Metadata for selecting or submitting generic seismic vulnerability functions via GEM's vulnerability database
Kishor Jaiswal
2013, Report
This memo lays out a procedure for the GEM software to offer an available vulnerability function for any acceptable set of attributes that the user specifies for a particular building category. The memo also provides general guidelines on how to submit the vulnerability or fragility functions to the GEM vulnerability...
Adaptive harvest management for the Svalbard population of pink-footed geese: briefing summary
Fred A. Johnson
2013, Report
The African-Eurasian Waterbird Agreement (AEWA; http://www.unep-aewa.org/) calls for means to manage populations which cause conflicts with certain human economic activities. The Svalbard population of the pink-footed goose has been selected as the first test case for such an international species management plan to be developed. This document describes progress to...
Status and trends monitoring of the mainstem Columbia River: sample frame development and review of programs relevant to the development of an integrated approach to monitoring
Timothy D. Counihan, Jill M. Hardiman, Stephen Waste
2013, PNAMP Report Series 2013-003
Implementing an Integrated Status and Trends Monitoring program (ISTM) for the mainstem Columbia River will help identify trends in important natural resources and help us understand the long-term collective effects of management actions. In this report, we present progress towards the completion of a stepwise process that will facilitate the...
Seafloor off Pleasure Point, Santa Cruz County, California
Curt D. Storlazzi, Nadine E. Golden, Helen Gibbons
2013, General Information Product 152
The seafloor off Pleasure Point, Santa Cruz County, California, is extremely varied, with sandy flats, boulder fields, faults, and complex bedrock ridges. These ridges support rich marine ecosystems; some of them form the "reefs" that produce world-class surf breaks. Colors indicate seafloor depth, from red-orange (about 2 meters or 7...
Biogeographic perspective of speciation among desert tortoises in the genus Gopherus: a preliminary evaluation
Taylor Edwards, Mercy Vaughn, Cristina Melendez Torres, Alice E. Karl, Philip C. Rosen, Kristin H. Berry, Robert W. Murph
2013, Proceedings RMRS-P-67
The enduring processes of time, climate, and adaptation have sculpted the distribution of organisms we observe in the Sonoran Desert. One such organism is Morafka’s desert tortoise, Gopherus morafkai. We apply a genomic approach to identify the evolutionary processes driving diversity in this species and present preliminary findings and emerging...
Emergent wetlands status and trends in the northern Gulf of Mexico: 1950-2010
2013, Conference Paper
Throughout the past century, emergent wetlands have been declining across the Gulf of Mexico. Emergent wetland ecosystems provide many resources, including plant and wildlife habitat, commercial and recreational economic activity, water quality, and natural barriers against storms. As emergent wetland losses increase, so does the need for information on the...
Movement and longevity of imperiled Okaloosa Darters (Etheostoma okaloosae)
Daniel E. Holt, Howard L. Jelks, Frank Jordan
2013, Copeia (2013) 653-659
Movement and longevity studies inform management and conservation plans for imperiled organisms. We used a mark–recapture study to reveal information about these key biological characteristics for imperiled Okaloosa Darters (Etheostoma okaloosae). Okaloosa Darters were captured from 20 m reaches at six separate streams, marked with VIE on the left or...
Unpaved road dust management, a successful practitioner’s handbook
David Jones, Angela Kociolek, Roger Surdahl, Peter Bolander, Bruce Drewes, Matthew Duran, Laura Fay, George Huntington, David James, Clark Milne, Mark Nahra, Andrew Scott, Bob Vitale, Bethany Williams
2013, Report
This handbook provides broad programmatic aspects of unpaved road management. It is based on observations made during a national scan tour and provides useful and insightful excerpts of realworld examples and includes practical how-to instructions for determining what type of treatment may be needed for different situations. It ultimately strives...
