Using geologic structures to constrain constitutive laws not accessible in the laboratory
Johanna Nevitt, Jessica M. Warren, Kathryn M. Kumamoto, David D. Pollard
2018, Journal of Structural Geology (125) 55-63
In this essay, we explore a central problem of structural geology today, and in the foreseeable future, which is the determination of constitutive laws governing rock deformation to produce geologic structures. Although laboratory experiments provide much needed data and insights about constitutive laws, these experiments cannot cover the range of conditions and...
Nutrient loads in the Lost River and Klamath River Basins, south-central Oregon and northern California, March 2012–March 2015
Liam N. Schenk, Marc A. Stewart, Sara L. Caldwell Eldridge
2018, Scientific Investigations Report 2018-5075
The U.S. Geological Survey and Bureau of Reclamation collected water-quality data from March 2012 to March 2015 at locations in the Lost River and Klamath River Basins, Oregon, in an effort to characterize water quality and compute a nutrient budget for the Bureau of Reclamation Klamath Reclamation Project. The study...
Water-quality conditions with an emphasis on cyanobacteria and associated toxins and taste-and-odor compounds in the Kansas River, Kansas, July 2012 through September 2016
Jennifer L. Graham, Guy M. Foster, Thomas J. Williams, Matthew D. Mahoney, Madison R. May, Keith A. Loftin
2018, Scientific Investigations Report 2018-5089
Cyanobacteria cause a multitude of water-quality concerns, including the potential to produce toxins and taste-and-odor compounds that may cause substantial economic and public health concerns, and are of particular interest in lakes, reservoirs, and rivers that are used for drinking-water supply. Extensive cyanobacterial blooms typically do not develop in the...
A semi-arid river in distress: Contributing factors and recovery solutions for three imperiled freshwater mussels (Family Unionidae) endemic to the Rio Grande basin in North America
Charles R. Randklev, Tom Miller, Michael Hart, Jennifer Morton, Nathan A. Johnson, Kevin Skow, Kentaro Inoue, Eric Tsakiris, Susan Oetker, Ryan Smith, Clint Robertson, Roel Lopez
2018, Science of the Total Environment (631-632) 733-744
Freshwater resources in arid and semi-arid regions are in extreme demand, which creates conflicts between needs of humans and aquatic ecosystems. The Rio Grande basin in the southwestern United States and northern Mexico exemplifies this issue, as much of its aquatic biodiversity is in peril as a result of human...
Status of selenium in south San Francisco Bay—A basis for modeling potential guidelines to meet National tissue criteria for fish and a proposed wildlife criterion for birds
Samuel N. Luoma, Theresa S. Presser
2018, Open-File Report 2018-1105
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed Aquatic Life and AquaticDependent Wildlife Criteria for Selenium (Se) in California’s San Francisco Bay and Delta (Bay-Delta) in June 2016. Here we apply...
Managing conflicts in the River of Grass
Stephanie S. Romanach, James M. Beerens, Larry Perez, Saira M. Haider, Leonard G. Pearlstine
2018, Solutions Journal (9)
Chances are, you would not pack up and move to a new home without first researching the neighborhood, reviewing your finances, and maybe investigating schools nearby. Similarly, you would not buy the first car you find on a magazine cover without first reviewing the technical specifications, exploring your options, and...
Tropical wetlands in the Anthropocene: The critical role of wet-dry cycles
Michael J. Osland, Beth A. Middleton
2018, Solutions Journal (9)
In the face of climate change and increasing human water demands for agriculture, industry, and cities, the fate of wetland ecosystems in tropical wet-dry climates is threatened. To maximize biodiversity and ecological resilience, the value of the ecosystem services provided by tropical wetlands can be incorporated into regional land use...
Methylmercury dynamics in Upper Sacramento Valley rice fields with low background soil mercury levels
K. Christy Tanner, Lisamarie Windham-Myers, Mark C. Marvin-DiPasquale, Jacob Fleck, Kenneth W. Tate, Bruce A. Linquist
2018, Journal of Environmental Quality (47) 830-838
Few studies have considered how methylmercury (MeHg, a toxic form of Hg produced in anaerobic soils) production in rice (Oryza sativa L.) fields can affect water quality, and little is known about MeHg dynamics in rice fields. Surface water MeHg and total Hg (THg) imports, exports, and storage were studied in...
