Paired comparisons with quiet surface drones show evidence of fish behavioral response to motorized vessels during acoustic surveys in Lake Superior
Thomas M. Evans, Lars G. Rudstam, Suresh A Sethi, Daniel L. Yule, David Warner, Steve A. Farha, Andrew R. Barnard, Mark Richard Dufour, Timothy P. O’Brien, Kayden Nasworthy, Ian Harding, Bradley A. Ray, Edmund J. Isaac, Joshua Blankenheim, Hannah B. Blair, James M. Watkins, Steven A. Senczyszyn, James Roberts, Peter C. Esselman
2024, Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences (81) 1740-1851
Acoustic surveys are important for fish stock assessments, but fish responses to survey vessels can bias acoustic estimates. We leveraged quiet uncrewed surface vessels (USVs) to characterize potential bias in acoustic surveys. Five conventional motorized ships overtook USVs from astern over 2 km transects at night in...
Water-quality constituent concentrations and loads computed using real-time water-quality data for the Republican River, Clay Center, Kansas, August 2018 through July 2023
Ariele R. Kramer, Justin R. Abel
2024, Scientific Investigations Report 2024-5072
Milford Lake, the largest reservoir by surface area in Kansas, has had confirmed harmful algal blooms every summer since reporting began in 2011, except 2018–19. Milford Lake has been listed as impaired and designated hypereutrophic under section 303(d) of the 1972 Clean Water Act. In 2014, the Kansas Department of...
Using systematic conservation planning to recover climate resilient habitat for threatened and endangered species while retaining areas of cultural importance
Christina Leopold, Lucas Fortini, Jonathan Sprague, Rachel Sprague, Steven C. Hess
2024, Conservation (4) 435-451
The effective management of at-risk species often requires fine-scale actions by natural resource managers. However, balancing these actions with concurrent land uses is challenging, particularly when compounded by the interplay of climate shifts, and escalating wildland–urban interface conflicts. We used spatial prioritization tools designed for biodiversity conservation to help...
Range-wide salamander densities reveal a key component of terrestrial vertebrate biomass in eastern North American forests
Evan H. Campbell Grant, Jillian Elizabeth Fleming, Elizabeth Bastiaans, Adrianne Brand, Jacey Brooks, Catherine Devlin, Kristen Epp, Matt Evans, M. Caitlin Fisher-Reid, Brian Gratwicke, Kristine Grayson, Natalie Haydt, Raisa Hernandez-Pacheco, Daniel J. Hocking, Amanda Hyde, Michael Losito, Maisie MacKnight, Tanya Matlaga, Louise Mead, David J. Munoz, William B. Peterman, Veronica Puza, Charles Shafer, Sean Sterrett, Chris Sutherland, Lily M. Thompson, Alexa R. Warwick, Alexander D. Wright, Kerry Yurewicz, David A. W. Miller
2024, Biology Letters (20)
Characterizing the population density of species is a central interest in ecology. Eastern North America is the global hotspot for biodiversity of plethodontid salamanders, an inconspicuous component of terrestrial vertebrate communities, and among the most widespread is the eastern red-backed salamander, Plethodon cinereus. Previous work suggests...
Wildland fire effects on sediment, salinity, and selenium yields in a basin underlain by Cretaceous marine shales near Rangely, Colorado
Natalie K. Day, Todd M. Preston, Patrick C. Longley
2024, Scientific Investigations Report 2024-5043
Understanding and quantifying soil erosion from rangelands is a high priority for land managers, especially in areas underlain by Cretaceous Mancos Shale, which is a natural source of sediment, salinity, and selenium to surface waters in many areas of western Colorado and eastern Utah. The purpose of this report is...
Monitoring and simulation of hydrology, suspended sediment, and nutrients in selected tributary watersheds of Lake Erie, New York
Katherine R. Merriman, Benjamin N. Fisher, Elizabeth A. Nystrom, Aubrey R. Bunch, Robert J. Welk, William M. Kappel
2024, Scientific Investigations Report 2024-5022
The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with Erie County, New York, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, and the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, collected water-quality samples in nine selected New York tributaries to Lake Erie, computed estimates of suspended sediment and nutrient loads using the R scripting package...
