Tracer-based characterization of hyporheic exchange and benthic biolayers in streams
Julia L.A. Knapp, Ricardo Gonzalez-Pinzon, Jennifer D. Drummond, Laurel G. Larsen, Olaf A. Cirpka, Judson W. Harvey
2017, Water Resources Research (53) 1575-1594
Shallow benthic biolayers at the top of the streambed are believed to be places of enhanced biogeochemical turnover within the hyporheic zone. They can be investigated by reactive stream tracer tests with tracer recordings in the streambed and in the stream channel. Common in-stream measurements of such reactive tracers cannot...
Development and utilization of USGS ShakeCast for rapid post-earthquake assessment of critical facilities and infrastructure
David J. Wald, Kuo-wan Lin, C. A. Kircher, Kishor S. Jaiswal, Nico Luco, L. Turner, Daniel Slosky
2017, Conference Paper, Proceedings of the 16th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering
The ShakeCast system is an openly available, near real-time post-earthquake information management system. ShakeCast is widely used by public and private emergency planners and responders, lifeline utility operators and transportation engineers to automatically receive and process ShakeMap products for situational awareness, inspection priority, or damage assessment of their own infrastructure...
Hard choices in assessing survival past dams — a comparison of single- and paired-release strategies
Joseph D. Zydlewski, Daniel S. Stich, Douglas B. Sigourney
2017, Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences (74) 178-190
Mark–recapture models are widely used to estimate survival of salmon smolts migrating past dams. Paired releases have been used to improve estimate accuracy by removing components of mortality not attributable to the dam. This method is accompanied by reduced precision because (i) sample size is reduced relative to a single,...
Ground motion in the presence of complex Topography II: Earthquake sources and 3D simulations
Stephen H. Hartzell, Leonardo Ramirez-Guzman, Mark Meremonte, Alena L. Leeds
2017, Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (107) 344-358
Eight seismic stations were placed in a linear array with a topographic relief of 222 m over Mission Peak in the east San Francisco Bay region for a period of one year to study topographic effects. Seventy‐two well‐recorded local earthquakes are used to calculate spectral amplitude ratios relative to a reference...
The invasive ant, Solenopsis invicta, reduces herpetofauna richness and abundance
Craig R. Allen, Hannah E. Birge, J. Slater, E. Wiggers
2017, Biological Invasions (19) 713-722
Amphibians and reptiles are declining globally. One potential cause of this decline includes impacts resulting from co-occurrence with non-native red imported fire ant, Solenopsis invicta. Although a growing body of anecdotal and observational evidence from laboratory experiments supports this hypothesis, there remains a lack of field scale manipulations testing...
An integrated data model to estimate spatiotemporal occupancy, abundance, and colonization dynamics
Perry J. Williams, Mevin Hooten, Jamie N. Womble, George G. Esslinger, Michael R. Bower, Trevor J. Hefley
2017, Ecology (98) 328-336
Ecological invasions and colonizations occur dynamically through space and time. Estimating the distribution and abundance of colonizing species is critical for efficient management or conservation. We describe a statistical framework for simultaneously estimating spatiotemporal occupancy and abundance dynamics of a colonizing species. Our method accounts for several issues that are...
Nonbreeding isolation and population-specific migration patterns among three populations of Golden-winged Warblers
Gunnar R. Kramer, Henry M. Streby, Sean M. Peterson, Justin A. Lehman, David A. Buehler, Petra B. Wood, Darin J. McNeil Jr., Jeffrey L. Larkin, David E. Andersen
2017, Condor (119) 108-121
Golden-winged Warblers (Vermivora chrysoptera) are Nearctic–Neotropical migrants experiencing varied regional population trends not fully explained by breeding-grounds factors such as nest success. A lack of detailed information on the nonbreeding distributions, migration routes, or timing of migration among populations hampers our ability to identify population processes outside the breeding period....
Integration of genetic and demographic data to assess population risk in a continuously distributed species
Bradley C. Fedy, Jeffery R. Row, Sara J. Oyler-McCance
2017, Conservation Genetics (18) 89-104
The identification and demographic assessment of biologically meaningful populations is fundamental to species’ ecology and management. Although genetic tools are used frequently to identify populations, studies often do not incorporate demographic data to understand their respective population trends. We used genetic data to define subpopulations in a continuously distributed...
Pectoral fin contact as a mechanism for social bonding among dolphins
Kathleen Dudzinski, Christine Ribic
2017, Animal Behavior and Cognition (4) 30-48
Bottlenose dolphins are large-brained social mammals residing in a fission-fusion society with relationships that are established and maintained over decades. We examined a decade-long data set of inter-individual pectoral fin contact exchanges to better understand how dolphins share information via tactile contact. Sex and age are significant factors in pectoral...
