Thermal-maturity limit for primary thermogenic-gas generation from humic coals as determined by hydrous pyrolysis
Michael Lewan, M.J. Kotarba
2014, AAPG Bulletin (98) 2581-2610
Hydrous-pyrolysis experiments at 360°C (680°F) for 72 h were conducted on 53 humic coals representing ranks from lignite through anthracite to determine the upper maturity limit for hydrocarbon-gas generation from their kerogen and associated bitumen (i.e., primary gas generation). These experimental conditions are below those needed for oil cracking to ensure...
Maximum magnitude earthquakes induced by fluid injection
Arthur F. McGarr
2014, Journal of Geophysical Research B: Solid Earth (119) 1008-1019
Analysis of numerous case histories of earthquake sequences induced by fluid injection at depth reveals that the maximum magnitude appears to be limited according to the total volume of fluid injected. Similarly, the maximum seismic moment seems to have an upper bound proportional to the total volume of injected fluid....
Evaluation of wastewater contaminant transport in surface waters using verified Lagrangian sampling
Ronald C. Antweiler, Jeffrey H. Writer, Sheila F. Murphy
2014, Science of the Total Environment (470-471) 551-558
Contaminants released from wastewater treatment plants can persist in surface waters for substantial distances. Much research has gone into evaluating the fate and transport of these contaminants, but this work has often assumed constant flow from wastewater treatment plants. However, effluent discharge commonly varies widely over a 24-hour period, and...
Synthesis of nearshore recovery following the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill: sea otter liver pathology and survival in Western Prince William Sound, 2001 – 2008
Brenda E. Ballachey, Daniel H. Monson, Kimberly A. Kloecker, George G. Esslinger, F.C. Mohr, T.P. Lipscomb, M.J. Murray, S. Howlin
2014, Report
We examined livers and liver biopsies collected from captured sea otters in WPWS, 2001–2008, to determine whether indicators of liver health correlated with history of oil contamination from the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. Sea otters captured in oiled areas had a significantly higher proportion of livers with gross pathological...
Wildlife connectivity approaches and best practices in U.S. state wildlife action plans
Iara Lacher, Marit L. Wilkerson
2014, Conservation Biology (28) 13-21
As habitat loss and fragmentation threaten biodiversity on large geographic scales, creating and maintaining connectivity of wildlife populations is an increasingly common conservation objective. To assess the progress and success of large-scale connectivity planning, conservation researchers need a set of plans that cover large geographic areas and can be analyzed...
Africa-wide monitoring of small surface water bodies using multisource satellite data: A monitoring system for FEWS NET
Naga Manohar Velpuri, Gabriel B. Senay, James Rowland, James P. Verdin, Henok Alemu
Assefa M. Melesse, Wossenu Abtew, Shimelis G. Setegn, editor(s)
2014, Book chapter, Nile River Basin
Continental Africa has the highest volume of water stored in wetlands, large lakes, reservoirs, and rivers, yet it suffers from problems such as water availability and access. With climate change intensifying the hydrologic cycle and altering the distribution and frequency of rainfall, the problem of water availability and access will...
Distinguishing high surf from volcanic long-period earthquakes
John J. Lyons, Matthew M. Haney, David Fee, John F. Paskievitch
2014, Geophysical Research Letters (41) 1171-1178
Repeating long-period (LP) earthquakes are observed at active volcanoes worldwide and are typically attributed to unsteady pressure fluctuations associated with fluid migration through the volcanic plumbing system. Nonvolcanic sources of LP signals include ice movement and glacial outburst floods, and the waveform characteristics and frequency content of these events often...
Mineral resource of the month: Iron and steel
Michael D. Fenton
2014, Earth (February 2014)
Iron is one of the most abundant elements on Earth, but it does not occur in nature in a useful metallic form. Although ancient people may have recovered some iron from meteorites, it wasn’t until smelting was invented that iron metal could be derived from iron oxides. After the beginning...
Approaches for advancing scientific understanding of macrosystems
Ofir Levy, Becky A. Ball, Ben Bond-Lamberty, Kendra S. Cheruvelil, Andrew O. Finley, Noah R. Lottig, Surangi W. Punyasena, Jingfeng Xiao, Jizhong Zhou, Lauren B. Buckley, Christopher T. Filstrup, Tim H. Keitt, James R. Kellner, Alan K. Knapp, Andrew D. Richardson, David Tcheng, Michael Toomey, Rodrigo Vargas, James W. Voordeckers, Tyler Wagner, John W. Williams
2014, Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment (12) 15-23
The emergence of macrosystems ecology (MSE), which focuses on regional- to continental-scale ecological patterns and processes, builds upon a history of long-term and broad-scale studies in ecology. Scientists face the difficulty of integrating the many elements that make up macrosystems, which consist of hierarchical processes at interacting spatial and temporal...
