Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Opportunity observations of the Burns formation: crater hopping at Meridiani Planum
R.E. Arvidson, J.F. Bell III, J.G. Catalano, B. C. Clark, V.K. Fox, Ralf Gellert, J.P. Grotzinger, E.A. Guinness, Kenneth E. Herkenhoff, A.H. Knoll, M.G.A. Lapotre, S. M. McLennan, D. W. Ming, R.V. Morris, S.L. Murchie, K. E. Powell, M. D. Smith, S. W. Squyres, M.J. Wolff, J.J. Wray
2015, Journal of Geophysical Research E: Planets (120) 429-451
Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars hyperspectral (1.0–2.65 µm) along-track oversampled observations covering Victoria, Santa Maria, Endeavour, and Ada craters were processed to 6 m/pixel and used in combination with Opportunity observations to detect and map hydrated Mg and Ca sulfate minerals in the Burns formation. The strongest spectral absorption features were...
Using an experimental manipulation to determine the effectiveness of a stock enhancement program
David R. Stewart, James M. Long
2015, Freshwater Ecology
We used an experimental manipulation to determine the impact of stocking 178 mm channel catfish Ictalurus punctatus in six impoundments. The study design consisted of equal numbers (two) of control, ceased-stock, and stocked treatments that were sampled one year before and two years after stocking. Relative abundance, growth, size structure, and average...
Turbidity, light, temperature, and hydropeaking control primary productivity in the Colorado River, Grand Canyon
Robert O. Hall Jr., Charles B. Yackulic, Theodore A. Kennedy, Michael D. Yard, Emma J. Rosi-Marshall, Nicholas Voichick, Kathrine E. Behn
2015, Limnology and Oceanography (60) 512-516
Dams and river regulation greatly alter the downstream environment for gross primary production (GPP) because of changes in water clarity, flow, and temperature regimes. We estimated reach-scale GPP in five locations of the regulated Colorado River in Grand Canyon using an open channel model of dissolved oxygen. Benthic GPP dominates...
Quantitative attribution of major driving forces on soil organic carbon dynamics
Yiping Wu, Shuguang Liu, Zhengxi Tan
2015, Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems (7) 21-34
Soil organic carbon (SOC) storage plays a major role in the global carbon cycle and is affected by many factors including land use/management changes (e.g., biofuel production-oriented changes). However, the contributions of various factors to SOC changes are not well understood and quantified. This study was designed to investigate the...
An assessment of fish assemblage structure in a large river
Ian A. Kiraly, S.M. Coghlan Jr., Joseph D. Zydlewski, D. Hayes
2015, River Research and Applications (31) 301-312
The Penobscot River drains the largest watershed in Maine and once provided spawning and rearing habitats to 11 species of diadromous fishes. The construction of dams blocked migrations of these fishes and likely changed the structure and function of fish assemblages throughout the river. The proposed removal of two main-stem...
Equation-free modeling unravels the behavior of complex ecological systems
Donald L. DeAngelis, Simeon Yurek
2015, PNAS (112) 3856-3857
Ye et al. (1) address a critical problem confronting the management of natural ecosystems: How can we make forecasts of possible future changes in populations to help guide management actions? This problem is especially acute for marine and anadromous fisheries, where the large interannual fluctuations of populations, arising from complex...
Thermal maturity of Tasmanites microfossils from confocal laser scanning fluorescence microscopy
Paul C. Hackley, Jolanta Kus
2015, Fuel (143) 343-350
We report here, for the first time, spectral properties of Tasmanites microfossils determined by confocal laser scanning fluorescence microscopy (CLSM, using Ar 458 nm excitation). The Tasmanites occur in a well-characterized natural maturation sequence (Ro 0.48–0.74%) of Devonian shale (n = 3 samples) from the Appalachian Basin. Spectral property λmax shows excellent agreement...
Behavioral responses of freshwater mussels to experimental dewatering
Heather S. Galbraith, Carrie J. Blakeslee, William A. Lellis
2015, Freshwater Science (34) 42-52
Understanding the effects of flow alteration on freshwater ecosystems is critical for predicting species responses and restoring appropriate flow regimes. We experimentally evaluated the effects of 3 dewatering rates on behavior of 6 freshwater mussel species in the context of water-removal rates observed in 21 Atlantic Coast rivers. Horizontal movement...
