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The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) archive of Earth images acquired by Landsat 1-8 sensors is organized in collections of consistently calibrated, geolocated, and processed data products. Such an organization ensures consistent quality of the archived data within a collection over time and across all instruments within the Landsat mission. In...

Modeling studies project that in the future surface waters in the northeast US will continue to recover from acidification over decades following reductions in atmospheric sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides emissions. However, these studies generally assume stationary climatic conditions over the simulation period and ignore the linkages between soil...

By merging our specialization silos, fisheries professionals can expand the options that are available to them to address difficult fisheries and aquatic conservation problems, which require an understanding of spatial patterns in geographically large systems. Our purpose is to start a profession-wide conversation about additional ways...

Marine phosphorites are an important part of the oceanic phosphorus cycle and are related to the effects of long-term global climate changes. We use petrography, mineralogy, rare earth elements contents, and 87Sr/86Sr-determined carbonate fluorapatite (CFA) and calcite ages to investigate the paragenesis and history of phosphatization of...

Bioaerosols, including bacteria and fungi, are ubiquitous and have been shown to impact various organisms as well as biogeochemical cycles and human health. However, sample collection poses a challenge for aeromicrobiologists and can determine the success of a study. Establishing a standard collection procedure for bioaerosol...

The USGS National Wildlife Health Center (NWHC) Quarterly Mortality Report provides brief summaries of epizootic mortality and morbidity events by quarter. The write-ups, highlighting epizootic events and other wildlife disease topics of interest, are published in the Wildlife Disease Association quarterly newsletter. A link is provided in this WDA newsletter...

American black bears (Ursus americanus) are an iconic wildlife species in the southern Appalachian highlands of the eastern United States and have increased in number and range since the early 1980s. Given an increasing number of human-bear conflicts in the region, many management agencies have liberalized harvest...

Evolving complex mixtures of pharmaceuticals and transformation products in effluent-dominated streams pose potential impacts to aquatic species; thus, understanding the attenuation dynamics in the field and characterizing the prominent attenuation mechanisms of pharmaceuticals and their transformation products (TPs) is critical for hazard assessments. Herein, we...

AimWe developed a new technique, utilizing species-specific counts of individuals from historical fish community samples, to examine landscape-level, spatio-temporal trends in relative abundance distributions. Abundance-based historical distribution analyses are often plagued by data comparability issues, but provide critical information about community composition trends inaccessible to those using...

Executive SummaryThis report addresses system characterization of Planet’s Dove-R and is part of a series of system characterization reports produced and delivered by the U.S. Geological Survey Earth Resources Observation and Science Cal/Val Center of Excellence. These reports present and detail the methodology and procedures for characterization; present technical and...

Conservation practitioners increasingly recognize the conservation value of tributaries for supporting mainstem, large-river specialist fishes. A tributarys discharge at its mouth is a coarse indicator of large-river specialist fishes found within the tributary, but the relative influences of regional dispersal and local habitat underpinning this species-discharge relationship is often unknown....

Organic matter (OM) accumulation in marsh soils affects marsh survival under rapid sea-level rise (SLR). This work describes the changing organic geochemistry of a salt marsh located in the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge on the eastern shore of Chesapeake Bay that has transgressed inland with SLR over the past 35–75 years. Marsh soils and vegetation were...

Run timing and spatial locations of spawning habitats are often used to identify stocks for conservation planning or management of salmonid fishes. Although complex stock structure is most common within large watersheds with diverse habitats, even small drainages can produce multiple co-occurring spatially or temporally isolated populations or “stocks.” This...

Global food and water insecurity could be serious problems in the upcoming decades with growing demands from the increasing global population and more frequent effect of climatic extremes. As the available water resources are diminishing and facing continuous stress, it is crucial to monitor water demand and water availability to...

Accurate population estimates are essential for monitoring and managing wildlife populations. Mark–recapture sampling methods have regularly been used to estimate population parameters for rare and cryptic species, including the federally listed Mojave desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii); however, the methods employed are often plagued by violations of...

Life-history tradeoffs are common across taxa, but growth-survival tradeoffs—usually enhancing survival at a cost to growth—are less frequently investigated. Increased salinity (NaCl) is a prevalent anthropogenic disturbance that may cause a growth-survival tradeoff for larval amphibians. Although physiological mechanisms mediating tradeoffs are seldom investigated, hormones are prime...

As the most remote archipelago in the world, the Hawaiian Islands are home to a highly endemic and disharmonic biota that has fascinated biologists for centuries. Forests are the dominant terrestrial biome in Hawai‘i, spanning complex, heterogeneous climates across substrates that vary...

Carnivore conservation and management are global research priorities focused on reversing population declines of imperiled species and identifying more effective and humane management of generalist carnivores with thriving populations. Nonlethal methods to mitigate conflict are increasingly used to advance conservation objectives; however, there is limited knowledge about the effectiveness of...

The decline in the eastern North American population of the monarch butterfly population since the late 1990s has been attributed to the loss of milkweed during the summer breeding season and the consequent reduction in the size of the summer population that migrates to central Mexico to overwinter (milkweed limitation...

Knowledge of diet composition can inform management strategies and efforts to recover endangered carnivore populations in vacant portions of their historic ranges. One such species, the Fisher (Pekania pennanti), was extirpated in Washington State prior to any formal documentation of its food habits in the coastal coniferous forests of western...

In late 2020 the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) began the distribution of Landsat products associated with their collection 2 reprocessing of the archive. Several changes were implemented within the Landsat Product Generation System (LPGS) and the calibration parameters applied to the Landsat imagery for the collection 2 processing. When comparing...

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has completed processing of the historical Landsat archive to Collection-2 as of December of 2020 and has released it to the public. As part of Collection-2, several geometric changes have been implemented, including changes to the ground control points (GCPs) and elevation datasets. These datasets...

The saguaro cacti (Carnegiea gigantea [Engelm.] Britton & Rose) is one of the world’s most iconic plants and a symbol of the desert Southwest. It is the namesake of Saguaro National Park, which was created (initially as a national monument) in 1933 to study, interpret, and protect the “giant cactus” and...

Quantitative evaluation of control tools for managing invasive species is necessary to assess overall effectiveness and individual variation in treatment susceptibility. Invasive brown treesnakes (Boiga irregularis) on Guam have caused severe ecological and economic effects, pose a risk of accidental introduction to other islands, and are the...

Stormwater discharges from municipalities are regulated by provisions in the Clean Water Act of 1972 to protect the Nation’s water resources from harmful pollutants. In 2014, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment issued new stormwater discharge permits for 17 municipalities in Johnson County, Kansas, in the northeastern part of...