Climate change, uncertainty, and natural resource management
J.D. Nichols, M.D. Koneff, P.J. Heglund, M. G. Knutson, M.E. Seamans, J. E. Lyons, J.M. Morton, M.T. Jones, G.S. Boomer, B. Kenneth Williams
2011, Journal of Wildlife Management (75) 6-18
Climate change and its associated uncertainties are of concern to natural resource managers. Although aspects of climate change may be novel (e.g., system change and nonstationarity), natural resource managers have long dealt with uncertainties and have developed corresponding approaches to decision-making. Adaptive resource management is an application of structured decision-making...
Recovery and reprocessing of legacy geophysical data from the archives of the State Company of Geology and Mining (GEOSURV) of Iraq and Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC)
David V. Smith, Benjamin J. Drenth, J.D. Fairhead, K. Lei, J.A. Dark, K. Al-Bassam
2011, SEG Technical Program Expanded Abstracts (30) 856-860
Aeromagnetic data belonging to the State Company of Geology and Mining of Iraq (GEOSURV) have been recovered from magnetic tapes and early paper maps. In 1974 a national airborne survey was flown by the French firm Compagnie General de Geophysique (CGG). Following the survey the magnetic data were stored on...
Managing and learning with multiple models: Objectives and optimization algorithms
William J. M. Probert, C.E. Hauser, E. McDonald-Madden, M.C. Runge, P.W.J. Baxter, H.P. Possingham
2011, Biological Conservation (144) 1237-1245
The quality of environmental decisions should be gauged according to managers' objectives. Management objectives generally seek to maximize quantifiable measures of system benefit, for instance population growth rate. Reaching these goals often requires a certain degree of learning about the system. Learning can occur by using management action in combination...
Lagrangian mass-flow investigations of inorganic contaminants in wastewater-impacted streams
L. B. Barber, Ronald C. Antweiler, J.L. Flynn, S.H. Keefe, D.W. Kolpin, D.A. Roth, D.J. Schnoebelen, Howard E. Taylor, P. L. Verplanck
2011, Environmental Science & Technology (45) 2575-2583
Understanding the potential effects of increased reliance on wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) effluents to meet municipal, agricultural, and environmental flow requires an understanding of the complex chemical loading characteristics of the WWTPs and the assimilative capacity of receiving waters. Stream ecosystem effects are linked to proportions of WWTP effluent under...
U.S. Department of Energy's regional carbon sequestration partnership initiative: Update on validation and development phases
T. Rodosta, J. Litynski, S. Plasynski, L. Spangler, R. Finley, E. Steadman, D. Ball, H. Gerald, B. McPherson, E. Burton, D. Vikara
2011, Conference Paper, Energy Procedia
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is the lead federal agency for the development and deployment of carbon sequestration technologies. The Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnerships (RCSPs) are the mechanism DOE utilizes to prove the technology and to develop human capital, stakeholder networks, information for regulatory policy, best practices documents and...
Probabilistic estimates of number of undiscovered deposits and their total tonnages in permissive tracts using deposit densities
Donald A. Singer, Ryoichi Kouda
2011, Natural Resources Research (20) 89-93
Empirical evidence indicates that processes affecting number and quantity of resources in geologic settings are very general across deposit types. Sizes of permissive tracts that geologically could contain the deposits are excellent predictors of numbers of deposits. In addition, total ore tonnage of mineral deposits of a particular type...
Terrestrial, benthic, and pelagic resource use in lakes: Results from a three-isotope Bayesian mixing model
C.T. Solomon, S.R. Carpenter, M.K. Clayton, J. J. Cole, J.J. Coloso, M. L. Pace, M. J. Vander Zanden, B.C. Weidel
2011, Ecology (92) 1115-1125
Fluxes of organic matter across habitat boundaries are common in food webs. These fluxes may strongly influence community dynamics, depending on the extent to which they are used by consumers. Yet understanding of basal resource use by consumers is limited, because describing trophic pathways in complex food webs is difficult....
Channel evolution on the dammed Elwha River, Washington, USA
A.E. Draut, J.B. Logan, M. C. Mastin
2011, Geomorphology (127) 71-87
Like many rivers in the western U.S., the Elwha River, Washington, has changed substantially over the past century in response to natural and human forcing. The lower river is affected by two upstream dams that are slated for removal as part of a major river restoration effort. In preparation for...
