Thick- and thin-skinned contractional styles and the tectonic evolution of the northern Sangre de Cristo Mountains, Colorado, USA
David A. Lindsey, Jonathan Saul Caine
2024, Geosphere (20) 678-710
The Sangre de Cristo Mountains of southern Colorado and northern New Mexico, USA, contain an unusual combination of thick- and thin-skinned contractional structures involving both basement and cover rocks in the Laramide Rocky Mountain foreland. These structures are truncated by down-faulted extensional basins to the east and west. Together with...
Double take: Ingestion of two rats by a juvenile Burmese Python (Python bivittatus) in Big Cypress National Preserve, FL, USA
Teah M. Evers, Andrea F. Currylow, Mark Robert Sandfoss, Lisa Marie McBride, Christina M. Romagosa, Wesley W. Boone, Jacquelyn C. Guzy, Gretchen Erika Anderson, Kristen Hart, Matthew McCollister, Amy A. Yackel Adams
2024, Reptiles and Amphibians (31)
No abstract available....
Simulation of hydrodynamics and water temperature in a 21-mile reach of the upper Illinois River, Illinois, 2020–22
Michael R. Ament, David C. Heimann
2024, Scientific Investigations Report 2024-5025
This report describes the development of a CE-QUAL-W2 river hydrodynamics and temperature model of a 21-mile reach of the Illinois River including a 3-mile reach of a major tributary, the Fox River. Model outputs consist of streamflow, water velocity, water-surface elevation, and water-temperature time series that can be used to...
Are researchers citing their data? A case study from the U.S. Geological Survey
Grace C. Donovan, Madison Langseth
2024, Data Science Journal (23)
Data citation promotes accessibility and discoverability of data through measures carried out by researchers, publishers, repositories, and the scientific community. This paper examines how a data citation workflow has been implemented by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) by evaluating publication and data linkages. Two different methods were used to identify...
Role of edaphic, hydrologic, and land cover variables in determining dissolved organic carbon in Missouri (USA) reservoirs and streams
John R. Jones, Jennifer L. Graham, Daniel V. Obrecht, James D. Harlan, Matthew F. Knowlton, Carol Pollard, Jennifer Parris, Anthony P. Thorpe
2024, Lake and Reservoir Management (40) 177-195
In Missouri, distinct geophysical gradients influence statewide patterns in water quality. Here, we quantify the spatiotemporal variability of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) in reservoirs and streams and the edaphic, hydrologic, and land cover variables that account for cross-system variation. Datasets included statewide inventories collected over decades and studies...
Hiding in plain sight: Federally protected Ringed Map Turtles (Graptemys oculifera) found in a new river system
Brad Glorioso, Will Selman, Brian R. Kreiser, Aidan Ford
2024, Herpetological Conservation and Biology (19) 96-105
Understanding the geographical range of a species is essential to successful conservation and management, but their ranges are not always fully known. Ringed Map Turtles (Graptemys oculifera) have been federally listed as a Threatened species since 1986, and they have long been considered endemic to the Pearl River system...
Challenges creating monarch butterfly management strategies for electric power companies in the United States
Jessica Fox, Kasey Allen, James E. Diffendorfer, Laura Lukens, Wayne E. Thogmartin, Christian Newman
2024, Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution (12)
Returning monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) to sustainable levels of abundance will require an array of contributors to protect and restore habitat over broad areas. Due to the diversity and scale of land managed by electric power companies across the monarch range, plus an additional 32 million hectares needed for new...
Global mercury concentrations in biota: Their use as a basis for a global biomonitoring framework
David C. Evers, Josh T. Ackerman, Staffan Akerblom, Dominique Bally, Niladri Basu, Kevin Bishop, Nathalie Bodin, Hans Fredrik Veitberg Braaten, Mark Burton, Paco Bustamante, Celia Y. Chen, John Chetelat, Linroy Christian, Rune Dietz, Paul Drevnick, Collin A. Eagles-Smith, Luis Fernandez, Neil Hammerschlag, Mireille Harmelin-Vivien, Agustin Harte, Eva Kruemmel, Jose Lailson-Brito, Gabriella Medina, Cesar Rodriguez, Iain Stenhouse, Elsie M. Sunderland, Akinori Takeuchi, Timothy Tear, Claudia Vega, Simon Wilson, Pianpian Wu
2024, Ecotoxicology (33) 325-396
An important provision of the Minamata Convention on Mercury is to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of the adopted measures and its implementation. Here, we describe for the first time currently available biotic mercury (Hg) data on a global scale to improve the understanding of global efforts to reduce the...
