Abiotic and biotic controls of non-native perennial plant success in drylands
Soroor Rahmanian, Nico Eisenhauer, Yuanyuan Huang, Martin Hejda, Petr Pyšek, Hannes Feilhauer, David J. Eldridge, Nicholas Gross, Yoann Le Bagousse-Pinguet, Hugo Saiz, Manuel Delgado-Baquerizo, Miguel Berdugo, Victoria Ochoa, Beatriz Gozalo, Sergio Asensio, Emilio Guirado, Enrique Valencia, Miguel García-Gómez, Juan J. Gaitán, Betty J. Mendoza, César Plaza, Paloma Díaz-Martínez, Jaime Martínez-Valderrama, Mehdi Abedi, Negar Ahmadian, Rodrigo J. Ahumada, Fateh Amghar, Thiago Araújo, Antonio I. Arroyo, Farah Ben Salem, Niels Blaum, Enkhjargal Boldbat, Bazartseren Boldgiv, Matthew A. Bowker, Liesbeth van den Brink, Chongfeng Bu, Rafaella Canessa, Andrea P. Castillo-Monroy, Helena Castro, Patricio Castro-Quezada, Ghassen Chaieb, Roukaya Chibani, Abel A. Conceição, Yvonne C. Davila, Balázs Deák, David A. Donoso, Andrew David Dougill, Carlos Iván Espinosa, Alex Fajardo, Mohammad Farzam, Daniela Ferrante, Jorgelina Franzese, Lauchlan H. Fraser, Erika L. Geiger, Sofia Laura Gonzalez, Elizabeth Gusman Montalván, Robert Hering, Eugene Marais, Rosa Mary Hernández, Sandra Daniela Hernández-Valdez, Norbert Hölzel, Elisabeth Huber-Sannwald, Oswaldo Jadán, Anke Jentsch, Liana Kindermann, Melanie Köbel, Peter C. le Roux, Cintia V. Leder, Xinhao Li, Pierre Liancourt, Anja Linstädter, Jushan Liu, Michelle A. Louw, Gillian Maggs-Kölling, Thulani P. Makhalanyane, Oumarou Malam Issa, Antonio J. Manzaneda, Pierre Margerie, Raphaël Martin, Mitchel P. McClaran, João Vitor S. Messeder, Juan P. Mora, Gerardo Moreno, Seth M. Munson, Girish R. Nair, Alice Nunes, Gabriel Oliva, Salza Palpurina, Guadalupe Peter, Yolanda Pueyo, Emiliano Quiroga, Sasha C. Reed, Pedro J. Rey, Alexandra Rodríguez, Victor Rolo, Jan C. Ruppert, Ayman Salah, Shlomo Sarig, Brajesh K. Singh, Anthony M. Swemmer, Alberto L. Teixido, Andrew D. Thomas, Katja Tielbörger, Samantha K. Travers, Orsolya Valkó, Wanyoike Wamiti, Deli Wang, Lixin Wang, Glenda M. Wardle, Peter Wolff, Laura Yahdjian, Gastón R. Oñatibia, Reza Yari, Eli Zaady, Yuanming Zhang, Xiaobing Zhou, Fernando T. Maestre
2026, Nature Ecology and Evolution
Drivers of non-native plant success in drylands are poorly understood. Here we identify functional differences between dryland native and non-native perennial plants and assess how biotic, abiotic and anthropogenic factors shape the success of the latter. On the basis of plant community and functional trait data from...
Estimating the magnitude and frequency of floods at ungaged locations on urban streams in Tennessee and parts of Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, and South Carolina, using data through the 2022 water year
Daniel M. Wagner, David E. Ladd
2026, Scientific Investigations Report 2025-5104
In 2024, the U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the Tennessee Department of Transportation, updated the methods for predicting the magnitude and frequency of floods at ungaged locations on streams in urban areas in Tennessee. The study area included 136 streamgages in urban areas in Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South...
James Buttle Review: A synthesis of riparian plant water use over two decades in North American drylands
Emily C. Palmquist, Pamela Nagler, Kiona Ogle, Claudia DiMartini, Jeffrey R. Kennedy, Joel B. Sankey
2026, Hydrological Processes (40)
Assessing riparian ecosystem water use, particularly transpiration from vegetation and evaporation from soils (‘plant water use’, hereafter), is key to developing sound water management approaches. In western North America, a multidecadal drought is reducing water availability and increasing the use of detailed water budgets. Questions related to both removal of...
