Public, bottled, and private drinking water: Shared contaminant-mixture exposures and effects challenge
Paul M. Bradley, Kristin M. Romanok, Kelly Smalling, Stephanie E. Gordon, Bradley J. Huffman, Katie Paul Friedman, Daniel L. Villeneuve, Brett R. Blackwell, Suzanne C. Fitzpatrick, Michael Focazio, Elizabeth Medlock-Kakaley, Shannon M. Meppelink, Ana Navas-Acien, Anne E. Nigra, Molly L. Schreiner
2025, Environment International (195)
BACKGROUND: Humans are primary drivers of environmental contaminant exposures worldwide, including in drinking-water (DW). In the United States (US), point-of-use DW (POU DW) is supplied via private tapwater (TW, predominantly private wells), public-supply TW, and bottled water (BW). Differences in management, monitoring, and messaging and lack of directly intercomparable exposure...
The diets of wild and reintroduced whooping cranes
Heather A. Neri, Glenn H. Olsen, Eric C. Kindahl, Susan L. Carney
2025, Proceedings of the North American Crane Workshop (16) 203-209
Abstract: We characterized the diets of the recently established Eastern Migratory Population (EMP) and the extant Aransas Wood Buffalo population (AWBP). Starting in 2013, frozen proventriculus and ventriculus contents from previously collected dead whooping cranes from both populations were examined to identify dietary items and quantity. EMP whooping cranes (n...
Population estimates and land cover use of wintering Mountain Plovers in Texas
James E. Lyons, Brad A. Andres, Kelli L. Stone, Allison K. Pierce, Kammie L. Kruse
2025, Journal of Field Ornithology (96)
Conservation of migratory birds throughout the full annual cycle requires a comprehensive understanding of abundance and distribution in interconnected breeding, migration, and wintering habitats. The Mountain Plover (Anarhynchus montanus) is a rare endemic breeder of the Rocky Mountain and Great Plains regions that migrates to wintering grounds in the southwestern...
Predictability and behavior of water transfers across basin boundaries
Ken Eng, Laura Medalie, Kenneth D. Skinner, Tamara Ivahnenko, Julian A. Heilman, Jared David Smith
2025, Journal of the American Water Resources Association (61)
Inter-basin water transfers (IBTs) are important components of water balances of basins, and they can have substantial impact on regional water availability. Flow information is often not available at locations with known IBTs, which is a drawback in several published IBT databases. Few, if any, studies examine whether IBT flow...
Ensemble methods for parameter estimation of WRF-Hydro
Arezoo RafieeiNasab, Michael N. Fienen, Nina Omani, Ishita Srivastava, Aubrey Dugger
2025, Water Resources Research (61)
The WRF-Hydro hydrological model has been used in many applications in the past with some level of history matching in the majority of these studies. In this study, we use the iterative Ensemble Smoother (iES), a powerful parameter estimation methodology implemented in the open-source PEST++ software. The iES provides an...
Integrating Sr isotopes, microchemistry, and genetics to reconstruct Salmonidae species and life history
Ross Anthony Salerno, Remi Murdoch, Taylor Wilcox, Joanna Elmore, Jens Hegg, Catherine S Austin, Michael LeMoine, Jade Luckhurst, Alexandra Fraik, Molly Carney
2025, Archaeometry
Recent approaches to fisheries research emphasize the importance of the coproduction of knowledge in building resilient and culturally mindful fisheries management frameworks. Despite widespread recognition of the need for Indigenous knowledge and historical reference points as baseline data, archaeological data are rarely included in conservation biology research designs. Here we...
Shifts in marsh erosion, migration, and wave exposure over nearly two centuries of sea-level rise in the Gulf of Mexico
Kathryn E.L. Smith, Joseph F. Terrano, Robert L. Jenkins III, Jonathan L Pitchford, Davina Passeri, Christopher G. Smith
2025, Estuarine Coastal and Shelf Science (313)
Coastal wetlands are economically important ecosystems, but are at risk to erosion from waves, storms, and sea level rise. However, marshes can persist under rising sea level through vertical accretion and migration into adjacent higher-elevation habitats. We measured rates of marsh shoreline change and migration and compared the results for...
