Climate change can drive marine diseases
Colleen A Burge, Paul Hershberger
2020, Book chapter, Marine disease ecology
As an ultimate driver of marine ecosystem processes, climate change is expected to influence proximate disease drivers in marine systems. The observable effects of climate change, including changes in temperature, hypoxia, CO2 accumulation, precipitation, and storm and cyclone frequencies and intensities, may directly act as proximate drivers of marine disease, especially...
A socio-environmental geodatabase for integrative research in the transboundary Rio Grande/Río Bravo basin
Jennifer Villa
2020, Report
Management of water resources in the transboundary Rio Grande/Río Bravo Basin (the Basin) presents challenges for state and Federal entities in the United States and Mexico making management decisions on shared water resources. Damming, channelization, water availability, and allocation are governed by water rights and water-sharing agreements. Data and...
An analysis of the factors that control fault zone architecture and the importance of fault orientation relative to regional stress
John Fletcher, Orlando Teran, Tom Rockwell, Michael E. Oskin, Kenneth W. Hudnut, Ronald Spelz, Pierre Lacan, Mathew Dorsey, Giles Ostermijer, Thomas M. Mitchell, Sinan Akciz, Ana Paula Hernandez-Flores, Alejandro Hinojosa-Corona, Ivan Pena-Villa, David K. Lynch
2020, GSA Bulletin (132) 2084-2104
The moment magnitude 7.2 El Mayor−Cucapah (EMC) earthquake of 2010 in northern Baja California, Mexico produced a cascading rupture that propagated through a geometrically diverse network of intersecting faults. These faults have been exhumed from depths of 6−10 km since the late Miocene based on low-temperature thermochronology, synkinematic alteration, and...
Evidence for late Quaternary deformation along Crowley's Ridge, New Madrid seismic zone
Jessica Thompson Jobe, Ryan D. Gold, Richard W. Briggs, Robert Williams, William J. Stephenson, Jaime E. Delano, Anjana K. Shah, Burke J. Minsley
2020, Tectonics (39)
The New Madrid seismic zone has been the source of multiple major (M ~7.0–7.5) earthquakes in the past 2 ka, yet the surface expression of recent deformation remains ambiguous. Crowleys Ridge, a linear ridge trending north‐south for 300+ km through the Mississippi Embayment, has been interpreted as either a fault‐bounded...
Parasites in marine food webs
John P. McLaughlin, Dana N. Morton, Kevin D. Lafferty
2020, Book chapter, Marine disease ecology
Parasites have important and unique impacts on marine food webs. By infecting taxa across all trophic levels, parasites affect both bottom-up and top-down processes in marine systems. When host densities are high enough, parasites can regulate or even decimate their populations, causing regime shifts in marine systems. As consumers and...
Soil biogeochemical responses of a tropical forest to warming and hurricane disturbance
Sasha C. Reed, Robin H. Reibold, Molly A. Cavaleri, Aura M. Alonso-Rodriguez, Megan E. Berberich, Tana E. Wood
2020, Book chapter, Advances in Ecological Research
Tropical forests represent 50% of the planets species and play a disproportionately large role in determining climate due to the vast amounts of carbon they store and exchange with the atmosphere. Currently, disturbance patterns in tropical ecosystems are changing due to factors such...
Storm impacts on phytoplankton community dynamics in lakes
Jason D. Stockwell, Jonathan P. Doubek, Rita Adrian, Orlane Anneville, Cayelan C. Carey, Laurence Carvalho, Marieke A. Frassl, Lisette N. De Senerpont Domis, Gael Dur, Bas W Ibelings, Hans-Peter Grossart, Marc J. Lajeunesse, Aleksandra M. Lewandowska, Maria E. Llames, Shin-Ichiro S. Matsuzaki, Emily Nodine, Peeter Noges, Vijay P. Patil, Francesco Pomati, Karsten Rinke, Lars G. Rudstam, James A. Rusak, Nico Salmaso, Christian T. Seltmann, Dietmar Straile, Stephen J. Thackeray, Wim Thiery, Pablo Urrutia-Cordero, Patrick Venail, Piet Verburg, R. Iestyn Woolway, Tamar Zohary, Mikkel R. Andersen, Ruchi Bhattacharya, J. Hejzlar, Nasime Janatian, Alfred T. N. K. Kpodonu, Tanner J. Williamson, Harriet Wilson
2020, Global Change Biology (26) 2756-2784
In many regions across the globe, extreme weather events such as storms have increased in frequency, intensity, and duration due to climate change. Ecological theory predicts that such extreme events should have large impacts on ecosystem structure and function. High winds and precipitation associated with storms can affect lakes via...
