Late Quaternary slip rates on the Sierra Madre fault zone and paleoseismic evidence on the size and frequency of past ruptures
Reed J. Burgette, Katherine M. Scharer, Scott Lindvall
2020, Book chapter, From the islands to the mountains: A 2020 view of geologic excursions in Southern California
The Sierra Madre fault zone is a south-vergent, active reverse fault that accommodates shortening between basins on the northern margin of the Los Angeles region and the San Gabriel Mountains. The preservation of late Quaternary alluvial fill and fan surfaces in the hanging wall of the fault provides evidence of...
Abundant spontaneous and dynamically triggered submarine landslides in the Gulf of Mexico
Wenyuan Fan, Jeffrey J. McGuire, Peter M. Shearer
2020, Geophysical Research Letters (47)
Submarine landslides that occur offshore are common along the U.S. continental margins. These mass wasting events can trigger tsunamis and hence potentially devastate coastal communities and damage offshore infrastructure. However, the initiation and failure processes of submarine landslides are poorly understood. Here, we identify and locate 85 previously unknown submarine...
Specialized meltwater biodiversity persists despite widespread deglaciation
Clint C. Muhlfeld, Timothy Joseph Cline, J. Joseph Giersch, Erich Peitzsch, Caitlyn Florentine, Dean Jacobsen, Scott Hotaling
2020, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (117) 12208-12214
Glaciers are important drivers of environmental heterogeneity and biological diversity across mountain landscapes. Worldwide, glaciers are receding rapidly due to climate change, with important consequences for biodiversity in mountain ecosystems. However, the effects of glacier loss on biodiversity have never been quantified across a mountainous region, primarily due to a...
Aligning climate models with stakeholder needs: Advances in communicating future rainfall uncertainties for south Florida decision makers
Johnna Infanti, Ben P. Kirtman, Nicholas Aumen, John F. Stamm, Colin Polsky
2020, Earth and Space Science (7)
Changes in future precipitation are of great importance to climate data users in South Florida. A recent U.S. Geological Survey workshop, “Increasing Confidence in Precipitation Projections for Everglades Restoration,” highlighted a gap between standard climate model outputs and the climate information needs of some key Florida...
Poultry litter as potential source of pathogens and other contaminants in groundwater and surface water proximal to large-scale confined poultry feeding operations
Laura E. Hubbard, Carrie E. Givens, Dale W. Griffin, Luke Iwanowicz, Michael T. Meyer, Dana W. Kolpin
2020, Science of the Total Environment (735)
Manure from livestock production has been associated with the contamination of water resources. To date, research has primarily focused on runoff of these contaminants from animal operations into surface water, and the introduction of poultry-derived pathogenic zoonoses and other contaminants into groundwater is under-investigated. We characterized pathogens and other microbial...
Understanding mountain lakes in a changing world: Introduction to the special issue
Jill S. Baron, Sudeep Chandra, James J. Elser
2020, Aquatic Sciences (82)
No abstract available....
Local magnitude, coda magnitude, and radiated energy of volcanic tectonic earthquakes from October 2010 to December 2011 at Sinabung volcano, Indonesia
Afnimar Pagacancang, Wendy A. McCausland, Nimas Nurul Hamidah, Kristianto, Ahmad Basuki, Novianti Indrastuti
2020, Bulletin of Volcanology (83)
In August 2010, Sinabung volcano began erupting after more than a thousand years of dormancy. Following several weeks of phreatic eruptions, the eruptions ceased and Sinabung entered what became an inter-eruptive period of dominantly seismic unrest. While standard equations for understanding the size of an earthquake (local magnitude (ML), coda...
Louisiana Barrier Island Comprehensive Monitoring Program: Mapping habitats in beach, dune, and intertidal environments along the Louisiana Gulf of Mexico shoreline, 2008 and 2015–16
Nicholas M. Enwright, William M. SooHoo, Jason L. Dugas, Craig P. Conzelmann, Claudia Laurenzano, Darin M. Lee, Kelly Mouton, Spencer J. Stelly
2020, Open-File Report 2020-1030
Barrier islands, headlands, and coastal shorelines provide numerous valuable ecosystem goods and services, including storm protection and erosion control for the mainland, habitat for fish and wildlife, salinity regulation in estuaries, carbon sequestration in marshes, and areas for recreation and tourism. These coastal features are dynamic environments because of their...
