An assessment of N, P, Fe, Zn, Ni and Mo limitation on suspended nutrient diffusing substrates in nearshore areas of Lake Michigan and Lake Erie
James H. Larson, David M. Costello, Jordyn T. Stoll, Andrea S. Fitzgibbon, Sean Bailey, Mary Anne Evans
2024, Freshwater Ecology (39)
In large lakes, metal availability sometimes limits the acquisition of nutrients (nitrogen, N and phosphorus, P) in offshore waters that are relatively isolated from tributaries and sediments. We hypothesize that metals may also be important within harmful algal blooms (HABs). HABs occur where nutrient loads are elevated, but...
Quantifying potential effects of China’s gallium and germanium export restrictions on the U.S. economy
Nedal T. Nassar, Ensieh Shojaeddini, Elisa Alonso, Brian Jaskula, Amy Tolcin
2024, Open-File Report 2024-1057
China’s export controls on gallium and germanium exemplify concerns regarding the reliability of supplies of mineral commodities that are essential to economic development, national security, and transition to renewable energy. This report presents a new model that quantifies the potential effects of mineral commodity supply disruptions on the U.S. economy....
Forest cover influences fish mercury concentrations in national parks of the western U.S.
Colleen M. Flanagan-Pritz, Branden L. Johnson, James Willacker, Christopher M. Kennedy, Ninette R. Daniele, Collin A. Eagles-Smith
2024, Science of the Total Environment (955)
The global prevalence of mercury (Hg) contamination and its complex biogeochemical cycling has resulted in elevated Hg concentrations in biota in remote and pristine environments. However, there is uncertainty in the relative importance of Hg deposition and landscape factors that control Hg cycling and bioaccumulation. To address this, we measured...
Climate change amplifies ongoing declines in sagebrush ecological integrity
Martin C. Holdrege, Kyle A. Palmquist, Daniel Rodolphe Schlaepfer, William K. Lauenroth, Chad S. Boyd, Megan K. Creutzburg, Michele R. Crist, Kevin E. Doherty, Thomas E. Remington, John C. Tull, Lief A. Wiechman, John B. Bradford
2024, Rangeland Ecology and Management (97) 25-40
Understanding how climate change will contribute to ongoing declines in sagebrush ecological integrity is critical for informing natural resource management, yet complicated by interactions with wildfire and biological invasions. Here, we assessed potential future changes in sagebrush ecological integrity under a range of scenarios using an individual plant-based simulation model,...
Hatch timing of largemouth bass: Implications for recruitment at the northern edge of their native range
Giancarlo Coppola, Craig J. Kelling, Daniel J. Dembkowski, Daniel A. Isermann
2024, Journal of Freshwater Ecology (39)
Climate-related shifts in hatch timing could mean that age-0 largemouth bass Micropterus salmoides in north temperate lakes reach larger sizes and experience higher survival, which may contribute to increased prevalence of this species in many lakes. However, information on age-0 largemouth bass life history is lacking for these lakes. We estimated hatch...
Reframing conservation audiences from individuals to social beings
L. Thomas-Walters, V. Cologna, E. de Lange, J. Ettinger, M. Selinske, Megan Siobhan Jones
2024, Conservation Letters (17)
Environmental practitioners often develop communications and behavior change interventions that conceptualize individuals as consumers or as other limited, standalone personae. This view neglects the role of conservation audiences as social beings with complex social relationships and networks, potentially resulting in lost opportunities to increase the effectiveness of conservation interventions. We...
Migratory strategies across an ecological barrier: Is the answer blowing in the wind?
Rosalyn E. Bathrick, James A. Johnson, Daniel R. Ruthrauff, Rebekah Snyder, Maria Stager, Nathan R. Senner
2024, Movement Ecology (12)
Background: Ecological barriers can shape the movement strategies of migratory animals that navigate around or across them, creating migratory divides. Wind plays a large role in facilitating aerial migrations, and can temporally or spatially change the challenge posed by an ecological barrier, with beneficial winds potentially converting a barrier to...