Developing version 2 of satellite-estimated precipitation monthly reports for selected locations in the Republic of the Marshall Islands
Gabriel B. Senay, David A. Helweg, Stefanie Kagone, Thomas Cecere, Tiare Eastmond, Amy Koch, Kurtis Nelson, Jack Randon
2024, Data Report 1199
The Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI; also known as the Marshall Islands) is a nation of more than 30 low-lying atolls and islands, most of which are inhabited, dispersed across an Exclusive Economic Zone over 770,000 square miles in the tropical central north Pacific Ocean. The study objectives and...
Fish size structures in lakes of the Lower Mississippi River floodplain
Leandro E. Miranda, D.J. Dembkowski
2024, Freshwater Biology (69) 1390-1398
The Lower Mississippi River has a floodplain that includes >1350 perennial lakes carved by shifts in river courses and other hydro-fluvial processes over eons. Notwithstanding their similar provenances, these waterbodies exhibit an immense variety of morphologies and successional stages that illustrate their natural trajectory from aquatic to forested wetlands....
Large-scale dam removal and ecosystem restoration
Rebecca McCaffery, Jeffrey J. Duda, Laura Soissons, Jean-Marc Roussel
2024, Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution (12)
Rivers underpin vital ecosystems that support aquatic and terrestrial biodiversity and many ecosystem services, including food, water, culture, and recreation (Dudgeon et al. 2006). After centuries of building dams on rivers across the world, river restoration via dam removal is receiving increased public attention, financial investment, and scientific study because...
Redistribution of debris-flow sediment following severe wildfire and floods in the Jemez Mountains, New Mexico, USA
Jonathan M. Friedman, Anne C. Tillery, Samuel J. Alfieri, Elizabeth Rachaelann Skaggs, Patrick B. Shafroth, Craig D. Allen
2024, Earth Surface Processes and Landforms (49) 4263-4274
Severe fire on steep slopes increases stormwater runoff and the occurrence of runoff-initiated debris flows. Predicting locations of debris flows and their downstream effects on trunk streams requires watershed-scale high-resolution topographic data. Intense precipitation in July and September 2013 following the June 2011 Las Conchas Fire in the Jemez Mountains,...
Developing, testing, and communicating earthquake forecasts: Current practices and future directions
Leila Mizrahi, Irina Dallo, Nicholas van der Elst, Annemarie Christophersen, Ilaria Spassiani, Maximillian J. Werner, Pablo Iturrieta, Jose Bayona, Iunio Iervolino, Max Schneider, Morgan T. Page, Jiancang Zhuang, Marcus Herrmann, Andrew J. Michael, Guiseppe Falcone, Warner Marzocchi, David A. Rhoades, Matthew Gerstenberger, Laura Gulia, Danijel Schorlemmer, Julia Becker, Marta Han, Lorena Kuratle, Michele Marti, Stefan Wiemer
2024, Reviews of Geophysics (63)
While deterministically predicting the time and location of earthquakes remains impossible, earthquake forecasting models can provide estimates of the probabilities of earthquakes occurring within some region over time. To enable informed decision-making of civil protection, governmental agencies, or the public, Operational Earthquake Forecasting (OEF) systems aim to provide authoritative earthquake...
Effects of temporal hydrologic shifts on the population biology of an endangered freshwater fish in a dryland river ecosystem
Jonathan Q. Richmond, Philip Robert Gould, Jennifer Pareti, Andrew Aitken, Eric Morrissette, Adam R. Backlin, Chris Dellith, Robert N. Fisher
2024, Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems (34)
Species occupying dryland river ecosystems often experience “boom-and-bust” demographic cycles that coincide with shifts in habitat availability. Knowing whether declines are within natural thresholds versus those caused by acute human disturbance is critical for managing protected species. We investigated temporal shifts in abundance and habitat use of an endangered population...
