Trench logs, terrestrial lidar system imagery, and radiocarbon data from the kilometer-62 site on the Greenville Fault, southeastern Alameda County, California, 2014
James J. Lienkaemper, Stephen B. DeLong, Nikita N. Avdievitch, Alexandra J. Pickering, Thomas P. Guilderson
2015, Open-File Report 2015-1122
In 2014, we investigated an abrupt 8.5-meter (m), right-laterally deflected stream channel located near the Greenville Fault in southeastern Alameda County, California (-121.56224° E, 37.53430° N) that we discovered using 0.5-m resolution, 2011 aerial lidar imagery flown along the active fault trace. Prior to trenching we surveyed the site using...
Chemical mixtures and environmental effects: a pilot study to assess ecological exposure and effects in streams
Herbert T. Buxton, Timothy J. Reilly, Kathryn Kuivila, Dana W. Kolpin, Paul M. Bradley, Daniel L. Villeneuve, Marc A. Mills
2015, Open-File Report 2015-1113
Assessment and management of the risks of exposure to complex chemical mixtures in streams are priorities for human and environmental health organizations around the world. The current lack of information on the composition and variability of environmental mixtures and a limited understanding of their combined effects are fundamental obstacles to...
Tsunami recurrence in the eastern Alaska-Aleutian arc: A Holocene stratigraphic record from Chirikof Island, Alaska
Alan R. Nelson, Richard W. Briggs, Tina Dura, Simon E. Engelhart, Guy Gelfenbaum, Lee-Ann Bradley, S.L. Forman, Christopher H. Vane, K.A. Kelley
2015, Geosphere (11) 1203
Despite the role of the Alaska-Aleutian megathrust as the source of some of the largest earthquakes and tsunamis, the history of its pre–twentieth century tsunamis is largely unknown west of the rupture zone of the great (magnitude, M 9.2) 1964 earthquake. Stratigraphy in core transects at two boggy lowland sites...
Global volcanic hazards and risk
S. K. Brown, S. C. Loughlin, R. S. J. Sparks, C. Vye-Brown, J. Barclay, E. Calder, E. Cottrell, G. Jolly, J.C. Komorowski, Charlie Mandeville, C. Newhall, J. Palma, S. Potter, G. Valentine
S. C. Loughlin, R. S. J. Sparks, S. K. Brown, S. F. Jenkins, C. Vye-Brown, editor(s)
2015, Book chapter, Global Volcanic Hazards and Risk
An estimated 800 million people live within 100 km of an active volcano in 86 countries and additional overseas territories worldwide [see Chapter 4 and Appendix B]1. Volcanoes are compelling evidence that the Earth is a dynamic planet characterised by endless change and renewal. Humans have always found volcanic activity...
Climate-induced lake drying causes heterogeneous reductions in waterfowl species richness
Jennifer K. Roach, Dennis B. Griffith
2015, Landscape Ecology (30) 1005-1022
ContextLake size has declined on breeding grounds for international populations of waterfowl.ObjectivesOur objectives were to (1) model the relationship between waterfowl species richness and lake size; (2) use the model and trends in lake size to project historical, contemporary, and...
Building a multi-scaled geospatial temporal ecology database from disparate data sources: Fostering open science through data reuse
Patricia A. Soranno, E.G. Bissell, Kendra S. Cheruvelil, Samuel T. Christel, Sarah M. Collins, C. Emi Fergus, Christopher T. Filstrup, Jean-Francois Lapierre, Noah R. Lotting, Samantha K. Oliver, Caren E. Scott, Nicole J. Smith, Scott Stopyak, Shuai Yuan, Mary Tate Bremigan, John A. Downing, Corinna Gries, Emily N. Henry, Nick K. Skaff, Emily H. Stanley, Craig A. Stow, Pang-Ning Tan, Tyler Wagner, Katherine E. Webster
2015, GigaScience (4)
Although there are considerable site-based data for individual or groups of ecosystems, these datasets are widely scattered, have different data formats and conventions, and often have limited accessibility. At the broader scale, national datasets exist for a large number of geospatial features of land, water, and air that are needed...
Comment on “The role of interbasin groundwater transfers in geologically complex terranes, demonstrated by the Great Basin in the western United States”: report published in Hydrogeology Journal (2014) 22:807–828, by Stephen T. Nelson and Alan L. Mayo
Melissa D. Masbruch, Lynette E. Brooks, Victor M. Heilweil, Donald S. Sweetkind
2015, Hydrogeology Journal (23) 209-210
The subject article (Nelson and Mayo 2014) presents an overview of previous reports of interbasin flow in the Great Basin of the western United States. This Comment is presented by authors of a cited study (comprising chapters in one large report) on the Great Basin carbonate and alluvial aquifer system...
The distribution of selected elements and minerals in soil of the conterminous United States
Laurel G. Woodruff, William F. Cannon, David B. Smith, Federico Solano
2015, Journal of Geochemical Exploration (154) 49-60
In 2007, the U.S. Geological Survey initiated a low-density (1 site per 1600 km2, 4857 sites) geochemical and mineralogical survey of soil of the conterminous United States as part of the North American Soil Geochemical Landscapes Project. Three soil samples were collected, if possible, from each site; (1) a sample from...