Quantifying the predictive consequences of model error with linear subspace analysis
Jeremy T. White, John E. Doherty, Joseph D. Hughes
2014, Water Resources Research (50) 1152-1173
All computer models are simplified and imperfect simulators of complex natural systems. The discrepancy arising from simplification induces bias in model predictions, which may be amplified by the process of model calibration. This paper presents a new method to identify and quantify the predictive consequences of calibrating a simplified computer...
Disease and predation: Sorting out causes of a bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) decline
Joshua B. Smith, Jonathan A. Jenks, Troy W. Grovenburg, Robert W. Klaver
2014, PLoS ONE (9) 1-9
Estimating survival and documenting causes and timing of mortality events in neonate bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) improves understanding of population ecology and factors influencing recruitment. During 2010–2012, we captured and radiocollared 74 neonates in the Black Hills, South Dakota, of which 95% (70) died before 52 weeks of age. Pneumonia...
Cross-scale interactions: Quantifying multi-scaled cause–effect relationships in macrosystems
Patricia A. Soranno, Kendra S. Cheruvelil, Edward G. Bissell, Mary T. Bremigan, John A. Downing, Carol E. Fergus, Christopher T. Filstrup, Emily N. Henry, Noah R. Lottig, Emily H. Stanley, Craig A. Stow, Pang-Ning Tan, Tyler Wagner, Katherine E. Webster
2014, Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment (12) 65-73
Ecologists are increasingly discovering that ecological processes are made up of components that are multi-scaled in space and time. Some of the most complex of these processes are cross-scale interactions (CSIs), which occur when components interact across scales. When undetected, such interactions may cause errors in extrapolation from one region...
Colony social structure in native and invasive populations of the social wasp Vespula pensylvanica
Cause Hanna, Erin D. Cook, Ariel R. Thompson, Lyndzey E. Dare, Amanda L. Palaski, David Foote, Michael A. D. Goodisman
2014, Biological Invasions (16) 283-294
Social insects rank among the most invasive of terrestrial species. The success of invasive social insects stems, in part, from the flexibility derived from their social behaviors. We used genetic markers to investigate if the social system of the invasive wasp, Vespula pensylvanica, differed in its introduced and native habitats...
Compilation of hydrologic data for White Sands pupfish habitat and nonhabitat areas, northern Tularosa Basin, White Sands Missile Range and Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico, 1911-2008
C.A. Naus, R. G. Myers, D.K. Saleh, N. C. Myers
2014, Data Series 810
The White Sands pupfish (Cyprinodon tularosa), listed as threatened by the State of New Mexico and as a Federal species of concern, is endemic to the Tularosa Basin, New Mexico. Because water quality can affect pupfish and the environmental conditions of their habitat, a comprehensive compilation of hydrologic data for...
Flood-tracking chart for the Withlacoochee and Little River Basins in south-central Georgia and northern Florida
Anthony J. Gotvald, Brian E. McCallum, Jaime A. Painter
2014, General Information Product 155
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in cooperation with other Federal, State, and local agencies, operates a flood-monitoring system in the Withlacoochee and Little River Basins. This system is a network of automated river stage stations (ten are shown on page 2 of this publication) that transmit stage data through satellite...
Methow and Columbia Rivers studies: summary of data collection, comparison of database structure and habitat protocols, and impact of additional PIT tag interrogation systems to survival estimates, 2008-2012
Kyle D. Martens, Wesley T. Tibbits, Grace A. Watson, Michael A. Newsom, Patrick J. Connolly
2014, Open-File Report 2014-1016
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) received funding from the Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation) to provide monitoring and evaluation on the effectiveness of stream restoration efforts by Reclamation in the Methow River watershed. This monitoring and evaluation program is designed to partially fulfill Reclamation’s part of the 2008 Biological Opinion for...
Nutrient load summaries for major lakes and estuaries of the Eastern United States, 2002
Michelle C. Moorman, Anne B. Hoos, Suzanne B. Bricker, Richard B. Moore, Ana María García, Scott W. Ator
2014, Data Series 820
Nutrient enrichment of lakes and estuaries across the Nation is widespread. Nutrient enrichment can stimulate excessive plant and algal growth and cause a number of undesirable effects that impair aquatic life and recreational activities and can also result in economic effects. Understanding the amount of nutrients entering lakes and estuaries,...
