Coal-tar-based pavement sealants—a potent source of PAHs
Barbara Mahler, Peter C. Van Metre
2017, Lakeline (37) 13-18
P avement sealants are applied to the asphalt pavement of many parking lots, driveways, and even playgrounds in North America (Figure 1), where, when first applied, they render the pavement glossy black and looking like new. Sealant products used commercially in the central, eastern, and northern United States typically are...
Matching watershed and otolith chemistry to establish natal origin of an endangered desert lake sucker
Deanna D. Strohm, Phaedra Budy, Todd A. Crowl
2017, Transactions of the American Fisheries Society (146) 732-743
Stream habitat restoration and supplemental stocking of hatchery-reared fish have increasingly become key components of recovery plans for imperiled freshwater fish; however, determining when to discontinue stocking efforts, prioritizing restoration areas, and evaluating restoration success present a conservation challenge. In this study, we demonstrate that otolith microchemistry is an effective...
Response of fish population dynamics to mitigation activities in a large regulated river
Carson J. Watkins, Tyler J. Ross, Michael C. Quist, Ryan S. Hardy
2017, Transactions of the American Fisheries Society (146) 703-715
Extensive water development in large rivers has precipitated many negative ecological effects on native fish populations. Mitigation for such development often focuses on restoring biological integrity through remediation of the physical and chemical properties of regulated rivers. However, evaluating and defining the success of those programs can be difficult. We...
Distribution and abundance of Millicoma Dace in the Coos River Basin, Oregon
Paul D. Scheerer, James Peterson, Shaun Clements
2017, Northwestern Naturalist (98) 39-47
The Millicoma Dace Rhinichthys cataractae is a form of Longnose Dace endemic to the Coos River drainage in southwestern Oregon. Sparse species records in the Oregon State University Ichthyology Collection and database and infrequent recent encounters prompted surveys to assess the current status and distribution of the species. In 2014, we surveyed...
A probabilistic approach to remote compositional analysis of planetary surfaces
Mathieu G.A. Lapotre, Bethany L. Ehlmann, Sarah E. Minson
2017, Journal of Geophysical Research E: Planets (122) 983-1009
Reflected light from planetary surfaces provides information, including mineral/ice compositions and grain sizes, by study of albedo and absorption features as a function of wavelength. However, deconvolving the compositional signal in spectra is complicated by the nonuniqueness of the inverse problem. Trade-offs between mineral abundances and grain sizes in setting...
Cessation of oil exposure in harlequin ducks after the Exxon Valdez oil spill: Cytochrome P4501A biomarker evidence
Daniel Esler, Brenda E. Ballachey, Lizabeth Bowen, A. Keith Miles, Rian D. Dickson, John D. Henderson
2017, Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (36) 1294-1300
The authors quantified hepatic hydrocarbon-inducible cytochrome P4501A (CYP1A) expression, as ethoxyresorufin-O-deethylase (EROD) activity, in wintering harlequin ducks (Histrionicus histrionicus) captured in Prince William Sound, Alaska (USA), during 2011, 2013, and 2014 (22–25 yr following the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill). Average EROD activity was compared between birds from areas oiled...
Neutron scattering measurements of carbon dioxide adsorption in pores within the Marcellus Shale: Implications for sequestration
Konstantinos L. Stefanopoulos, Tristan G. A. Youngs, Richard Sakurovs, Leslie F. Ruppert, Jitendra Bahadur, Yuri B. Melnichenko
2017, Environmental Science & Technology (51) 6515-6521
Shale is an increasingly viable source of natural gas and a potential candidate for geologic CO2sequestration. Understanding the gas adsorption behavior on shale is necessary for the design of optimal gas recovery and sequestration projects. In the present study neutron diffraction and small-angle neutron scattering measurements of adsorbed CO2 in Marcellus...
Creating multithemed ecological regions for macroscale ecology: Testing a flexible, repeatable, and accessible clustering method
Kendra Spence Cheruvelil, Shuai Yuan, Katherine E. Webster, Pang-Ning Tan, Jean-Francois Lapierre, Sarah M. Collins, C. Emi Fergus, Caren E. Scott, Emily Norton Henry, Patricia A. Soranno, Christopher T. Filstrup, Tyler Wagner
2017, Ecology and Evolution (7) 3046-3058
Understanding broad-scale ecological patterns and processes often involves accounting for regional-scale heterogeneity. A common way to do so is to include ecological regions in sampling schemes and empirical models. However, most existing ecological regions were developed for specific purposes, using a limited set of geospatial features and irreproducible methods. Our...
