U.S. Geological Survey experience with the residual absolutes method
E. William Worthington, Jurgen Matzka
2017, Geoscientific Instrumentation, Methods and Data Systems (6) 419-427
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Geomagnetism Program has developed and tested the residual method of absolutes, with the assistance of the Danish Technical University's (DTU) Geomagnetism Program. Three years of testing were performed at College Magnetic Observatory (CMO), Fairbanks, Alaska, to compare the residual method with the null method. Results show that the two...
Urban landscapes can change virus gene flow and evolution in a fragmentation-sensitive carnivore
Nicholas M. Fountain-Jones, Meggan E. Craft, W. Chris Funk, Chris Kozakiewicz, Daryl Trumbo, Erin E. Boydston, Lisa M. Lyren, Kevin R. Crooks, Justin S. Lee, Sue VandeWoude, Scott Carver
2017, Molecular Ecology (26) 6487-6498
Urban expansion has widespread impacts on wildlife species globally, including the transmission and emergence of infectious diseases. However, there is almost no information about how urban landscapes shape transmission dynamics in wildlife. Using an innovative phylodynamic approach combining host and pathogen molecular data with landscape characteristics and host traits, we...
Oxygen stable isotopic disparities among sympatric small land snail species from northwest Minnesota, USA
Yurena Yanes, Jeffrey C. Nekola, Jason A. Rech, Jeffery S. Pigati
2017, Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology (485) 715-722
The oxygen isotopic composition (δ18O) of land snail shells can be a valuable paleoenvironmental archive if the climatic parameters that influence the isotopic system are fully understood. Previous calibration studies have examined a limited number of species or individuals, and most have focused on larger (> 10 mm) taxa, which do not...
Epicormic resprouting in fire-prone ecosystems
Juli G. Pausas, Jon E. Keeley
2017, Trends in Plant Science (22) 1008-1015
Many plants resprout from basal buds after disturbance, and this is common in shrublands subjected to high-intensity fires. However, resprouting after fire from epicormic (stem) buds is globally far less common. Unlike basal resprouting, post-fire epicormic resprouting is a key plant adaptation for retention of the arborescent skeleton after fire,...
An improved camera trap for amphibians, reptiles, small mammals, and large invertebrates
Michael T. Hobbs, Cheryl S. Brehme
2017, PLoS ONE (12)
Camera traps are valuable sampling tools commonly used to inventory and monitor wildlife communities but are challenged to reliably sample small animals. We introduce a novel active camera trap system enabling the reliable and efficient use of wildlife cameras for sampling small animals, particularly reptiles, amphibians, small mammals and large...
Recurrent Holocene movement on the Susitna Glacier Thrust Fault: The structure that initiated the Mw 7.9 Denali Fault earthquake, central Alaska
Stephen Personius, Anthony J. Crone, Patricia A. Burns, Nadine G. Reitman
2017, Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (107) 1593-1609
We conducted a trench investigation and analyzed pre‐ and postearthquake topography to determine the timing and size of prehistoric surface ruptures on the Susitna Glacier fault (SGF), the thrust fault that initiated the 2002 Mw 7.9 Denali fault earthquake sequence in central Alaska. In two of our three hand‐excavated trenches, we found...
Characterizing interactions between fire and other disturbances and their impacts on tree mortality in western U.S. Forests
Jeffrey M. Kane, J. Morgan Varner, Margaret R. Metz, Phillip J. van Mantgem
2017, Forest Ecology and Management (405) 188-199
Increasing evidence that pervasive warming trends are altering disturbance regimes and their interactions with fire has generated substantial interest and debate over the implications of these changes. Previous work has primarily focused on conditions that promote non-additive interactions of linked and compounded disturbances,...
Linking functional response and bioenergetics to estimate juvenile salmon growth in a reservoir food web
Craig A. Haskell, David A. Beauchamp, Stephen M. Bollens
2017, PLoS ONE (10) 1-21
Juvenile salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.) use of reservoir food webs is understudied. We examined the feeding behavior of subyearling Chinook salmon (O. tshawytscha) and its relation to growth by estimating the functional response of juvenile salmon to changes in the density of Daphnia, an important component of reservoir food webs. We then estimated salmon...
Multistressor predictive models of invertebrate condition in the Corn Belt, USA
Ian R. Waite, Peter C. Van Metre
2017, Freshwater Science (36) 901-914
Understanding the complex relations between multiple environmental stressors and ecological conditions in streams can help guide resource-management decisions. During 14 weeks in spring/summer 2013, personnel from the US Geological Survey and the US Environmental Protection Agency sampled 98 wadeable streams across the Midwest Corn Belt region of the USA for...
