Assessing the value and usage of data management planning and data management plans within the U.S. Geological Survey
Madison Langseth, Elizabeth Sellers, Grace C. Donovan, Amanda N. Liford
2023, Open-File Report 2023-1069
As of 2016, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Fundamental Science Practices require data management plans (DMPs) for all USGS and USGS-funded research. The USGS Science Data Management Branch of the Science Analytics and Synthesis Program has been working to help the USGS (Bureau) meet this requirement. However, USGS researchers still...
Groundwater potentiometric-surface altitude in 2022 and groundwater-level changes between 1968, 1991, and 2022, in the alluvial aquifer in the Big Lost River Valley, south-central Idaho
Scott D. Ducar, Lauren M. Zinsser
2023, Scientific Investigations Map 3509
The U.S. Geological Survey and the Idaho Department of Water Resources measured groundwater levels during spring 2022 and autumn 2022 to create detailed potentiometric-surface maps for the alluvial aquifer in the Big Lost River Valley in south-central Idaho. Wells were assigned to shallow, intermediate, and deep water-bearing units based on...
A multifault earthquake threat for the Seattle metropolitan region revealed by mass tree mortality
Bryan Black, Jessie K. Pearl, Charlotte Pearson, Patrick T. Pringle, David C. Frank, Morgan T. Page, Brendan M. Buckley, Edward R. Cook, Grant L. Harley, Karen J. King, Jonathan F. Hughes, David J. Reynolds, Brian Sherrod
2023, Science Advances (9)
Compound earthquakes involving simultaneous ruptures along multiple faults often define a region’s upper threshold of maximum magnitude. Yet, the potential for linked faulting remains poorly understood given the infrequency of these events in the historic era. Geological records provide longer perspectives, although temporal uncertainties are too broad to clearly pinpoint...
Thirteen years of turtle capture–mark–recapture in a small urban pond complex in Louisiana, USA
Brad Glorioso, J. Hardin Waddle, Doug P. Armstrong
2023, Journal of Herpetology (57) 290-296
Turtles are one of the most imperiled vertebrate groups in the world. With habitat destruction unabated in many places, urban and suburban greenspaces may serve as refugia for turtles, at least those species able to tolerate heavily altered landscapes. In south-central Louisiana, we have conducted...
Flood-inundation maps created using a synthetic rating curve for a 10-mile reach of the Sabinal River and a 7-mile reach of the West Sabinal River near Utopia, Texas, 2021
Namjeong Choi
2023, Scientific Investigations Report 2023-5001
In 2021, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in cooperation with the Bandera County River Authority and Groundwater District and the Texas Water Development Board, studied floods to produce a library of flood-inundation maps for the Sabinal River near Utopia, Texas. Digital flood-inundation maps were created for a 10-mile reach of...
ECCOE Landsat quarterly Calibration and Validation report—Quarter 2, 2023
Md Obaidul Haque, Rajagopalan Rengarajan, Mark Lubke, Nahid Hasan, Ashish Shrestha, Fatima Tuz Zafrin Tuli, Jerad L. Shaw, Alex Denevan, Shannon Franks, Kathryn Ruslander, Esad Micijevic, Michael J. Choate, Cody Anderson, Kurt Thome, Ed Kaita, Julia Barsi, Raviv Levy, Jeff Miller, Leibo Ding
2023, Open-File Report 2023-1075
Executive SummaryThe U.S. Geological Survey Earth Resources Observation and Science Calibration and Validation (Cal/Val) Center of Excellence (ECCOE) focuses on improving the accuracy, precision, calibration, and product quality of remote-sensing data, leveraging years of multiscale optical system geometric and radiometric calibration and characterization experience. The ECCOE Landsat Cal/Val Team continually...
A guide to creating an effective big data management framework
Samantha Arundel, Kevin G McKeehan, Bryan B Campbell, Andrew N. Bulen, Philip T. Thiem
2023, Journal of Big Data (10)
Many agencies and organizations, such as the U.S. Geological Survey, handle massive geospatial datasets and their auxiliary data and are thus faced with challenges in storing data and ingesting it, transferring it between internal programs, and egressing it to external entities. As a result, these agencies and organizations may inadvertently...
Long-term water-quality constituent trends in the Little Arkansas River, south-central Kansas, 1995–2021
Mandy L. Stone, Brian J. Klager
2023, Scientific Investigations Report 2023-5102
The Equus Beds aquifer and Cheney Reservoir are primary sources for the city of Wichita’s current (2023) water supply. The Equus Beds aquifer storage and recovery (ASR) project was developed by the city of Wichita in the early 1990s to meet future water demands using the Little Arkansas River as...