Projected 21st century coastal flooding in the Southern California Bight. Part 2: Tools for assessing climate change-driven coastal hazards and socio-economic impacts
Li H. Erikson, Patrick L. Barnard, Andrea C. O'Neill, Nathan J. Wood, Jeanne M. Jones, Juliette Finzi Hart, Sean Vitousek, Patrick W. Limber, Maya Hayden, Michael Fitzgibbon, Jessica Lovering, Amy C. Foxgrover
2018, Journal of Marine Science and Engineering (6) 1-19
This paper is the second of two that describes the Coastal Storm Modeling System (CoSMoS) approach for quantifying physical hazards and socio-economic hazard exposure in coastal zones affected by sea-level rise and changing coastal storms. The modelling approach, presented in Part 1, downscales atmospheric global-scale projections to local scale coastal...
Characterization of peak streamflows and flood inundation of selected areas in southeastern Texas and southwestern Louisiana from the August and September 2017 flood resulting from Hurricane Harvey
Kara M. Watson, Glenn R. Harwell, David S. Wallace, Toby L. Welborn, Victoria G. Stengel, Jeremy S. McDowell
2018, Scientific Investigations Report 2018-5070
Hurricane Harvey made landfall near Rockport, Texas, on August 25, 2017, as a Category 4 hurricane with wind gusts exceeding 150 miles per hour. As Harvey moved inland, the forward motion of the storm slowed down and produced tremendous rainfall amounts over southeastern Texas, with 8-day rainfall amounts exceeding 60...
Geochemical characterization and modeling of regional groundwater contributing to the Verde River, Arizona between Mormon Pocket and the USGS Clarkdale gage
Kimberly R. Beisner, W. Payton Gardner, Andrew G. Hunt
2018, Journal of Hydrology (564) 99-114
We use synoptic surveys of stream discharge, stable isotopes, and dissolved noble gases to identify the source of groundwater discharge to the Verde River in central Arizona. The Verde River more than doubles in discharge in Mormon Pocket over a 1.4 km distance that includes three discrete locations of...
Female hatchling American kestrels have a larger hippocampus than males: A link with sexual size dimorphism?
Melanie F. Guigueno, Natalie Karouna-Renier, Paula F. P. Henry, Jessica A. Head, Lisa E. Peters, Vince P. Palace, Robert J. Letcher, Kimberly J. Fernie
2018, Behavioural Brain Research (349) 98-101
The brain and underlying cognition may vary adaptively according to an organism’s ecology. As with all raptor species, adult American kestrels (Falco sparverius) are sexually dimorphic with females being larger than males. Related to this sexual dimorphism, kestrels display sex differences in hunting and migration, with females ranging more widely...
Metamodeling for groundwater age forecasting in the Lake Michigan Basin
Michael N. Fienen, B. Thomas Nolan, Leon J. Kauffman, Daniel T. Feinstein
2018, Water Resources Research (54) 4750-4766
Groundwater age is an important indicator of groundwater susceptibility to anthropogenic contamination and a key input to statistical models for forecasting water quality. Numerical models can provide estimates of groundwater age, enabling interpretation of measured age tracers. However, to extend to national‐scale groundwater systems where numerical models are not routinely...
Environmental controls, emergent scaling, and predictions of greenhouse gas (GHG) fluxes in coastal salt marshes
Omar I. Abdul-Aziz, Khandker S. Ishitaq, Jianwu Tang, Serena Moseman-Valtierra, Kevin D. Kroeger, Meagan Gonneea Eagle, Jordan Mora, Kate Morkeski
2018, Journal of Geophysical Research G: Biogeosciences (123) 2234-2256
Coastal salt marshes play an important role in mitigating global warming by removing atmospheric carbon at a high rate. We investigated the environmental controls and emergent scaling of major greenhouse gas (GHG) fluxes such as carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) in coastal salt marshes by conducting data analytics and...
Biogeography of pelagic food webs in the North Pacific
John F. Piatt, Mayumi L. Arimitsu, William J. Sydeman, Sarah Ann Thompson, Heather Renner, Stephani Zador, David C. Douglas, Scott A. Hatch, Arthur B. Kettle, Jeffrey C. Williams
2018, Fisheries Oceanography (27) 366-380
The tufted puffin (Fratercula cirrhata) is a generalist seabird that breeds throughout the North Pacific and eats more than 75 different prey species. Using puffins as samplers, we characterized the geographic variability in pelagic food webs across the subarctic North Pacific from the composition of ~10,000 tufted puffin meals (~56,000...
USGS quarterly wildlife mortality report July 2018
Bryan J. Richards, Barbara L. Bodenstein, Anne Ballmann, Michelle St. Martin
2018, Wildlife Disease Association Newsletter 15-17
No abstract available....