Problems with studying wolf predation on small prey in summer via global positioning system collars
V. Palacios, L.D. Mech
2011, European Journal of Wildlife Research (57) 149-156
We attempted to study predation on various-sized prey by a male and female wolf (Canis lupus) with global positioning system (GPS) collars programmed to acquire locations every 10 min in the Superior National Forest of Minnesota. During May to August 2007, we investigated 147 clusters of locations (31% of the...
Controls on large landslide distribution and implications for the geomorphic evolution of the southern interior Columbia River basin
E.B. Safran, S.W. Anderson, M. Mills-Novoa, P.K. House, L. Ely
2011, Geological Society of America Bulletin (123) 1851-1862
Large landslides (>0.1 km2) are important agents of geomorphic change. While most common in rugged mountain ranges, large landslides can also be widespread in relatively low-relief (several 100 m) terrain, where their distribution has been relatively little studied. A fuller understanding of the role of large landslides in landscape evolution...
Gas hydrate saturation from acoustic impedance and resistivity logs in the Shenhu area, south China Sea
X. Wang, S. Wu, M. Lee, Y. Guo, S. Yang, J. Liang
2011, Marine and Petroleum Geology (28) 1625-1633
During the China’s first gas hydrate drilling expedition -1 (GMGS-1), gas hydrate was discovered in layers ranging from 10 to 25 m above the base of gas hydrate stability zone in the Shenhu area, South China Sea. Water chemistry, electrical resistivity logs, and acoustic impedance were used to estimate gas hydrate...
Soil and periphyton indicators of anthropogenic water-quality changes in a rainfall-driven wetland
P.V. McCormick
2011, Wetlands Ecology and Management (19) 19-34
Surface soils and periphyton communities were sampled across an oligotrophic, soft-water wetland to document changes associated with pulsed inputs of nutrient- and mineral-rich canal drainage waters. A gradient of canal-water influence was indicated by the surface-water specific conductance, which ranged between 743 and 963 μS cm−1 in the canals to as low as...
Integument coloration signals reproductive success, heterozygosity, and antioxidant levels in chick-rearing black-legged kittiwakes
S. Leclaire, J. White, E. Arnoux, B. Faivre, N. Vetter, Scott A. Hatch, E. Danchin
2011, Die Naturwissenschaften (98) 773-782
Carotenoid pigments are important for immunity and as antioxidants, and carotenoid-based colors are believed to provide honest signals of individual quality. Other colorless but more efficient antioxidants such as vitamins A and E may protect carotenoids from bleaching. Carotenoid-based colors have thus recently been suggested to reflect the concentration of...
On the use of log-transformation vs. nonlinear regression for analyzing biological power laws
X. Xiao, E.P. White, M.B. Hooten, S.L. Durham
2011, Ecology (92) 1887-1894
Power‐law relationships are among the most well‐studied functional relationships in biology. Recently the common practice of fitting power laws using linear regression (LR) on log‐transformed data has been criticized, calling into question the conclusions of hundreds of studies. It has been suggested that nonlinear regression (NLR) is preferable, but no...
OSL dating of a Pleistocene maar: Birket Ram, the Golan heights
U. Shaanan, N. Porat, O. Navon, R. Weinberger, A. Calvert, Y. Weinstein
2011, Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research (201) 397-403
Direct dating of maars and their phreatomagmatic deposits is difficult due to the dominance of lithic (host rock) fragments and glassy particles of the juvenile magma. In this paper we demonstrate that optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating can be successfully used for age determination of phreatomagmatic deposits. We studied the...
Home range dynamics, habitat selection, and survival of Greater Roadrunners
S.W. Kelley, D. Ransom Jr., J.A. Butcher, G.G. Schulz, B.W. Surber, W.E. Pinchak, C.A. Santamaria, L.A. Hurtado
2011, Journal of Field Ornithology (82) 165-174
Greater Roadrunners (Geococcyx californianus) are common, poorly studied birds of arid and semi-arid ecosystems in the southwestern United States. Conservation of this avian predator requires a detailed understanding of their movements and spatial requirements that is currently lacking. From 2006 to 2009, we quantified home-range and core area sizes and...