Multiphysics modelling in PyLith: Poroelasticity
Robert L. Walker, Matthew G. Knepley, Brad T. Aagaard, Charles A. Williams
2023, Geophysical Journal International (235) 2442-2475
PyLith, a community, open-source code for modelling quasi-static and dynamic crustal deformation with an emphasis on earthquake faulting, has recently been updated with a flexible multiphysics implementation. We demonstrate the versatility of the multiphysics implementation by extending the code to model fully coupled continuum poromechanics. We verify the newly incorporated...
Informing ASR treatment practices in a Florida aquifer through a human health risk approach
Anna Gitter, Kristina Mean, John T. Lisle
2023, International Journal of Enviornmental Research and Public Health (20)
Aquifer storage and recovery (ASR) can augment water supplies and hydrologic flows under varying climatic conditions. However, imposing drinking water regulations on ASR practices, including pre-treatment before injection into the aquifer, remains arguable. Microbial inactivation data—Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, poliovirus type 1 and Cryptosporidium parvum—were used in a...
Vegetation change over 140 years in a sagebrush landscape of the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument, New Mexico, USA
Kara Fox, Ellis Margolis, Manuel K. Lopez, Ella Kasten, J.T. Stevens
2023, Journal of Vegetation Science (34)
QuestionsBig sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata) ecosystems across the western United States have experienced many changes in ecosystem dynamics and vegetation composition over the last century due to livestock grazing, non-native species, and changing climate and fire regimes. We conducted the first systematic investigation of historical vegetation composition and...
Survey optimization for invasive Burmese pythons informed by camera traps
Michael V. Cove, Jeremy Dixon, Katherine King, Matthew Willson, Kristen Hart
2023, Wildlife Letters (1) 143-148
The Burmese python (Python bivittatus) is an invasive predator responsible for broad mammal declines in South Florida, United States. Despite their large size, pythons remain cryptic and require multifaceted approaches for detection. We evaluated a novel technique by deploying camera traps at known locations of radiotagged pythons...
Lessons learned in applying decision analysis to natural resource management for high stakes issues surrounded by uncertainty
Kelly Filer Robinson, Mark Richard Dufour, Jason L. Fischer, Seth J. Herbst, Michael L. Jones, Lucas R. Nathan, Tammy J. Newcomb
2023, Decision Analysis (20) 326-342
Management agencies are tasked with difficult decisions for conservation and management of natural resources. These decisions are difficult because of ecological and social uncertainties, the potential for multiple decision makers from multiple jurisdictions, and the need to account for the diverse values of stakeholders. Decision analysis provides a framework for...
Lessons learned from community and citizen science monitoring projects on the Elwha River Restoration Project
M. V. Eitzel, Ryan Meyer, Sarah A. Morley, Ian M. Miller, Patrick B. Shafroth, Chelsea Behymer, Christopher Jadallah, David Parks, Anna Kagley, Anne Shaffer, Heidi L. Ballard
2023, Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution (11)
Community and citizen science (CCS) projects – initiatives that involve public participation in scientific research – can both sustain and expand long-term monitoring of large dam removal projects. In this article, we discuss our perspectives on CCS associated with the Elwha River dam removals. We summarize how the public has...
Crop water use dynamics over arid and semi-arid croplands in the lower Colorado River Basin
Neda Abbasi, Hamideh Nouri, Pamela L. Nagler, Kamel Didan, Sattar Chavoshi Borujeni, Armando Barreto-Muñoz, Christian Opp, Stefan Siebert
2023, European Journal of Remote Sensing (56)
Numerous studies have evaluated the application of Remote Sensing (RS) techniques for mapping actual evapotranspiration (ETa) using Vegetation-Index-based (VI-based) and surface energy balance methods (SEB). SEB models computationally require a large effort for application. VI-based methods are fast and easy to apply and could therefore potentially be applied...
Evidence for fine-grained material at lunar red spots: Insights from thermal infrared and radar data sets
Benjamin Byron, Catherine Elder, Timothy Glotch, Paul Hayne, Lori M. Pigue, Joshua T. S. Cahill
2023, Planetary Science Journal (4)
Lunar red spots are small spectrally red features that have been proposed to be the result of non-mare volcanism. Studies have shown that a number of red spots are silicic, and are spectrally distinct from both highlands and mare compositions. In this work, we use data from LRO Diviner, Mini-RF,...
Eruption of stagnant lava from an inactive perched lava lake
Tim R. Orr, Michael H. Zoeller, Edward W. Llewellin, Matthew R. Patrick
2023, Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research (442)
Lava flow hazards are usually thought to end when the erupting vent becomes inactive, but this is not always the case. At Kīlauea in August 2014, a spiny ʻaʻā flow erupted from the levee of a crusted perched lava lake that...
