Environmental monitoring of groundwater, surface water, and soil at the Ammonium Perchlorate Rocket Motor Destruction Facility at the Letterkenny Army Depot, Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, 2021
Daniel G. Galeone, Shaun J. Donmoyer
2024, Open-File Report 2024-1031
Letterkenny Army Depot in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, built an Ammonium Perchlorate Rocket Motor Destruction (ARMD) Facility in 2016 to centralize rocket motor destruction and contain all waste during the destruction process. The U.S. Geological Survey has collected environmental samples from groundwater, surface water, and soils at ARMD since 2016.During 2021, samples...
Status of greater sage-grouse in the Bi-State Distinct Population Segment—An evaluation of population trends, habitat selection, and efficacy of conservation actions
Peter S. Coates, Megan C. Milligan, Brian G. Prochazka, Brianne E. Brussee, Shawn T. O’Neil, Carl G. Lundblad, Sarah C. Webster, Cali L. Weise, Steven R. Mathews, Michael P. Chenaille, Cameron L. Aldridge, Michael S. O’Donnell, Shawn P. Espinosa, Amy C. Sturgill, Kevin E. Doherty, John C. Tull, Katherine Miller, Lief A. Wiechman, Steve Abele, John Boone, Heather Stone, Michael L. Casazza
2024, Open-File Report 2024-1030
PrefaceThis study was completed to provide timely scientific information regarding greater sage-grouse population trends, habitat selection, and the efficacy of previous conservation actions implemented to benefit the Bi-State Distinct Population Segment (DPS). Specifically, we provide these analyses to inform the current (2024) status review and pending listing...
Distribution of ancient carbon in groundwater and soil gas from degradation of petroleum near the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility, O‘ahu, Hawai‘i
Jared J. Trost, Barbara A. Bekins, Jeanne B. Jaeschke, Geoffrey N. Delin, Daniel A Sinclair, James K Stack, Rylen K. Nakama, Uli’i M. Miyajima, Lhiberty D. Pagaduan, Isabelle M. Cozzarelli
2024, Scientific Investigations Report 2024-5034
The groundwater below the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility (the facility) in Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi, contains fuel compounds from past spills. This study used carbon-14 analyses to distinguish fuel-derived carbon from background carbon, along with other biodegradation indicators, to address two goals: (1) determine the extent and migration direction of...
The where and why of large wood occurrence in the Upper Mississippi and Illinois Rivers
Molly Van Appledorn, Kathi Jo Jankowski, Kaija Gahm, Serenity Budd, Douglas Baumann, Barbara Bennie, Richard A. Erickson, Roger J. Haro, Jason J. Rohweder
2024, Earth Surface Processes and Landforms (49) 3383-3398
Large wood (LW) plays important geomorphic and ecological roles in rivers and is widely used as a restoration tool. Changes to floodplain land use and historical removal have altered wood dynamics in fluvial systems globally. We know little about the distribution and dynamics of LW in great rivers (approximately >105 km2)...
Potential hazards of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in Great Lakes tributaries using water column and porewater passive samplers and sediment wquilibrium partitioning
Austin K. Baldwin, Steven R. Corsi, David A. Alvarez, David L. Villeneuve, Gerald T. Ankley, Brett R. Blackwell, Marc A. Mills, Peter L. Lenaker, Michelle A. Nott
2024, Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (43) 1509-1523
The potential for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH)-related effects in benthic organisms is commonly estimated from organic carbon-normalized sediment concentrations based on equilibrium partitioning (EqP). Although this approach is useful for screening purposes, it may overestimate PAH bioavailability by orders of magnitude in some sediments, leading to inflated exposure estimates and...
Temporal habitat use of mule deer in the Pueblo of Santa Ana, New Mexico
Daniel E. Bird, Laura D’Acunto, Daniel Ginter, Glenn Harper, Patrick A. Zollner
2024, Journal of Wildlife Management (88)
Mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) are important economically, culturally, and recreationally to the Pueblo of Santa Ana in central New Mexico, USA. Studies of habitat selection improve our understanding of mule deer ecology in central New Mexico and provide the Tribe with valuable information for management...
Lifetime reproductive characteristics of gray wolves
David Edward Ausband
2024, Journal of Mammalogy
Female and male cooperative breeders can use different strategies to maximize reproduction and fitness over their lifetimes. Answering questions about fitness in cooperative breeders requires long-term studies as well as complete data on group composition and size which can be exceedingly difficult to obtain. Using a long-term genetic data...