Phylogenetic distribution of a male pheromone that may exploit a nonsexual preference in lampreys
Tyler J. Buchinger, Ugo Bussy, Ke Li, Huiyong Wang, Mar Huertas, Cindy F. Baker, Liang Jia, Michael C. Hayes, Weiming Li, Nicholas S. Johnson
2017, Journal of Evolutionary Biology (30) 2244-2254
Pheromones are among the most important sexual signals used by organisms throughout the animal kingdom. However, few are identified in vertebrates, leaving the evolutionary mechanisms underlying vertebrate pheromones poorly understood. Pre-existing biases in receivers’ perceptual systems shape visual and auditory signaling systems, but studies on how receiver biases influence the...
Shelf evolution along a transpressive transform margin, Santa Barbara Channel, California
Samuel Y. Johnson, Stephen Hartwell, Christopher C. Sorlien, Peter Dartnell, Andrew C. Ritchie
2017, Geosphere (13) 2041-2077
High-resolution bathymetric and seismic reflection data provide new insights for understanding the post–Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, ca. 21 ka) evolution of the ∼120-km-long Santa Barbara shelf, located within a transpressive segment of the transform continental margin of western North America. The goal is to determine how rising sea level, sediment supply,...
Proceedings of the 11th United States-Japan natural resources panel for earthquake research, Napa Valley, California, November 16–18, 2016
Shane Detweiler, Frederick Pollitz, editor(s)
2017, Open-File Report 2017-1133
The UJNR Panel on Earthquake Research promotes advanced research toward a more fundamental understanding of the earthquake process and hazard estimation. The Eleventh Joint meeting was extremely beneficial in furthering cooperation and deepening understanding of problems common to both Japan and the United States.The meeting included productive exchanges of information...
Ephemeral seafloor sedimentation during dam removal: Elwha River, Washington
Melissa M. Foley, Jonathan A. Warrick
2017, Continental Shelf Research (150) 36-47
The removal of the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams from the Elwha River in Washington, USA, resulted in the erosion and transport of over 10 million m3 of sediment from the former reservoirs and into the river during the first two years of the dam removal process. Approximately 90% of this...
Bedrock geology of DFDP-2B, central Alpine Fault, New Zealand
Virginia G. Toy, Rupert Southerland, John Townend, Michael J. Allen, Leeza Becroft, Austin Boles, Carolyn Boulton, Brett Carpenter, Alan K. Cooper, Simon C. Cox, Christopher Daube, Daniel R. Faulkner, Angela Halfpenny, Naoki Kato, Stephen Keys, Martina Kirilova, Yusuke Kometani, Timothy Little, Elisabetta Mariani, Benjamin L. Melosh, Catriona D. Menzies, Luiz Morales, Chance Morgan, Hiroshi Mori, Andre Niemeijer, Richard Norris, David Prior, Katrina Sauer, Anja Schleicher, Norio Shigematsu, Damon A.H. Teagle, Harold Tobin, Robert Valdez, Jack Williams, Samantha Yeo, Laura-May Baratin, Nicolas C. Barth, Adrian Benson, Caroline Boese, Bernard Celerier, Calum J. Chamberlain, Ronald Conze, Jamie Coussens, Lisa Craw, Mai-Linh Doan, Jennifer L. Eccles, Jason Grieve, Julia Grochowski, Anton Gulley, Jamie Howarth, Katrina D. Zamudio, Lucie Janku-Capova, Tamara Nicole Jeppson, Robert M. Langridge, Deirdre Mallyon, Ray Marx, Cecile Massiot, Loren Mathewson, Josephine Moore, Osamu Nishikawa, Brent Pooley, Alex Pyne, Martha K. Savage, Doug Schmitt, Sam Taylor-Offord, Phaedra Upton, Konrad C. Weaver, Thomas Wiersberg, Martin Zimmer
2017, New Zealand Journal of Geology and Geophysics (60) 497-518
During the second phase of the Alpine Fault, Deep Fault Drilling Project (DFDP) in the Whataroa River, South Westland, New Zealand, bedrock was encountered in the DFDP-2B borehole from 238.5–893.2 m Measured Depth (MD). Continuous sampling and meso- to microscale characterisation of whole rock cuttings established that, in...
Forest harvest patterns on private lands in the Cascade Mountains, Washington, USA
Christopher E. Soulard, Jessica J. Walker, Glenn E. Griffith
2017, Forests (8) 1-18
Forests in Washington State generate substantial economic revenue from commercial timber harvesting on private lands. To investigate the rates, causes, and spatial and temporal patterns of forest harvest on private tracts throughout the Cascade Mountains, we relied on a new generation of annual land-use/land-cover (LULC) products created from the application...
Protected areas as social-ecological systems: perspectives from resilience and social-ecological systems theory
Graeme S. Cumming, Craig R. Allen
2017, Ecological Applications (27) 1709-1717
Conservation biology and applied ecology increasingly recognize that natural resource management is both an outcome and a driver of social, economic, and ecological dynamics. Protected areas offer a fundamental approach to conserving ecosystems, but they are also social-ecological systems whose ecological management and sustainability are heavily influenced by people. This...
