Search Results

Cover crops are planted to reduce soil erosion, increase soil fertility, and improve watershed management. In the Delmarva Peninsula of the eastern United States, winter cover crops are essential for reducing nutrient and sediment losses from farmland. Cost-share programs have been created to incentivize cover crops to achieve conservation objectives....

The Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area (BOHA) is at high risk to the impacts of sealevel rise (SLR) and erosion from coastal storms. In June 2021, the National Trust for Historic Preservation listed the islands as one of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places due to climate change. BOHA...

Groundwater in northwestern Louisiana is a valuable resource needed for expanding public-supply needs as well as possible energy development needs arising from Haynesville Formation natural-gas production. The Red River alluvial and the Carrizo-Wilcox aquifers are two of the most important and heavily pumped aquifers in northwestern Louisiana; however, little documentation...

Key Takeaways Nutrient loads from croplands continue to negatively affect surface water quality, despite considerable investments in and adoption of agricultural conservation practices aimed at reducing nutrient losses. Numerous studies indicate that effective restoration and management of wetlands in and adjacent to cultivated croplands could reduce surface and subsurface nutrient...

The U.S. Geological Survey Great Lakes Science Center has assessed annual changes in the offshore prey fish community of Lake Huron since 1973. Assessments are based on a bottom trawl survey conducted in October of each year and an acoustics-midwater trawl survey, which began in 2004 and is conducted...

The geologic map and description of map units presented here cover approximately 880 km2 of northeastern Umnak Island, Aleutian Islands, Alaska. This report focuses on Okmok Volcano and its eruptive products and updates the mid-20th-century geologic map of Byers (1959). Mapped deposits reflect the state of the volcano just prior...

Knowing the population size of Florida manatees (Trichechus manatus latirostris) is critical for conservation and management of this threatened species. Martin et al. (2015) and Hostetler et al. (2018) applied statistical models that incorporated multiple data sources to estimate the statewide abundance of manatees from aerial surveys f lown in...

This report is part of the NOAA Mesophotic and Deep Benthic Communities (MDBC) Series of publications that share the results of work conducted by the Deepwater Horizon MDBC restoration projects. The 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill was an unprecedented event. Approximately 3.2 million barrels of oil were released into the...

As global surface temperatures continue to rise as a result of anthropogenic climate change, effects in temperate lakes are likely to be more pronounced than in other ecosystems. Decreases in snow and ice cover extent and duration, as well as extended periods of summer stratification have been observed in temperate...

We investigated wind-wave and suspended-sediment dynamics in Little Holland Tract and Liberty Island, two subsided former agricultural tracts in the Cache Slough complex in the northern Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta which were restored to tidal shallows to improve habitat. Turbidity, and thus suspended-sediment concentration (SSC), is important to habitat quality because...

Satellite remote sensing is transforming coastal science from a “data-poor” field into a “data-rich” field. Sandy beaches are dynamic landscapes that change in response to long-term pressures, short-term pulses, and anthropogenic interventions. Until recently, the rate and breadth of beach change have outpaced our ability to monitor those changes, due...

The Soricidae (Mammalia: Eulypotyphla) comprises more than 450 species inhabiting a variety of habitats on five continents.  As a family, shrews employ a variety of locomotor modes that incorporate ambulatory, fossorial, aquatic, and scansorial behaviors, illustrating an ability to exploit a variety of natural substrates and their associated resources.  In...

Cores from Searsville Lake within Stanford University’s Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve, California, USA, are examined to identify a potential GSSP for the Anthropocene: core JRBP2018-VC01B (944.5 cm-long) and tightly correlated JRBP2018-VC01A (852.5 cm-long). Spanning from 1900 CE ± 3 years to 2018 CE, a secure chronology resolved to the sub-annual level allows detailed...

Actual evapotranspiration modeling is providing useful information for researchers and resource managers in agriculture and water resources around the world. The performance of models depends on the accuracy of forcing inputs and model parameters. We developed an improved approach to the parameterization of the Operational Simplified Surface Energy Balance...

Watershed resilience is the ability of a watershed to maintain its characteristic system state while concurrently resisting, adapting to, and reorganizing after hydrological (for example, drought, flooding) or biogeochemical (for example, excessive nutrient) disturbances. Vulnerable waters include non-floodplain wetlands and headwater streams, abundant watershed components representing...

The mid to outer continental shelf in the northern Gulf of Mexico is composed of a patchy distribution of coral and rock reefs designated high priority for marine protection. To better understand the influence of deepwater habitat on fish community dynamics and conservation needs, we compared altiphotic-mesophotic transition (20– 40...

ShakeAlert, the earthquake early warning (EEW) system for the West Coast of the United States, attempts to provides crucial warnings before strong shaking occurs. However, because the alerts are triggered only when an earthquake is already in progress, and the alert latencies and delivery times are platform dependent, the time...

Managing impounded river systems is a recurring challenge for aquatic resource professionals because reservoirs serve multiple functions with different ecological and socioeconomic outcomes. However, research on fishes in reservoirs has disproportionally focused on recreationally and economically important species, with less attention directed toward fish assemblages despite the potential for management...

Rapid and accurate estimates of seismic ground failure and building damage are beneficial to efficient emergency response and post-earthquake recovery. Traditional approaches, such as physical and geospatial models, have poor accuracy and resolution due to large uncertainties and the limited availability of informing geospatial layers. The introduction of remote sensing...

Body condition indices are commonly used in the management of fish populations and are a surrogate to physiological attributes such as tissue-energy reserves. Relative condition factor (Kn) describes the condition of species relative to populations in a geographic area. We developed models to allow for the calculation of Kn in...

In 2001, we collected whole blood from sea ducks (Steller’s eider Polysticta stelleri, harlequin duck Histrionicus histrionicus, black scoter Melanitta nigra, and long-tailed duck Clangula hyemalis) wintering at Dutch Harbor, Alaska, and from Steller’s eiders molting at Izembek Lagoon on the Alaska Peninsula....

Running Reelfoot Bayou (RRB) is the outlet canal of Reelfoot Lake, the largest natural lake in Tennessee. RRB is not able to contain discharge from Reelfoot Lake greater than the bankfull discharge of 28 m3/s (1000 ft3/s), which typically occurs at the beginning of the growing season...

Estimating the material flows of rare earth elements (REEs) is essential to understanding which industries are most vulnerable to potential REE supply disruptions which, in turn, may inform policy recommendations aimed at reducing the supply risk. However, the REEs are a group of mineral commodities characterized...

Gizzard shad (Dorosoma cepedianum) is a common freshwater fish species found throughout the central and eastern portions of North America. Within these regions, gizzard shad play several critical roles in the freshwater community such as serving as prey for other fish species and translocating nutrients from substrates into the water...

The success of long-term wildlife monitoring programs can be influenced by many factors and study designs often represent compromises between spatial scales and costs. Adaptive monitoring programs can iteratively manage this tension by adopting new cost-efficient technologies, which can provide projects the...