Doing the same thing over and over again and getting the same result: Assessing variance in wetland invertebrate assemblages
Sophie Reindl, Kyle McLean, Jamie M. Kneitel, Douglas A. Bell, Darold P. Batzer
2023, Wetlands (43)
Past efforts to explain variation of invertebrate assemblages in freshwater wetlands have been less productive than anticipated. To explore why efforts are disappointing, we assembled large invertebrate data sets from North Dakota prairie potholes, California rock pools, and Georgia Carolina bay wetlands that addressed spatial (among wetlands) and temporal (among...
The 50-year Landsat collection 2 archive
Christopher J. Crawford, David P. Roy, Saeed Arab, Christopher Barnes, Eric Vermote, Glynn Hulley, Aaron Gerace, Michael J. Choate, Christopher Engebretson, Esad Micijevic, Gail L. Schmidt, Cody Anderson, Martha Anderson, Michelle Bouchard, Bruce D. Cook, Ray Dittmeier, Danny Howard, Calli Jenkerson, Minsu Kim, Tania Kleyians, Tom Maiersperger, Chase Mueller, Christopher Neigh, Linda Owen, Benjamin Page, Nima Pahelvan, Rajagopalan Rengarajan, Jean-Claude Roger, Kristi Sayler, Pat L Scaramuzza, Sergii Skakun, Lin Yan, Hankui K. Zhang, Zhe Zhu, Stephen G. Zahn
2023, Science of Remote Sensing (8)
The Landsat global consolidated data archive now exceeds 50 years. In recognition of the need for consistently processed data across the Landsat satellite series, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) initiated collection-based processing of the entire archive that was processed as Collection 1 in 2016. In preparation...
Population dynamics of the threatened Oregon spotted frog before and after drought mitigation
Jennifer Rowe, Christopher Pearl, Adam Duarte, Brome McCreary, Michael J. Adams
2023, The Journal of Wildlife Management (88)
Amphibians are among the most sensitive taxa to climate change, and species inhabiting arid and semiarid landscapes at the extremes of their range are especially vulnerable to drought. The Jack Creek, Oregon, USA, population of Oregon spotted frogs (Rana pretiosa) faces unique challenges because...
Crustal thickness and the VP/VS ratio within the Arabia Plate from P-wave receiver functions at 154 broadband seismic stations
Alexander R. Blanchette, Simon L. Klemperer, Walter D. Mooney
2023, Open-File Report 2023-1042
As part of a joint Saudi Geological Survey (SGS) and United States Geological Survey project, we analyzed P-wave receiver functions from seismic stations covering most of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to map the thickness of the crust across the Arabia Plate. We present an update of crustal thickness...
Models for linking hunter retention and recruitment to regulations and game populations
Conor P. McGowan, Jennifer L. Price Tack, Amy Silvano, J. Barry Grand
2023, Frontiers in Conservation Science (4)
Introduction: Declining hunter populations across North America present wildlife management agencies with the prospect of declining revenues for wildlife conservation and management and the need for new tools to evaluate management strategies and predict future status of game species and hunters.Methods: Here we present a modeling framework and potential decision support tool...
Salinity trends in a groundwater system supplemented by 50 years of imported Colorado River water
Jennifer S. Harkness, Patrick Michael McCarthy, Bryant Jurgens, Zeno Levy
2023, Environmental Science & Technology Water (3) 3253-3264
The Indio subbasin of the Coachella Valley is a desert area of southern California where a growing population depends primarily on groundwater for drinking and agricultural uses. The aquifer system has been supplemented with Colorado River water through managed recharge and widespread irrigation since the mid-20th century. We use a...
Relating absolute abundance of an estuarine fish to habitat area in an urbanizing environment
Paul J. Rudershausen, Steven M. Lombardo, George R. Stilson, Matthew J. O'Donnell
2023, Marine Ecologly Progressive Series (719) 92
Organisms that rely on salt marsh habitat are an important trophic link, helping to maintain estuarine ecosystem productivity. We used GIS to quantify intertidal (assumed salt marsh) area from aerial photographs taken in 1939 and from software-supplied satellite imagery taken in 2021 for tidal creeks in North Carolina (USA)...
Fecal metabarcoding of the endangered Pacific pocket mouse (Perognathus longimembris pacificus) reveals a diverse and forb rich diet that reflects local habitat availability
Amy G. Vandergast, Cheryl S. Brehme, Deborah D. Iwanowicz, Robert S. Cornman, Devin T. Adsit-Morris, Robert N. Fisher
2023, Ecology and Evolution (13)
Information on diet breadth and preference can assist in understanding links between food resources and population growth and inform habitat restoration for rare herbivores. We assessed the diet of the endangered Pacific pocket mouse using metabarcoding of fecal samples and compared it to plant...