Ecosystem services from transborder migratory species: Implications for conservation governance
Laura Lopez-Hoffman, Charles C. Chester, Darius J. Semmens, Wayne E. Thogmartin, M. Sofia Rodriguez-McGoffin, Robert W. Merideth, Jay E. Diffendorfer
2017, Annual Review of Environment and Resources (42) 509-539
This article discusses the conservation challenges of volant migratory transborder species and conservation governance primarily in North America. Many migratory species provide ecosystem service benefits to society. For example, insectivorous bats prey on crop pests and reduce the need for pesticides; birds and insects pollinate food plants; and birds afford...
The importance of parameterization when simulating the hydrologic response of vegetative land-cover change
Jeremy T. White, Victoria G. Stengel, Samuel H. Rendon, John Banta
2017, Hydrology and Earth System Sciences (21) 3975-3989
Computer models of hydrologic systems are frequently used to investigate the hydrologic response of land-cover change. If the modeling results are used to inform resource-management decisions, then providing robust estimates of uncertainty in the simulated response is an important consideration. Here we examine the importance of parameterization, a necessarily subjective...
A decade of induced slip on the causative fault of the 2015 Mw 4.0 Venus earthquake, northeast Johnson County, Texas
Monique M. Scales, Heather R. DeShon, M. Beatrice Magnani, Jacob I. Walter, Louis Quinones, Thomas L. Pratt, Matthew J. Hornbach
2017, Journal of Geophysical Research B: Solid Earth (122) 7879-7894
On 7 May 2015, a Mw 4.0 earthquake occurred near Venus, northeast Johnson County, Texas, in an area of the Bend Arch-Fort Worth Basin that reports long-term, high-volume wastewater disposal and that has hosted felt earthquakes since 2009. In the weeks following the Mw 4.0 earthquake, we deployed a local seismic network and purchased...
Forecast first: An argument for groundwater modeling in reverse
Jeremy T. White
2017, Groundwater (55) 660-664
Numerical groundwater models are important compo-nents of groundwater analyses that are used for makingcritical decisions related to the management of ground-water resources. In this support role, models are oftenconstructed to serve a specific purpose that is to provideinsights, through simulation, related to a specific func-tion of a complex aquifer system...
Millennial-scale variability in the local radiocarbon reservoir age of south Florida during the Holocene
Lauren T. Toth, Hai Cheng, R. Lawrence Edwards, Erica Ashe, Julie N. Richey
2017, Quaternary Geochronology (42) 130-143
A growing body of research suggests that the marine environments of south Florida provide a critical link between the tropical and high-latitude Atlantic. Changes in the characteristics of water masses off south Florida may therefore have important implications for our understanding of climatic and oceanographic variability over a broad spatial...
Influence of pore pressure change on coseismic volumetric strain
Chi-Yuen Wang, Andrew J. Barbour
2017, Earth and Planetary Science Letters (475) 152-159
Coseismic strain is fundamentally important for understanding crustal response to changes of stress after earthquakes. The elastic dislocation model has been widely applied to interpreting observed shear deformation caused by earthquakes. The application of the same theory to interpreting volumetric strain, however, has met with difficulty, especially in the far...
FinDer v.2: Improved real-time ground-motion predictions for M2-M9 with seismic finite-source characterization
Maren Boese, Deborah Smith, Claude Felizardo, Men-Andrin Meier, Thomas H. Heaton, J.F. Clinton
2017, Geophysical Journal International (212) 725-742
Recent studies suggest that small and large earthquakes nucleate similarly, and that they often have indistinguishable seismic waveform onsets. The characterization of earthquakes in real time, such as for earthquake early warning, therefore requires a flexible modeling approach that allows a small earthquake to become large as fault rupture evolves...
Conceptual modeling framework to support development of site-specific selenium criteria for Lake Koocanusa, Montana, U.S.A., and British Columbia, Canada
Karen E. Jenni, David L. Naftz, Theresa S. Presser
2017, Open-File Report 2017-1130
The U.S. Geological Survey, working with the Montana Department of Environmental Quality and the British Columbia Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change Strategy, has developed a conceptual modeling framework that can be used to provide structured and scientifically based input to the Lake Koocanusa Monitoring and Research Working Group...
The NorWeST summer stream temperature model and scenarios for the western U.S.: A crowd-sourced database and new geospatial tools foster a user-community and predict broad climate warming of rivers and streams
Daniel J. Isaak, Seth J. Wenger, Erin E. Peterson, Jay M Ver Hoef, David E Nagel, Charlie H. Luce, Steven W. Hostetler, Jason B. Dunham, Brett B. Roper, Sherry P Wollrab, Gwynne L Chandler, Dona L Horan, Sharon Parkes-Payne
2017, Water Resources Research (53) 9181-9205
Thermal regimes are fundamental determinants of aquatic ecosystems, which makes description and prediction of temperatures critical during a period of rapid global change. The advent of inexpensive temperature sensors dramatically increased monitoring in recent decades, and although most monitoring is done by individuals for agency‐specific purposes, collectively these efforts constitute...