Natural and anthropogenic processes affecting radon releases during mining and early stage reclamation activities, Pinenut uranium mine, Arizona, USA
David L. Naftz, Katherine Walton-Day, W. Payton Gardner, Michael C. Duniway, Donald J. Bills
2020, Journal of Environmental Radioactivity (220–221)
Radon (Rnair) was monitored in open air in publicly accessible areas surrounding the Pinenut uranium (U) mine during mining and reclamation activities in 2015–16 to address concerns about mining related effects to areas surrounding Grand Canyon National Park (GCNP) in Arizona, USA. During July 2015, Rnair concentrations associated with the...
Red Knot (Calidris canutus) research—Preliminary results and future opportunities
David C. Kazyak, Aaron Aunins, Robin L. Johnson
2020, Open-File Report 2020-1050
The Red Knot, Calidris canutus, is a highly migratory shorebird with a cosmopolitan distribution. Six subspecies have been identified, two of which occur regularly in North America (C.c. rufa and C.c. roselaari). Given their long-distance migrations through many jurisdictions and conservation status, tools are needed to reliably distinguish the subspecies...
Good prospects: High-resolution telemetry data suggests novel brood-site selection behavior in waterfowl
Michael L. Casazza, Fiona McDuie, Austen Lorenz, David A. Keiter, Julie L. Yee, Cory T. Overton, Sarah H. Peterson, Cliff L. Feldheim, Joshua T. Ackerman
2020, Animal Behavior and Cognition (164) 163-172
Breeding success should increase with prior knowledge of the surrounding environment, which is dependent upon an animal’s ability to evaluate habitat. Prospecting for nesting locations and migratory stop-over sites are well-established behaviors among bird species. We assessed whether ducks in Suisun Marsh, California, USA, a brackish marsh, prospect for suitable...
The use of Bayesian priors in Ecology: The good, the bad and the not great
Katharine M. Banner, Kathryn M. Irvine, Thomas Rodhouse
2020, Methods in Ecology and Evolution (11) 882-889
Bayesian data analysis (BDA) is a powerful tool for making inference from ecological data, but its full potential has yet to be realized. Despite a generally positive trajectory in research surrounding model development and assessment, far too little attention has been given to prior specification.Default priors, a sub‐class of...
Experimental shifts of hydrologic residence time in a sandy urban stream sediment-water interface alter nitrate removal and nitrous oxide fluxes
T. Hampton, J. Zarnetske, Martin A. Briggs, F. M. P. Dehkordy, K. Singha, Frederick Day-Lewis, Judson Harvey, S. R. Chowdhury, John W. Lane
2020, Biogeochemistry (149) 195-219
The sediment–water interfaces (SWI) of streams serve as important biogeochemical hotspots in watersheds and contribute to whole-catchment reactive nitrogen budgets and water-quality conditions. Recently, the SWI has been identified as an important source of nitrous oxide (N2O) produced in streams, with SWI residence time among the principal controls on its...
Forecasting, detecting, and tracking volcanic eruptions from space
Michael P. Poland, Taryn Lopez, Robert Wright, Michael J. Pavolonis
2020, Remote Sensing in Earth Systems Sciences (3) 55-94
Satellite monitoring of volcanic activity typically includes four primary observations: (1) deformation and surface change, (2) gas emissions, (3) thermal anomalies, and (4) ash plumes. These phenomena are imaged by remote sensing data that span the electromagnetic spectrum, from microwave to ultraviolet energy and including visible and infrared wavelengths. The...
Genetic identification of African pangolins and their origin in illegal trade
Huarong Zhang, Gary Ades, Mark P. Miller, Feng Yang, Kwok-wai Lai, Gunter A. Fischer
2020, Global Ecology and Conservation (23)
To track the illegal pangolin trade from Africa to Asia, we analyzed 1800 DNA samples from 30 seizures of African pangolin scales in Hong Kong during the period 2012–2016. We concluded that all four African pangolin species were present in trade,...
Investigation on endocrine disruption of the larval lampricide 3-trifluoromethyl-4-nitrophenol: Short-term reproduction assay with fathead minnow (Pimephales promelas) under flow-through conditions
Simon Dinehart, Terrance D. Hubert
2020, Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (39) 1599-1607
3‐Trifluoromethyl‐4‐nitrophenol (TFM) has been used for more than 60 yr to control the invasive parasitic sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus ) in the Great Lakes Basin (USA/Canada). In the early 1990s, researchers reported that TFM induced vitellogenin in fish and that TFM was an agonist for the rainbow trout...