Flood- inundation maps for Río Grande De Loíza in and near Caguas, Puerto Rico, 2026
Chad J. Ostheimer, Legna M. Torres-Garcia, Julieta M. Gomez-Fragoso
2026, Scientific Investigations Report 2025-5112
Digital flood- inundation maps for a 2.7- mile reach of Río Grande De Loíza in Caguas, Puerto Rico, were created by the U.S. Geological Survey. Water- surface profiles were computed for the stream reach by using a one- dimensional, steady- state, step- backwater model. The model was calibrated to the...
Migration water temperature and heat stress assessments in western Alaska Chinook salmon overlapping the 2019 heatwave
Vanessa R. von Biela, Amy M. Regish, Stephen D. McCormick, Joseph Spaeder, Kevin Whitworth, Justin Leon, Daniel Gillikin, Zachary Liller, Renae Ivanoff, Jenefer Bell, Sean D. Larson, Michael P. Carey, Christian E. Zimmerman
2026, Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences
Chinook salmon population declines span their geographic range with climate hypothesized as a major driver. Concerns of warming freshwater temperatures in their northern range gained urgency during 2019 when a heatwave coincided with premature mortality. This study examined heat stress during the 2019 heatwave compared to subsequent years and described...
Water-budget simulations for selected watersheds in Cameron County, Texas, 2022–23
Darwin J. Ockerman, Namjeong Choi
2026, Scientific Investigations Report 2025-5098
The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the City of Brownsville, Texas, configured and calibrated a set of hydrologic models for a 217-square-mile study area in Cameron County in south Texas during 2022–23. The models were used for estimating runoff and quantities of water diverted from the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo...
Geochronologic data reveal Late Pleistocene to Holocene debris-flow history and wildfire association within Whiskeytown National Recreation Area, Klamath Mountains, northern California
John R. "Jack" Wood, Shannon A. Mahan, Amy E. East, Eric Leland Bilderback, Emma Taylor Krolczyk, Brian A. Rasmussen, Karina S. Zyatitsky, Leticia (Contractor) Hallas
2026, Quaternary Research
Understanding the local to regional history of extreme events such as debris flows and floods provides context to plan for and mitigate these hazards to life, property, and infrastructure. The Klamath Mountains of northwestern California have experienced both debris flows and devastating wildfires. Whiskeytown National Recreation Area...
Ensemble methods for history matching and uncertainty quantification with a watershed model
Michael N. Fienen, Andrew J. Long, Katherine H. Markovich, Adel E. Haj, Matthew Irwin Barker
2026, Journal of the American Water Resources Association (62)
History matching of large hydrologic models is challenging due to data sparsity and non-unique process combinations (and associated parameters) that can produce similar model predictions. We develop an ensemble-based history matching (and uncertainty quantification) approach using an iterative ensemble smoother (iES) method for three cutouts of the...
A fresh perspective - Advancing fish immunotoxicology in a complex world
Cheyenne R. Smith, Laura Burattin, Nuria Ruiz Iglesias, Roisin Sullivan, Charles D. Rice, Helmut Segner, Lluis Tort
2026, FEBS Letters
Understanding how environmental changes affect the health of organisms and ecosystems is complex, but recent interdisciplinary advances and the recognition of immune function as a dynamic mediator offer exciting progress. Environmental immunotoxicology in teleost fishes is evolving beyond cataloguing stressors towards a mechanistic, integrative framework that leverages...
Large streamflow differences between forested and urbanized watersheds in the energy-limited eastern United States: The role of evapotranspiration and impervious surfaces
G. Sun, Z. Bian, K. Khand, P. V. Caldwell, J. Boggs, C. Wang, Y. Chen, N. Liu, Y. Zhang, X. Chen, Gabriel Senay, S. G. McNulty
2026, Water Resources Research (62)
Urban forests and other green infrastructures have been viewed as part of the “Nature-based Solutions” (NbS) to mitigate emerging urban environmental change. This study focuses on the role of evapotranspiration (ET) in regulating water balances of small watersheds in the eastern United States. We compared streamflow and ET patterns at...