Streamflow, water quality, and constituent loads and yields, Scituate Reservoir drainage area, Rhode Island, water year 2020
Kirk Smith
2024, Data Report 1192
As part of a long-term cooperative program to monitor water quality within the Scituate Reservoir drainage area, the U.S. Geological Survey in cooperation with Providence Water (sometimes known as Providence Water Supply Board) collected streamflow and water-quality data in tributaries to the Scituate Reservoir, Rhode Island. Streamflow and concentrations of...
The development of China’s monopoly over cobalt battery materials
Andrew L. Gulley
2024, Mineral Economics (37) 619-631
While previous resource conflicts have often been linked to fuel minerals such as oil, future resource conflict may revolve around nonfuel minerals that enable strategic emerging technologies. During a 2010 diplomatic dispute, China reportedly blocked exports of rare earth elements to Japan, thereby leveraging China’s near-monopoly to threaten Japanese manufacturers...
Middle-late Holocene paleolimnological changes in central Lake Tanganyika: Integrated evidence from the Kavala Island Ridge (Tanzania)
Leandro Domingos-Luz, Michael J. Soreghan, Giliane G. Rasbold, Geoffrey S. Ellis, Justin E. Birdwell, Ishmael A. Kimirei, Christopher A. Scholz, Michael M. McGlue
2024, The Holocene (34) 1167-1180
Middle and Late Holocene sediments have not been extensively sampled in Lake Tanganyika, and much remains unknown about the response of the Rift Valley’s largest lake to major environmental shifts during the Holocene, including the termination of the African Humid Period (AHP). Here, we present an integrated study (sedimentology, mineralogy,...
Human activity drives establishment, but not invasion, of non-native plants on islands
William G. Pfadenhauer, Graziella Vittoria DiRenzo, Bethany A. Bradley
2024, Ecography
Island ecosystems are particularly susceptible to the impacts of invasive species. Many rare and endangered species that are endemic to islands are negatively affected by invasions. Past studies have shown that the establishment of non-native species on islands is related to native plant richness, habitat heterogeneity, island age, human activity,...
Evolutionary ecology of masting: Mechanisms, models, and climate change
Michal Bogdziewicz, Dave Kelly, Davide Ascoli, Thomas Caignard, Francesco Chianucci, Elizabeth E. Crone, Emilie Fleurot, Jessie Foest, Georg Gratzer, Tomika Hagiwara, Qingmin Han, Valentin Journe, Lea Keurinck, Katarzyna Kondrat, Ryan McClory, Jalene M. LaMontagne, Ignacio A. Mundo, Anita Nussbaumer, Iris Oberklammer, Misuzu Ohno, Ian Pearse, Mario B. Pesendorfer, Giulia Resente, Akiko Satake, Mitsue Shibata, Rebecca Snell, Jakub Szymkowiak, Laura Touzot, Rafal Zwolak, Magdalena Zywiec, Andrew Hacket-Pain
2024, Trends in Ecology and Evolution (39) 851-862
Many perennial plants show mast seeding, characterized by synchronous and highly variable reproduction across years. We propose a general model of masting, integrating proximate factors (environmental variation, weather cues, and resource budgets) with ultimate drivers (predator satiation and pollination efficiency). This general model shows how the...
Microbial diversity, genomics, and phage–host interactions of cyanobacterial harmful algal blooms
Lauren E Krausfeldt, Elizaveta Shmakova, Hyo Won Lee, Viviana Mazzei, Keith A. Loftin, Robert P Smith, Emily E. Karwacki, Eric Fortman, B.H. Rosen, Hidetoshi Urakawa, Manoj Dadlani, Rita Colwell, Jose V Lopez
2024, mSystems (9)
The occurrence of cyanobacterial harmful algal blooms (cyanoHABs) is related to their physical and chemical environment. However, less is known about their associated microbial interactions and processes. In this study, cyanoHABs were analyzed as a microbial ecosystem, using 1 year of 16S rRNA sequencing and 70 metagenomes collected during the...
Egg mercury concentration and egg size varies with position in the laying sequence in two songbird species
C. Alex Hartman, Josh T. Ackerman, Breanne Cooney, Mark P. Herzog
2024, Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (43) 1844-1854
In birds, mercury embryotoxicity can occur through the transfer of mercury from the female to her eggs. Maternal transfer of mercury can vary by egg position in the laying sequence, with first-laid eggs often exhibiting greater mercury concentrations than subsequently laid eggs. We studied...