Climate futures for lizards and snakes in western North America may result in new species management issues
David S. Pilliod, Michelle I. Jeffries, Robert Arkle, Deanna H. Olson
2024, Ecology and Evolution (14)
We assessed changes in fundamental climate-niche space for lizard and snake species in western North America under modeled climate scenarios to inform natural resource managers of possible shifts in species distributions. We generated eight distribution models for each of 130 snake and lizard species...
Propagating observation errors to enable scalable and rigorous enumeration of plant population abundance with aerial imagery
Andrii Zaiats, Trevor Caughlin, Jennyffer Cruz, David S. Pilliod, Megan E Cattau, Rongsong Liu, Richard Rachman, Maisha Maliha, Donna M. Delparte, John DF Clare
2024, Methods in Ecology and Evolution (15) 2074-2086
Estimating and monitoring plant population size is fundamental for ecological research, as well as conservation and restoration programs. High-resolution imagery has potential to facilitate such estimation and monitoring. However, remotely sensed estimates typically have higher uncertainty than field measurements, risking biased inference on...
Accounting for multiple uncertainties in a decision-support population viability assessment
Erica M. Christensen, Abigail Jean Lawson, E. Rivenbark, P.K. London, D. Castellanos, J.C. Culbertson, S.M. DeMay, C. Eakin, L.S. Pearson, K. Soileau, J. Hardin Waddle, Conor P. McGowan
2024, Biological Conservation (299)
Conservation and management decisions often must be made on strict timelines, based on the “best available information” regarding a species’ current and expected future status. Simulation models are valuable tools for predicting a species’ future status but must incorporate multiple types of uncertainty in order to provide a complete understanding...
Landsat geometric and radiometric calibration and characterization
Jerad Shaw, Cody Anderson, Mike Choate, Esad Micijevic
2024, Fact Sheet 2024-3039
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Earth Resources Observation and Science Calibration and Validation (Cal/Val) Center of Excellence (ECCOE) focuses on improving the accuracy, precision, calibration, and product quality of remote-sensing data, leveraging years of multiscale optical system geometric and radiometric calibration and characterization experience. The ECCOE Landsat Cal/Val team...
Earth observation remote sensing tools—Assessing systems, trends, and characteristics
Simon J. Cantrell, Jeff Clauson, Cody Anderson
2024, Fact Sheet 2024-3040
With the ever-increasing number of civil and commercial remote-sensing satellite launches in recent years, the Earth Observation community needs to better understand the quality of new data products as they become available for scientific research purposes....
Peering into the eye of the sea lamprey: What can stable isotopes in lamprey eye lenses reveal about their life history?
Thomas M. Evans, Joseph D. Zydlewski
2024, Environmental Biology of Fishes (107) 1155-1169
The Atlantic sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus) is an anadromous species which is a detritivore for years in freshwater, before metamorphosing into a juvenile and feeding parasitically at sea. However, their migratory patterns and marine ecology are poorly characterized. In other fishes, chemical analysis of calcified structures has aided in understanding...
Northern Mexican gartersnake demographics and movement ecology
Javan Mathias Bauder, Anthony Pawlicki, Matt Goode
2024, Cooperator Science Series CSS-158-2024
The northern Mexican gartersnake (Thamnophis eques; hereafter NMGS) is a federally threatened species occurring in riparian areas in central and southeast Arizona and west-central New Mexico. While previous studies have examined the ecology of this species in central Arizona, less is known about NMGS ecology in grassland landscapes of southeast...