Cleaner cuts: Farmed fish and skin-off fillets are lower in per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)
Guillermo Figueroa-Munoz, Christina Amy Murphy, Kory Whittum, Joseph D. Zydlewski
2025, Science of the Total Environment (959)
The ubiquitous occurrence and persistence of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in all environmental matrices and biota poses significant health risks to humans. Fish consumption is one of the main pathways humans are exposed to PFAS, yet general patterns in factors influencing PFAS content in fish fillets remain unknown. We...
A universal method for the simultaneous determination of environmental pollutants in marine biological samples: Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances and antibiotics as a case study
Di Fang, Ge Yang, Bentuo Xu, Jialin Li, Jiayi Lin, Chunmiao Zheng, Jason Tyler Magnuson, Wenhui Qiu
2025, ACS ES&T Water (5) 274-283
Conventional detection technologies for environmental contaminants have primarily focused on providing accurate qualitative and quantitative evaluations for single pollutant types, leading to increased costs and an inability to satisfy the growing demand for detecting a broader spectrum of pollutants. Here, we introduced a novel analytical method to simultaneously measure the...
Biophysical simulation of wetland surface water flow to predict changing water availability in the Everglades
Judson Harvey, Jay Choi, Walter Wilcox, Michael C. Brown, Wasantha Lal
2025, Ecological Engineering (212)
A central challenge for water managers is to adaptively manage water availability to meet societal needs while simultaneously protecting ecosystems. Progress restoring the Everglades requires predictions of how overland flow of surface water can be increased to rehydrate and revive downstream areas without causing unintended harms. We developed a biophysical...
Potential 2050 distributions of World Terrestrial Ecosystems from projections of changes in World Climate Regions and Global Land Cover
Roger Sayre, Charlie Frye, Sean Breyer, Patrick Roehrdanz, Paul Elsen, Kevin Butler, Clint Brown, Jill Janene Cress, Deniz Karagulle, Madeline T. Martin, Florencia Sangermano, Regan Smyth, Terry Sohl, Nicholas Wolff, Dawn Wright, Zhuoting Wu
2025, Global Ecology and Conservation (57)
The urgency to address ecosystem loss is paramount, as both land use change and climate change will continue to rapidly alter and degrade natural ecosystems and reduce the many services they provide. To support conservation actions that mitigate impacts from these dual threats, we have developed potential World Terrestrial Ecosystem...
Vertebrates in trade that pose high invasion risk to the United States
Wesley Daniel, Helen Sofaer, Catherine S. Jarnevich, Richard A. Erickson, Brett Alexander DeGregorio, Peder Scott Engelstad, Jonathan A. Freedman, Susan Canavan, Emily M. Dean, Michael J Adams, Charmayne L. Anderson, Mindy Barnett, Marybeth K. Brey, Kyle J. Brumm, Matthew S. Bunting, Emily Caffrey, Laura Cardador, Jacoby Carter, Phillip Cassey, Duane Chapman, Natalie M. Claunch, Timothy D. Counihan, Kristin P. Davis, Anant Deshwal, Andrew K. Douglas, Corey Garland Dunn, Chase Ehlo, Katie Everett, Jason M. Gleditsch, Andrew Grosse, Zoey Hendrickson, Steven C. Hess, Jeffrey E. Hill, Nick D. Holmes, Ana V. Longo, Julie L. Lockwood, Doran M. Mason, Ashley McDonald, Matthew Neilson, Kristen M. Reaver, Robert Reed, Caleb Powell Roberts, Jane S. Rogosch, Christina Romagosa, James C. Russell, Annie Simpson, Scott A. Smith, Jinelle Sperry, Quenton M. Tuckett, Kurt VerCauteren, J. Hardin Waddle, Christian Wanamaker, John D. Willson, Arden Williams, Deah Lieurance
2025, Biological Conservation (302)
The United States imports thousands of live vertebrate species annually as part of legal trade. Escapes and releases from captivity are major pathways of invasion, however, the risk posed by the thousands of imported vertebrate species has not been systematically assessed. We conducted a horizon scan that used a data-driven...