Diverting lava flows in the lab
Hannah R. Dietterich, Katharine V. Cashman, Alison C. Rust, Einat Lev
2015, Nature Geoscience (8) 494-496
Recent volcanic eruptions in Hawai'i, Iceland and Cape Verde highlight the challenges of mitigating hazards when lava flows threaten infrastructure. Diversion barriers are the most common form of intervention, but historical attempts to divert lava flows have met with mixed success and there has been little systematic analysis of optimal barrier...
Patterns and predictability in the intra-annual organic carbon variability across the boreal and hemiboreal landscape
Julia K. Hytteborn, Johan Temnerud, Richard B. Alexander, Elizabeth W. Boyer, Martyn N. Futter, Mats Froberg, Joel Dahne, Kevin H. Bishop
2015, Science of the Total Environment (520) 260-269
Factors affecting total organic carbon (TOC) concentrations in 215 watercourses across Sweden were investigated using parameter parsimonious regression approaches to explain spatial and temporal variabilities of the TOC water quality responses. We systematically quantified the effects of discharge, seasonality, and long-term trend as factors controlling intra-annual (among year) and...
Sea level and turbidity controls on mangrove soil surface elevation change
Catherine E. Lovelock, Maria Fernanda Adame, Vicki Bennion, Matthew Hayes, Ruth Reef, Nadia Santini, Donald R. Cahoon
2015, Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science (153) 1-9
Increases in sea level are a threat to seaward fringing mangrove forests if levels of inundation exceed the physiological tolerance of the trees; however, tidal wetlands can keep pace with sea level rise if soil surface elevations can increase at the same pace as sea level rise. Sediment accretion on...
Evapotranspiration in the Nile Basin: Identifying dynamics and drivers, 2002–2011
Henok Alemu, Armel T. Kaptue, Gabriel B. Senay, Michael C. Wimberly, Geoffrey M. Henebry
2015, Water (7) 4914-1931
Analysis of the relationship between evapotranspiration (ET) and its natural and anthropogenic drivers is critical in water-limited basins such as the Nile. The spatiotemporal relationships of ET with rainfall and vegetation dynamics in the Nile Basin during 2002–2011 were analyzed using satellite-derived data. Non-parametric statistics were used to quantify ET-rainfall...
Tracing the cycling and fate of the explosive 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene in coastal marine systems with a stable isotopic tracer, 15N-[TNT]
Richard W. Smith, Penny Vlahos, J.K. Bohlke, Thivanka Ariyarathna, Mark Ballentine, Christopher Cooper, Stephen Fallis, Thomas J. Groshens, Craig R. Tobias
2015, Environmental Science & Technology (49) 12223-12231
2,4,6-Trinitrotoluene (TNT) has been used as a military explosive for over a hundred years. Contamination concerns have arisen as a result of manufacturing and use on a large scale; however, despite decades of work addressing TNT contamination in the environment, its fate in marine ecosystems is not fully resolved. Here...
Use of dynamic occupancy models to assess the response of Darters (Teleostei: Percidae) to varying hydrothermal conditions in a southeastern United States tailwater
C.P. Shea, Phillip William Bettoli, K. M. Potoka, C. F. Saylor, P. W. Shute
2015, River Research and Applications (31) 676-691
During the past 100 years, most large rivers in North America have been altered for flood control, hydropower, navigation or water supply development. Although these activities clearly provide important human services, their associated environmental disturbances can profoundly affect stream-dwelling organisms. We used dynamic multi-species occupancy models combined with a trait-based approach...
Up in arms: Immune and nervous system response to sea star wasting disease
Lauren E Fuess, Morgan E. Eiselord, Collin J. Closek, Allison M. Tracy, Ruth Mauntz, Sarah Gignoux-Wolfsohn, Monica M Moritsch, Reyn Yoshioka, Colleen A. Burge, Drew Harvell, Carolyn S. Friedman, Paul K. Hershberger, Steven B. Roberts
2015, PLoS ONE (10)
Echinoderms, positioned taxonomically at the base of deuterostomes, provide an important system for the study of the evolution of the immune system. However, there is little known about the cellular components and genes associated with echinoderm immunity. The 2013–2014 sea star wasting disease outbreak is an emergent, rapidly spreading disease,...
Statistical analysis of soil geochemical data to identify pathfinders associated with mineral deposits: An example from the Coles Hill uranium deposit, Virginia, USA
Denise M. Levitan, Carl E. Zipper, Patricia Donovan, Madeline E. Schreiber, Robert R. Seal, Mark A. Engle, John A. Chermak, Robert J. Bodnar, Daniel K. Johnson, Joseph G. Aylor Jr.