Drivers of woody dominance across global drylands
Lucio Biancari, Martin R. Aguiar, David J. Eldridge, Gastón R. Oñatibia, Yoann Le Bagousse-Pinguet, Hugo Saiz, Nicolas Gross, Amy T. Austin, Victoria Ochoa, Beatriz Gozalo, Sergio Asensio, Emilio Guirado, Enrique Valencia, Miguel Berdugo, Cesar Plaza, Jaime Martinez-Valderrama, Betty J. Mendoza, Miguel García-Gómez, Mehdi Abedi, Rodrigo J. Ahumada, Julio M. Alcantara, Fateh Amghar, Jose D. Anadon, Valeria Aramayo, Tulio Arredondo, Maaike Y. Bader, Khadijeh Bahalkeh, Farah Ben Salem, Niels Blaum, Bazartseren Boldgiv, Matthew A. Bowker, Cristina Branquinho, Chongfeng Bu, Batbold Byambatsogt, Dianela A. Calvo, Andrea P. Castillo Monroy, Helena Castro, Patricio Castro-Quezada, Roukaya Chibani, Abel A. Conceição, Courtney M. Currier, David A. Donoso, Andrew David Dougill, Hamid Ejtehadi, Carlos I. Espinosa, Alex Fajardo, Mohammad Farzam, Daniela Ferrante, Lauchlan H. Fraser, Juan J. Gaitan, Laureano A. Gherardi, Elizabeth Gusman-Montalvan, Rosa M. Hernández-Hernández, Norbert Holzel, Elisabeth Huber-Sannwald, Frederic M. Hughes, Oswaldo Jadan-Maza, Florian Jeltsch, Anke Jentsch, Mengchen Ju, Kudzai F. Kaseke, Liana Kindermann, Melanie Kobel, Peter C. le Roux, Pierre Liancourt, Anja Linstadter, Jushan Liu, Michelle A. Louw, Gillian Maggs-Kolling, Oumarou Malam Issa, Eugene Marais, Pierre Margerie, Joao Vitor S. Messeder, Juan P. Mora, Gerardo Moreno, Seth M. Munson, Gabriel Oliva, Yolanda Pueyo, R. Emiliano Quiroga, Sasha C. Reed, Pedro J. Rey, Alexandra Rodriguez, Laura B. Rodriguez, Víctor Rolo, Jan C. Ruppert, Osvaldo E. Sala, Ayman Salah, Ilan Stavi, Colton R. A. Stephens, Anthony M. Swemmer, Alberto L. Teixido, Andrew D. Thomas, Heather L. Throop, Katja Tielborger, Samantha K. Travers, Liesbeth van den Brink, Viktoria Wagner, Wanyoike Wamiti, Deli Wang, Lixin Wang, Peter Wolff, Laura Yahdjian, Eli Zaady, Fernando T. Maestre
2024, Science Advances (10)
Increases in the abundance of woody species have been reported to affect the provisioning of ecosystem services in drylands worldwide. However, it is virtually unknown how multiple biotic and abiotic drivers, such as climate, grazing, and fire, interact to determine woody dominance across global drylands. We conducted a standardized field...
Tracking mangrove condition changes using dense Landsat time series
Xiucheng Yang, Zhe Zhu, Kevin D. Kroeger, Shi Qiu, Scott Covington, Jeremy R. Conrad, Zhiliang Zhu
2024, Remote Sensing of Environment (315)
Mangroves in tropical and subtropical coasts are subject to episodic disturbances, notably from severe storms, leading to potential widespread vegetation mortality. The ability of vegetation to recover varies, and with disturbances becoming more frequent and severe, it is vital to track and project vegetation responses to support management and policy...
Lake temperature and morphometry shape the thermal composition of recreational fishing catch
Lyndsie S. Wszola, Nicholas A. Sievert, Abigail J. Lynch, Holly Susan Embke, Anna L. Kaz, Matthew D. Robertson, Stephen R. Midway, Craig P. Paukert
2024, Transactions of the American Fisheries Society (153) 746-762
ObjectiveManaging freshwater fisheries in warming lakes is challenging because climate change impacts anglers, fish, and their interactions.MethodsWe integrated recent models of current and future lake temperatures with recreational fisheries catch data from 587 lakes in three north-central U.S. states (Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin) to...
Reducing wastewater nitrogen loading by >90% with carbon-amended septic systems: A field demonstration in Barnstable (Cape Cod), Massachusetts
Laura Erban, Sara Wigginton, Brian Baumgaertel, Bryan Horsley, Timothy D. McCobb, Zee Crocker, Scott Horsley, Timothy Gleason
2024, Journal of Environmental Management (370)
Onsite wastewater treatment systems (OWTS) are a major source of excess nutrients and co-pollutants in watersheds across the United States. In Barnstable County (Cape Cod), Massachusetts, effluent from septic systems and cesspools contributes approximately 80% of the controllable reactive nitrogen...