Age, growth, and reproductive biology of Achilles tang (Acanthurus achilles) around Hawai'i Island, USA
Timothy B. Grabowski, Richard Massey, Dawn McSwain, Annie Larson, Lillian Joy Tuttle Raz, Eva Schemmel, Danielle E. Bartz, Nikola Rodriguez
2025, Article
A culturally important food fish in Hawai'i, Achilles tang (Acanthurus achilles Shaw), recently experienced sharp declines in biomass, density, and average length in west Hawai'i Island. In December 2022, State resource managers placed a 2-year moratorium on the Achilles tang fishery in west Hawai'i Island so that the cause of the...
Identifying lakes critical to the westward spread and establishment of zebra mussels
David A. Creamer, Jane S. Rogosch, Renaldo Patino, Monica E. McGarrity
2025, Biological Conservation (302)
Damaging aquatic invasive species, such as the zebra mussel (Dreissena polymorpha), pose an ongoing concern for potential introduction and establishment in the western United States. Our study applied habitat suitability indices and network analysis to identify lakes critical to the continued westward spread and establishment of zebra mussels from a key...
Practical application of time-lapse camera imagery to develop water-level data for three hydrologic monitoring sites in Wisconsin during water year 2020
Keegan Eland Johnson, Paul Reneau, Matthew J. Komiskey
2025, Journal of Hydrology X (26)
Using camera imagery to measure water level (camera-stage) is a well-researched area of study. Previous camera-stage studies have shown promising results when implementing this technology with tight constraints on test conditions. However, there is a need for a more comprehensive evaluation of the extensibility of camera-stage to practical applications. Therefore,...
Intersection of wildfire and legacy mining poses risk to water quality
Sheila F. Murphy, Johanna Blake, Brian A. Ebel, Deborah A. Martin
2025, Environmental Science and Technology (59) 35-44
Mining and wildfires are both landscape disturbances that pose elevated and substantial hazards to water supplies and ecosystems due to increased erosion and transport of sediment, metals, and debris to downstream waters. The risk to water supplies may be amplified when these disturbances occur in the same watershed. This work...
Evaluating approaches for integrating species distributions in spatial conservation planning
Jason M. Winiarski, Amy A. Shipley, Drew Nathan Fowler, Matthew D. Palumbo, Jacob N. Straub
2025, Conservation Science and Practice (7)
Map-based decision support tools (DSTs) that use species distributions are an important means of identifying priority areas for conservation. The 2020 Wisconsin Waterfowl Habitat Conservation Strategy (WWHCS) uses a DST to identify priority ecological landscapes and watersheds to guide waterfowl habitat projects. The WWHCS DST relies on waterfowl habitat suitability...
A case for occupancy as a state variable for wild bee monitoring
Clint Otto, S. Hollis Woodard, Larissa L. Bailey
2025, Biological Conservation (302)
Reports of widespread pollinator declines, data deficiencies, and inabilities to assess status and trends underscore the need for wild bee monitoring. Chief among the challenges with wild bee monitoring is identifying monitoring objectives and state variables. Here we make the case for considering occupancy, the proportion of area occupied, as...
Examining inter-regional and intra-seasonal differences in wintering waterfowl landscape associations among Pacific and Atlantic flyways
Matthew J. Hardy, Christopher K. Williams, Brian S. Ladman, Maurice E. Pitesky, Cory T. Overton, Michael L. Casazza, Elliott Matchett, Diann Prosser, Jeffrey J. Buler
2025, Journal of Avian Biology (2025)
The Central Valley of California (CVC) and Mid-Atlantic (MA) in the U.S. are both critical sites for nationwide food security, and many waterfowl species annually, especially during the winter, providing feeding and roosting locations for a variety of species. Mapping waterfowl distributions, using NEXRAD, may aid in the adaptive management...