2015, Journal of Geochemical Exploration (154) 238-251
Soil geochemical anomalies can be used to identify pathfinders in exploration for ore deposits. In this study, compositional data analysis is used with multivariate statistical methods to analyse soil geochemical data collected from the Coles Hill uranium deposit, Virginia, USA, to identify pathfinders associated with this deposit. Elemental compositions and...
Linking degradation status with ecosystem vulnerability to environmental change
David G. Angeler, Didier L. Baho, Craig R. Allen, Richard K. Johnson
2015, Oecologia (178) 899-913
Environmental change can cause regime shifts in ecosystems, potentially threatening ecosystem services. It is unclear if the degradation status of ecosystems correlates with their vulnerability to environmental change, and thus the risk of future regime shifts. We assessed resilience in acidified (degraded) and circumneutral (undegraded) lakes with long-term data (1988–2012),...
Hydraulic fracturing water use variability in the United States and potential environmental implications
Tanya J. Gallegos, Brian A. Varela, Seth S. Haines, Mark A. Engle
2015, Water Resources Research (51) 5839-5845
Until now, up-to-date, comprehensive, spatial, national-scale data on hydraulic fracturing water volumes have been lacking. Water volumes used (injected) to hydraulically fracture over 263,859 oil and gas wells drilled between 2000 and 2014 were compiled and used to create the first U.S. map of hydraulic fracturing water use. Although median...
Water's Way at Sleepers River watershed – revisiting flow generation in a post-glacial landscape, Vermont USA
James B. Shanley, Stephen D. Sebestyen, Jeffrey J. McDonnell, Brian L. McGlynn, Thomas Dunne
2015, Hydrological Processes (29) 3447-3459
The Sleepers River Research Watershed (SRRW) in Vermont, USA, has been the site of active hydrologic research since 1959 and was the setting where Dunne and Black demonstrated the importance and controls of saturation-excess overland flow (SOF) on streamflow generation. Here, we review the early studies from the SRRW and...
Point spread functions for earthquake source imaging: An interpretation based on seismic interferometry
Hisashi Nakahara, Matthew M. Haney
2015, Geophysical Journal International (202) 54-61
Recently, various methods have been proposed and applied for earthquake source imaging, and theoretical relationships among the methods have been studied. In this study, we make a follow-up theoretical study to better understand the meanings of earthquake source imaging. For imaging problems, the point spread function (PSF) is used to...
Tree mortality predicted from drought-induced vascular damage
William R.L. Anderegg, Alan L. Flint, Cho-ying Huang, Lorraine E. Flint, Joseph A. Berry, Frank W. Davis, John S. Sperry, Christopher B. Field
2015, Nature Geoscience (8) 367-371
The projected responses of forest ecosystems to warming and drying associated with twenty-first-century climate change vary widely from resiliency to widespread tree mortality1, <a id="ref-link-3"...
NACSN, note 67--Application for revision of Articles 36 and 37, Lithodemic units of the North American stratigraphic code
Robert M. Easton, Lucy E. Edwards, Randall C. Orndorff, Manuel Duguet, Ismael Ferrusquia-Villafranca
2015, Stratigraphy (12) 39-45
Currently the North American Stratigraphic Code, (NACSN 2005, Article 37) sets restrictions on the use of the term “complex” for lithodemic units. With exceptions for “volcanic complex” and “structural complex,” a complex must consist of more than one genetic class of rock (i.e., sedimentary, igneous or metamorphic). Thus, the use...
Evaluating the relationship between biomass, percent groundcover and remote sensing indices across six winter cover crop fields in Maryland, United States
Kusuma Prabhakara, W. Dean Hively, Greg W. McCarty
2015, International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation (39) 88-102
Winter cover crops are an essential part of managing nutrient and sediment losses from agricultural lands. Cover crops lessen sedimentation by reducing erosion, and the accumulation of nitrogen in aboveground biomass results in reduced nutrient runoff. Winter cover crops are planted in the fall and are usually terminated in early...
Tectonic and sedimentary linkages between the Belt-Purcell basin and southwestern Laurentia during the Mesoproterozoic ca. 1.60-1.40 Ga
James V. Jones III, Christohper G Dainel, Michael F Doe
2015, Lithosphere (7) 465-472
Mesoproterozoic sedimentary basins in western North America provide key constraints on pre-Rodinia craton positions and interactions along the western rifted margin of Laurentia. One such basin, the Belt-Purcell basin, extends from southern Idaho into southern British Columbia and contains a >18-km-thick succession of siliciclastic sediment deposited ca. 1.47–1.40 Ga. The...
Downscaling global land-use/land-cover projections for use in region-level state-and-transition simulation modeling
Jason T. Sherba, Benjamin M. Sleeter, Adam W. Davis, Owen P. Parker
2015, AIMS Environmental Science (2) 623-647
Global land-use/land-cover (LULC) change projections and historical datasets are typically available at coarse grid resolutions and are often incompatible with modeling applications at local to regional scales. The difficulty of downscaling and reapportioning global gridded LULC change projections to regional boundaries is a barrier to the use of these datasets...