Climate change scenarios for air and water temperatures in the upper San Francisco Estuary: Implications for thermal regimes and Delta Smelt
Brock Huntsman, Larry R. Brown, Marissa L. Wulff, Noah Knowles, R. Wayne Wagner, Frederick V. Feyrer
2024, San Francisco Estuary and Watershed Science (22)
Climate projections and their effects in the San Francisco Estuary have been evaluated as part of the US Geological Survey’s CASCaDE2 project. Understanding the ecological effects of climate change can help manage and maintain the ecological health and productivity of the San...
A circumpolar study unveils a positive non-linear effect of temperature on arctic arthropod availability that may reduce the risk of warming-induced trophic mismatch for breeding shorebirds
Aurelie Chagnon-Lafortune, Eliane Duchesne, Pierre Legagneux, Laura McKinnon, Jeroen Reneerkens, Nicolas Casajus, Kenneth F. Abraham, Elise Bolduc, Glen S. Brown, Stephen C. Brown, H. River Gates, Olivier Gilg, Marie-Andrée Giroux, Kirsty Gurney, Steve Kendall, Eunbi Kwon, Richard B. Lanctot, David B. Lank, Nicolas Lecomte, Maria Leung, Joe Liebezeit, R.I.G. Morrison, Erica Nol, David C. Payer, Donald Reid, Daniel R. Ruthrauff, Sarah T. Saalfeld, Brett K. Sandercock, Paul Smith, Niels Martin Schmidt, Ingrid Tulp, David H. Ward, Toke Thomas Hoye, Dominique Berteaux, Joel Bety
2024, Global Change Biology (30)
Seasonally abundant arthropods are a crucial food source for many migratory birds that breed in the Arctic. In cold environments, the growth and emergence of arthropods are particularly tied to temperature. Thus, the phenology of arthropods is anticipated to undergo a rapid change in response to a warming climate, potentially...
Complex patterns of genetic population structure in the mouthbrooding marine catfish, Bagre marinus, in the Gulf of Mexico and U.S. Atlantic
David S. Portnoy, Shannon J. O’Leary, Andrew T. Fields, Christopher M. Hollenbeck, Dean Grubbs, Cheston T. Peterson, Jayne M. Gardiner, Douglas H. Adams, Brett J. Falterman, Marcus Drymon, Jeremy M. Higgs, Erin L. Pulster, Tonya R. Wiley, Steven A. Murawski
2024, Ecology and Evolution (14)
Patterns of genetic variation reflect interactions among microevolutionary forces that vary in strength with changing demography. Here, patterns of variation within and among samples of the mouthbrooding gafftopsail catfish (Bagre marinus, Family Ariidae) captured in the U.S. Atlantic and throughout the Gulf of Mexico were analyzed using genomics to generate...
Time varying crustal anisotropy at Whakaari/White Island volcano
D.M. Mengesha, M.K. Savage, A.D. Jolly, C.J. Ebinger
2024, Geophysical Research Letters (51)
Whakaari/White Island has been the most active New Zealand volcano in the 21st century, producing small phreatic and phreatomagmatic eruptions, which are hard to predict. The most recent eruption occurred in 2019, tragically claiming the lives of 22 individuals and causing numerous injuries. We employed shear-wave splitting analyses to investigate...
Comparing subduction ground-motion models to observations for Cascadia
James Andrew Smith, Morgan P. Moschetti, Eric M. Thompson
2024, Earthquake Spectra (40) 1787-1817
We evaluate Cascadia subduction ground-motion models (GMMs), considered for the 2023 US National Seismic Hazard Model (NSHM) update, by comparing observations to model predictions. The observations comprise regional recordings from intraslab earthquakes, including contributions from 2021 and 2022 events in southern Cascadia and global records from interface earthquakes. Since the...
Taking heat (downstream): Simulating groundwater and thermal equilibrium controls on annual paired air–water temperature signal transport in headwater streams
Zachary Johnson, Martin A. Briggs, Craig D. Snyder, Brittany G. Johnson, Nathaniel P. Hitt
2024, Journal of Hydrology (638)
Headwater stream temperature often exhibits spatial variation at the kilometer-scale, but the relative importance of the underlying hydrogeological processes and riverine perturbations remains poorly understood. In this study, we investigated the relative importance of groundwater (GW) and other processes on downstream annual stream temperature signal characteristics using deterministic heat budget...
