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Nutrient pollution from agriculture and urban areas plus acid mine drainage (AMD) from legacy coal mines are primary causes of water-quality impairment in the Susquehanna River, which is the predominant source of freshwater and nutrients entering the Chesapeake Bay. Recent increases in the delivery of dissolved orthophosphate (PO4)...

The McKay’s Bunting (Plectrophenax hyperboreus) is endemic to Alaska, breeds solely on the remote and uninhabited St. Matthew and Hall islands (332 km2) in the central Bering Sea, and is designated as a species of high conservation concern due to its small population size and restricted range. A previous...

An unusual, high-alpine, rapid debris slide originating in ice-rich debris occurred on June 28, 2022, at 16:33:16 MDT at the head of Chaos Canyon, a formerly glacier-covered valley in Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, USA. In this study, we integrate eyewitness videos and seismic records of...

Coastal mangrove forests provide a suite of environmental services, including sequestration of anthropogenic contamination. Yet, research lags on the environmental fate and potential human health risks of mangrove-sequestered contaminants in the context of mangrove removal for development and range shifts due to climate...

Rare earth elements and yttrium (REEs) have a wide range of applications in high- and low-carbon technologies. The strategic significance of REEs has grown due to their expanding applications in manufacturing industries and the constrained availability of these essential resources. This research explores the...

ObjectiveAn assumption of biotelemetry is that animal performance is unaffected by the tagging process and tag burden, yet this assumption is often untested or not thoroughly explored. Our objective was to explore how transmitter implantation procedures influenced Atlantic Salmon Salmo salar smolt survival and migratory performance.MethodsWe...

Water level is an important guide for water resource management and wetland ecosystems, defining one of the most basic processes in hydrology. This research seeks to investigate the possibility of complementing numerical modeling with a Machine Learning (ML) model to forecast daily water levels in the southern Everglades in Florida,...

Since the 1950s, Moenkopi Wash, in Arizona, United States, has been transformed from a relatively wide river with little riparian vegetation, to a narrow, heavily vegetated river that is less than half of its former width. We analyzed a ∼95-years-long instantaneous-discharge record, an extensive sediment-transport record, oblique and aerial photographs,...

Increased interest in renewable energy has fostered development of wind and solar energy facilities globally. However, energy development sometimes has negative environmental impacts, such as wildlife fatalities. Efforts by regional land managers to balance energy potential while minimizing fatality risk currently rely on datasets that are aggregated at continental, but...

Bioassessment of complex and heterogeneous ecosystems is a challenge when there are multiple, strong, natural environmental gradients; unknown, or spatially varying, mixtures of stressors; and large numbers of taxa with unknown responses to both the environmental gradients and the stressors. Current...

Tetragnathid spiders have been used as sentinels to study the biotransport of contaminants between aquatic and terrestrial environments because a significant proportion of their diet consists of adult aquatic insects. A key knowledge gap in assessing tetragnathid spiders as sentinels is understanding the consistency...

Salt marshes can attenuate nutrient pollution and store large amounts of ‘blue carbon’ in their soils, however, the value of sequestered carbon may be partially offset by nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions. Global climate and land use changes result in higher temperatures and inputs of reactive nitrogen...

Many forests throughout the world consist of regenerating mature stands. Although these forests differ in many respects from old-growth (with a history of minimal human disturbance), they typically develop similar structural attributes over time. As a result, older mature forests may be of particular conservation value if they contain resources...

Development and evaluation of models for tectonic evolution in the Cascadia forearc require understanding of along-strike heterogeneity of strain distribution, uplift, and upper-plate characteristics. Here, we investigated the Neogene geologic record of the Klamath Mountains province in southernmost Cascadia and obtained apatite (U-Th)/He (AHe) thermochronology of Mesozoic plutons, Neogene graben...

On the GroundSoil pitting is an ancient technique for concentrating soil moisture to enable plant establishment and promote plant growth. It is especially effective in arid areas where plant establishment is limited by water availability.Pits created by digging and mounding action have...

Hunting mortality can affect population abundance, demography, patterns of dispersal and philopatry, breeding, and genetic diversity. We investigated the effects of hunting on the reproduction and genetic diversity in a puma population in western Colorado, USA. We genotyped over 11,000 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), using double-digest, restriction site-associated DNA sequencing...

Sea-level rise (SLR) is one of the greatest future threats to mangrove forests. Mangroves have kept up with or paced past SLR by maintaining their forest floor elevation relative to sea level through root growth, sedimentation, and peat development. Monitoring surface elevation change (SEC) or accretion rates...

The southern tip of North America coalesces into one of the world’s largest freshwater wetlands, the Everglades, Florida, USA. Though this region is much like an island, home to high biodiversity and endemism, it is also the site of a century of development and associated landscape-scale...

The Pliocene Model Intercomparison Project (PlioMIP) was initiated in 2008. Over two phases PlioMIP has helped co-ordinate the experimental design and publication strategy of the community, which has included an increasing number of climate models and modelling groups from around the world. It has engaged with palaeoenvironmental scientists to foster new...

Reintroductions are one means of managing species distributions, but the feasibility of such efforts is uncertain. Here we consider reintroduction for threatened bull trout (Salvelinus confluentus) that currently occupy a small fraction of historically occupied habitats in the upper Klamath River basin owing to climate warming...

Ecological restoration is an essential strategy for mitigating the current biodiversity crisis, yet restoration actions are costly. We used systematic conservation planning principles to design an approach that prioritizes restoration sites for birds and tested it in a riparian forest restoration program in the...

Hydrologic changes in the Brazos River Basin and implications for Great Plains fishes...

Fisheries and aquaculture provide food and economic security, especially in the developing world, but both face challenges from infectious disease. Here, we consider management of disease issues from a structured decision-making perspective to examine how infectious disease can threaten seafood production and influence management decisions....

Wildlife-related recreationists play an important role in conservation. Understanding constraints to wildlife-related activities is critical for maintaining or increasing participation in activities like birdwatching and hunting. A mail-out survey was administered to a generalized sample representative of U.S. residents (i.e., not specific to birdwatching or hunting) in early 2017 to determine what would...

Bobcats (Lynx rufus) are terrestrial mammals that also inhabit tree islands (i.e., topographically elevated patches of forested land) embedded in the subtropical Everglades wetlands, which serve as a dry refuge habitat during the wet season in this region of Florida, USA. The Comprehensive Everglades...