Tropical river suspended sediment and solute dynamics in storms during an extreme drought
Kathryn E. Clark, James B. Shanley, Martha A. Scholl, Nicolas Perdrial, Julia N. Perdrial, Alain F. Plante, William H. McDowell
2017, Water Resources Research (53) 3695-3712
Droughts, which can strongly affect both hydrologic and biogeochemical systems, are projected to become more prevalent in the tropics in the future. We assessed the effects of an extreme drought during 2015 on stream water composition in the Luquillo Mountains of Puerto Rico. We demonstrated that drought base flow in...
Effect of substrate size on sympatric sand darter benthic habitat preferences
Patricia A. Thompson, Stuart A. Welsh, Austin A. Rizzo, Dustin M. Smith
2017, Journal of Freshwater Ecology (32) 455-465
The western sand darter, Ammocrypta clara, and the eastern sand darter, A. pellucida, are sand-dwelling fishes that have undergone range-wide population declines, presumably owing to habitat loss. Habitat use studies have been conducted for the eastern sand darter, but literature on the western sand darter remains sparse. To evaluate substrate...
White-cheeked Pintail duckling and brood survival across wetland types at Humacao Nature Reserve, Puerto Rico
J. Brian Davis, Francisco Vilella, Joseph D. Lancaster, Marisel Lopez-Flores, Richard M. Kaminski, Jose A. Cruz-Burgos
2017, Condor (119) 308-320
Duckling survival is an important influence on recruitment in several North American Anas species. White-cheeked Pintail (Anas bahamensis) breeding in Puerto Rico encounter a variety of wetland types that may influence duckling survival. We monitored fates of 92 radio-tagged ducklings in 31 broods in 5 wetland habitat types at Humacao...
A report on upgraded seismic monitoring stations in Myanmar: Station performance and site response
Hrin Nei Thiam, Yin Myo Min Htwe, Tun Lin Kyaw, Pa Pa Tun, Zaw Min, Sun Hninn Htwe, Tin Myo Aung, Kyaw Kyaw Lin, Myat Min Aung, Jason De Cristofaro, Mathias Franke, Stefan Radman, Elouie Lepiten, Emily Wolin, Susan E. Hough
2017, Seismological Research Letters (88) 926-934
Myanmar is in a tectonically complex region between the eastern edge of the Himalayan collision zone and the northern end of the Sunda megathrust. Until recently, earthquake monitoring and research efforts have been hampered by a lack of modern instrumentation and communication infrastructure. In January 2016, a major upgrade of...
Contributions of wildland fire to terrestrial ecosystem carbon dynamics in North America from 1990 to 2012
Guangsheng Chen, Daniel J. Hayes, A. David McGuire
2017, Global Biogeochemical Cycles (31) 878-900
Burn area and the frequency of extreme fire events have been increasing during recent decades in North America, and this trend is expected to continue over the 21st century. While many aspects of the North American carbon budget have been intensively studied, the net contribution of fire disturbance to the...
Global Positioning System data collection, processing, and analysis conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey Earthquake Hazards Program
Jessica R. Murray, Jerry L. Svarc
2017, Seismological Research Letters (88) 916-925
The U.S. Geological Survey Earthquake Science Center collects and processes Global Positioning System (GPS) data throughout the western United States to measure crustal deformation related to earthquakes and tectonic processes as part of a long‐term program of research and monitoring. Here, we outline data collection procedures and present the GPS...
Automatic mapping of the base of aquifer — A case study from Morrill, Nebraska
Mats Lundh Gulbrandsen, Lyndsay B. Ball, Burke J. Minsley, Thomas Mejer Hansen
2017, Interpretation (5) T231-T241
When a geologist sets up a geologic model, various types of disparate information may be available, such as exposures, boreholes, and (or) geophysical data. In recent years, the amount of geophysical data available has been increasing, a trend that is only expected to continue. It is nontrivial (and often, in...
The history of mercury pollution near the Spolana chlor-alkali plant (Neratovice, Czech Republic) as recorded by Scots pine tree rings and other bioindicators
Tomáš Navrátil, Martin Simecek, James B. Shanley, Jan Rohovec, Maria Hojdova, Jakub Houska
2017, Science of the Total Environment (586) 1192
We assessed > 100 years of mercury (Hg) pollution recorded in the tree rings of Scots Pine near a Czech chlor-alkali plant operating since 1941. Hg concentrations in tree rings increased with the launching of plant operations and decreased when Hg emissions decreased in 1975 due to an upgrade in production technology....