Diet and population metrics of the introduced blue catfish population in the Altamaha, River, GA
Timothy F. Bonvechio, Cecil A. Jennings
2011, Conference Paper, Proceedings of the Southeastern Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies
Blue catfish (Ictalurus furcatus) were first detected in the Altamaha River, Georgia, during an access creel survey in 2005 and subsequently in 2006 during annual ictalurid sampling. Introduction of this species in the Altamaha River is believed to have occurred via escape from normal upstream reservoir releases from Lake Sinclair...
Recovering from the ShakeOut earthquake
Anne Wein, Laurie Johnson, Richard Bernknopf
2011, Earthquake Spectra (27) 521-538
Recovery from an earthquake like the M7.8 ShakeOut Scenario will be a major endeavor taking many years to complete. Hundreds of Southern California municipalities will be affected; most lack recovery plans or previous disaster experience. To support recovery planning this paper 1) extends the regional ShakeOut Scenario analysis into the...
Implementation and modification of a three-dimensional radiation stress formulation for surf zone and rip-current applications
N. Kumar, G. Voulgaris, John C. Warner
2011, Coastal Engineering (58) 1097-1117
Regional Ocean Modeling System (ROMS v 3.0), a three-dimensional numerical ocean model, was previously enhanced for shallow water applications by including wave-induced radiation stress forcing provided through coupling to wave propagation models (SWAN, REF/DIF). This enhancement made it suitable for surf zone applications as demonstrated using examples of obliquely incident...
Evaluation of single and two-stage adaptive sampling designs for estimation of density and abundance of freshwater mussels in a large river
D. R. Smith, J. T. Rogala, B. R. Gray, S. J. Zigler, T.J. Newton
2011, River Research and Applications (27) 122-133
Reliable estimates of abundance are needed to assess consequences of proposed habitat restoration and enhancement projects on freshwater mussels in the Upper Mississippi River (UMR). Although there is general guidance on sampling techniques for population assessment of freshwater mussels, the actual performance of sampling designs can depend critically on the...
On the hydrologic adjustment of climate-model projections: The potential pitfall of potential evapotranspiration
P. C. D. Milly, K.A. Dunne
2011, Earth Interactions (15) 1-14
Hydrologic models often are applied to adjust projections of hydroclimatic change that come from climate models. Such adjustment includes climate-bias correction, spatial refinement ("downscaling"), and consideration of the roles of hydrologic processes that were neglected in the climate model. Described herein is a quantitative analysis of the effects of hydrologic...
Decision analysis for conservation breeding: Maximizing production for reintroduction of whooping cranes
Des Smith, Sarah J. Converse, Keith Gibson, Axel Moehrenschlager, William A. Link, Glenn H. Olsen, Kelly Maguire
2011, Journal of Wildlife Management (75) 501-508
Captive breeding is key to management of severely endangered species, but maximizing captive production can be challenging because of poor knowledge of species breeding biology and the complexity of evaluating different management options. In the face of uncertainty and complexity, decision-analytic approaches can be used to identify optimal management options...
Stratigraphy of the Younger Dryas Chronozone and paleoenvironmental implications: Central and Southern Great Plains
V.T. Holliday, D.J. Meltzer, R. Mandel
2011, Quaternary International (242) 520-533
The Great Plains of the United States was the setting for some of the earliest research in North America into patterns and changes in the character of late Pleistocene environments and their effects on contemporary human populations. Many localities in the region have well-stratified records of terminal Pleistocene and early...
Factors affecting winter survival of female mallards in the lower Mississippi alluvial valley
B.E. Davis, A. D. Afton, R. R. Cox Jr.
2011, Waterbirds (34) 186-194
The lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley (hereafter LMAV) provides winter habitat for approximately 40% of the Mississippi Flyway's Mallard (Anas platyrhynhcos) population; information on winter survival rates of female Mallards in the LMAV is restricted to data collected prior to implementation of the North American Waterfowl Management Plan. To estimate recent...
A feasibility study of geological CO2 sequestration in the Ordos Basin, China
Z. Jiao, R.C. Surdam, L. Zhou, P.H. Stauffer, T. Luo
2011, Conference Paper, Energy Procedia
The Shaanxi Province/Wyoming CCS Partnership (supported by DOE NETL) aims to store commercial quantities of CO2 safely and permanently in the Ordovician Majiagou Formation in the northern Ordos Basin, Shaanxi Province, China. This objective is imperative because at present, six coal-to-liquid facilities in Shaanxi Province are capturing and venting significant...
