Distribution, population status and trends of Kittlitz's murrelet Brachyramphus brevirostris in Lower Cook Inlet and Kachemak Bay, Alaska
Kathy J. Kuletz, Suzann G. Speckman, John F. Piatt, E.A. Labunski
2011, Marine Ornithology: Journal of Seabird Research and Conservation (39) 85-95
Lower Cook Inlet (LCI) in south-central Alaska is unusual among the breeding areas of Kittlitz's Murrelet Brachyramphus brevirostris because of human impacts on the marine and terrestrial environments and because of the lack of tidewater glaciers. In LCI the Kittlitz's Murrelet co-exists with the more abundant Marbled Murrelet, which complicates...
Turtles and culverts, and alternative energy development: an unreported but potentially significant mortality threat to the desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii)
J.E. Lovich, J.R. Ennen, S. Madrak, B. Grover
2011, Chelonian Conservation and Biology (10) 124-129
Culverts are often used to increase the permeability of roaded landscapes for wildlife, including turtles. Although the benefits of culverts as safe passages for turtles are well documented, under some conditions culverts can entrap them and cause mortality. Here we report a culvert-related mortality in the federally threatened desert tortoise...
Atacamite and paratacamite from the ultramafic-hosted Logatchev seafloor vent field (14°45′N, Mid-Atlantic Ridge)
Vesselin Dekov, Tanya Boycheva, Ulf Halenius, Sven Petersen, Kjell Billstrom, Jens Stummeyer, G. Kamenov, W. Shanks
2011, Chemical Geology (286) 169-184
Atacamite and paratacamite are ubiquitous minerals associated with Cu-rich massive sulfides at the Logatchev hydrothermal field (Mid-Atlantic Ridge). In this work we provide new details on the mineralogy and geochemistry of these basic cupric chlorides. Our data support the notion that atacamite and paratacamite formation at submarine vent fields is...
A buoyant plume adjacent to a headland-Observations of the Elwha River plume
Jonathan A. Warrick, Andrew W. Stevens
2011, Continental Shelf Research (31) 85-97
Small rivers commonly discharge into coastal settings with topographic complexities – such as headlands and islands – but these settings are underrepresented in river plume studies compared to more simplified, straight coasts. The Elwha River provides a unique opportunity to study the effects of coastal topography on a buoyant plume,...
Historical summer base flow and stormflow trends for New England rivers
Glenn A. Hodgkins, Robert W. Dudley
2011, Water Resources Research (47)
River base flow is important to aquatic ecosystems, particularly because of its influence on summer water temperatures. Summer (June through September) daily mean streamflows were separated into base flow and stormflow components by use of an automated method at 25 stations in the New England region of the United States...
Recovery of native treefrogs after removal of nonindigenous Cuban Treefrogs, Osteopilus septentrionalis
K.G. Rice, J.H. Waddle, M.W. Miller, M.E. Crockett, F.J. Mazzotti, H.F. Percival
2011, Herpetologica (67) 105-117
Florida is home to several introduced animal species, especially in the southern portion of the state. Most introduced species are restricted to the urban and suburban areas along the coasts, but some species, like the Cuban Treefrog (Osteopilus septentrionalis), are locally abundant in natural protected areas. Although Cuban...
Estimation of mussel population response to hydrologic alteration in a southeastern U.S. stream
James T. Peterson, J.M. Wisniewski, C.P. Shea, Jackson C. Rhett
2011, Environmental Management (48) 109-122
The southeastern United States has experienced severe, recurrent drought, rapid human population growth, and increasing agricultural irrigation during recent decades, resulting in greater demand for the water resources. During the same time period, freshwater mussels (Unioniformes) in the region have experienced substantial population declines. Consequently, there is growing interest in...
Integration of paleoseismic data from multiple sites to develop an objective earthquake chronology: Application to the Weber segment of the Wasatch fault zone, Utah
C. B. DuRoss, S. F. Personius, A. J. Crone, S.S. Olig, W.R. Lund
2011, Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (101) 2765-2781
We present a method to evaluate and integrate paleoseismic data from multiple sites into a single, objective measure of earthquake timing and recurrence on discrete segments of active faults. We apply this method to the Weber segment (WS) of the Wasatch fault zone using data from four fault-trench studies completed...
Introduction
W. Nelson Beyer, James P. Meador
W. Nelson Beyer, James P. Meador, editor(s)
2011, Book chapter, Environmental contaminants in biota: Interpreting tissue concentrations, Second Edition
Ecotoxicology is the study of the movement of environmental contaminants through ecosystems and their effects on plants and animals. Examining tissue residues of these contaminants in biota is basic to ecotoxicology, both for understanding the movement of contaminants within organisms and through food chains, and for understanding and quantifying injuries...
