Global nonfuel mineral exploration trends 2001-2015
Nick A Karl, David R. Wilburn
2017, Mining Engineering (69) 30-37
This review summarizes significant exploration trends related to active sites and budgets, mineral commodities and regional factors for the years 2001-2015. Data were compiled by specialists in the USGS-NMIC, and reported annually in the USGS-NMIC Minerals Yearbook series and in the May issue of Mining Engineering magazine. External data for...
Using diets of Canis breeding pairs to assess resource partitioning between sympatric red wolves and coyotes
Joseph W. Hinton, Annaliese K. Ashley, Justin A. Dellinger, John L. Gittleman, Frank T. van Manen, Michael J. Chamberlain
2017, Journal of Mammalogy (98) 475-488
Foraging behaviors of red wolves (Canis rufus) and coyotes (Canis latrans) are complex and their ability to form congeneric breeding pairs and hybridize further complicates our understanding of factors influencing their diets. Through scat analysis, we assessed prey selection of red wolf, coyote, and congeneric breeding pairs formed by red...
2010-2015 Juvenile fish ecology in the Nisqually River Delta and Nisqually Reach Aquatic Reserve
Sayre Hodgson, Christopher S. Ellings, Steve P. Rubin, Michael C. Hayes, Walker Duval, Eric E. Grossman
2017, Salmon Recovery Program Technical Report 2016-1
The return of tidal inundation to over 750 acres of the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service Billy Frank Jr. Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge (NNWR) in fall of 2009 was the crowning moment in the effort to protect and restore the Nisqually Delta. The Nisqually NWR project complemented three earlier...
Inner-shelf ocean dynamics and seafloor morphologic changes during Hurricane Sandy
John C. Warner, William C. Schwab, Jeffrey H. List, Ilgar Safak, Maria Liste, Wayne E. Baldwin
2017, Continental Shelf Research (138) 1-18
Hurricane Sandy was one of the most destructive hurricanes in US history, making landfall on the New Jersey coast on Oct 30, 2012. Storm impacts included several barrier island breaches, massive coastal erosion, and flooding. While changes to the subaerial landscape are relatively easily observed, storm-induced changes to the adjacent...
The role of uplift and erosion in the persistence of saline groundwater in the shallow subsurface
Richard M. Yager, Kurt J. McCoy, Clifford I. Voss, Ward E. Sanford, Richard B. Winston
2017, Geophysical Research Letters (44) 3672-3681
In many regions of the world, the shallow (<300 m) subsurface is replenished with meteoric recharge within a few centuries or millennia, but in some regions saline groundwater persists despite abundant rainfall. Analyses of the flushing rate of shallow groundwater usually consider the permeability and recharge rate and a static landscape....
A decade of insights into grassland ecosystem responses to global environmental change
Elizabeth T. Borer, James B. Grace, W. Stanley Harpole, Andrew S. MacDougall, Eric W. Seabloom
2017, Nature Ecology & Evolution (1)
Earth’s biodiversity and carbon uptake by plants, or primary productivity, are intricately interlinked, underlie many essential ecosystem processes, and depend on the interplay among environmental factors, many of which are being changed by human activities. While ecological theory generalizes across taxa and environments, most empirical tests of factors controlling diversity...
Microbial methane from in situ biodegradation of coal and shale: A review and reevaluation of hydrogen and carbon isotope signatures
David S. Vinson, Neal E. Blair, Anna M. Martini, Steve Larter, William H. Orem, Jennifer C. McIntosh
2017, Chemical Geology (453) 128-145
Stable carbon and hydrogen isotope signatures of methane, water, and inorganic carbon are widely utilized in natural gas systems for distinguishing microbial and thermogenic methane and for delineating methanogenic pathways (acetoclastic, hydrogenotrophic, and/or methylotrophic methanogenesis). Recent studies of coal and shale gas systems have characterized in situ microbial communities...
Evidence for strong lateral seismic velocity variation in the lower crust and upper mantle beneath the California margin
Voon Lai, Robert Graves, Shengji Wei, Don Helmberger
2017, Earth and Planetary Science Letters 202-211
Regional seismograms from earthquakes in Northern California show a systematic difference in arrival times across Southern California where long period (30–50 seconds) SH waves arrive up to 15 seconds earlier at stations near the coast compared with sites towards the east at similar epicentral distances. We attribute this time difference...