Tidal triggering of earthquakes suggests poroelastic behavior on the San Andreas Fault
Andrew Delorey, Nicholas van der Elst, Paul Johnson
2017, Earth and Planetary Science Letters (460) 164-170
Tidal triggering of earthquakes is hypothesized to provide quantitative information regarding the fault's stress state, poroelastic properties, and may be significant for our understanding of seismic hazard. To date, studies of regional or global earthquake catalogs have had only modest successes in identifying tidal triggering. We posit that the smallest...
Fish and invertebrate flow-biology relationships to support the determination of ecological flows for North Carolina
Jennifer Phelan, Thomas F. Cuffney, Lauren A. Patterson, Michele Eddy, Robert Dykes, Sam Pearsall, Chris Goudreau, Jim Mead, Fred Tarver
2017, Journal of the American Water Resources Association (53) 42-55
A method was developed to characterize fish and invertebrate responses to flow alteration in the state of North Carolina. This method involved using 80th percentile linear quantile regressions to relate six flow metrics to the diversity of riffle-run fish and benthic Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera, and Trichoptera (EPT) richness. All twelve flow-biology...
Ca isotopic geochemistry of an Antarctic aquatic system
W. Berry Lyons, Thomas D. Bullen, Kathleen A. Welch
2017, Geophysical Research Letters (44) 882-891
The McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica, are a polar desert ecosystem. The hydrologic system of the dry valleys is linked to climate with ephemeral streams that flow from glacial melt during the austral summer. Past climate variations have strongly influenced the closed-basin, chemically stratified lakes on the valley floor. Results of...
A land data assimilation system for sub-Saharan Africa food and water security applications
Amy McNally, Kristi Arsenault, Sujay Kumar, Shraddhanand Shukla, Pete Peterson, Shugong Wang, Chris Funk, Christa Peters-Lidard, James Verdin
2017, Scientific Data (4) 1-19
Seasonal agricultural drought monitoring systems, which rely on satellite remote sensing and land surface models (LSMs), are important for disaster risk reduction and famine early warning. These systems require the best available weather inputs, as well as a long-term historical record to contextualize current observations. This article introduces the Famine...
Generation of 3-D hydrostratigraphic zones from dense airborne electromagnetic data to assess groundwater model prediction error
Nikolaj K Christensen, Burke J. Minsley, Steen Christensen
2017, Water Resources Research (53) 1019-1038
We present a new methodology to combine spatially dense high-resolution airborne electromagnetic (AEM) data and sparse borehole information to construct multiple plausible geological structures using a stochastic approach. The method developed allows for quantification of the performance of groundwater models built from different geological realizations of structure. Multiple structural realizations...
Factors influencing detection of the federally endangered Diamond Darter Crystallaria cincotta: Implications for long-term monitoring strategies
Austin A. Rizzo, Donald J. Brown, Stuart A. Welsh, Patricia A. Thompson
2017, The American Midland Naturalist (178) 123-131
Population monitoring is an essential component of endangered species recovery programs. The federally endangered Diamond Darter Crystallaria cincotta is in need of an effective monitoring design to improve our understanding of its distribution and track population trends. Because of their small size, cryptic coloration, and nocturnal behavior, along with limitations associated with...
Terrestrial ecosystem model performance in simulating productivity and its vulnerability to climate change in the northern permafrost region
Jianyang Xia, A. David McGuire, David Lawrence, Eleanor J. Burke, Guangsheng Chen, Xiaodong Chen, Christine Delire, Charles Koven, Andrew MacDougall, Shushi Peng, Annette Rinke, Kazuyuki Saito, Wenxin Zhang, Ramdane Alkama, Theodore J. Bohn, Philippe Ciais, Bertrand Decharme, Isabelle Gouttevin, Tomohiro Hajima, Daniel J. Hayes, Kun Huang, Duoying Ji, Gerhard Krinner, Dennis P. Lettenmaier, Paul A. Miller, John C. Moore, Benjamin Smith, Tetsuo Sueyoshi, Zheng Shi, Liming Yan, Junyi Liang, Lifen Jiang, Qian Zhang, Yiqi Luo
2017, Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences (122) 430-446
Realistic projection of future climate-carbon (C) cycle feedbacks requires better understanding and an improved representation of the C cycle in permafrost regions in the current generation of Earth system models. Here we evaluated 10 terrestrial ecosystem models for their estimates of net primary productivity (NPP) and responses to historical climate...
