological Survey
Grace C. Donovan, Madison Langseth
2024, Data Science Journal (23)
Data citation promotes accessibility and discoverability of data through measures carried out by researchers, publishers, repositories, and the scientific community. This paper examines how a data citation workflow has been implemented by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) by evaluating publication and data linkages. Two different methods were used to identify...
Role of edaphic, hydrologic, and land cover variables in determining dissolved organic carbon in Missouri (USA) reservoirs and streams
John R. Jones, Jennifer L. Graham, Daniel V. Obrecht, James D. Harlan, Matthew F. Knowlton, Carol Pollard, Jennifer Parris, Anthony P. Thorpe
2024, Lake and Reservoir Management (40) 177-195
In Missouri, distinct geophysical gradients influence statewide patterns in water quality. Here, we quantify the spatiotemporal variability of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) in reservoirs and streams and the edaphic, hydrologic, and land cover variables that account for cross-system variation. Datasets included statewide inventories collected over decades and studies...
Hiding in plain sight: Federally protected Ringed Map Turtles (Graptemys oculifera) found in a new river system
Brad Glorioso, Will Selman, Brian R. Kreiser, Aidan Ford
2024, Herpetological Conservation and Biology (19) 96-105
Understanding the geographical range of a species is essential to successful conservation and management, but their ranges are not always fully known. Ringed Map Turtles (Graptemys oculifera) have been federally listed as a Threatened species since 1986, and they have long been considered endemic to the Pearl River system...
Challenges creating monarch butterfly management strategies for electric power companies in the United States
Jessica Fox, Kasey Allen, James E. Diffendorfer, Laura Lukens, Wayne E. Thogmartin, Christian Newman
2024, Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution (12)
Returning monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) to sustainable levels of abundance will require an array of contributors to protect and restore habitat over broad areas. Due to the diversity and scale of land managed by electric power companies across the monarch range, plus an additional 32 million hectares needed for new...
Global mercury concentrations in biota: Their use as a basis for a global biomonitoring framework
David C. Evers, Josh T. Ackerman, Staffan Akerblom, Dominique Bally, Niladri Basu, Kevin Bishop, Nathalie Bodin, Hans Fredrik Veitberg Braaten, Mark Burton, Paco Bustamante, Celia Y. Chen, John Chetelat, Linroy Christian, Rune Dietz, Paul Drevnick, Collin A. Eagles-Smith, Luis Fernandez, Neil Hammerschlag, Mireille Harmelin-Vivien, Agustin Harte, Eva Kruemmel, Jose Lailson-Brito, Gabriella Medina, Cesar Rodriguez, Iain Stenhouse, Elsie M. Sunderland, Akinori Takeuchi, Timothy Tear, Claudia Vega, Simon Wilson, Pianpian Wu
2024, Ecotoxicology (33) 325-396
An important provision of the Minamata Convention on Mercury is to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of the adopted measures and its implementation. Here, we describe for the first time currently available biotic mercury (Hg) data on a global scale to improve the understanding of global efforts to reduce the...
Evaluating an improved systems approach to wetland crediting: Consideration of wetland ecosystem services
Pamela Mason, Gregory E. Noe, Alicia Berlin, Denise Clearwater, Sally Claggett, Dave Goerman, Brooke J. Landry, Alison Santoro
2024, Report
The Chesapeake Bay Agreement (CBA) has numerous direct goals for improving habitat, living resources, and water quality, conserving lands, engaging communities and addressing a changing climate. To date, the progress toward the wetlands outcome (creation/ restoration of 85,000 acres and enhancement of 150,000 acres) has been very slow and the...
Snow avalanches are a primary climate-linked driver of mountain ungulate populations
Kevin White, Eran Hood, Gabriel Wolken, Erich Peitzsch, Yves Buhler, Katreen Wikstrom Jones, Chris Darimont
2024, Nature Communications Biology (7)
Snow is a major, climate-sensitive feature of the Earth’s surface and catalyst of fundamentally important ecosystem processes. Understanding how snow influences sentinel species in rapidly changing mountain ecosystems is particularly critical. Whereas effects of snow on food availability, energy expenditure, and predation are well documented, we...
Black carp Mylopharyngodon piceus (Richardson, 1846) mouth gape and size preference of a bivalve prey
Patrick Kroboth, Benjamin H. Stahlschmidt, Duane Chapman
2024, Journal of Applied Ichthyology (2024)
Black carp Mylopharyngodon piceus (Richardson, 1846) have been widely used as biological control of snails in aquaculture and were imported to the United States in the 1970s and 1980s for this purpose. Prior research emphasizes the species’ propensity to control gastropods, but since subsequent escape and establishment of black carp...