Application of ground-truth for classification and quantification of bird movements on migratory bird habitat initiative sites in southwest Louisiana: final report
Wylie C. Barrow, Michael J. Baldwin, Lori A. Randall, John Pitre, Kyle J. Dudley
2013, Report
This project was initiated to assess migrating and wintering bird use of lands enrolled in the Natural Resources Conservation Service’s (NRCS) Migratory Bird Habitat Initiative (MBHI). The MBHI program was developed in response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, with the goal of improving/creating habitat for waterbirds affected...
Residency times and patterns of movement of postbreeding dunlin on a subarctic staging area in Alaska
Nils Warnock, Colleen M. Handel, Robert E. Gill Jr., Brian J. McCaffery
2013, Arctic (66) 407-416
Understanding how individuals use key resources is critical for effective conservation of a population. The Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta (YKD) in western Alaska is the most important postbreeding staging area for shorebirds in the subarctic North Pacific, yet little is known about movements of shorebirds there during the postbreeding period. To address...
Are captive tortoises a reservoir for conservation? An assessment of genealogical affiliation of captive Gopherus agassizii to local, wild populations
Kristin H. Berry, Taylor Edwards
2013, Conservation Genetics (14) 649-659
The conservation of tortoises poses a unique situation because several threatened species are commonly kept as pets within their native ranges. Thus, there is potential for captive populations to be a reservoir for repatriation efforts. We assess the utility of captive populations of the threatened Agassiz’s desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii)...
User's guide and metadata for WestuRe: U.S. Pacific Coast estuary/watershed data and R tools
M.R. Frazier, D.A. Reusser, H. Lee II, L.M. McCoy, C. Brown, W. Nelson
2013, Report
Overview There are about 350 estuaries along the U.S. Pacific Coast (U.S. Fish andWildlife 2011). Basic descriptive data for these estuaries, such as their size and watershed area, are important for coastal-scale research and conservation planning. However, this information is spread among many sources, making it difficult to find and standardize....
Extent of endocrine disruption in fish of western and Alaskan National Parks
Carl B. Schreck, Michael Kent
2013, Report
In 2008 2009, 998 fish were collected from 43 water bodies across 11 western Alaskan national parks and analyzed for reproductive abnormalities. Exposure to estrogenic substances such as pesticides can induce abnormalities like intersex. Results suggest there is a greater propensity for male intersex fish collected from parks located in...
Riparian litter inputs to streams in the central Oregon Coast Range
Stephanie K. Hart, David E. Hibbs, Steven S. Perakis
2013, The Society for Freshwater Science (32) 343-358
Riparian-zone vegetation can influence terrestrial and aquatic food webs through variation in the amount, timing, and nutritional content of leaf and other litter inputs. We investigated how riparian-forest community composition, understory density, and lateral slope shaped vertical and lateral litter inputs to 16 streams in the Oregon Coast Range. Riparian...
ECALS: Loading studies interim report July 2013
Katy E. Klymus, Cathy A. Richter, Duane Chapman, Craig P. Paukert
2013, Report
Since the initial detection of Asian carp moving up the Mississippi Basin, the potential for invasion of the Great Lakes by Silver Carp and Bighead Carp has been a major concern to stakeholders. To combat this problem, sampling for environmental DNA (eDNA) is used to monitor the waterways near Lake...
Post-paleozoic stratigraphy of western Tennessee and adjacent portions of the upper Mississippi embayment
Richard Gordon Stearns
2013, Report of Investigations of the Tennessee Department of Conservation, Division of Geology 2
Population attributes of lake trout in Tennessee reservoirs
Drew Russell, Phillip William Bettoli
2013, Southeastern Naturalist (12) 217-232
We sampled stocked Salvelinus namaycush (Lake Trout) in Watauga Lake and South Holston Lake, TN using experimental gill nets in 2009-2010 to describe their growth, longevity, and condition. Annuli in sagittal otoliths formed once a year in early spring in both reservoirs. South Holston Lake (n = 99 Lake Trout)...