Ahead of his time: Jacob Lipman's 1930 estimate of atmospheric sulfur deposition for the conterminous United States
Edward R. Landa, James B. Shanley
2015, Soil Science (180) 87-89
A 1936 New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin provided an early quantitative assessment of atmospheric deposition of sulfur for the United States that has been compared in this study with more recent assessments. In the early 20th century, anthropogenic sulfur additions from the atmosphere to the soil by the combustion...
Catalog of type specimens of recent mammals: orders Didelphimorpha through Chiroptera (Excluding Rodentia) in the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution
Robert D. Fisher, Craig A. Ludwig
2015, Book
The type collection of Recent Mammals in the Division of Mammals, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, contains 820 specimens bearing names of 809 species-group taxa of Didelphimorphia through Chiroptera, excluding Rodentia, as of June 2014. This catalog presents an annotated list of these holdings comprised of 788 holotypes,...
Response of crayfish to hyporheic water availability and excess sedimentation
Joseph J. Dyer, Thomas A. Worthington, Shannon K. Brewer
2015, Hydrobiologia (747) 147-157
Crayfish in many headwater streams regularly cope with seasonal drought. However, it is unclear how landscape changes affect the long-term persistence of crayfish populations. We designed two laboratory experiments to investigate the acute effects of common landscape stressors on crayfish: water withdrawal and sedimentation. The first experiment tested the interaction...
Robust estimates of environmental effects on population vital rates: an integrated capture–recapture model of seasonal brook trout growth, survival and movement in a stream network
Benjamin H. Letcher, Paul Schueller, Ronald D. Bassar, Keith H. Nislow, Jason A. Coombs, Krzysztof Sakrejda, Michael Morrissey, Douglas B. Sigourney, Andrew R. Whiteley, Matthew J. O'Donnell, Todd L. Dubreuil
2015, Journal of Animal Ecology (84) 337-352
Modelling the effects of environmental change on populations is a key challenge for ecologists, particularly as the pace of change increases. Currently, modelling efforts are limited by difficulties in establishing robust relationships between environmental drivers and population responses.We developed an integrated capture–recapture state-space model to estimate the...
Reservoir area of influence and implications for fisheries management
Dustin R. Martin, Christopher J. Chizinski, Kevin L. Pope
2015, North American Journal of Fisheries Management (35) 185-190
Understanding the spatial area that a reservoir draws anglers from, defined as the reservoir's area of influence, and the potential overlap of that area of influence between reservoirs is important for fishery managers. Our objective was to define the area of influence for reservoirs of the Salt Valley regional fishery...
Bidirectional recovery patterns of Mojave Desert vegetation in an aqueduct pipeline corridor after 36 years: I. Perennial shrubs and grasses
Kristin H. Berry, James F. Weigand, Timothy A. Gowan, Jeremy S. Mack
2015, Journal of Arid Environments (124) 413-425
We studied recovery of 21 perennial plant species along a severely disturbed aqueduct corridor in a Larrea tridentata-Ambrosia dumosa plant alliance in the Mojave Desert 36 years after construction. The 97-m wide corridor contained a central dirt road and buried aqueduct pipeline. We established transects at 0 m (road verge), 20 m and 40 m...
Uranium isotopes and dissolved organic carbon in loess permafrost: Modeling the age of ancient ice
Stephanie A. Ewing, James B. Paces, J.A. O'Donnell, M.T. Jorgenson, M.Z. Kanevskiy, George R. Aiken, Y. Shur, Jennifer W. Harden, Robert G. Striegl
2015, Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta (152) 143-165
The residence time of ice in permafrost is an indicator of past climate history, and of the resilience and vulnerability of high-latitude ecosystems to global change. Development of geochemical indicators of ground-ice residence times in permafrost will advance understanding of the circumstances and evidence of permafrost formation, preservation, and thaw...
The importance of scaling for detecting community patterns: success and failure in assemblages of introduced species
Craig R. Allen, David G. Angeler, Michael P. Moulton, Crawford S. Holling
2015, Diversity (7) 229-241
Community saturation can help to explain why biological invasions fail. However, previous research has documented inconsistent relationships between failed invasions (i.e., an invasive species colonizes but goes extinct) and the number of species present in the invaded community. We use data from bird communities of the Hawaiian island of Oahu,...
Multiscale geophysical imaging of the critical zone
Andy Parsekian, Kamini Singha, Burke J. Minsley, W. Steven Holbrook, Lee Slater
2015, Reviews of Geophysics (53) 1-26
Details of Earth's shallow subsurface—a key component of the critical zone (CZ)—are largely obscured because making direct observations with sufficient density to capture natural characteristic spatial variability in physical properties is difficult. Yet this inaccessible region of the CZ is fundamental to processes that support ecosystems, society, and the environment....
