On the size of the flare associated with the solar proton event in 774 AD
E. W. Cliver, H. Hayakawa, Jeffrey J. Love, D. F. Neidig
2020, Astrophysical Journal (903)
The 774 AD solar proton event (SPE) detected in cosmogenic nuclides had an inferred >1 GV (>430 MeV) fluence estimated to have been ~30–70 times larger than that of the 1956 February 23 ground level event (GLE). The 1956 GLE was itself ~2.5 times larger at >430 MeV than the...
Nitrate in streams during winter low‐flow conditions as an indicator of legacy nitrate
Henry M. Johnson, Edward G. Stets
2020, Water Resources Research (56)
Winter low‐flow (LF) conditions in streams provide a potential opportunity to evaluate the importance of legacy nitrate in catchments due to the dominance of slow‐flow transport pathways and lowered biotic activity. In this study, the concentration, flux, and trend of nitrate in streams during winter low‐flow...
Estimating the effects of forest structure changes from wildfire on snow water resources under varying meteorological conditions
C. David Moeser, Patrick Borxton, Adrian Harpold, Andrew J. Robertson
2020, Water Resources Research (56)
Modeling forest change effects on snow is critical to resource management. However, many models either do not appropriately model canopy structure or cannot represent fine‐scale changes in structure following a disturbance. We applied a 1 m2 resolution energy budget snowpack model at a forested site in New Mexico,...
Modeling water quality in watersheds: From here to the next generation
Baihua Fu, J. S. Horsburgh, Anthony J. Jakeman, C Gaultieri, Todd W. Arnold, Lucy A. Marshall, Tim R Green, Nigel W. T. Quinn, Martin Volk, Randall J. Hunt, L. Vezzaro, Barry Croke, John Jakeman, Valerie O Snow, Brenda Rashleigh
2020, Water Resources Research (56)
In this synthesis, we assess present research and anticipate future development needs in modeling water quality in watersheds. We first discuss areas of potential improvement in the representation of freshwater systems pertaining to water quality, including representation of environmental interfaces, in‐stream water quality and process interactions, soil health and land...
Keeping up with the times: Mapping range-wide habitat suitability for endangered species in a changing environment
Eamon J. Harrity, Bryan S. Stevens, Courtney J. Conway
2020, Biological Conservation (250)
Biologists and policy-makers have the difficult task of allocating limited resources to habitat conservation and management for endangered species in the face of changing environmental conditions. Satellite remote sensing can inform conservation because it is an efficient means to obtain environmental data over broad spatial and temporal extents. Yet, the...
Modest residual effects of short-term warming, altered hydration, and biocrust successional state on dryland soil heterotrophic carbon and nitrogen cycling
Colin Tucker, Scott Ferrenberg, Sasha C. Reed
2020, Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution Section Biogeography and Macroecology (8)
Biological soil crusts (biocrusts) on the Colorado Plateau may fuel carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) cycling of soil heterotrophic organisms throughout the region. Late successional moss and lichen biocrusts, in particular, can increase soil C and N availability, but some data suggest these biocrust types will be replaced by early...
Daily nest predation rates decrease with body size in passerine birds
Mar Unzeta, Thomas E. Martin, Daniel Sol
2020, The American Naturalist (196) 743-754
Body size evolution is generally framed by the benefits of being large, while costs are largely overlooked. An important putative cost of being large is the need to extend development periods, which should increase exposure to predation and potentially select against larger size. In birds, this selection pressure can be...
Mussel community assessment tool for the Upper Mississippi River system
Heidi L. Dunn, Steven J. Zigler, Teresa Newton
2020, Freshwater Mollusk Biology and Conservation (23) 109-123
Upper Mississippi River (UMR) resource managers need a quantitative means of evaluating the health of mussel assemblages to measure effects of management and regulatory actions, assess restoration techniques, and inform regulatory tasks. Our objective was to create a mussel community assessment tool (MCAT), consisting of a suite of metrics and...