Sensitivity of streamflow to climate change in California
Theodore E. W. Grantham, Daren M. Carlisle, Gregory J. McCabe, Jeanette K. Howard
2018, Climate Change (149) 427-441
Climate change is rapidly altering the global water cycle, exposing vulnerabilities in both social and environmental systems. However, uncertainty in future climate predictions makes it difficult to design and evaluate strategies for building climate resilience. In regions such as California, characterized by stressed water-supply systems, high natural climate variability, and...
Comparative nest survival of three sympatric loon species breeding in the Arctic
Brian D. Uher-Koch, Joshua C. Koch, Kenneth G. Wright, Joel A. Schmutz
2018, Journal of Avian Biology (49) 1-15
Identifying factors influencing nest survival among sympatric species is important for understanding and managing sources of variation in population dynamics of individual species. Three species of loons nest sympatrically in northern Alaska and differ in body size, life history characteristics, and population trends. We tested the effects of competition, nest...
Advances in sensitivity analysis of uncertainty to changes in sampling density when modeling spatially correlated attributes
Ricardo A. Olea
2018, Book chapter
A comparative analysis of distance methods, kriging and stochastic simulation is conducted for evaluating their capabilities for predicting fluctuations in uncertainty due to changes in spatially correlated samples. It is concluded that distance methods lack the most basic capabilities to assess reliability despite their wide acceptance. In contrast, kriging and...
Applying high-resolution imagery to evaluate restoration-induced changes in stream condition, Missouri River Headwaters Basin, Montana
Melanie K. Vanderhoof, Clifton Burt
2018, Remote Sensing (10) 1-28
Degradation of streams and associated riparian habitat across the Missouri River Headwaters Basin has motivated several stream restoration projects across the watershed. Many of these projects install a series of beaver dam analogues (BDAs) to aggrade incised streams, elevate local water tables, and create natural surface water storage by reconnecting...
Karst hydrogeology of Tuckaleechee Cove and the western Great Smoky Mountains, Tennessee and North Carolina
Benjamin Miller, Mike Bradley, Teresa L. Brown
2018, Book chapter, Geology at Every Scale: Field Excursions for the 2018 GSA Southeastern Section Meeting, Geological Society of America Field Guide 50
The geology of Great Smoky Mountains National Park (GRSM) in Tennessee and North Carolina is dominated by siliciclastics and metamorphic strata. However, in the western portion of GRSM, a series of carbonate fensters (windows) expose the Lower Ordovician–age section of the Knox Group, a series of dolomite and limestone units...
Comparison of a prepositioned areal electrofishing device and fixed underwater videography for sampling riverine fishes
Philip R. Branigan, Michael C. Quist, Bradley B. Shepard, Susan C. Ireland
2018, Western North American Naturalist (78) 65-75
Prepositioned areal electrofishing devices (PAEDs) are used to evaluate microhabitat use by fishes because they minimize fright biases associated with traditional electrofishing techniques (e.g., boat electrofishing). Similarly, fixed underwater videography (FUV) is commonly used to minimize the effect of observers on fish behavior. The specific objectives of this research were...
Message in a bottle: The story of drifting plastic in the eastern Mediterranean Sea
Galia Pasternak, Dov Zviely, Asaf Ariel, Ehud Spanier, Christine Ribic
2018, Waste Management (77) 67-77
The Mediterranean Sea is a closed basin with limited water exchange through the Strait of Gibraltar, and sites along its shores show the greatest densities of marine debris in the world. Plastic bottles, which are a growing concern due to high consumption of soft drinks and bottled water, constitute most of...
Insights from long-term ungrazed and grazed watersheds in a salt desert Colorado Plateau ecosystem
Michael C. Duniway, Erika L. Geiger, Tamera J. Minnick, Susan L. Phillips, Jayne Belnap
2018, Rangeland Ecology and Management (71) 492-505
Dryland ecosystems cover over 41% of the earth’s land surface, and living within these important ecosystems are approximately 2 billion people, a large proportion of whom are subsistence agropastoralists. Improper grazing in drylands can negatively impact ecosystem productivity, soil conservation, hydrologic processes, downstream water quantity and quality, and ultimately human health...
Spatial spectroscopic models for remote exploration
David R. Thompson, Alberto Candela, David Wettergreen, E. Noe Dobrea, Gregg A. Swayze, Roger N Clark, Rebecca Greenberger
2018, Astrobiology (18) 934-954
Ancient hydrothermal systems are a high-priority target for a future Mars sample return mission because they contain energy sources for microbes and can preserve organic materials (Farmer, 2000; MEPAG Next Decade Science Analysis Group, <a id="B36R" class="tab-link" href="https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/ast.2017.1782#B36" data-tab="pane-pcw-references"...