Evaluating an improved systems approach to wetland crediting: Consideration of wetland ecosystem services
Pamela Mason, Gregory E. Noe, Alicia Berlin, Denise Clearwater, Sally Claggett, Dave Goerman, Brooke J. Landry, Alison Santoro
2024, Report
The Chesapeake Bay Agreement (CBA) has numerous direct goals for improving habitat, living resources, and water quality, conserving lands, engaging communities and addressing a changing climate. To date, the progress toward the wetlands outcome (creation/ restoration of 85,000 acres and enhancement of 150,000 acres) has been very slow and the...
Snow avalanches are a primary climate-linked driver of mountain ungulate populations
Kevin White, Eran Hood, Gabriel Wolken, Erich Peitzsch, Yves Buhler, Katreen Wikstrom Jones, Chris Darimont
2024, Nature Communications Biology (7)
Snow is a major, climate-sensitive feature of the Earth’s surface and catalyst of fundamentally important ecosystem processes. Understanding how snow influences sentinel species in rapidly changing mountain ecosystems is particularly critical. Whereas effects of snow on food availability, energy expenditure, and predation are well documented, we...
Black carp Mylopharyngodon piceus (Richardson, 1846) mouth gape and size preference of a bivalve prey
Patrick Kroboth, Benjamin H. Stahlschmidt, Duane Chapman
2024, Journal of Applied Ichthyology (2024)
Black carp Mylopharyngodon piceus (Richardson, 1846) have been widely used as biological control of snails in aquaculture and were imported to the United States in the 1970s and 1980s for this purpose. Prior research emphasizes the species’ propensity to control gastropods, but since subsequent escape and establishment of black carp...
A multi-marker assessment of sewage contamination in streams using human-associated indicator bacteria, human-specific viruses, and pharmaceuticals
Peter L. Lenaker, Matthew A. Pronschinske, Steven R. Corsi, Joel P. Stokdyk, Hayley Olds, Deborah K. Dila, Sandra L. McLellan
2024, Science of the Total Environment (930)
Human sewage contaminates waterways, delivering excess nutrients, pathogens, chemicals, and other toxic contaminants. Contaminants and various sewage indicators are measured to monitor and assess water quality, but these analytes vary in their representation of sewage contamination and the inferences about water quality they support....
Evaluation of debris-flow building damage forecasts
Katherine R. Barnhart, Christopher R. Miller, Francis K. Rengers, Jason W. Kean
2024, Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences (24) 1459-1483
Reliable forecasts of building damage due to debris flows may provide situational awareness and guide land and emergency management decisions. Application of debris-flow runout models to generate such forecasts requires combining hazard intensity predictions with fragility functions that link hazard intensity with building damage....
Flooding-induced failure of an invasive Burmese Python nest in southern Florida
Mark Robert Sandfoss, Lisa Marie McBride, Gretchen Erika Anderson, Amanda Marie Kissel, Matthew McCollister, Christina M. Romagosa, Amy A. Yackel Adams
2024, Reptiles and Amphibians (31)
It is important to understand the factors affecting the reproductive success of an invasive species to estimate population size and develop management plans. There remains much we do not understand about the reproductive biology of invasive Burmese Pythons in both their native and invasive range. Oviposition site selection is an...
Methylmercury effects on birds: A review, meta-analysis, and development of toxicity reference values for injury assessment based on tissue residues and diet
Josh T. Ackerman, Sarah H. Peterson, Mark P. Herzog, Julie L. Yee
2024, Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (43) 1195-1241
Birds are used as bioindicators of environmental mercury (Hg) contamination, and toxicity reference values are needed for injury assessments. We conducted a comprehensive review, summarized data from 168 studies, performed a series of Bayesian hierarchical meta-analyses, and developed new toxicity reference values for the...
Influence of organic matter thermal maturity on rare earth element distribution: A study of Middle Devonian black shales from the Appalachian Basin, USA
Shailee Bhattacharya, Shikha Sharma, Vikas Agrawal, Michael C. Dix, Giovanni Zanoni, Justin E. Birdwell, Albert S. Wylie Jr., Tom Wagner
2024, Energies (17)
This study focuses on understanding the association of rare earth elements (REE; lanthanides + yttrium + scandium) with organic matter from the Middle Devonian black shales of the Appalachian Basin. Developing a better understanding of the role of organic matter (OM) and thermal maturity in REE partitioning may help improve...
Prion forensics: A multidisciplinary approach to investigate CWD at an illegal deer carcass disposal site
Marc D. Schwabenlander, Jason C. Bartz, Michelle Carstensen, Alberto Fameli, Linda Glaser, Roxanne J. Larsen, Manci Li, Rachel L. Shoemaker, Gage Rowden, Suzanne Stone, W. David Walter, Tiffany M. Wolf, Peter A. Larsen
2024, Prion (18) 72-86
Infectious prions are resistant to degradation and remain infectious in the environment for several years. Chronic wasting disease (CWD) has been detected in cervids inhabiting North America, the Nordic countries, and South Korea. CWD-prion spread is partially attributed to carcass transport and disposal. We employed a forensic approach to investigate...