Geodetic measurements of slow slip events southeast of Parkfield, CA
Brent G. Delbridge, Joshua D. Carmichael, Robert M. Nadeau, David R. Shelly, Roland Burgmann
2020, Journal of Geophysical Research (125)
Tremor and low-frequency earthquakes are presumed to be indicative of surrounding slow, aseismic slip that is often below geodetic detection thresholds. This study uses data from borehole seismometers and long-baseline laser strainmeters to observe both the seismic and geodetic signatures of episodic tremor and slip on the Parkfield region of...
Standard operating procedures for wild horse and burro double-observer aerial surveys
Paul C. Griffin, L. Stefan Ekernas, Kathryn A. Schoenecker, Bruce C. Lubow
2020, Techniques and Methods 2-A16
The U.S. Geological Survey has been collaborating with the Bureau of Land Management to develop statistically reliable methods for wild horse and burro aerial survey data collection and analysis for more than a decade. In cooperation with Colorado State University, the U.S. Geological Survey tested several methods in herds with...
Removal of chronic Mycoplasma ovipneumoniae carrier ewes eliminates pneumonia in a bighorn sheep population
Tyler Garwood, Chadwick P. Lehman, Daniel P. Walsh, E. Frances Cassirer, Thomas E. Besser, Jonathan A. Jenks
2020, Ecology and Evolution (10) 3491-3502
Chronic pathogen carriage is one mechanism that allows diseases to persist in populations. We hypothesized that persistent or recurrent pneumonia in bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis ) populations may be caused by chronic carriers of Mycoplasma ovipneumoniae (Mo ). Our experimental approach allowed us to address a conservation need while investigating the role of...
Monitoring nearshore ecosystem health using Pacific razor clams (Siliqua patula) as an indicator species
Lizabeth Bowen, Katrina Counihan, Brenda E. Ballachey, Heather A Colletti, Tuula E. Hollmen, Benjamin Pister, Tammy L Wilson
2020, PeerJ (8)
An emerging approach to ecosystem monitoring involves the use of physiological biomarker analyses in combination with gene transcription assays. For the first time, we employed these tools to evaluate the Pacific razor clam (Siliqua patula), which is important both economically and ecologically, as a bioindicator species in the northeast Pacific....
Groundwater characterization and effects of pumping in the Death Valley regional groundwater flow system, Nevada and California, with special reference to Devils Hole
Keith J. Halford, Tracie R. Jackson
2020, Professional Paper 1863
Groundwater flow and development were characterized in four groundwater basins of the Death Valley regional flow system in Nevada and California with calibrated, groundwater-flow models. Natural groundwater discharges in the Furnace Creek, Lower Amargosa, and Saratoga Spring areas were defined and distributed consistently with a revised hydrogeologic...
Biogeography of fire regimes in western US conifer forests: A trait-based approach
Jens Stevens, Matthew M. Kling, Dylan W. Schwilk, J. Morgan Varner, Jeffrey M. Kane
2020, Global Ecology and Biogeography (29) 944-955
Aim Functional traits are a critical link between species distributions and the ecosystem processes that structure those species’ niches. Concurrent increases in the availability of functional trait data and our ability to model species distributions present an opportunity to develop functional trait biogeography, i.e. the mapping of functional traits across space....
Fundamental hydraulics of cross sections in natural rivers: Preliminary analysis of a large data set of acoustic doppler flow measurements
David M. Bjerklie, John W, Fulton, S. Lawrence Dingman, Michael G. Canova, J. Toby Minear, Tommaso Moramarco
2020, Water Resource Research (56)
We have assembled a comprehensive and publicly accessible U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) streamflow measurement data set, called HYDRoSWOT, from a USGS National Water Information System archive of acoustic Doppler current profiler river discharge measurements collected from a wide range of rivers throughout the United States. The data...
Climate dipoles as continental drivers of plant and animal populations
Benjamin Zuckerberg, Courtenay Strong, Jalene M. LaMontagne, Scott St. George, Julio L. Betancourt, Walter D. Koenig
2020, Trends in Ecology and Evolution (35) 440-453
Ecological processes, such as migration and phenology, are strongly influenced by climate variability. Studying these processes often relies on associating observations of animals and plants with climate variability indices, such as the El Niño–Southern Oscillation. A characteristic of climate indices is the simultaneous emergence of opposite extremes of temperature and...
Causal effect of impervious cover on annual flood magnitude for the United States
Annalise G. Blum, Paul J. Ferraro, Stacey A. Archfield, Karen R. Ryberg
2020, Geophysical Research Letters (47)
Despite consensus that impervious surfaces increase flooding, the magnitude of the increase remains uncertain. This uncertainty largely stems from the challenge of isolating the effect of changes in impervious cover separate from other factors that also affect flooding. To control for these factors, prior study designs...