Assessment of burrowing behavior of freshwater juvenile mussels in sediment
Nile E. Kemble, John M. Besser, Jeffery A. Steevens, Jamie P. Hughes
2020, Freshwater Mollusk Biology and Conservation (23) 69-81
Standard laboratory sediment toxicity methods have been adapted for conducting toxicity tests with juvenile freshwater mussels. However, studies looking at juvenile mussel burrowing behavior at the water-sediment interface are limited. Juvenile mussels burrow in sediment for the first 0 to 4 yr of life but also may inhabit the sediment-water...
Topographic, soil, and climate drivers of drought sensitivity in forests and shrublands of the Pacific Northwest, USA
Jennifer M. Cartwright, Caitlin E. Littlefield, Julia Michalak, Joshua J. Lawler, Solomon Dobrowski
2020, Scientific Reports (10)
Climate change is anticipated to increase the frequency and intensity of droughts, with major impacts to ecosystems globally. Broad-scale assessments of vegetation responses to drought are needed to anticipate, manage, and potentially mitigate climate-change effects on ecosystems. We quantified the drought sensitivity of vegetation in the Pacific Northwest, USA, as...
Restoration of rapids habitat in a Great Lakes connecting channel, the St. Marys River, Michigan
A. Molina-Moctezuma, E. Ellis, K. Kapuscinski, Edward F. Roseman, T. Heatlie, A. Moerke
2020, Restoration Ecology (29)
Aquatic habitat has been extensively altered throughout the Laurentian Great Lakes to increase navigation connectivity. In particular, the St. Marys River, a Great Lakes connecting channel, lost >50% of its historic rapids habitat over the past century. In 2016, the natural flow was restored to the...
Detecting cover crop end-of-season using VENµS and sentinel-2 satellite imagery
Feng Gao, Martha Anderson, W. Dean Hively
2020, Remote Sensing (12)
Cover crops are planted during the off-season to protect the soil and improve watershed management. The ability to map cover crop termination dates over agricultural landscapes is essential for quantifying conservation practice implementation, and enabling estimation of biomass accumulation during the active cover period. Remote sensing detection of end-of-season (termination)...
Virome of bat guano from nine northern California roosts
Yanpeng Li, Eda Altan, Gabriel Reyes, Brian J. Halstead, Xutao Deng, Eric Delwart
2020, Journal of Virology (95) e01713-e01720
Bats are hosts to a large variety of viruses, including many capable of cross species transmissions to other mammals or humans. We characterized the virome in guano from five common bat species in 9 Northern California roosts and a pool of 5 individual bats. Genomes belonging to 14 viral families...
Ontogenetic shifts in mesohabitat use of young-of-year Rio Grande blue sucker in the Big Bend region of the Rio Grande
Seiji Miyazono, Allison A. Pease, Sarah Fritts, Timothy B. Grabowski
2020, Environmental Biology of Fishes (103) 1471-1480
Alteration of flow regimes by anthropogenic activities is one of the primary environmental problems in riverine systems. Understanding how hydrologic conditions can affect ontogenetic habitat shifts of imperiled fishes is important in order to develop conservation and management strategies for each life-history stage. We examined relationships between the abundance of...
Cenozoic tectonic evolution of the Ecemiş fault zone and adjacent basins, central Anatolia, Turkey during the transition from Arabia - Eurasia collision to escape tectonics
Paul J. Umhoefer, Stuart Thompson, Come Lefebre, Michael Cosca, Christian Teyssier, Donna L. Whitney
2020, Geosphere (16) 1358-1384
The effects of Arabia-Eurasia collision are recorded in faults, basins, and exhumed metamorphic massifs across eastern and central Anatolia. These faults and basins also preserve evidence of major changes in deformation and associated sedimentary processes along major suture zones including the Inner Tauride suture where it lies along the southern...
Statistical methods in water resources
Dennis R. Helsel, Robert M. Hirsch, Karen R. Ryberg, Stacey A. Archfield, Edward J. Gilroy
2020, Techniques and Methods 4-A3
This text began as a collection of class notes for a course on applied statistical methods for hydrologists taught at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Training Center. Course material was formalized and organized into a textbook, first published in 1992 by Elsevier as part of their Studies in Environmental...
