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We identified in-stream and off-stream characteristics that influenced various species diversity metrics in reaches of the Duck River Basin, Tennessee, USA. This relatively small basin is home to one of the most diverse freshwater fish faunas in North America. In all, over 325,000 native fish representing 136 native fish species...

The current state of permafrost in Alaska and meaningful expectations for its future evolution are informed by long-term perspectives of previous permafrost degradation. Thermokarst processes in permafrost landscapes often lead to widespread lake formation and the spatial and temporal evolution of thermokarst lake landscapes reflects the combined effects of climate,...

Foraminiferal evidence from two sites in southern Maryland, eastern United States, reveals a series of rapid ecological changes on the continental shelf during the onset of the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). Benthic and planktic foraminifer assemblages from the South Dover Bridge (SDB) and Mattawoman Creek-Billingsley Road (MCBR) cores in the...

To better understand recent population growth of the Double-crested Cormorant Phalacrocorax auritus along the Pacific coast of North America, we assessed long-term breeding population trends in the Humboldt Bay area, California, using aerial photographic survey data collected since 1989 as well as available prior data. The earliest documentations of breeding (but without...

This chapter highlights the major consistencies and differences that are evident in the anatomy and physiology of those fish most likely to be encountered by the veterinarian or biologist working in the realm of aquatic animal health. It describes teleost fish, members of the infraclass Teleostei that includes bony fish...

The invasive American bullfrog (Lithobates catesbeianus) and a variety of non‐native sport fish commonly co‐occur in lowland lentic habitats of the western United States. Both invasive taxa are implicated in declines of native amphibians in this region, but few long‐term studies of communities exist. Further, field studies of invasive–native interactions...

On February 14, 2019, just before 2:56 am local time (Pacific Standard Time), a landslide initiated from the hillslopes above the Hurricane Gulch section of the City of Sausalito, Marin County, California. The landslide, specifically classified as a debris flow, overran a road (Sausalito Boulevard) immediately below the landslide source...

Earthquake swarms present a challenge for operational earthquake forecasting because they are driven primarily by transient external processes, such as fluid flow, the behavior and duration of which are difficult to predict. In this study, we develop a swarm duration model to estimate how long a swarm is likely to...

Situated in the Mississippi Alluvial Plain of the Gulf Coast Prairie Landscape Conservation Cooperative (GCP LCC), the Chitimacha Tribe is one of four federally recognized tribes in Louisiana. The Tribal seat, trust lands/ reservation, and adjacent Tribal owned lands are located near Charenton, Louisiana, totaling nearly 1,000 acres. The...

Plant sexual reproduction is an important driver of plant community maintenance, dispersal, and recovery from disturbance. Despite this, sexual reproduction in habitats dominated by clonally spreading perennial species, such as salt marshes, is often ignored. Communities dominated by long-lived perennial species can still depend on sexual reproduction for recolonizing large...

A large part of oceanic biological production is limited by the scarcity of dissolved iron. Mineral dust aerosol, processed under acidic atmospheric conditions, is the primary natural source of bioavailable iron to oceanic life. However,...

Infectious diseases are causing catastrophic losses to biodiversity globally. Iridoviruses in the genus Ranavirus are among the leading causes of amphibian disease-related mortality. Polymorphisms in major histocompatibility complex (MHC) genes are significantly associated with variation in amphibian susceptibility to pathogens. MHC genes encode diverse cell-surface molecules that can recognize and...

Recently introduced unmarked spatial capture–recapture (SCR), spatial mark–resight (SMR), and 2‐flank spatial partial identity models (SPIMs) extend the domain of SCR to populations or observation systems that do not always allow for individual identity to be determined with certainty. For example, some species do not have natural marks that can...

Under modern conditions, the Atlantic Coastal Plain province of the eastern United States is not very conducive to widespread eolian sediment mobilization because of a humid and mesothermal climate, relatively low mean surface wind velocities (~1–3 m/sec), and relatively dense vegetation. LiDAR data, however, have revealed the presence of...

Residents in the wildland-urban interface (WUI) can play an important role in reducing wildfire’s negative effects by performing wildfire risk mitigation on their property. This report offers insight into the wildfire risk mitigation activities and related considerations, such as attitudes, experiences, and concern about wildfire, for people with homes in...

Context: Diadromous fish populations in the Pacific Northwest face challenges along their migratory routes from declining habitat quality, harvest, and barriers to longitudinal connectivity. These stressors complicate the prioritization of proposed management actions intended to improve conditions for migratory fishes including anadromous salmon and trout. Objectives: We describe a multi-scale hybrid...

The Department of the Interior and the U.S. Geological Survey have made it a priority to train the next generation of scientists and resource managers. The Climate Adaptation Science Centers (CSC) and consortium institutions are working to contribute to this initiative by supporting and building a network of students across...

The master joints bounding the columns that make up the basal colonnade of large lava flows of the Columbia Plateau are, in places, flanked by sub-horizontal mini-columns that have grown normal to the master joints. The secondary mini-columns grow into the main columns and are clearly younger than them. They...

Most marine mammals rely on swimming as their primary form of locomotion. These animals have evolved specialized morphologies, physiologies, and behaviors that have enabled them to efficiently move through an aquatic environment (Williams 1999). Such adaptations include body streamlining, modified plantar surfaces for propulsion, and abilities...

Fine scale maps of soil properties enable efficient land management and inform earth system models. Recent efforts to create soil property maps from field observations tend to use similar tree-based machine learning interpolation approaches, but often deal with depth of predictions, validation, and uncertainty differently. One of the main differences...

Conservation decisions are challenging, not only because they often involve difficult conflicts among outcomes that people value, but because our understanding of the natural world and our effects on it is fraught with uncertainty. Value of Information (VoI) methods provide an approach for understanding and managing uncertainty from the standpoint...

While microbiome research is a rapidly expanding field of study, relatively little is known of the microbiomes associated with Foraminifera. This preliminary study investigated microbes associated with four species of Foraminifera, representing two taxonomic orders, which host three kinds of algal endosymbionts. A major objective was to explore potential influences...

Roadside amphibian citizen science (CS) programmes bring together volunteers focused on collecting scientific data while working to mitigate population declines by reducing road mortality of pond‐breeding amphibians. Despite the international popularity of these movement‐based, roadside conservation efforts (i.e. “big nights,” “bucket brigades” and “toad patrols”), direct benefits to conservation...

In 2017, we investigated a mortality event of muskrat (Ondatra zibethicus) in Northwest Ohio, USA, and determined the causes of death to be from Tyzzer's disease due to Clostridium piliforme and Klebsiella pneumoniae septicemia. The gross presentation resembled tularemia, which highlighted the importance of a complete diagnostic investigation....

We present a method to calculate landslide hazard curves along offshore margins based on size distributions of submarine landslides. The method analyzes ten different continental margins, that were mapped by high-resolution multibeam sonar with landslide scar areas measured by a consistent GIS procedure. Statistical tests of several different probability distribution...