A multi-marker assessment of sewage contamination in streams using human-associated indicator bacteria, human-specific viruses, and pharmaceuticals
Peter L. Lenaker, Matthew A. Pronschinske, Steven R. Corsi, Joel P. Stokdyk, Hayley Olds, Deborah K. Dila, Sandra L. McLellan
2024, Science of the Total Environment (930)
Human sewage contaminates waterways, delivering excess nutrients, pathogens, chemicals, and other toxic contaminants. Contaminants and various sewage indicators are measured to monitor and assess water quality, but these analytes vary in their representation of sewage contamination and the inferences about water quality they support....
Evaluation of debris-flow building damage forecasts
Katherine R. Barnhart, Christopher R. Miller, Francis K. Rengers, Jason W. Kean
2024, Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences (24) 1459-1483
Reliable forecasts of building damage due to debris flows may provide situational awareness and guide land and emergency management decisions. Application of debris-flow runout models to generate such forecasts requires combining hazard intensity predictions with fragility functions that link hazard intensity with building damage....
Flooding-induced failure of an invasive Burmese Python nest in southern Florida
Mark Robert Sandfoss, Lisa Marie McBride, Gretchen Erika Anderson, Amanda Marie Kissel, Matthew McCollister, Christina M. Romagosa, Amy A. Yackel Adams
2024, Reptiles and Amphibians (31)
It is important to understand the factors affecting the reproductive success of an invasive species to estimate population size and develop management plans. There remains much we do not understand about the reproductive biology of invasive Burmese Pythons in both their native and invasive range. Oviposition site selection is an...
Methylmercury effects on birds: A review, meta-analysis, and development of toxicity reference values for injury assessment based on tissue residues and diet
Josh T. Ackerman, Sarah H. Peterson, Mark P. Herzog, Julie L. Yee
2024, Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (43) 1195-1241
Birds are used as bioindicators of environmental mercury (Hg) contamination, and toxicity reference values are needed for injury assessments. We conducted a comprehensive review, summarized data from 168 studies, performed a series of Bayesian hierarchical meta-analyses, and developed new toxicity reference values for the...
Influence of organic matter thermal maturity on rare earth element distribution: A study of Middle Devonian black shales from the Appalachian Basin, USA
Shailee Bhattacharya, Shikha Sharma, Vikas Agrawal, Michael C. Dix, Giovanni Zanoni, Justin E. Birdwell, Albert S. Wylie Jr., Tom Wagner
2024, Energies (17)
This study focuses on understanding the association of rare earth elements (REE; lanthanides + yttrium + scandium) with organic matter from the Middle Devonian black shales of the Appalachian Basin. Developing a better understanding of the role of organic matter (OM) and thermal maturity in REE partitioning may help improve...
Prion forensics: A multidisciplinary approach to investigate CWD at an illegal deer carcass disposal site
Marc D. Schwabenlander, Jason C. Bartz, Michelle Carstensen, Alberto Fameli, Linda Glaser, Roxanne J. Larsen, Manci Li, Rachel L. Shoemaker, Gage Rowden, Suzanne Stone, W. David Walter, Tiffany M. Wolf, Peter A. Larsen
2024, Prion (18) 72-86
Infectious prions are resistant to degradation and remain infectious in the environment for several years. Chronic wasting disease (CWD) has been detected in cervids inhabiting North America, the Nordic countries, and South Korea. CWD-prion spread is partially attributed to carcass transport and disposal. We employed a forensic approach to investigate...
Special Contributing Area Loading Program user’s manual
Henry F. Doyle, Marian M. Domanski
2024, Open-File Report 2024-1021
The Special Contributing Area Loading Program (SCALP) is a hydrologic routing program that simulates reservoir routing through a linear-reservoir-in-series method. The Java version of SCALP was developed to replicate and replace the functionality of an older version of the program written in Fortran. SCALP models flow through three reservoirs in...
Automatic identification and quantification of volcanic hotspots in Alaska using HotLINK: The hotspot learning and identification network
Pablo Saunders-Shultz, Taryn Lopez, Hannah R. Dietterich, Tarsilo Girona
2024, Frontiers in Earth Science (12)
An increase in volcanic thermal emissions can indicate subsurface and surface processes that precede, or coincide with, volcanic eruptions. Space-borne infrared sensors can detect hotspots—defined here as localized volcanic thermal emissions—in near-real-time. However, automatic hotspot detection systems are needed to efficiently analyze the large quantities of data produced....
Post-fire reference densities for giant sequoia seedlings in a new era of high-severity wildfires
Nathan L. Stephenson, Anthony C. Caprio, David Nicolas Bertil Soderberg, Adrian Das, Eva Louisa Lopez, A. Park Williams
2024, Forest Ecology and Management (562)
Many forests globally are experiencing increases in large, high-severity wildfires, often with increasingly inadequate post-fire tree regeneration. To identify areas that might need post-fire planting, forest managers have a growing need for seedling reference densities – the natural seedling densities...