Variation in dietary ecology of two invasive American Bullfrog (Lithobates catesbeianus) populations in Southern California
Nathan W. Smith, Ryan J. Hanscom, Jonathan Q. Richmond, Robert N. Fisher, Rulon W. Clark
2024, Herpetologica (80) 241-247
Invasive American Bullfrogs (Lithobates catesbeianus) are a threat to native species in riparian ecosystems worldwide. They are indiscriminate predators consuming both vertebrate and invertebrate prey, negatively affecting biodiversity. Documenting the diet and feeding ecology of invasive L. catesbeianus can help management agencies identify affected species and facilitate eradication efforts. We...
Revision of ModelMuse to support the use of PEST software with MODFLOW and SUTRA models
Richard B. Winston
2024, Techniques and Methods 6-A64
Executive SummaryModelMuse is a graphical user interface for several groundwater modeling programs. ModelMuse was updated to generate the input files for the parameter estimation software suite PEST. The software is used with MODFLOW or SUTRA models to run PEST-based parameter estimation and display the updated model inputs after parameter estimation....
Population genetic structure and demographic history reconstruction of introduced flathead catfish (Pylodictis olivaris) in two US Mid-Atlantic rivers
Justin Waraniak, Michael S. Eackles, Jason Keagy, Geoffrey D. Smith, Megan Schall, Sydney Stark, Shannon L. White, David C. Kazyak, Tyler Wagner
2024, Journal of Fish Biology
Population genetic analysis of invasive populations can provide valuable insights into the source of introductions, pathways for expansion, and their demographic histories. Flathead catfish (Pylodictis olivaris) are a prolific invasive species with high fecundity, long-distance dispersal, and piscivorous feeding habits that can lead to declines in native fish populations. In...
Origin of the Laurentian Great Lakes fish fauna through upward adaptive radiation cascade prior to the Last Glacial Maximum
Nathan J.C. Backenstose, Daniel J. MacGuigan, Christopher A. Osborne, Moises A. Bernal, Elizabeth K. Thomas, Eric Normandeau, Daniel L. Yule, Wendylee Stott, Amanda Susanne Ackiss, Victor A. Albert, Louis Bernatchez, Trevor J. Krabbenhoft
2024, Communications Biology (7)
The evolutionary histories of adaptive radiations can be marked by dramatic demographic fluctuations. However, the demographic histories of ecologically-linked co-diversifying lineages remain understudied. The Laurentian Great Lakes provide a unique system of two such radiations that are dispersed across depth gradients with a predator-prey relationship. We show that the North...
Resource availability and heterogeneity affect space use and resource selection of a feral ungulate
Saeideh Esmaeili, Kathryn A. Schoenecker, Sarah King
2024, Ecosphere (15)
Animals adjust their habitat use patterns in response to changes in their physiological needs and environmental conditions. Understanding the mechanisms underlying resource selection and space use across time and space reveals effects of the environment on animals' decisions. We explored the effects of habitat availability and heterogeneity on the seasonal...
Body mass changes of dabbling and diving ducks wintering in California
Mark P. Herzog, Josh T. Ackerman, Jeffrey D. Kohl, Brady Lynn Fettig, C. Alex Hartman, Sarah H. Peterson, Michael L. Casazza, Joseph P. Fleskes
2024, Journal of Wildlife Management (88)
Bird body mass is often used as an index of body condition and fluctuates throughout the year in response to environmental conditions and avian life-history events. We examined the body mass of 59,572 ducks representing 13 species (7 dabbling duck species and 6 diving duck species) harvested within the 3...
Estimating traffic volume and road age in Wyoming to inform resource management planning: An application with wildlife-vehicle collisions
Richard D. Inman, Benjamin Seward Robb, Michael S. O’Donnell, David R. Edmunds, Matthew J Holloran, Cameron L. Aldridge
2024, Ecological Indicators (116)
Road networks and their associated vehicular traffic disturb many terrestrial systems, but inventories of roads used to assess these effects often focus on the ‘where’ (e.g., local road type and density) and neglect the ‘when’ (e.g., temporal disturbance) or ‘how much’ (e.g.,...