The future of sediment transport and streamflow under a changing climate and the implications for long-term resilience of the San Francisco Bay-Delta
Michelle A. Stern, Lorraine E. Flint, Alan L Flint, Noah Knowles, Scott Wright
2020, Water Resources Research (56)
Sedimentation and turbidity have effects on habitat suitability in the San Francisco Bay‐Delta (Bay‐Delta), concerning key species in the bay as well as the ability of the delta marshes to keep pace with sea level rise. A daily rainfall runoff and transport model of the Sacramento River...
Projecting spatiotemporally explicit effects of climate change on stream temperature: A model comparison and implications for coldwater fishes
Yeun Lee, Aimee H. Fullerton, Ning Sun, Christian E. Torgersen
2020, Journal of Hydrology (588)
Conservation planners and resource managers seek information about how the availability and locations of cold-water habitats will change in the future and how these predictions vary among models. We used a physical process-based model to demonstrate the implications of climate change for streamflow and water temperature in two watersheds with...
Active steady-state creep on a nontectonic normal fault in southeast Utah: Implications for strain release in a rapidly deforming salt system
Katherine Kravitz, Karl Mueller, Roger Bilham, Maureen A. L. Walton
2020, Geophysical Research Letters (47)
Characterizing short-term temporal variations of fault creep provides insight into the evolution, mechanics, and strength of fault systems. Using spirit leveling and an extensome- ter, we measured surface displacement of a fault southwest of the Needles District, Canyon- lands National Park, Utah, where extension is driven by differential unloading of...
At the end of the road: Lessons learned from comparing model- and design-based approaches to estimate population sizes of boreal birds in Alberta, Canada
Peter Solymos, Judith D Toms, Steven M. Matsuoka, Steven G. Cumming, Nicole K. S. Barker, Wayne E. Thogmartin, Diana Stralberg, Andrew D. Crosby, Francisco V Denes, Samuel Hache, C Lisa Mahon, Fiona K A Schmiegelow, Erin M. Bayne
2020, The Condor (122)
Estimating population abundance is a challenging task complicated by the amount, type, and quality of available data. Conservationists have relied on design-based estimates from Partners in Flight (PIF), which primarily uses roadside data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) to estimate populations sizes. However, the BBS was not...
Evaluating the potential role of bioactive chemicals on the distribution of invasive Asian carp upstream and downstream from river mile 278 in the Illinois waterway
William A. Battaglin, James J. Duncker, Paul J. Terrio, Paul M. Bradley, Larry B. Barber, Laura A. DeCicco
2020, Science of the Total Environment (735)
Two non-native carp species have invaded the Illinois Waterway and are a threat to Great Lakes ecosystems. Poor water quality in the upper Illinois Waterway, may be a factor contributing to the stalling of the carp population front near river mile 278. In 2015, the U.S. Geological Survey collected 4...
Mount St. Helens at 40
Jon J. Major
2020, Science (368) 704-705
No abstract available. ...
Testing environmental DNA from wolf snow tracks for species, sex, and individual identification
Shannon Barber-Meyer, Joseph C. Dysthe, Kristine Pilgrim
2020, Canadian Wildlife Biology and Management (9) 12-20
Monitoring elusive, relatively low-density, large predators, such as the grey wolf (Canis lupus), has often been accomplished by live-capture and radiocollaring. Increasingly, non-invasive methods are considered best practice whenever it is possible to use them. Recently, environmental DNA (eDNA) deposited in snow tracks was demonstrated as useful for identifying lynx...
Deep long-period earthquakes generated by second boiling beneath Mauna Kea volcano
Aaron Wech, Weston Thelen, Amanda Thomas
2020, Science (368) 775-779
Deep long-period earthquakes (DLPs) are an enigmatic type of volcanic seismicity that sometimes precedes eruptions but mostly occurs at quiescent volcanoes. These earthquakes are depleted in high-frequency content and typically occur near the base of the crust. We observed a near-periodic, long- lived sequence of more than one million DLPs...
A red knot as a black swan: How a single bird shows navigational abilities during repeat crossings of the Greenland Icecap
Eva Kok, T. Lee Tibbitts, David C. Douglas, Paul Howey, Anne Dekinga, Benjamin Gnep, Theunis Piersma
2020, Journal of Avian Biology (51)
Despite the wealth of studies on seasonal movements of birds between southern nonbreeding locations and High Arctic breeding locations, the key mechanisms of navigation during these migrations remain elusive. A flight along the shortest possible route between pairs of points on a sphere (‘orthodrome’) requires a bird to be able...