Special Contributing Area Loading Program user’s manual
Henry F. Doyle, Marian M. Domanski
2024, Open-File Report 2024-1021
The Special Contributing Area Loading Program (SCALP) is a hydrologic routing program that simulates reservoir routing through a linear-reservoir-in-series method. The Java version of SCALP was developed to replicate and replace the functionality of an older version of the program written in Fortran. SCALP models flow through three reservoirs in...
Automatic identification and quantification of volcanic hotspots in Alaska using HotLINK: The hotspot learning and identification network
Pablo Saunders-Shultz, Taryn Lopez, Hannah R. Dietterich, Tarsilo Girona
2024, Frontiers in Earth Science (12)
An increase in volcanic thermal emissions can indicate subsurface and surface processes that precede, or coincide with, volcanic eruptions. Space-borne infrared sensors can detect hotspots—defined here as localized volcanic thermal emissions—in near-real-time. However, automatic hotspot detection systems are needed to efficiently analyze the large quantities of data produced....
Post-fire reference densities for giant sequoia seedlings in a new era of high-severity wildfires
Nathan L. Stephenson, Anthony C. Caprio, David Nicolas Bertil Soderberg, Adrian Das, Eva Louisa Lopez, A. Park Williams
2024, Forest Ecology and Management (562)
Many forests globally are experiencing increases in large, high-severity wildfires, often with increasingly inadequate post-fire tree regeneration. To identify areas that might need post-fire planting, forest managers have a growing need for seedling reference densities – the natural seedling densities...
Evaluation of metrics and thresholds for use in national-scale river harmful algal bloom assessments
Sarah M. Stackpoole, Jacob Aaron Zwart, Jennifer L. Graham, Judson Harvey, Noah Schmadel, Jennifer C. Murphy
2024, Ecological Indicators (162)
The spatiotemporal distribution of harmful algal blooms (HABs) in rivers remains poorly understood, and there is an urgent need to develop a consistent set of metrics to better document HAB occurrences and forecast future events. Using data from seven sites in...
State of the data: Assessing the FAIRness of USGS data
Vivian B. Hutchison, Tamar Norkin, Lisa Zolly, Leslie Hsu
2024, Data Science Journal (23)
In response to recent shifts towards open science that emphasize transparency, reproducibility, and access to research data, the US Geological Survey (USGS) conducted a study to assess the degree to which USGS data assets meet the FAIR data principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable). The USGS designed and applied a...
Status of water quality in groundwater resources used for drinking-water supply in the southeastern San Joaquin Valley, 2013–15—California GAMA Priority Basin Project
Karen R. Burow, Jennifer L. Shelton, Miranda S. Fram
2024, Scientific Investigations Report 2024-5009
The California Groundwater Ambient Monitoring and Assessment Program Priority Basin Project (GAMA-PBP) investigated water quality of groundwater resources used for drinking-water supplies in the Madera-Chowchilla, Kings, Kaweah, Tule, and Tulare Lake groundwater subbasins of the southeastern San Joaquin Valley during 2013–15. The study focused primarily on groundwater resources used for...
Survival and growth of larval Pallid Sturgeon are improved by a live diet
Hilary B. Treanor, Christopher S. Guy, Jason E. Ilgen, Wendy M. Sealey, Addison T. Dove, Molly A. H. Webb
2024, North American Journal of Aquaculture (86) 332-339
ObjectiveConservation propagation facilities in the upper basin of the Missouri River are currently experiencing inconsistent survival of first-feeding larval Pallid Sturgeon Scaphirhynchus albus among genetic families (i.e., distinct male–female pairings). The inconsistent survival can have unintended negative consequences for genetic representation of Pallid Sturgeon that are returned to the...
Genetic evidence for the presence of wild-caught sturgeons in commercial markets in Georgia
Tamar Beridze, Shannon L. White, David C. Kazyak, Levan Ninua, Dewayne A. Fox, Arun Sethuraman, Tamar Edisherashvili, Bianca Roberts, Mikheil Potskhishvili, Michelle Klailova, Cort Anderson
2024, Diversity (16)
Sturgeons (Family: Acipenseridae) are among the most endangered taxa worldwide. Significant resources have been invested into the conservation of global sturgeon populations, including the development of commercial aquaculture programs. These programs are intended to improve conservation outcomes by reducing the harvest of wild populations while still meeting commercial demand for...