Changes to oak woodland stand structure and ground flora composition caused by thinning and burning
Carter O. Kinkead, John M. Kabrick, Michael C. Stambaugh, Keith W. Grabner
2013, Conference Paper, Proceedings of the 18th Central Hardwoods Forest Conference
Our objective was to quantify the cumulative effects of prescribed burning and thinning on forest stocking and species composition at a woodland restoration experiment site in the Ozark Highlands of Missouri. Our study used four treatments (burn, harvest, harvest and burn, control) on three slope position and aspect combinations (south,...
Of travertine and time: otolith chemistry and microstructure detect provenance and demography of endangered humpback chub in Grand Canyon, USA
Karin E. Limburg, Todd A. Hayden, William E. Pine III, Michael D. Yard, Reinhard Kozdon, John W. Valley
2013, PLoS ONE (8)
We developed a geochemical atlas of the Colorado River in Grand Canyon and in its tributary, the Little Colorado River, and used it to identify provenance and habitat use by Federally Endangered humpback chub, Gila cypha. Carbon stable isotope ratios (δ13C) discriminate best between the two rivers, but fine...
The geomorphic effectiveness of a large flood on the Rio Grande in the Big Bend region: insights on geomorphic controls and post-flood geomorphic response
David J. Dean, John C. Schmidt
2013, Geomorphology (201) 183-198
Since the 1940s, the Rio Grande in the Big Bend region has undergone long periods of channel narrowing, which have been occasionally interrupted by rare, large floods that widen the channel (termed a channel reset). The most recent channel reset occurred in 2008 following a 17-year period of extremely low...
Modeling trends from North American Breeding Bird Survey data: a spatially explicit approach
Florent Bled, John R. Sauer, Keith L. Pardieck, Paul Doherty, J. Andy Royle
2013, PLoS ONE (8)
Population trends, defined as interval-specific proportional changes in population size, are often used to help identify species of conservation interest. Efficient modeling of such trends depends on the consideration of the correlation of population changes with key spatial and environmental covariates. This can provide insights into causal mechanisms and allow...
Relationships between ecosystem metabolism, benthic macroinvertebrate densities, and environmental variables in a sub-arctic Alaskan river
Emily R. Benson, Mark S. Wipfli, Joanne E. Clapcott, Nicholas F. Hughes
2013, Hydrobiologia (701) 189-207
Relationships between environmental variables, ecosystem metabolism, and benthos are not well understood in sub-arctic ecosystems. The goal of this study was to investigate environmental drivers of river ecosystem metabolism and macroinvertebrate density in a sub-arctic river. We estimated primary production and respiration rates, sampled benthic macroinvertebrates, and monitored light intensity,...
Moving forward with imperfect information
Kristen Averyt, Levi D. Brekke, David E. Busch, Laurna Kaatz, Leigh Welling, Eric H. Hartge, Tom Iseman
2013, Book chapter, Assessment of climate change in the southwest United States: A report prepared for the National Climate Assessment
This chapter summarized the scope of what is known and not known about climate in the Southwestern United States. There is now more evidence and more agreement among climate scientists about the physical climate and related impacts in the Southwest compared with that represented in the 2009 National Climate Assessment...
The stability of sulfate and hydrated sulfate minerals near ambient conditions and their significance in environmental and planetary sciences
I-Ming Chou, Robert R. Seal II, Alian Wang
2013, Journal of Asian Earth Sciences (62) 734-758
Sulfate and hydrated sulfate minerals are abundant and ubiquitous on the surface of the Earth and also on other planets and their satellites. The humidity-buffer technique has been applied to study the stability of some of these minerals at 0.1 MPa in terms of temperature-relative humidity space on the basis...
Sediment Transport from Urban, Urbanizing, and Rural Areas in Johnson County, Kansas, 2006-08
Casey J. Lee
2013, Book
1. Studies have commonly illustrated that erosion and sediment transport from construction sites is extensive, typically 10-100X that of background levels. 2. However, to our knowledge, the affects of construction and urbanization have rarely been assessed (1) since erosion and sediment controls have been required at construction sites, and (2) at...
