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Throughout the 2018 eruption of Kīlauea volcano (Hawai‘i), episodic collapses of a portion of the volcano’s summit caldera produced repeated Mw">Mw 4.9–5.3 earthquakes. Each of these 62 events was characterized by a very‐long‐period (VLP)...

Plants and animals undergo certain recurring life-cycle events, such as migrations between summer and winter habitats or the annual blooming of plants. Known as phenology, the timing of these events is very sensitive to changes in climate (and changes in one species’ phenology can impact entire food webs and ecosystems)....

In 2017, the comprehensive east Maui bird surveys allowed for an update in status and evaluation of trends in bird populations within Haleakalā National Park. This report describes a finer-scale analysis of the park lands, distinguishing between the upper Kīpahulu Valley plus adjacent high-elevation areas compared to the rest of...

Mercury (Hg) is a naturally occurring element that bonds with organic matter and, when converted to methylmercury, is a potent neurotoxicant. Here we estimate potential future releases of Hg from thawing permafrost for low and high greenhouse gas emissions scenarios using a mechanistic model. By 2200, the high emissions scenario...

Intramolecular isotope distributions, including isotope clumping and position specific fractionation, can provide proxies for the formation temperature and formation and destruction pathways of molecules. In this study, we explore the position-specific hydrogen isotope distribution in propane. We analyzed propane samples from...

The ecosystems along the border between the United States and Mexico are at increasing risk to wildfire due to interactions among climate, land-use, and fuel loads. A wide range of fuel treatments have been implemented to mitigate wildfire and its threats to valued resources, yet we have...

Power consumption coefficients (PCCs) and dedicated flowmeter records for irrigation wells in three Utah groundwater basins were analyzed to develop a method to better characterize the accuracy of annual groundwater withdrawal estimates. The PCC method has been used by the U.S. Geological Survey in Utah since 1963 as a way...

The coastal Pacific Northwest USA hosts thousands of deep-seated landslides. Historic landslides have primarily been triggered by rainfall, but the region is also prone to large earthquakes on the 1100-km-long Cascadia Subduction Zone megathrust. Little is known about the number of landslides triggered by these earthquakes because the last magnitude...

Motion‐activated wildlife cameras (or “camera traps”) are frequently used to remotely and noninvasively observe animals. The vast number of images collected from camera trap projects has prompted some biologists to employ machine learning algorithms to automatically recognize species in these images, or at least filter‐out images...

Retention, processing, and transport of solutes and particulates in stream corridors are influenced by the travel time of streamflow through stream channels, which varies dynamically with discharge. The effects of streamflow variability across sites and over time cannot be addressed by time-averaged models if parameters are based solely on...

Rapid ʻŌhiʻa Death (ROD) is a deadly disease that is threatening the native Hawaiian keystone tree species, ʻōhiʻa lehua (Metrosideros polymorpha Gaudich). Ambrosia beetles (Curculionidae: Scolytinae) and their frass are hypothesized to play a major role in the spread of ROD, although their ecological niches and frass production within trees and...

The East Contra Costa County Habitat Conservation Plan/Natural Community Conservation Plan (HCP/NCCP) Preserve System was designed to protect and enhance ecological diversity and function in eastern Contra Costa County, California. Aquila chrysaetos (golden eagle) is a special-status species expected to benefit from biological goals of the HCP/NCCP. As part of...

Tsunami risk management requires strategies that can address multiple sources with different recurrence intervals, wave-arrival times, and inundation extents. Probabilistic tsunami hazard analysis (PTHA) provides a structured way to integrate multiple sources, including the uncertainties due to the natural variability and...

Spatially distributed populations often rely on large-scale processes for long-term population stability. These processes are driven by individuals moving across the landscape through long-distance dispersal movements. However, as landscapes are continually altered by anthropogenic development, increased fragmentation and avoidance behavior can affect landscape permeability and limit dispersal. Lesser prairie-chickens (Tympanuchus...

Ponds are common features on salt marshes, yet it is unclear how they affect large-scale marsh evolution. We developed a spatially explicit model that combines cellular automata for pond formation, expansion, and drainage, and partial differential equations for elevation dynamics. We...

Uncertainty is ubiquitous in natural resource systems, science and management. Sample data are obtained in order to reduce uncertainty, thereby increasing knowledge and improving resource management, but sampling always comes at a cost of some sort. Is that cost worthwhile? Analysis of the value of sample information (VSI) addresses...

We present a high-resolution daily temperature data set, CHIRTS-daily, which is derived by merging the monthly Climate Hazards center InfraRed Temperature with Stations climate record with daily temperatures from version 5 of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts Re-Analysis. We demonstrate that remotely sensed temperature estimates may more closely...

Understanding future land-use related water demand is important for planners and resource managers in identifying potential shortages and crafting mitigation strategies. This is especially the case for regions dependent on limited local groundwater supplies. For the groundwater dependent Central Coast of California, we developed two scenarios of future land use...

High salinity limits groundwater use in parts of the Mississippi embayment. Machine learning was used to create spatially continuous and three‐dimensional predictions of salinity across drinking‐water aquifers in the embayment. Boosted regression tree (BRT) models, a type of machine learning, were used to predict specific conductance (SC) and chloride (Cl),...

Models of alongshore sediment transport during quiescent conditions, storm‐driven barrier island morphology, and poststorm dune recovery are integrated to assess decadal barrier island evolution under scenarios of increased sea levels and variability in storminess (intensity and frequency). Model results indicate barrier island response regimes of keeping pace, narrowing, flattening, deflation...

The Delaware River Basin (DRB) supplies water to approximately 15 million people and is essential to agriculture and industry. In this study, a monthly water balance model is used to compute monthly water balance components (i.e., potential evapotranspiration, actual evapotranspiration, and runoff [R]) for the DRB...

The Geomagnetism Program of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) monitors geomagnetic field variation through operation of a network of observatories across the United States and its territories, and it pursues scientific research needed to estimate and assess geomagnetic and geoelectric hazards. Over the next five years (2020–2024 inclusive) and in...

The ability to effectively manage game species for specific conservation objectives is often limited by the scientific understanding of their distribution and abundance. This is especially true in Hawai‘i where introduced game mammals are poorly studied and have low value relative to native species in other states. We modeled the...

As part of a broader trial of noninvasive methods to research wild wolves (Canis lupus) in Minnesota, USA, we explored whether wolves could be remotely monitored using a new, inexpensive, remotely deployable, noninvasive, passive acoustic recording device, the AudioMoth. We tested the efficacy of AudioMoths in detecting wolf howls and...

Climate is an important driver of ungulate life-histories, population dynamics, and migratory behaviors, and can affect the growth, development, fecundity, dispersal, and demographic trends of populations. Changes in temperature and precipitation, and resulting shifts in plant phenology, winter severity, drought and wildfire conditions, invasive species distribution and abundance, predation, and...