Riverine dissolved organic matter transformations increase with watershed area, water residence time, and Damköhler numbers in nested watersheds
Kevin Alexander Ryan, Vanessa Garayburu-Caruso, Byron Crump, Ted Bambakidis, Peter Raymond, Shaoda Liu, James Stegen
2024, Biogeochemistry (167) 1203-1224
Quantifying the relative influence of factors and processes controlling riverine ecosystem function is essential to predicting future conditions under global change. Dissolved organic matter (DOM) is a fundamental component of riverine ecosystems that fuels microbial food webs, influences nutrient and light availability, and represents a significant carbon flux globally. The...
It's about time: A multistate semicontinuous time mark–recapture model to evaluate seasonal survival and movement rates of juvenile Coho Salmon in a small coastal watershed
Nicholas P. Van Vleet, Darren Ward, Nicholas A. Som, Daniel C. Barton, Colin Anderson, Mark J. Henderson
2024, Transactions of the American Fisheries Society (153) 541-558
ObjectiveMany mark–recapture models assume that releases and recaptures are discrete events, and researchers often aggregate continuous recapture data (e.g., passive integrated transponder [PIT] detections) into coarse temporal scales to satisfy this assumption. This temporal discretization could result in parameter biases by ignoring the individual heterogeneity in the...
A heuristic method to evaluate consequences for flight control and stability induced by attachment of biologging devices to birds and bats
Todd E. Katzner, George Young
2024, Methods in Ecology and Evolution (15) 1553-1560
Biologging is central to the study of wildlife, but questions remain about the minimization of effects of biologging devices. Rarely considered are changes biologging devices induce on an animal's centre of mass (COM) and resulting losses of flight control and stability.We applied established...
In-situ valve opening response of eastern oysters to estuarine conditions
Romain Lavaud, Stephanie K. Archer, Megan K. La Peyre, Finella M. Campanino, Sandra M. Casas, Jerome F. La Peyre
2024, Marine Biology (171)
High-frequency recordings of valve opening behavior (VOB) in bivalves are often used to detect changes in environmental conditions. However, generally a single variable such as temperature or the presence of toxicants in the water is the focus. A description of routine VOB under non-stressful conditions is also important for interpreting...
Mapping eelgrass cover and biomass at Izembek Lagoon, Alaska, using in-situ field data and Sentinel-2 satellite imagery
David C. Douglas, Michael D. Fleming, Vijay P. Patil, David H. Ward
2024, Preprint
Two eelgrass (Zostera marina) maps of Izembek Lagoon, Alaska, were generated by first creating maps of spectrally unique classes from each of two Sentinel-2 satellite images collected on July 1, 2016, and August 14, 2020, then attributing the spectral classes with information about eelgrass conditions based on field data. Maps...
The Amazon Basin’s rivers and lakes support Nearctic-breeding shorebirds during southward migration
Jennifer A. Linscott, Enzo Basso, Rosalyn Bathrick, Juliana Bosi de Almeida, Alexandra Anderson, Fernando Angulo-Pratolongo, Bart M Ballard, Joel Bety, Stephen Brown, Katherine S. Christie, Sarah J. Clements, Christian Friis, Callie Gesmundo, Marie-Andree Giroux, Autumn-Lynn Harrison, Christopher M. Harwood, Jason M. Hill, James A. Johnson, Bart Kempenaers, Benoit Laliberte, Jean-Francois Lamarre, Richard B. Lanctot, Christopher Latty, Nicolas Lecomte, Laura Anne McDuffie, Juan G. Navedo, Erica Nol, Zachary M. Pohlen, Jennie Rausch, R.B. Renfrew, Jorge Ruiz, Mike Russell, Daniel R. Ruthrauff, Sarah T. Saalfeld, Brett K. Sandercock, Shiloh A. Schulte, Paul A Smith, Audrey R. Taylor, T. Lee Tibbitts, Mihai Valcu, Mitch D. Weegman, James R. Wright, Nathan R. Senner
2024, Ornithological Applications (126)
Identifying the migration routes and stopover sites used by declining species is critical for developing targeted conservation actions. Long-distance migratory shorebirds are among the groups of birds declining most rapidly, yet we frequently lack detailed knowledge about the routes and stopover sites they use during their hemisphere-spanning migrations. This is...