Population structure and genetic diversity of greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) in fragmented landscapes at the northern edge of their range
K.L. Bush, C.K. Dyte, B.J. Moynahan, Cameron L. Aldridge, H.S. Sauls, A.M. Battazzo, B.L. Walker, K.E. Doherty, J. Tack, J. Carlson, D. Eslinger, J. Nicholson, M.S. Boyce, D.E. Naugle, C.A. Paszkowski, D.W. Coltman
2011, Conservation Genetics (12) 527-542
Range-edge dynamics and anthropogenic fragmentation are expected to impact patterns of genetic diversity, and understanding the influence of both factors is important for effective conservation of threatened wildlife species. To examine these factors, we sampled greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) from a declining, fragmented region at the northern periphery of the...
Design of ecoregional monitoring in conservation areas of high-latitude ecosystems under contemporary climate change
Erik A. Beever, Andrea Woodward
2011, Biological Conservation (144) 1258-1269
Land ownership in Alaska includes a mosaic of federally managed units. Within its agency’s context, each unit has its own management strategy, authority, and resources of conservation concern, many of which are migratory animals. Though some units are geographically isolated, many are nevertheless linked by paths of abiotic and biotic...
Nitrogen contamination of surficial aquifers - A growing legacy
Larry J. Puckett, Anthony J. Tesoriero, Neil M. Dubrovsky
2011, Environmental Science & Technology (45) 839-844
The virtual ubiquity of fertilizer-fed agriculture, increasing over several decades, has become necessary to support the global human population. Ironically, widespread use of nitrogen (N) has contaminated another vital resource: surficial fresh groundwater. Further, as nitrous oxide (N2O) is a potent greenhouse gas, anthropogenic manipulation of...
Expansion of urban area and wastewater irrigated rice area in Hyderabad, India
K.M. Gumma, Rooijen D. van, A. Nelson, P.S. Thenkabail, Radha V. Aakuraju, P. Amerasinghe
2011, Irrigation and Drainage Systems (25) 135-149
The goal of this study was to investigate land use changes in urban and peri-urban Hyderabad and their influence on wastewater irrigated rice using Landsat ETM + data and spectral matching techniques. The main source of irrigation water is the Musi River, which collects a large volume of wastewater and...
Late Holocene geomorphic record of fire in ponderosa pine and mixed-conifer forests, Kendrick Mountain, northern Arizona, USA
S.E. Jenkins, Sieg C. Hull, D.E. Anderson, D. S. Kaufman, P. A. Pearthree
2011, International Journal of Wildland Fire (20) 125-141
Long-term fire history reconstructions enhance our understanding of fire behaviour and associated geomorphic hazards in forested ecosystems. We used 14C ages on charcoal from fire-induced debris-flow deposits to date prehistoric fires on Kendrick Mountain, northern Arizona, USA. Fire-related debris-flow sedimentation dominates Holocene fan deposition in the study area. Radiocarbon ages indicate...
The Sculptured Hills of the Taurus Highlands: Implications for the relative age of Serenitatis, basin chronologies and the cratering history of the Moon
P. D. Spudis, D.E. Wilhelms, M.S. Robinson
2011, Journal of Geophysical Research E: Planets (116)
New images from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera show the distribution and geological relations of the Sculptured Hills, a geological unit widespread in the highlands between the Serenitatis and Crisium basins. The Sculptured Hills shows knobby, undulating, radially textured, and plains-like morphologies and in many places is indistinguishable from the...
The flow dynamics of an extremely large volume pyroclastic flow, the 2.08-Ma Cerro Galán Ignimbrite, NW Argentina, and comparison with other flow types
Ray A.F. Cas, Heather M. Wright, Christopher B. Folkes, Chiara Lesti, Massimiliano Porreca, Guido Giordano, Jose G. Viramonte
2011, Bulletin of Volcanology (73) 1583-1609
The 2.08-Ma Cerro Galán Ignimbrite (CGI) represents a >630-km3 dense rock equivalent (VEI 8) eruption from the long-lived Cerro Galán magma system (∼6 Ma). It is a crystal-rich (35–60%), pumice (<10% generally) and lithic-poor (<5% generally) rhyodacitic ignimbrite, lacking a preceding plinian fallout deposit. The CGI is preserved up to 80 km...
Chapter 6: Detectability adjusted count models of songbird abundance
Cameron L. Aldridge, Steve E. Hanser, Scott E. Nielsen, Matthias Leu, Brian S. Cade, D. Joanne Saher, Steven T. Knick
2011, Book chapter, Sagebrush ecosystem conservation and management: Ecoregional assessment tools and models for the Wyoming Basins
Sagebrush (Artemisia spp.) steppe ecosystems have experienced recent changes resulting not only in the loss of habitat but also fragmentation and degradation of remaining habitats. As a result, sagebrush-obligate and sagebrush associated songbird populations have experienced population declines over the past several decades. We examined landscape-scale responses in occupancy and...
