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Loss of wetland habitats and their associated biological communities is a major environmental concern. Quality assessment indices (QAIs) and indices of biological integrity (IBIs) are useful for assessing the responses of taxa to wetland habitat quality and land use in the surrounding landscape. We synthesized the results of our previous...

Switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.), a highly productive perennial grass, has been recommended as one potential source for cellulosic biofuel feedstocks. Previous studies indicate that planting perennial grasses (e.g., switchgrass) in high‐topographic‐relief cropland waterway buffers can improve local environmental conditions and sustainability. The main advantages of this land management practice include (i)...

Conventional PCR is an established method to detect Tetracapsuloides bryosalmonaeDNA in fish tissues and to confirm diagnosis of proliferative kidney disease (PKD) caused by T. bryosalmonae. However, the commonly used PKX5f‐6r primers were designed with the intention of obtaining sequence information and are suboptimal for determining parasite DNA presence. A new PCR...

Thousands of lesser scaup (Aythya affinis) die during spring and fall migrations through the upper Midwest, USA, from infections with Cyathocotyle bushiensis and Sphaeridiotrema spp. (Class: Trematoda) after ingesting infected intermediate hosts, such as non-native faucet snails (Bithynia tentaculata). The lesser scaup is a species of...

We developed a new software package, burnr, for fire history analysis and plotting in the Rstatistical programming environment. It was developed for tree-ring fire-scar analysis, but is broadly applicable to other event analyses (e.g., avalanches, frost rings, or culturally modified trees). Our new package can read, write, and manipulate standard tree-ring fire history FHX...

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In south-central Texas the lower Guadalupe River has incised into the outcrop of the Carrizo-Wilcox aquifer. The river and the aquifer are hydraulically connected across the outcrop, although the connectivity is obscured at the surface by alluvium and surface-water and groundwater exchange dynamics are currently poorly understood. To investigate surface-water...

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Acoustic recording units (ARUs) enable geographically extensive surveys of sensitive and elusive species. However, a hidden cost of using ARU data for modeling species occupancy is that prohibitive amounts of human verification may be required to correct species identifications made from automated software. Bat acoustic studies exemplify this challenge because...

During surveys for Thamnophis gigas (Giant Gartersnake), I observed an adult T. sirtalis fitchi with unusual coloration— a yellow-cream background color with some typical red coloration laterally, but with very minimal amounts of the dark slate-black (along the sides of the yellow dorsal stripe and on top of the head)...

Water circulation over coral reefs can determine the degree to which reef organisms are exposed to the overlying waters, so understanding circulation is necessary to interpret spatial patterns in coral health. Because coral reefs often have high geomorphic complexity, circulation patterns and the duration of exposure, or “local residence time”...

Heat transfer theory suggests that floodplain soils in dryland riverine ecosystems can be cooled by hyporheic flows generated during spring floods. I compared soil temperature cycles and associated hydrologic factors on a free‐flowing river to those on a river where flows and surface water temperatures are now regulated. Spring surface...

We collated available satellite telemetry data for six species of ice-associated marine mammals in the Pacific Arctic: ringed seals (Pusa hispida; n = 118), bearded seals(Erignathus barbatus, n = 51), spotted seals (Phoca largha, n = 72), Pacific walruses (Odobenus rosmarus divergens, n = 389); bowhead whales (Balaena mysticetus, n = 46), and five Arctic and sub-arctic stocks of beluga whales (Delphinapterus leucas, n = 103). We also included...

Rocky shorelines are relatively common features along modern coastlines, but few have been recognized in the geological record. The hard substrates of rocky shorelines telescope the width of offshore marine environments, thus the diagnostic deposits observed in such settings today have a low preservation potential due to small accommodation space...

Social science offers rich descriptions of relationships between wildland–urban interface residents and wildfire, but syntheses across different contexts might gloss over important differences. We investigate the potential extent of such differences using data collected consistently in sixty-eight Colorado communities and hierarchical modeling. We find substantial variation across responses for all...

The Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) on-board Cassini took a few high-resolution images of the icy Saturnian satellites Mimas and Enceladus over the last seven years of the Cassini mission during non-targeted flybys. We used the new Mimas images to improve the existing semi-controlled mosaic of Mimas. A new controlled Enceladus mosaic was published recently (Bland et al.,...

Modern observations of planktic foraminifera from sediment trap studies help to constrain the regional ecology of paleoceanographically valuable species. Results from a weekly-resolved sediment trap time series (2008–2014) in the northern Gulf of Mexico demonstrate that 92% of Globorotalia truncatulinoides flux occurs in winter (January, February, and March), and that encrusted and non-encrusted individuals represent calcification in distinct depth habitats....

Uncertainties about the age of base-flow discharge can have serious implications for the management of degraded environmental systems where subsurface pathways, and the ongoing release of pollutants that accumulated in the subsurface during past decades, dominate the water quality signal. Numerical groundwater models may be used to estimate groundwater return...

No abstract available....

Mapping of vegetation types is of great importance to the San Carlos Apache Tribe and their management of forestry and fire fuels. Various remote sensing techniques were applied to classify multitemporal Landsat 8 satellite data, vegetation index, and digital elevation model data. A multitiered unsupervised classification generated over 900 classes...

A common yet largely untested assumption in the theory of animal movements is that increased rates and a wider range of movements, such as occurs during breeding, make animals more vulnerable to mortality. We examined mortality among 34 white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) wearing GPS collars during the autumn breeding season...

Deposit data derived from IAEA UDEPO (http://infcis.iaea.org/UDEPO/About.cshtml) database with assistance from P. Bruneton (France) and M. Mihalasky (U.S.A.). The map is an updated companion to "World Distribution of Uranium Deposits (UDEPO) with Uranium Deposit Classification, IAEA Tech-Doc-1629". Geology was derived from L.B. Chorlton, Generalized Geology of the World, Geological Survey of...

The Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) generates substantial benefits to continental duck populations by providing grassland nesting habitat in rested cropland. Seeding mixes of CRP grasslands vary among numerous conservation practices, but one contrast of interest in the Prairie Pothole Region is the use of introduced, or “tame” versus native grass....

Assessing nutrient stores in avian species is important for understanding the extent to which body condition influences success or failure in life‐history events. We evaluated predictive models using morphometric characteristics to estimate total body lipids (TBL) and total body protein (TBP), based on traditional proximate analyses, in spring migrating lesser...