Cotton farming affects ileal virome in a sedentary wild passerine
Sergei V. Drovetski, Brian P. Bourke, Michelle L. Hladik, Carolina F. Ferreira, Koray Ergunay, Yvonne-Marie Linton, Dana W. Kolpin, Gary Voelker
2026, Animal Microbiome (8)
Although a few studies have focused on avian gut virome variation in response to environmental stressors, none have assessed virome in relation to the production of chemically intensive crop-based agriculture that alters food resources and detrimentally affects various aspects of avian health and fitness. In this study,...
Origins, evolutions, and future directions of Landsat science products for advancing global inland water and coastal ocean observations
Benjamin Page, Christopher J. Crawford, Saeed Arab, Gail Schmidt, Christopher Barnes, Danika F. Wellington
2026, Earth System Science Data (18) 779-800
In April 2020, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center introduced a Level 2 provisional Aquatic Reflectance (AR) product for the Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI), marking the initial phase in developing a standardized global product for Landsat-derived surface water measurements. The goal of...
New methods provide a 300–year perspective on modern area burned in two wilderness areas of the southwest United States
Calvin A. Farris, Ellis Q. Margolis, Jose Iniguez, D.A. Falk, K. Gerow, C.H. Baisan, C.D. Allen, T.W. Swetnam
2026, Ecosphere (17)
Climate change, expanding human ignitions, and increased fuels from fire exclusion are driving increases in area burned and fire severity in dry conifer forests of the western United States. Increasing area burned is occurring against the backdrop of a large fire deficit caused by over a century...
Simulated ground motion dataset in the Azores Plateau, Portugal, on rock and soil sites
Shaghayegh Karimzadeh, S.M. Sajad Hussaini, Daniel Caicedo, Alexandra Carvalho, Sanaz Rezaeian, Paulo B. Lourenco
2026, Journal of Earthquake Engineering (JEE)
Building on a previously developed bedrock dataset, this study extends the Azores Plateau ground motion simulations to include soil-amplified records and introduces a comprehensive validation framework. Soil amplification is modeled using one-dimensional soil profiles. A stochastic source-based approach is employed to generate the dataset, incorporating randomization of input-model parameters to...
Estimating paleotemperature using stable isotopes of soil-formed phyllosilicates from paleosols: A review
Kate Andrzejewski, Julia A. McIntosh, Erik L. Gulbranson, Daniel Ibarra
2026, Earth-Science Reviews (275)
Fossilized soils, or paleosols, contain soil-formed phyllosilicates whose stable isotopic compositions may be used to calculate paleotemperature and thus reconstruct ancient terrestrial environments. Though paleosols are common in the geologic record, the use of phyllosilicates as paleotemperature proxies is limited in the literature owing to difficulties with selecting optimal paleosols,...
Integrating climate and anthropogenic dynamics can inform multifaceted management for declining mule deer populations
Teagan A. Hayes, Aaron N. Johnston, L. Embere Hall, Jill Randall, Matthew Kauffman, Christopher Keefe, Kevin Monteith, Tabitha A. Graves
2026, Ecological Applications (36)
Wildlife and their habitats face profound challenges from climate and landscape-scale changes that extend beyond the influence and time horizon of most biologists and land managers. In this changing environment, long-term datasets can enhance assessments of how demographic trends respond to interactions among local (e.g., habitat restoration decisions) and broad...
Environmental DNA pilot monitoring program for invasive species and biodiversity assessments on Santa Cruz Island: Interim report, September 2025
Adam Sepulveda, Susanna Theroux
2026, Science Report NPS/SR—2026/381
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and Southern California Coastal Water Research Project supported Channel Islands National Park, The Nature Conservancy’s (TNC) Santa Cruz Island Preserve, and University of California San Diego (UCSD) researchers in using environmental DNA sampling to monitor for invasive Argentine ant (Linepithema humile) and to describe spatial...
Long- versus short-term changes in seafloor elevation and volume of the Upper Florida Keys Reef Tract: 1935–2002 and 2002–2016
Selena Anne-Marie Johnson, David G. Zawada, Kimberly Yates, Connor Monroe Jenkins
2026, Remote Sensing (18)
Coral reefs provide immense ecosystem and economic value, supporting biodiversity, fisheries, tourism, and coastal protection worth billions annually. However, widespread degradation from thermal stress, storms, disease, and human impacts has caused significant coral cover and reef structure loss, increasing coastal vulnerability and economic risks. While coral loss is well-documented, degradation...
