Rapid fluvial incision of a late Holocene lava flow: Insights from LiDAR, alluvial stratigraphy, and numerical modeling
Kristin Sweeney, Joshua J. Roering
2016, GSA Bulletin (129) 500-512
Volcanic eruptions fundamentally alter landscapes, paving over channels, decimating biota, and emplacing fresh, unweathered material. The fluvial incision of blocky lava flows is a geomorphic puzzle. First, high surface permeability and lack of sediment should preclude geomorphically effective surface runoff and dissection. Furthermore, past work has demonstrated the importance of...
Metabarcoding of fecal samples to determine herbivore diets: A case study of the endangered Pacific pocket mouse
Deborah D. Iwanowicz, Amy G. Vandergast, Robert S. Cornman, Cynthia R. Adams, Joshua R. Kohn, Robert N. Fisher, Cheryl S. Brehme
2016, PLoS ONE (11) 1-23
Understanding the diet of an endangered species illuminates the animal’s ecology, habitat requirements, and conservation needs. However, direct observation of diet can be difficult, particularly for small, nocturnal animals such as the Pacific pocket mouse (Heteromyidae: Perognathus longimembris pacificus). Very little is known of the dietary habits of this federally endangered...
Assessing the role of climate and resource management on groundwater dependent ecosystem changes in arid environments with the Landsat archive
Justin Huntington, Kenneth C. McGwire, Charles Morton, Keirith A. Snyder, Sarah Peterson, Tyler Erickson, Richard G. Niswonger, Rosemary W.H. Carroll, Guy Smith, Richard Allen
2016, Remote Sensing of Environment (185) 186-197
Groundwater dependent ecosystems (GDEs) rely on near-surface groundwater. These systems are receiving more attention with rising air temperature, prolonged drought, and where groundwater pumping captures natural groundwater discharge for anthropogenic use. Phreatophyte shrublands, meadows, and riparian areas are GDEs that provide critical habitat for many sensitive species, especially in arid...
Review of footnotes and annotations to the 1949–2013 tables of standard atomic weights and tables of isotopic compositions of the elements (IUPAC Technical Report)
Tyler B. Coplen, Norman E. Holden
2016, Pure and Applied Chemistry (88) 689-699
The Commission on Isotopic Abundances and Atomic Weights uses annotations given in footnotes that are an integral part of the Tables of Standard Atomic Weights to alert users to the possibilities of quite extraordinary occurrences, as well as sources with abnormal atomic-weight values outside an otherwise acceptable range. The basic...
Annual elk calf survival in a multiple carnivore system
Daniel R. Eacker, Mark Hebblewhite, Kelly M. Proffitt, Benjamin S. Jimenez, Michael S. Mitchell, Hugh S. Robinson
2016, Journal of Wildlife Management (80) 1345-1359
The realized effect of multiple carnivores on juvenile ungulate recruitment may depend on the carnivore assemblage as well as compensation from forage and winter weather severity, which may mediate juvenile vulnerability to predation in ungulates. We used a time-to-event approach to test for the effects of risk factors on annual...
Calibrated acoustic emission system records M -3.5 to M -8 events generated on a saw-cut granite sample
Gregory C. McLaskey, David A. Lockner
2016, Rock Mechanics and Rock Engineering (49) 4527-4536
Acoustic emission (AE) analyses have been used for decades for rock mechanics testing, but because AE systems are not typically calibrated, the absolute sizes of dynamic microcrack growth and other physical processes responsible for the generation of AEs are poorly constrained. We describe a calibration technique for the AE recording...
When winners become losers: Predicted nonlinear responses of arctic birds to increasing woody vegetation
Sarah J. Thompson, Colleen M. Handel, Rachel M. Richardson, Lance B. McNew
2016, PLoS ONE (11) 1-17
Climate change is facilitating rapid changes in the composition and distribution of vegetation at northern latitudes, raising questions about the responses of wildlife that rely on arctic ecosystems. One widely observed change occurring in arctic tundra ecosystems is an increasing dominance of deciduous shrub vegetation. Our goals were to examine...
Using thermal limits to assess establishment of fish dispersing to high-latitude and high-elevation watersheds
Karen M. Dunmall, Neil J. Mochnacz, Christian E. Zimmerman, Charles Lean, James D. Reist
2016, Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences (73) 1750-1758
Distributional shifts of biota to higher latitudes and elevations are presumably influenced by species-specific physiological tolerances related to warming temperatures. However, it is establishment rather than dispersal that may be limiting colonizations in these cold frontier areas. In freshwater ecosystems, perennial groundwater springs provide critical winter thermal refugia in these...
Chronic wasting disease in white-tailed deer: Infection, mortality, and implications for heterogeneous transmission
Michael D. Samuel, Daniel J. Storm
2016, Ecology (97) 3195-3205
Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is a fatal neurodegenerative disease affecting free-ranging and captive cervids that now occurs in 24 U.S. states and two Canadian provinces. Despite the potential threat of CWD to deer populations, little is known about the rates of infection and mortality caused by this disease. We used...