Benthic-invertebrate, fish-community, and streambed-sediment-chemistry data for streams in the Indianapolis metropolitan area, Indiana, 2009–2012
David C. Voelker
2014, Data Series 819
Aquatic-biology and sediment-chemistry data were collected at seven sites on the White River and at six tributary sites in the Indianapolis metropolitan area of Indiana during the period 2009 through 2012. Data collected included benthic-invertebrate and fish-community information and concentrations of metals, insecticides, herbicides, and semivolatile organic compounds adsorbed to...
A Great Lakes atmospheric mercury monitoring network: evaluation and design
Martin R. Risch, Donna M. Kenski, Gay, A. David
2014, Atmospheric Environment (85) 109-122
As many as 51 mercury (Hg) wet-deposition-monitoring sites from 4 networks were operated in 8 USA states and Ontario, Canada in the North American Great Lakes Region from 1996 to 2010. By 2013, 20 of those sites were no longer in operation and approximately half the geographic area of the...
Phanerozoic continental growth and gold metallogeny of Asia
Richard J. Goldfarb, Ryan D. Taylor, Gregory S. Collins, Nicolay A. Goryachev, Omero Felipe Orlandini
2014, Gondwana Research (25) 48-102
The Asian continent formed during the past 800 m.y. during late Neoproterozoic through Jurassic closure of the Tethyan ocean basins, followed by late Mesozoic circum-Pacific and Cenozoic Himalayan orogenies. The oldest gold deposits in Asia reflect accretionary events along the margins of the Siberia, Kazakhstan, North China, Tarim–Karakum, South China, and...
Understanding uncertainties in future Colorado River streamflow
Julie A. Vano, Bradley Udall, Daniel Cayan, Jonathan T Overpeck, Levi D. Brekke, Tapash Das, Holly C. Hartmann, Hugo G. Hidalgo, Martin P Hoerling, Gregory J. McCabe, Kiyomi Morino, Robert S. Webb, Kevin Werner, Dennis P. Lettenmaier
2014, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (95) 59-78
The Colorado River is the primary water source for more than 30 million people in the United States and Mexico. Recent studies that project streamf low changes in the Colorado River all project annual declines, but the magnitude of the projected decreases range from less than 10% to 45% by...
Distal facies variability within the Upper Triassic part of the Otuk Formation in northern Alaska
Katherine J. Whidden, Julie A. Dumoulin, M.T. Whalen, E. Hutton, Thomas E. Moore, Stephanie B. Gaswirth
2014, Book chapter, Deposits, architecture, and controls of carbonate margin, slope and basinal settings
The Triassic-Jurassic Otuk Formation is a potentially important source rock in allochthonous structural positions in the northern foothills of the Brooks Range in the North Slope of Alaska. This study focuses on three localities of the Upper Triassic (Norian) limestone member, which form a present-day, 110-km-long, east-west transect in the...
Acceptability of residential development in a regional landscape: Potential effects on wildlife occupancy patterns
Charles A. Bettigole, Therese Donovan, Robert Manning, John Austin, Robert Long
2014, Biological Conservation (169) 401-409
The conversion of natural lands to developed uses may pose the single greatest human threat to global terrestrial biodiversity. Continued human growth and development over the next century will further exacerbate these effects of habitat loss and fragmentation. Natural resource managers are tasked with managing wildlife as a public trust,...
Assessing streamflow sensitivity to variations in glacier mass balance
Shad O’Neel, Eran Hood, Anthony Arendt, Louis C. Sass
2014, Climatic Change (123) 329-341
The mountains ringing the Gulf of Alaska (GOA) receive upwards of 4–8 m yr−1 of precipitation (Simpson et al.2005; Weingartner et al. 2005; O’Neel 2012), much of which runs off into productive coastal waters. The alpine landscape is heavily glacierized, and storage and turnover of water by glaciers substantially influences...
Slip rate and tremor genesis in Cascadia
Aaron G. Wech, Noel M. Bartlow
2014, Geophysical Research Letters (41) 392-398
At many plate boundaries, conditions in the transition zone between seismogenic and stable slip produce slow earthquakes. In the Cascadia subduction zone, these events are consistently observed as slow, aseismic slip on the plate interface accompanied by persistent tectonic tremor. However, not all slow slip at other plate boundaries coincides...