Historical perspective on seismic hazard to Hispaniola and the northeast Caribbean region
Uri S. ten Brink, W. H. Bakun, C.H. Flores
2011, Journal of Geophysical Research B: Solid Earth (116)
We evaluate the long-term seismic activity of the North-American/Caribbean plate boundary from 500 years of historical earthquake damage reports. The 2010 Haiti earthquakes and other earthquakes were used to derive regional attenuation relationships between earthquake intensity, magnitude, and distance from the reported damage to the epicenter, for Hispaniola and for...
Simulating sterilization, vaccination, and test-and-remove as brucellosis control measures in bison
M. Ebinger, Paul C. Cross, Rick Wallen, P.J. White, John Treanor
2011, Ecological Applications (21) 2944-2959
Brucella abortus, the causative agent of bovine brucellosis, infects wildlife, cattle, and humans worldwide, but management of the disease is often hindered by the logistics of controlling its prevalence in wildlife reservoirs. We used an individually based epidemiological model to assess the relative efficacies of three management interventions (sterilization, vaccination,...
Hydrothermal hexahydrite spherules erupted during the 2008-2010 summit eruption of Kīlauea Volcano, Hawai`i'
Ken Hon, Tim R. Orr
2011, Bulletin of Volcanology (73) 1369-1375
Small (1-3 mm), hollow spherules of hexahydrite have been collected falling out of the magmatic gas plume downwind of Kīlauea’s summit vent. The spherules were observed on eight separate occasions during 2009-2010 when a lake of actively spattering lava was present ~150-200 m below the rim of the vent. The...
A framework for sea level rise vulnerability assessment for southwest U.S. military installations
B. Chadwick, Reinhard Flick, J. Helly, Tracy Nishikawa, Fang Wang Pei, W. O'Reilly, R. Guza, Peter Bromirski, A. Young, W. Crampton, B. Wild, I. Canner
2011, Conference Paper, OCEANS'11 - MTS/IEEE Kona, Program Book
We describe an analysis framework to determine military installation vulnerabilities under increases in local mean sea level as projected over the next century. The effort is in response to an increasing recognition of potential climate change ramifications for national security and recommendations that DoD conduct assessments of the impact on...
Evaluation of sewage source and fate on southeast Florida coastal reefs
Futch J. Carrie, Dale W. Griffin, K. Banks, E.K. Lipp
2011, Marine Pollution Bulletin (62) 2308-2316
Water, sponge and coral samples were collected from stations impacted by a variety of pollution sources and screened for human enteric viruses as conservative markers for human sewage. While human enteroviruses and adenoviruses were not detected, noroviruses (NoV; human genogroups I and II) were detected in 31% of samples (especially...
Parallelization of GeoClaw code for modeling geophysical flows with adaptive mesh refinement on many-core systems
S. Zhang, D.A. Yuen, A. Zhu, S. Song, David L. George
2011, Conference Paper, 14th IEEE Int. Conf. on Computational Science and Engineering, CSE 2011 and 11th Int. Symp. on Pervasive Systems, Algorithms, and Networks, I-SPA 2011 and 10th IEEE Int. Conf. on IUCC 2011
We parallelized the GeoClaw code on one-level grid using OpenMP in March, 2011 to meet the urgent need of simulating tsunami waves at near-shore from Tohoku 2011 and achieved over 75% of the potential speed-up on an eight core Dell Precision T7500 workstation [1]. After submitting that work to SC11...
Sarcocystis neurona retinochoroiditis in a sea otter (Enhydra lutris kenyoni)
J. P. Dubey, N. J. Thomas
2011, Veterinary Parasitology (183) 156-159
Sarcocystis neurona is an important cause of fatal disease in sea otters in the USA. Encephalitis is the predominant lesion and parasites are confined to the central nervous system and muscles. Here we report retinochoroiditis in a sea otter (Enhydra lutris kenyoni) found dead on Copalis Beach, WA, USA. Salient...
Effects of planting method and seed mix richness on the early stages of tallgrass prairie restoration
D.L. Larson, J.B. Bright, P. Drobney, J.L. Larson, N. Palaia, P.A. Rabie, S. Vacek, D. Wells
2011, Biological Conservation (144) 3127-3139
Tallgrass prairie restoration has been practiced for more than 75. years, yet few studies have systematically tested restoration methods over large geographic regions with the intent of refining methodology. In this study, we used three planting methods (dormant-season broadcast, growing-season broadcast and growing-season drill) fully crossed with three levels of...