Scale-dependent seasonal pool habitat use by sympatric Wild Brook Trout and Brown Trout populations
Lori A. Davis, Tyler Wagner
2016, Transactions of the American Fisheries Society (145) 888-902
Sympatric populations of native Brook Trout Salvelinus fontinalis and naturalized Brown Trout Salmo truttaexist throughout the eastern USA. An understanding of habitat use by sympatric populations is of importance for fisheries management agencies because of the close association between habitat and population dynamics. Moreover, habitat use by stream-dwelling salmonids may...
Active faulting on the Wallula fault zone within the Olympic-Wallowa lineament, Washington State, USA
Brian Sherrod, Richard J. Blakely, John P. Lasher, Andrew P. Lamb, Shannon A. Mahan, Franklin F. Foit, Elizabeth Barnett
2016, GSA Bulletin (128) 1636-1659
The Wallula fault zone is an integral feature of the Olympic-Wallowa lineament, an ∼500-km-long topographic lineament oblique to the Cascadia plate boundary, extending from Vancouver Island, British Columbia, to Walla Walla, Washington. The structure and past earthquake activity of the Wallula fault zone are important because of nearby infrastructure, and...
A brackish diatom, Pseudofrustulia lancea gen. et sp. nov. (Bacillariophyceae), from the Pacific coast of Oregon (USA)
Yuki Sawai, Tamotsu Nagumo, Alan R. Nelson
2016, Phytotaxa (267) 103-112
Light and electron microscope observations show that a brackish diatom taxon should be classified as a new species of a new genus; Pseudofrustulia lancea gen. et sp. nov. We propose separating Pseudofrustulia from other similar genera such as Frickea, Frustulia, Amphipleura, Muelleria, and Envekadea on the basis of its thickened...
The use of amino acid indices for assessing organic matter quality and microbial abundance in deep-sea Antarctic sediments of IODP Expedition 318
Stephanie A Carr, Christopher T. Mills, Kevin W Mandernack
2016, Marine Chemistry (186) 72-82
The Adélie Basin, located offshore of the Wilkes Land margin, experiences unusually high sedimentation rates (~ 2 cm yr− 1) for the Antarctic coast. This study sought to compare depthwise changes in organic matter (OM) quantity and quality with changes in microbial biomass with depth at this high-deposition site and an offshore continental margin...
Bacterial genomics reveal the complex epidemiology of an emerging pathogen in arctic and boreal ungulates
Taya L. Forde, Karin Orsel, Ruth N. Zadoks, Roman Biek, Layne G. Adams, Sylvia L. Checkley, Tracy Davison, Jeroen De Buck, Mathieu Dumond, Brett T. Elkin, Laura Finnegan, Bryan J. Macbeth, Cait Nelson, Amanda Niptanatiak, Shane Sather, Helen M. Schwantje, Frank van der Meer, Susan J. Kutz
2016, Frontiers in Microbiology (7) 1-14
Northern ecosystems are currently experiencing unprecedented ecological change, largely driven by a rapidly changing climate. Pathogen range expansion, and emergence and altered patterns of infectious disease, are increasingly reported in wildlife at high latitudes. Understanding the causes and consequences of shifting pathogen diversity and host-pathogen interactions in these ecosystems is...
Positive biodiversity-productivity relationship predominant in global forests
Jingjing Liang, Thomas W. Crowther, Nicolas Picard, Susan Wiser, Mo Zhou, Giorgio Alberti, Ernst-Detlef Schulze, Anthony D. McGuire, et al.
2016, Science (354)
The relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem productivity has been explored in detail in herbaceous vegetation, but patterns in forests are far less well understood. Liang et al. have amassed a global forest data set from >770,000 sample plots in 44 countries. A positive and consistent relationship can be discerned between...
Pb-Sr isotopic and geochemical constraints on sources and processes of lead contamination in well waters and soil from former fruit orchards, Pennsylvania, USA: A legacy of anthropogenic activities
Robert A. Ayuso, Nora K. Foley
2016, Journal of Geochemical Exploration (170) 125-147
Isotopic discrimination can be an effective tool in establishing a direct link between sources of Pb contamination and the presence of anomalously high concentrations of Pb in waters, soils, and organisms. Residential wells supplying water containing up to 1600 ppb Pb to houses built on the former Mohr orchards commercial site,...