Effects of fire on small mammal communities in frequent-fire forests in California
Susan L. Roberts, Douglas A. Kelt, Jan W. Van Wagtendonk, A. Keith Miles, Marc D. Meyer
2015, Journal of Mammalogy (96) 107-119
Fire is a natural, dynamic process that is integral to maintaining ecosystem function. The reintroduction of fire (e.g., prescribed fire, managed wildfire) is a critical management tool for protecting many frequent-fire forests against stand-replacing fires while restoring an essential ecological process. Understanding the effects of fire on forests and wildlife...
Identifying the location and population served by domestic wells in California
Tyler D. Johnson, Kenneth Belitz
2015, Journal of Hydrology: Regional Studies (3) 31-86
Study region California, USA. Study focus Identification of groundwater use is an important step in the regional-scale assessment of groundwater quality. In California, 1990 US Census data indicate that domestic wells provide drinking-water to about 1.2 million people. However, the location of these domestic well users of groundwater is...
Characterizing Congo Basin rainfall and climate using Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite data and limited rain gauge ground observations
Yolande A. Munzimi, Matthew C. Hansen, Bernard Adusei, Gabriel B. Senay
2015, Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology (54) 541-555
Quantitative understanding of Congo River basin hydrological behavior is poor because of the basin’s limited hydrometeorological observation network. In cases such as the Congo basin where ground data are scarce, satellite-based estimates of rainfall, such as those from the joint NASA/JAXA Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), can be used to...
In situ effects of pesticides on amphibians in the Sierra Nevada
Donald W. Sparling, John W. Bickham, Deborah Cowman, Gary M. Fellers, Thomas E. Lacher Jr., Cole W. Matson, Laura McConnell
2015, Ecotoxicology (24) 262-278
For more than 20 years, conservationists have agreed that amphibian populations around the world are declining. Results obtained through laboratory or mesocosm studies and measurement of contaminant concentrations in areas experiencing declines have supported a role of contaminants in these declines. The current study examines the effects of contaminant exposure to...
EverVIEW: a visualization platform for hydrologic and Earth science gridded data
Stephanie S. Romañach, Mark McKelvy, Kevin J. Suir, Craig Conzelmann
2015, Computers & Geosciences (76) 88-95
The EverVIEW Data Viewer is a cross-platform desktop application that combines and builds upon multiple open source libraries to help users to explore spatially-explicit gridded data stored in Network Common Data Form (NetCDF). Datasets are displayed across multiple side-by-side geographic or tabular displays, showing colorized overlays on an Earth globe...
Revisions to some parameters used in stochastic-method simulations of ground motion
David Boore, Eric M. Thompson
2015, Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (105) 1029-1041
The stochastic method of ground‐motion simulation specifies the amplitude spectrum as a function of magnitude (M) and distance (R). The manner in which the amplitude spectrum varies with M and R depends on physical‐based parameters that are often constrained by recorded motions for a particular region (e.g., stress parameter, geometrical spreading, quality factor, and...
Revision of Tympanopleura Eigenmann (Siluriformes: Auchenipteridae) with description of two new species
Stephen J. Walsh, Frank Ribeiro, Lucia H. Rapp Py-Daniel
2015, Neotropical Ichthyology (13) 1-46
The Neotropical catfish genus Tympanopleura, previously synonymized within Ageneiosus, is revalidated and included species are reviewed. Six species are recognized, two of which are described as new. Tympanopleura is distinguished from Ageneiosus by having an enlarged gas bladder not strongly encapsulated in bone; a prominent pseudotympanum consisting of an area on the side of the body...
Next-generation genomic shotgun sequencing indicates greater genetic variability in the mitochondria of Hypophthalmichthys molitrix relative to H. nobilis from the Mississippi River, USA and provides tools for research and detection
John J Miller, Michael S. Eackles, Jay R Stauffer, Tim L. King
2015, Conservation Genetics Resources (7) 9-11
We characterized variation within the mitochondrial genomes of the invasive silver carp (Hypophthalmichthys molitrix) and bighead carp (H. nobilis) from the Mississippi River drainage by mapping our Next-Generation sequences to their publicly available genomes. Variant detection resulted in 338 single-nucleotide polymorphisms for H. molitrix and 39...