Decision analysis of Integrated Pest Management: A case study on invasive sea lamprey in the Great Lakes Basin
Sean Alois Lewandoski, Kelly Filer Robinson, Travis O. Brenden, Ryan Booth, Peter Hrodey, John B. Hume, Thomas C. Pratt, Anne M Scott, Matthew Symbal, C. Michael Wagner, Nicholas S. Johnson
2025, Journal of Environmental Management (373)
Integrated Pest Management (IPM) provides a powerful framework for addressing threats to human well-being caused by nuisance species including invasives. We examined the hypothesis that adaptive management could erode barriers to IPM implementation by developing a decision-analytic adaptive management framework...
Effects of Mycoplasma ovipneumoniae, abundance, and environmental conditions on bighorn sheep lamb:ewe ratios and adult survival in New Mexico
Colton J. Padilla, Caitlin Q. Ruhl, James W. Cain III, Matthew E. Gompper
2025, Ecosphere (15)
Mycoplasma ovipneumoniae is a primary causative agent responsible for initiating polymicrobial pneumonia in bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis). Infections of bighorn sheep populations are typically characterized by initial all-age epizootics followed by long-term periods of repressed juvenile (lamb) survival. Populations of bighorn sheep in New Mexico, USA, were thought to be free...
SCEC/USGS Community Stress Drop Validation Study: How spectral fitting approaches influence measured source parameters
Elizabeth S. Cochran, Annemarie S. Baltay Sundstrom, Shanna Chu, Rachel E. Abercrombie, Dino Bindi, X. Chen, Grace Alexandra Parker, Colin Pennington, Peter M. Shearer, Daniel T. Trugman
2025, Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (115) 760-776
Spectral source parameters used to estimate an earthquake’s stress drop (Δσ) can vary significantly across measurement approaches. The Statewide California Earthquake Center/U.S. Geological Survey Community Stress-Drop Validation Study was initiated to compare source parameter estimates, focusing initially on a dataset from the 2019 Ridgecrest earthquake sequence. As part of that...
Intra-urban variations in land surface phenology in a semi-arid environment
Ben Crawford, Kathy Kelsey, Peter Christian Ibsen, Amanda Rees, Amanda Charobee
2025, Environmental Research Letters (20)
Urban vegetation is growing in importance as cities use 'green infrastructure' to mitigate the impacts of climate change, reduce extreme heat, and improve human health and comfort. However, due to the heterogeneity of city landscapes, urban vegetation experiences a diverse range of environmental conditions, potentially leading to differences in growing...
Prioritizing US Geological Survey science on salinization and salinity in candidate and selected priority river basins
Christopher H. Conaway, Nancy T. Baker, Craig J. Brown, Christopher T. Green, Douglas B. Kent
2025, Enviornmental Monitoring and Assessment (197)
The US Geological Survey (USGS) is selecting and prioritizing basins, known as Integrated Water Science basins, for monitoring and intensive study. Previous efforts to aid in this selection process include a scientifically defensible and quantitative assessment of basins facing human-caused water resource challenges (Van Metre et al. in Environmental Monitoring...
Hypothetical CO2 leakage into, and hydrological plume management within, an underground source of drinking water at a proposed CO2 storage facility, Kemper County, Mississippi, USA
Michelle R. Plampin, Matthew D. Merrill
2025, Environmental Geosciences (84)
A large Geologic Carbon Sequestration (GCS) hub has been proposed in Kemper County, Mississippi. The target injection interval consists of numerous Cretaceous-aged deep saline aquifers overlain by a competent and extensive regional sealing layer. Above the seal, the deepest Underground Source of Drinking Water (USDW) at the site is the...