Implanting 8-mm passive integrated transponder tags into small Brook Trout: Effects on growth and survival in the laboratory
Matthew J. O’Donnell, Benjamin H. Letcher
2017, North American Journal of Fisheries Management (37) 605-611
Passive integrated transponder (PIT) tags are commonly used to investigate relationships between individual fish and their environment. The recent availability of smaller tags has provided the opportunity to tag smaller fish. In this study, we implanted 8-mm PIT tags into small Brook Trout Salvelinus fontinalis (35–50 mm FL; 0.35–1.266 g)...
Hazus® estimated annualized earthquake losses for the United States
Kishor S. Jaiswal, Doug Bausch, Jesse Rozelle, John Holub, Sean McGowan
2017, Report
Large earthquakes can cause social and economic disruption that can be unprecedented to any given community, and the full recovery from these impacts may or may not always be achievable. In the United States (U.S.), the 1994 M6.7 Northridge earthquake in California remains the third costliest disaster in U.S. history;...
Bacterial, fungal, and plant communities exhibit no biomass or compositional response to two years of simulated nitrogen deposition in a semiarid grassland
Theresa A. McHugh, Ember M. Morrissey, Rebecca C. Mueller, La Verne Gallegos-Graves, Cheryl R. Kuske, Sasha C. Reed
2017, Environmental Microbiology (19) 1600-1611
Nitrogen (N) deposition affects myriad aspects of terrestrial ecosystem structure and function, and microbial communities may be particularly sensitive to anthropogenic N inputs. However, our understanding of N deposition effects on microbial communities is far from complete, especially for drylands where data are comparatively rare. To address the need for...
Coping with historic drought in California rangelands: Developing a more effective institutional response
Joel R. Brown, Pelayo Alvarez, Kristin B. Byrd, Helena Deswood, Emile Elias, Sheri Spiegal
2017, Rangelands (39) 73-78
Drought response is widely varied depending on both the characteristics of the drought and the ability of individual ranchers to respond.Assistance from institutions during drought has not typically considered preemptive, during, and post-drought response as a strategic approach, which recognizes biophysical, sociological, and economic complexities of drought.A USDA Southwest Climate...
Climate drives adaptive genetic responses associated with survival in big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata)
Lindsay Chaney, Bryce A. Richardson, Matthew J. Germino
2017, Evolutionary Applications (10) 313-322
A genecological approach was used to explore genetic variation for survival in Artemisia tridentata(big sagebrush). Artemisia tridentata is a widespread and foundational shrub species in western North America. This species has become extremely fragmented, to the detriment of dependent wildlife, and efforts to restore it are now a land management priority. Common-garden experiments...
Community stability within the St. Marys River fish community: Evidence from trawl surveys
Jeffrey S. Schaeffer, Anjanette K. Bowen, David G. Fielder
2017, Journal of Great Lakes Research (43) 399-404
A trawl survey was conducted in the Saint Marys River during 2010–2011 and we compared our results to a prior trawl survey conducted during 1979–1983 to look for long-term changes in the fish community, especially in terms of changes induced by invasive species. We found no substantive temporal differences in...
Mitigating future avian malaria threats to Hawaiian forest birds from climate change
Wei Liao, Carter T. Atkinson, Dennis LaPointe, Michael D. Samuel
2017, PLoS ONE (12) 1-25
Avian malaria, transmitted by Culex quinquefasciatus mosquitoes in the Hawaiian Islands, has been a primary contributor to population range limitations, declines, and extinctions for many endemic Hawaiian honeycreepers. Avian malaria is strongly influenced by climate; therefore, predicted future changes are expected to expand transmission into higher elevations and intensify and...
Scale-specific habitat relationships influence patch occupancy: defining neighborhoods to optimize the effectiveness of landscape-scale grassland bird conservation
Michael Guttery, Christine Ribic, David W. Sample, Andy Paulios, Chris Trosen, John D. Dadisman, Daniel Schneider, Josephine Horton
2017, Landscape Ecology (32) 515-529
ContextBeyond the recognized importance of protecting large areas of contiguous habitat, conservation efforts for many species are complicated by the fact that patch suitability may also be affected by characteristics of the landscape within which the patch is located. Currently, little is known about the...