Digging into the geologic record of environmentally driven changes in coral-reef development
Philip M. Gravinese, Richard B. Aronson, Lauren T. Toth
2020, Oceanography (1) 85-91
This lesson uses data based on real-world geological archives to guide students toward understanding how climate and oceanography have impacted coral-reef growth over the last 5000 years. The objective of the lesson is for students to determine the relationship between environmental variability and coral-reef development over millennial timescales. In this...
An uncertain future for a population of desert tortoises experiencing human impacts
Kristin H. Berry, Julie L. Yee, Lisa L. Lyren, Jeremy S Mack
2020, Herpetologica (76) 1-11
We evaluated the status of a population of Mojave Desert Tortoises (Gopherus agassizii), a threatened species, in the El Paso Mountains of the northwestern Mojave Desert in California, USA. The study area lies north of and adjacent to a designated critical habitat unit for the species, is adjacent to a...
Estimates of water use associated with continuous oil and gas development in the Williston Basin, North Dakota and Montana, 2007–17
Ryan R. McShane, Theodore B. Barnhart, Joshua F. Valder, Seth S. Haines, Kathleen M. Macek-Rowland, Janet M. Carter, Gregory C. Delzer, Joanna N. Thamke
2020, Scientific Investigations Report 2020-5012
This study of water use associated with development of continuous oil and gas resources in the Williston Basin is intended to provide a preliminary model-based analysis of water use in major regions of production of continuous oil and gas resources in the United States. Direct, indirect, and ancillary water use...
Identifying life history traits that promote occurrence for four minnow (Leuciscidae) species in intermittent Gulf Coastal Plain streams
Jessica L. Davis, Mary Freeman, Stephen W. Golladay
2020, Southeastern Naturalist (19) 103-127
- Life history traits of stream fishes partly reflect adaptations to disturbance regimes, which in turn shape assemblage composition via environmental filters. In this study, we focused on life history traits of four morphologically similar leuciscid species in coastal plain streams of southwestern GA that are shifting from historically perennial...
The changing sociocultural context of wildlife conservation
Michael J. Manfredo, Tara L. Teel, Andrew W. Don Carlos, Leeann Sullivan, Alan D. Bright, Alia M. Dietsch, Jeremy Bruskotter, David C. Fulton
2020, Conservation Biology (34) 1549-1559
We introduced a multilevel model of value shift to describe the changing social context of wildlife conservation. Our model depicts how cultural-level processes driven by modernization (e.g., increased wealth, education, and urbanization) affect changes in individual-level cognition that prompt a shift from domination to mutualism wildlife...
Operational earthquake forecasting during the 2019 Ridgecrest, California, earthquake sequence with the UCERF3-ETAS model
Kevin R. Milner, Edward H. Field, William H Savran, Morgan T. Page, Thomas H Jordan
2020, Seismological Research Letters (91) 1567-1578
The first Uniform California Earthquake Rupture Forecast, Version 3–epidemic‐type aftershock sequence (UCERF3‐ETAS) aftershock simulations were running on a high‐performance computing cluster within 33 min of the 4 July 2019 M 6.4 Searles Valley earthquake. UCERF3‐ETAS, an extension of the third Uniform California Earthquake Rupture Forecast (UCERF3), is the first comprehensive,...
Mapping fire regime ecoregions in California
Alexandra D. Syphard, Jon Keeley
2020, International Journal of Wildland Fire (29) 595-601
The fire regime is a central framing concept in wildfire science and ecology and describes how a range of wildfire characteristics vary geographically over time. Understanding and mapping fire regimes is important for guiding appropriate management and risk reduction strategies and for informing research on drivers of global...
Changing suspended sediment in United States rivers and streams: Linking sediment trends to changes in land use/cover, hydrology and climate
Jennifer C. Murphy
2020, Hydrology and Earth System Sciences (24) 991-1010
Sediment is one of the leading pollutants in rivers and streams across the United States (US) and the world. Between 1992 and 2012, concentrations of annual mean suspended sediment decreased at over half of the 137 stream sites assessed across the contiguous US. Increases occurred at less than 25 % of...
Climate change: Flowering time may be shifting in surprising ways
Janet S. Prevey
2020, Current Biology (30) R112-R114
Climate change is known to affect regional weather patterns and phenology; however, we lack under-standing of how climate drives phenological change across local spatial gradients. This spatial variation is critical for determining whether subpopulations and metacommunities are changing in unison or diverging in phenology. Divergent responses could reduce synchrony both...