Compartmentalization of the Coso East Flank geothermal field imaged by 3-D full-tensor MT inversion
Nathaniel J. Lindsey, J. Ole Kaven, Nicholas C. Davatzes, Gregory A. Newman
2017, Geophysical Journal International (208) 652-662
Previous magnetotelluric (MT) studies of the high-temperature Coso geothermal system in California identified a subvertical feature of low resistivity (2–5 Ohm m) and appreciable lateral extent (>1 km) in the producing zone of the East Flank field. However, these models could not reproduce gross 3-D effects in the recorded data. We perform...
Prior knowledge-based approach for associating contaminants with biological effects: A case study in the St. Croix River basin, MN, WI, USA
Anthony L. Schroeder, Dalma Martinovic-Weigelt, Gerald T. Ankley, Kathy Lee, Natalia Garcia-Reyero, Edward J. Perkins, Heiko L. Schoenfuss, Daniel L. Villeneuve
2017, Environmental Pollution (221) 427-436
Evaluating potential adverse effects of complex chemical mixtures in the environment is challenging. One way to address that challenge is through more integrated analysis of chemical monitoring and biological effects data. In the present study, water samples from five locations near two municipal wastewater treatment plants in the St. Croix...
Population genetics and demography unite ecology and evolution
Winsor H. Lowe, Ryan Kovach, Fred W. Allendorf
2017, Trends in Ecology and Evolution (32) 141-152
The interplay of ecology and evolution has been a rich area of research for decades. A surge of interest in this area was catalyzed by the observation that evolution by natural selection can operate at the same contemporary timescales as ecological dynamics. Specifically, recent eco-evolutionary...
Quaternary displacement rates on the Meeman‐Shelby fault and Joiner ridge horst, eastern Arkansas: Results from coring Mississippi River alluvium
Alex Ward, Ronald C. Counts, Roy Van Arsdale, Daniel Larsen, Shannon A. Mahan
2017, Seismological Research Letters (88) 442-455
This research used coring and optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating of displaced, deeply buried Quaternary alluvium to determine vertical displacement rates for the Meeman‐Shelby fault and the Joiner ridge horst, two structures in northeastern Arkansas that have no modern seismicity associated with them. We drilled continuous cores of the entire...
Evolutionary and functional mitogenomics associated with the genetic restoration of the Florida panther
Alexander Ochoa, David P. Onorato, Robert R. Fitak, Melody Roelke-Parker, Melanie Culver
2017, Journal of Heredity (108) 449-455
Florida panthers are endangered pumas that currently persist in reduced patches of habitat in South Florida, USA. We performed mitogenome reference-based assemblies for most parental lines of the admixed Florida panthers that resulted from the introduction of female Texas pumas into South Florida in 1995. With the addition of 2...
Temporal expansion of annual crop classification layers for the CONUS using the C5 decision tree classifier
Aaron M. Friesz, Bruce K. Wylie, Daniel M. Howard
2017, Remote Sensing Letters (8) 389-398
Crop cover maps have become widely used in a range of research applications. Multiple crop cover maps have been developed to suite particular research interests. The National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) Cropland Data Layers (CDL) are a series of commonly used crop cover maps for the conterminous United States (CONUS)...
Annual changes in seasonal river water temperatures in the eastern and western United States
Tyler Wagner, Stephen R. Midway, Joanna B. Whittier, Jefferson T. DeWeber, Craig P. Paukert
2017, Water (9)
Changes in river water temperatures are anticipated to have direct effects on thermal habitat and fish population vital rates, and therefore, understanding temporal trends in water temperatures may be necessary for predicting changes in thermal habitat and how species might respond to such changes. However, many investigations into trends in...
Predictors of breeding site occupancy by amphibians in montane landscapes
Luke A. Groff, Cynthia S. Loftin, Aram J.K. Calhoun
2017, Journal of Wildlife Management (81) 269-278
Ecological relationships and processes vary across species’ geographic distributions, life stages and spatial, and temporal scales. Montane landscapes are characterized by low wetland densities, rugged topographies, and cold climates. Consequently, aquatic-dependent and low-vagility ectothermic species (e.g., pool-breeding amphibians) may exhibit unique ecological associations in montane landscapes. We evaluated the relative...
Size and age structure of anadromous and landlocked populations of Rainbow Smelt
Andrew O’Malley, Claire Enterline, Joseph D. Zydlewski
2017, North American Journal of Fisheries Management (37) 326-336
Rainbow Smelt Osmerus mordax are widely distributed in both anadromous and landlocked populations throughout northeastern North America; abundance, size at age, and maximum size vary widely among populations and life histories. In the present study, size at age, von Bertalanffy growth parameters, population age distributions, and precision and bias in age assessment...