A software tool to assess uncertainty in transient-storage model parameters using Monte Carlo simulations
Adam S. Ward, Christa A. Kelleher, Seth J. K. Mason, Thorsten Wagener, Neil McIntyre, Brian L. McGlynn, Robert L. Runkel, Robert A. Payn
2017, Freshwater Science (36) 195-217
Researchers and practitioners alike often need to understand and characterize how water and solutes move through a stream in terms of the relative importance of in-stream and near-stream storage and transport processes. In-channel and subsurface storage processes are highly variable in space and time and difficult to measure. Storage estimates...
A micro-UAS to start prescribed fires
Evan Beachly, James Higgins, Christian Laney, Sebastian Elbaum, Carrick Detweiler, Craig R. Allen, Dirac Twidwell
2017, Conference Paper, ISER 2016: 2016 International Symposium on Experimental Robotics
Prescribed fires have many benefits, but existing ignition methods are dangerous, costly, or inefficient. This paper presents the design and evaluation of a micro-UAS that can start a prescribed fire from the air, while being operated from a safe distance and without the costs associated with aerial ignition from a...
Grand challenges in understanding the interplay of climate and land changes
Shuguang Liu, Ben Bond-Lamberty, Lena R. Boysen, James D. Ford, Andrew Fox, Kevin Gallo, Jerry L. Hatfield, Geoffrey M. Henebry, Thomas G. Huntington, Zhihua Liu, Thomas R. Loveland, Richard J. Norby, Terry L. Sohl, Allison L. Steiner, Wenping Yuan, Zhao Zhang, Shuqing Zhao
2017, Earth Interactions (21) 1-43
Half of Earth’s land surface has been altered by human activities, creating various consequences on the climate and weather systems at local to global scales, which in turn affect a myriad of land surface processes and the adaptation behaviors. This study reviews the status and major knowledge gaps in the...
Tree mortality across biomes is promoted by drought intensity, lower wood density and higher specific leaf area
Sarah Greenwood, Paloma Ruiz-Benito, Jordi Martínez-Vilalta, Francisco Lloret, Thomas Kitzberger, Craig D. Allen, Rod Fensham, Daniel C. Laughlin, Jens Kattge, Gerhard Bonisch, Nathan J. B. Kraft, Alistair S. Jump
2017, Ecology Letters (20) 539-553
Drought events are increasing globally, and reports of consequent forest mortality are widespread. However, due to a lack of a quantitative global synthesis, it is still not clear whether drought-induced mortality rates differ among global biomes and whether functional traits influence the risk of drought-induced mortality. To address these uncertainties,...
Book review: Bovids of the World: Antelopes, gazelles, cattle, goats, sheep, and relatives
David Leslie
2017, Journal of Wildlife Management (81) 554-554
No abstract available.Book info: Bovids of the World: Antelopes, Gazelles, Cattle, Goats, Sheep, and Relatives. José R. Castelló. 2016. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, USA. 664 pp. ISBN 978-0-691-16717-6....
Estimating occupancy probability of moose using hunter survey data
Nathan J. Crum, Angela K. Fuller, Christopher S. Sutherland, Evan G. Cooch, Jeremy E. Hurst
2017, Journal of Wildlife Management (81) 521-534
Monitoring rare species can be difficult, especially across large spatial extents, making conventional methods of population monitoring costly and logistically challenging. Citizen science has the potential to produce observational data across large areas that can be used to monitor wildlife distributions using occupancy models. We used citizen science (i.e., hunter...
Contrasting latitudinal patterns of life-history divergence in two genera of new world thrushes (Turdinae)
Andy J. Boyce, Thomas E. Martin
2017, Journal of Avian Biology (48) 581-590
Several long-standing hypotheses have been proposed to explain latitudinal patterns of life-history strategies. Here, we test predictions of four such hypotheses (seasonality, food limitation, nest predation and adult survival probability) by examining life-history traits and age-specific mortality rates of several species of thrushes (Turdinae) based on field studies at temperate...
Relationships among catch, angler catisfaction, and fish assemblage characteristics of an urban small impoundment fishery
Tomas J. Ivasauskas, Wilson N. Xiong, Augustin C. Engman, Jesse R. Fischer, Thomas J. Kwak, Kirk R. Rundle
2017, Journal of the Southeastern Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (4) 31-38
Urban fisheries provide unique angling opportunities for people from traditionally underrepresented demographics. Lake Raleigh is a 38-ha impoundment located on the North Carolina State University campus in Raleigh. Like many urban fisheries, little is known about angler use and satisfaction or how angling catch rate is related to fish availability...
The deadly fisheries safety issue no one discusses
Scott A. Bonar
2017, Fisheries (April 2017)
No abstract available....