Water resources in the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribal jurisdictional area, west-central Oklahoma, with an analysis of data gaps through 2015
Carol Becker, Matthew S. Varonka
2020, Scientific Investigations Report 2020-5105
This report provides an overview of existing hydrologic information describing the quality, quantity, and extent of the major surface-water and groundwater resources in the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribal jurisdictional area, west-central Oklahoma. Hydrologic information is provided for five major river systems (Cimarron River, North Canadian River, Canadian River, Washita River,...
Distribution of giant gartersnakes (Thamnophis gigas) in the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta, California, 2018–2019
Kristen J. Fouts, Richard Kim, Anna C. Jordan, Alexandria M. Fulton, Jonathan P. Rose, Julia S. M. Ersan, Brian J. Halstead
2020, Open-File Report 2020-1119
SummaryWe examined the occurrence of giant gartersnakes in the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta, California, in 2018 and 2019. We made eight captures of seven giant gartersnakes (three females, four males) in 2018, and six captures of six giant gartersnakes (four females, two males) in 2019. Detection probabilities were exceedingly low despite using methods...
Meeting the challenge: U.S. Geological Survey North Atlantic and Appalachian Region fiscal year 2020 in review
U.S. Geological Survey
2020, General Information Product 207
The utilization, preservation, and conservation of the Nation’s resources requires well-informed management decisions. The North Atlantic and Appalachian Region (NAAR) of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) supports science-based decision making for Federal, State, and local policymakers to meet the challenges of today and into the future. The science centers in...
Hydrogeology and groundwater flow in alluvial deposits, north Summerset, South Dakota
William G. Eldridge, Todd M. Anderson
2020, Scientific Investigations Report 2020-5097
The city of Summerset is a growing community in west South Dakota. The Sun Valley Estates subdivision in the north part of the city was developed on unconsolidated deposits surrounded by steep terrain. During years with greater than normal precipitation, particularly in 2019, groundwater levels increased in the unconsolidated deposits...
Outsized nutrient contributions from small tributaries to a Great Lake
Robert J Mooney, Emily H. Stanley, William C. Rosenthal, Peter C. Esselman, Anthony D Kendall, Peter B. McIntyre
2020, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (117)
Excessive nutrient inputs from tributary streams and rivers contribute to harmful algal blooms and coastal ecosystem degradation worldwide. However, the role that small tributaries play in coastal nutrient dynamics remains unknown because most monitoring and regulatory efforts focus only on the largest tributaries. We combined a 6-d sampling...
Imperatives for predicting preferential and diffuse flow in the unsaturated zone: 1. Equal emphasis
John R. Nimmo
2020, Hydrological Processes (34) 5690-5693
No abstract available....
Imperatives for predicting preferential and diffuse flow in the unsaturated zone: 2. Disparate formulation
John R. Nimmo
2020, Hydrological Processes (34) 5694-5698
No abstract available....
Integrated geophysical analysis provides an alternate interpretation of the northern margin of the North American Midcontinent Rift System, Central Lake Superior
V. J. Grauch, Eric D. Anderson, Samuel J. Heller, Esther K. Stewart, Laurel G. Woodruff
2020, Interpretation (8) SS63-SS85
The Midcontinent Rift System (MRS) is a 1.1 Ga sequence of voluminous basaltic eruptions and multiple intrusions followed by widespread sedimentation that extends across the Midcontinent and northern Great Lakes region of North America. Previous workers have commonly used seismic-reflection data (Great Lakes International Multidisciplinary...
Lava–water interaction and hydrothermal activity within the 2014–2015 Holuhraun Lava Flow Field, Iceland
Colin M. Dundas, Laszlo P. Keszthelyi, Einat Lev, M. Elise Rumpf, Christopher W. Hamilton, Armann Hoskuldsson, Thorvaldur Thordarson
2020, Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research (408)
Lava that erupted during the 2014–2015 Holuhraun eruption in Iceland flowed into a proglacial river system, resulting in aqueous cooling of the lava and an ephemeral hydrothermal system. We carried out a monitoring study of this system from 2015 to 2018...