Cosmogenic nuclide age estimate for Laurentide Ice Sheet recession from the terminal moraine, New Jersey, USA, and constraints on latest Pleistocene ice sheet history
Lee B. Corbett, Paul R. Bierman, Byron D. Stone, Marc W. Caffee, Patrick L. Larsen
2017, Quaternary Research (87) 482-498
The time at which the Laurentide Ice Sheet reached its maximum extent and subsequently retreated from its terminal moraine in New Jersey has been constrained by bracketing radiocarbon ages on preglacial and postglacial sediments. Here, we present measurements of in situ produced 10Be and 26Al in 16 quartz-bearing...
Experimental evaluation of four ground-motion scaling methods for dynamic response-history analysis of nonlinear structures
Andrew P. O’Donnell, Yahya C. Kurama, Erol Kalkan, Alexandros A. Taflanidis
2017, Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering (15) 1899-1924
This paper experimentally evaluates four methods to scale earthquake ground-motions within an ensemble of records to minimize the statistical dispersion and maximize the accuracy in the dynamic peak roof drift demand and peak inter-story drift demand estimates from response-history analyses of nonlinear building structures. The scaling methods that are investigated...
The California Earthquake Advisory Plan: A history
Evelyn A. Roeloffs, James D. Goltz
2017, Seismological Research Letters (88) 784-797
Since 1985, the California Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES) has issued advisory statements to local jurisdictions and the public following seismic activity that scientists on the California Earthquake Prediction Evaluation Council view as indicating elevated probability of a larger earthquake in the same area during the next several days....
A dynamic spatio-temporal model for spatial data
Trevor J. Hefley, Mevin Hooten, Ephraim M. Hanks, Robin Russell, Daniel P. Walsh
2017, Spatial Statistics (20) 206-220
Analyzing spatial data often requires modeling dependencies created by a dynamic spatio-temporal data generating process. In many applications, a generalized linear mixed model (GLMM) is used with a random effect to account for spatial dependence and to provide optimal spatial predictions. Location-specific covariates are often included as fixed effects in...
Achieving full connectivity of sites in the multiperiod reserve network design problem
Nahid Jafari, Bryan L. Nuse, Clinton T. Moore, Bistra Dilkina, Jeffrey Hepinstall-Cymerman
2017, Computers & Operations Research (81) 119-127
The conservation reserve design problem is a challenge to solve because of the spatial and temporal nature of the problem, uncertainties in the decision process, and the possibility of alternative conservation actions for any given land parcel. Conservation agencies tasked with reserve design may benefit from a dynamic decision system...
Using variance structure to quantify responses to perturbation in fish catches
Tiffany E. Vidal, Brian J. Irwin, Tyler Wagner, Lars G. Rudstam, James R. Jackson, James R. Bence
2017, Transactions of the American Fisheries Society (146) 584-593
We present a case study evaluation of gill-net catches of Walleye Sander vitreus to assess potential effects of large-scale changes in Oneida Lake, New York, including the disruption of trophic interactions by double-crested cormorants Phalacrocorax auritus and invasive dreissenid mussels. We used the empirical long-term gill-net time series and a...
Microbial formation of labile organic carbon in Antarctic glacial environments
H.J. Smith, R. Foster, D.M. McKnight, John T. Lisle, S. Littmann, M.M.M. Kuypers, C.M. Foreman
2017, Nature Geoscience (10) 356-359
Roughly six petagrams of organic carbon are stored within ice worldwide. This organic carbon is thought to be of old age and highly bioavailable. Along with storage of ancient and new atmospherically deposited organic carbon, microorganisms may contribute substantially to the glacial organic carbon pool. Models of glacial microbial carbon...
Reconstructing a herbivore’s diet using a novel rbcL DNA mini-barcode for plants
David L. Erickson, Elizabeth Reed, Padmini Ramachandran, Norman Bourg, William J. McShea, Andrea Ottesen
2017, AoB PLANTS (9) 1-17
Next Generation Sequencing and the application of metagenomic analyses can be used to answer questions about animal diet choice and study the consequences of selective foraging by herbivores. The quantification of herbivore diet choice with respect to native versus exotic plant species is particularly relevant given concerns of invasive species...
Fall and winter survival of brook trout and brown trout in a north-central Pennsylvania watershed
John A. Sweka, Lori A. Davis, Tyler Wagner
2017, Transactions of the American Fisheries Society (146) 744-752
Stream-dwelling salmonids that spawn in the fall generally experience their lowest survival during the fall and winter due to behavioral changes associated with spawning and energetic deficiencies during this time of year. We used data from Brook Trout Salvelinus fontinalis and Brown Trout Salmo trutta implanted with radio transmitters in...