Constraining the onset of carboniferous cyclicity in the Arkoma Basin of the Midcontinent, North America: Implications for calibrating a globally significant latest Bashkirian transgression
Neil Patrick Griffis, Marieke Dechesne, Tyson Michael Smith, Mark R. Hudson, Charles M. Henderson, Roland Mundil, Mikel Shinn, Justin E. Birdwell, Laura Pianowski, Brandon Michael Lutz, Cameron Mark Mercer, Leah E. Morgan, Leland Robson Spangler
2026, Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology (687)
Cyclothems are defined by the repeat juxtaposition of littoral and open marine successions over short stratigraphic distances (meters to 10's of meters) and are interpreted to be driven by glacioeustatic forcing of sea level during the late Paleozoic Ice Age. The concept of cyclothems was defined in...
Carbon sequestration along a gradient of tidal marsh degradation in response to sea level rise
Mona Huyzentruyt, Maarten Wens, Gregory S. Fivash, David Walters, Steven Bouillon, Joel Carr, Glenn Guntenspergen, Matt L. Kirwan, Stijn Temmerman
2026, Biogeosciences (23) 851-865
Tidal marshes are considered one of the world's most efficient ecosystems for belowground organic carbon sequestration and hence climate mitigation. Marsh systems are however also vulnerable to degradation due to climate-induced sea level rise, whereby marsh vegetation conversion to open water often follows distinct spatial patterns: levees...
Groundwater-level elevations in the bedrock aquifers of the Denver Basin aquifer system, Elbert County, Colorado, 2015–23
Kelli M. Palko, Cory A. Russell, Nicholas J. Pieseski
2026, Scientific Investigations Report 2026-5115
Water users in Elbert County, Colorado, rely on groundwater from bedrock aquifers in the Denver Basin aquifer system (upper Dawson, lower Dawson, Denver, Arapahoe, and Laramie-Fox Hills aquifers) for approximately half of their water uses. Withdrawals from the bedrocks aquifers have increased to meet the water use needs of expanding...
Restoration based on cost-benefit optimization: A grasslands pilot study
Sarah R. Weiskopf, Toni Lyn Morelli, Tina G. Mozelewski, Alexey N. Shiklomanov, Susannah B. Lerman
2026, Ecological Applications (36)
Ecological restoration is essential to meeting global biodiversity conservation goals. Given limited conservation budgets, deciding where to restore habitat is a key challenge for the coming decade. We developed a spatially explicit framework to optimize ecological restoration site selection by integrating land use history, species distributions, and economic costs. The...
Assessment of undiscovered conventional oil and gas resources in the Greater Carpathian area, 2024
Christopher J. Schenk, Tracey J. Mercier, Phuong A. Le, Andrea D. Cicero, Sarah E. Gelman, Jane S. Hearon, Benjamin G. Johnson, Jenny H. Lagesse, Heidi M. Leathers-Miller
2026, Fact Sheet 2026-3060
Using a geology-based assessment methodology, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated undiscovered, technically recoverable mean conventional resources of 208 million barrels of oil and 4.1 trillion cubic feet of gas in the greater Carpathian area....
Millennial-scale climatic and cultural impacts on vegetation and fire at the southern edge of the Rocky Mountains, USA
Paul Henne, Susann Stolze, Natalie Kehrwald, Rebecca Lynn Brice, Craig Allen
2026, Quaternary Science Reviews (376)
Mountain forests and woodlands in semiarid regions of the world are threatened by climatic change and other human impacts. In the southwestern USA, climate and culturally driven changes to the structure and fire regimes of dry coniferous forests over recent centuries are well documented by tree-ring archives. However, the roles...
Toward a four-dimensional petrogenetic model of a distributed volcanic field on the southern edge of the Colorado Plateau
Marissa E. Mnich, Christopher D. Condit
2026, Professional Paper 1890-N
A detailed characterization of the >3,000 square kilometer (km2) Springerville volcanic field, located on the southern tip of the Colorado Plateau in Arizona, United States, with its more than 501 volcanic units and widely distributed >420 cinder cones and lava flows, provides constraints toward an integrated petrogenetic model for the...