Previous reproductive success and environmental variation influence nest-site fidelity of a subarctic-nesting goose
Jordan M. Thompson, Brian D. Uher-Koch, Bryan L. Daniels, Thomas V. Riecke, Joel A. Schmutz, Benjamin S. Sedinger
2024, Ecology and Evolution (14)
Nest-site fidelity is a common strategy in birds and is believed to be adaptive due to familiarity with local conditions. Returning to previously successful nest sites (i.e., the win-stay lose-switch strategy) may be beneficial when habitat quality is spatially variable and temporally predictable; however, changes in environmental conditions may constrain...
When and where can coastal wetland restoration increase carbon sequestration as a natural climate solution?
Scott F. Jones, Ariane Arias-Ortiz, Dennis Baldocchi, Meagan J. Eagle, Daniel A. Friess, Catrina Gore, Gregory E. Noe, Stefanie Nolte, Patty Oikawa, Adina Paytan, Jacqueline L. Raw, Brian J. Roberts, Kerrylee Rogers, Charles A Schutte, Camille Stagg, Karen M. Thorne, Eric J. Ward, Lisamarie Windham-Myers, Eric S. Yando
2024, Coastal Futures (2)
Coastal wetlands are hotspots of carbon sequestration, and their conservation and restoration can help to mitigate climate change. However, there remains uncertainty on when and where coastal wetland restoration can most effectively act as a Natural Climate Solution (NCS). Here, we synthesize current understanding to illustrate the requirements for coastal...
Predictive understanding of stream salinization in a developed watershed using machine learning
Jared David Smith, Lauren Elizabeth Koenig, Margaux Jeanne Sleckman, Alison P. Appling, Jeffrey M Sadler, Vincent T. DePaul, Zoltan Szabo
2024, Environmental Science and Technology (58) 18833
Stream salinization is a global issue, yet few models can provide reliable salinity estimates for unmonitored locations at the time scales required for ecological exposure assessments. Machine learning approaches are presented that use spatially limited high-frequency monitoring and spatially distributed discrete samples to estimate the daily...
Controls on the stratigraphic architecture of the US Atlantic margin: Processes forming the accommodation space
Guy Lang, Uri S. ten Brink, Deborah Hutchinson, Gregory S. Mountain, Uri Schattner
2024, Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth (129)
Accommodation space governs the spatial and temporal distributions of sediments in continental margins. Mapping the sedimentation patterns, therefore, offers insights into the solid-Earth processes that shape accommodation space. We assembled an unprecedented amount of seismic and borehole data along the Eastern North American Margin and used it...
Breeding by western Yellow-billed Cuckoos in xeroriparian habitat in southeastern Arizona
Nicholas D. Beauregard, Tad C. Theimer, Charles A. Drost, Susan J. Sferra
2024, Journal of Field Ornithology (95)
The identification of occupied habitat is an important component of recovery efforts for threatened and endangered species. The western population of the Yellow-billed Cuckoo (Coccyzus americanus), federally listed as a threatened distinct population segment, has long been considered a riparian-obligate, yet recent survey efforts in southeastern Arizona have documented cuckoos...
A dataset of two-dimensional XBeach model set-up files for northern California
Andrea C. O'Neill, Cornelis M. Nederhoff, Li H. Erikson, Jennifer Anne Thomas, Patrick L. Barnard
2024, Data (9)
Here, we describe a dataset of two-dimensional (2D) XBeach model files that were developed for the Coastal Storm Modeling System (CoSMoS) in northern California as an update to an earlier CoSMoS implementation that relied on one-dimensional (1D) modeling methods. We provide details on the data and their application, such that...
Contemporary fires are less frequent but more severe in dry conifer forests of the southwestern United States
E. McClure, J.D. Cooper, C. Guiterman, Ellis Margolis, S. Parks
2024, Nature Communications Earth & Environment (5)
Wildfires in the southwestern United States are increasingly frequent and severe, but whether these trends exceed historical norms remains contested. Here we combine dendroecological records, satellite-derived burn severity, and field measured tree mortality to compare historical (1700-1880) and contemporary (1985-2020) fire regimes at tree-ring fire-scar sites...