Western Lake Erie Basin: Soft-data-constrained, NHDPlus resolution watershed modeling and exploration of applicable conservation scenarios
Haw Yen, Michael J. White, Jeffrey G. Arnold, S. Conor Keitzer, Mari-Vaughn V. Johnson, Jay D. Atwood, Prasad Daggupati, Matthew E. Herbert, Scott P. Sowa, Stuart A. Ludsin, Dale M. Robertson, Raghavan Srinivasan, Charles A. Rewa
2016, Science of the Total Environment (569-570) 1265-1281
Complex watershed simulation models are powerful tools that can help scientists and policy-makers address challenging topics, such as land use management and water security. In the Western Lake Erie Basin (WLEB), complex hydrological models have been applied at various scales to help describe relationships between land use and water, nutrient,...
Estimation of time-variable fast flow path chemical concentrations for application in tracer-based hydrograph separation analyses
Scott C. Kronholm, Paul D. Capel
2016, Water Resources Research (52) 6881-6896
Mixing models are a commonly used method for hydrograph separation, but can be hindered by the subjective choice of the end-member tracer concentrations. This work tests a new variant of mixing model that uses high-frequency measures of two tracers and streamflow to separate total streamflow into water from slowflow and...
Comment on “Reconciliation of the Devils Hole climate record with orbital forcing”
Tyler B. Coplen
2016, Science (354) 296-296
Moseley et al.’s (Reports, 8 January 2016, p. 165) preferred-Termination-II age is subjective, as evidenced by variation in their Termination-II ages of 2500 years per meter. Termination-II-age bias decreases to zero at ~1.5 meters below the present-day water table, if one assumes linear variation with core-sample height. Maintaining the required...
Spatio-temporal variation in age structure and abundance of the endangered snail kite: Pooling across regions masks a declining and aging population
Brian E. Reichert, William L. Kendall, Robert J. Fletcher Jr., Wiley M. Kitchens
2016, PLoS ONE (11) 1-18
While variation in age structure over time and space has long been considered important for population dynamics and conservation, reliable estimates of such spatio-temporal variation in age structure have been elusive for wild vertebrate populations. This limitation has arisen because of problems of imperfect detection, the potential for temporary emigration...
Age, distribution and style of deformation in Alaska north of 60°N: Implications for assembly of Alaska
Thomas E. Moore, Stephen E. Box
2016, Tectonophysics (691) 133-170
The structural architecture of Alaska is the product of a complex history of deformation along both the Cordilleran and Arctic margins of North America involving oceanic plates, subduction zones and strike-slip faults and with continental elements of Laurentia, Baltica, and Siberia. We use geological constraints to assign regions of deformation...
Land–atmosphere feedbacks amplify aridity increase over land under global warming
Alexis Berg, Kirsten Findell, Benjamin Lintner, Alessandra Giannini, Sonia I. Seneviratne, Bart van den Hurk, Ruth Lorenz, Andy Pitman, Stefan Hagemann, Arndt Meier, Frederique Cheruy, Agnes Ducharne, Sergey Malyshev, Paul C. D. Milly
2016, Nature Climate Change (6) 869-874
The response of the terrestrial water cycle to global warming is central to issues including water resources, agriculture and ecosystem health. Recent studies indicate that aridity, defined in terms of atmospheric supply (precipitation, P) and demand (potential evapotranspiration, Ep) of water at the land surface, will increase globally in a...
Evaluation of fisher (Pekania pennanti) restoration in Olympic National Park and the Olympic Recovery Area: 2015 final annual progress report
Patricia J. Happe, Kurt J. Jenkins, Thomas J. Kay, Kristie Pilgrim, Michael K. Schwartz, Jeffrey C. Lewis, Keith B. Aubry
2016, Natural Resource Report NPS/OLYM/NRR—2016/1274
With the translocation and release of 90 fishers (Pekania pennanti) from British Columbia to Olympic National Park during 2008–2010, the National Park Service (NPS) and Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) accomplished the first phase of fisher restoration in Washington State. Beginning in 2013, we initiated a new research...
Microrefuges and the occurrence of thermal specialists: implications for wildlife persistence amidst changing temperatures
L. Embere Hall, Anna D. Chalfoun, Erik A. Beever, Anne E. Loosen
2016, Climate Change Responses (3) 1-12
BackgroundContemporary climate change is affecting nearly all biomes, causing shifts in animal distributions, phenology, and persistence. Favorable microclimates may buffer organisms against rapid changes in climate, thereby allowing time for populations to adapt. The degree to which microclimates facilitate the local persistence of climate-sensitive species,...
Seismic imaging of the metamorphism of young sediment into new crystalline crust in the actively rifting Imperial Valley, California
Liang Han, John Hole, Joann Stock, Gary S. Fuis, Colin F. Williams, Jonathan Delph, Kathy Davenport, Amanda Livers
2016, Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems (17) 4566-4584
Plate-boundary rifting between transform faults is opening the Imperial Valley of southern California and the rift is rapidly filling with sediment from the Colorado River. Three 65–90 km long seismic refraction profiles across and along the valley, acquired as part of the 2011 Salton Seismic Imaging Project, were analyzed to...