Rainfall intensification amplifies exposure of American Southwest to conditions that trigger postfire debris flows
Matthew A. Thomas, Allison C. Michaelis, Nina S. Oakley, Jason W. Kean, Victor A. Gensini, Walker S. Ashley
2024, npj Natural Hazards (1)
Short-duration, high-intensity rainfall can initiate deadly and destructive debris flows after wildfire. Methods to estimate the conditions that can trigger debris flows exist and guidance to determine how often those thresholds will be exceeded under the present climate are available. However, the limited spatiotemporal resolution of climate models has hampered...
Systematic assessment of long-read RNA-seq methods for transcript identification and quantification
Francisco J. Pardo-Palacios, Dingjie Wang, Fairlie Reese, Mark Diekhans, Silvia Carbonell-Sala, Brian Williams, Jane E. Loveland, Maite De María, Matthew S. Adams, Gabriela Balderrama-Gutierrez, Amit K. Behera, Jose M. Gonzalez Martinez, Toby Hunt, Julien Lagarde, Cindy E. Liang, Haoran Li, Marcus Jerryd Meade, David A. Moraga Amador, Andrey D. Prjibelski, Inanc Birol, Hamed Bostan, Ashley M. Brooks, Muhammed Hasan Celik, Ying Chen, Mei R.M. Du, Colette Felton, Jonathan Goke, Saber Hafezqorani, Ralf Herwig, Hideya Kawaji, Joseph Lee, Jian-Liang Li, Matthias Lienhard, Alla Mikheenko, Dennis Mulligan, Ka Ming Nip, Mihaela Pertea, Matthew E. Ritchie, Andre D. Sim, Alison D. Tang, Yuk Kei Wan, Changqing Wang, Brandon Y. Wong, Chen Yang, If Barnes, Andrew E. Berry, Salvador Capella-Gutierrez, Alyssa Cousineau, Namrita Dhillon, Jose M. Fernandez-Gonzalez, Luis Ferrandez-Peral, Natàlia Garcia-Reyero, Stefan Gotz, Carles Hernandez-Ferrer, Liudmyla Kondratova, Tianyuan Liu, Alessandra Martinez-Martin, Carlos Menor, Jorge Mestre-Tomas, Jonathan M. Mudge, Nedka G. Panayotova, Alejandro Paniagua, Dmitry Repchevsky, Xingjie Ren, Eric Rouchka, Brandon Saint-John, Enrique Sapena, Leon Sheynkman, Melissa Laird Smith, Marie-Marthe Suner, Hazuki Takahashi, Ingrid A. Youngworth, Piero Carninci, Nancy D. Denslow, Roderic Guigo, Margaret Hunter, Rene Maehr, Yin Shen, Hagen U. Tilgner, Barbara J. Wold, Christopher Vollmers, Adam Frankish, Kin Fai Au, Gloria M. Sheynkman, Ali Mortazavi, Ana Conesa, Angela N. Brooks
2024, Nature Methods (21) 1349-1363
The Long-read RNA-Seq Genome Annotation Assessment Project Consortium was formed to evaluate the effectiveness of long-read approaches for transcriptome analysis. Using different protocols and sequencing platforms, the consortium generated over 427 million long-read sequences from complementary DNA and direct RNA datasets, encompassing human, mouse and manatee species. Developers utilized these...
Earthquake scenario development in conjunction with the 2023 USGS National Seismic Hazard Model
Robert Edward Chase, Kishor S. Jaiswal, Mark D. Petersen
2024, Earthquake Spectra (40) 1818-1844
We present earthquake scenarios developed to accompany the release of the 2023 update to the US Geological Survey National Seismic Hazard Model (NSHM). Scenarios can serve a range of local and regional needs, from developing proactive-targeted mitigation strategies for minimizing impending risk to aiding emergency management planning. These deterministic scenarios...
Bornean Wren-Babbler Ptilocichla leucogrammica
Ryan C. Burner, Guy M. Kirwan, Peter Pyle, Nigel J. Collar, Craig Robson
2024, Book chapter, Birds of the World
No abstract available....
Bare-headed Laughingthrush Melanocichla calva
Ryan C. Burner, Guy M. Kirwan, Peter Pyle, Nigel J. Collar, Craig Robson
2024, Book chapter, Birds of the world
No abstract available....