Evaluating new SMAP soil moisture for drought monitoring in the rangelands of the US High Plains
Naga Manohar Velpuri, Gabriel B. Senay, Jeffrey T. Morisette
2016, Rangelands (38) 183-190
Level 3 soil moisture datasets from the recently launched Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) satellite are evaluated for drought monitoring in rangelands.Validation of SMAP soil moisture (SSM) with in situ and modeled estimates showed high level of agreement.SSM showed the highest correlation with surface soil moisture (0-5 cm) and a...
Re-Occupancy of Breeding Territories by Ferruginous Hawks in Wyoming: Relationships to Environmental and Anthropogenic Factors
Zachary P. Wallace, Patricia L. Kennedy, John R. Squires, Robert J. Oakleaf, Lucretia E. Olson, Katie M. Dugger
2016, PLoS ONE (11)
Grassland and shrubland birds are declining globally due in part to anthropogenic habitat modification. Because population performance of these species is also influenced by non-anthropogenic factors, it is important to incorporate all relevant ecological drivers into demographic models. We used design-based sampling and occupancy models to test relationships of environmental...
Response of fish assemblages to declining acidic deposition in Adirondack Mountain lakes, 1984–2012
Barry P. Baldigo, Karen Roy, Charles T. Driscoll
2016, Atmospheric Environment (146) 223-235
Adverse effects of acidic deposition on the chemistry and fish communities were evident in Adirondack Mountain lakes during the 1980s and 1990s. Fish assemblages and water chemistry in 43 Adirondack Long-Term Monitoring (ALTM) lakes were sampled by the Adirondack Lakes Survey Corporation and the New York State Department of Environmental...
Hydrology of prairie wetlands: Understanding the integrated surface-water and groundwater processes
Masaki Hayashi, Garth van der Kamp, Donald O. Rosenberry
2016, Wetlands (36) 237-254
Wetland managers and policy makers need to make decisions based on a sound scientific understanding of hydrological and ecological functions of wetlands. This article presents an overview of the hydrology of prairie wetlands intended for managers, policy makers, and researchers new to this field (e.g., graduate students), and a quantitative...
Creating a Coastal National Elevation Database (CoNED) for science and conservation applications
Cindy A. Thatcher, John Brock, Jeffrey J. Danielson, Sandra K. Poppenga, Dean B. Gesch, Monica Palaseanu-Lovejoy, John Barras, Gayla A. Evans, Ann Gibbs
2016, Journal of Coastal Research (Special Issue 76) 64-74
The U.S. Geological Survey is creating the Coastal National Elevation Database, an expanding set of topobathymetric elevation models that extend seamlessly across coastal regions of high societal or ecological significance in the United States that are undergoing rapid change or are threatened by inundation hazards. Topobathymetric elevation models are raster...
Use of noninvasive genetics to assess nest and space use by white-tailed eagles
Zafer Bulut, Evgeny A. Bragin, J. Andrew DeWoody, Melissa A. Braham, Todd E. Katzner, Jacqueline M. Doyle
2016, Journal of Raptor Research (50) 351-362
Movement and space use are important components of animal interactions with the environment. However, for hard-to-monitor raptor species, there are substantial gaps in our understanding of these key determinants. We used noninvasive genetic tools to evaluate the details of space use over a 3-yr period by White-tailed Eagles (Haliaeetus albicilla)...
Modeling and simulation of storm surge on Staten Island to understand inundation mitigation strategies
Michael E. Kress, Alan I. Benimoff, William J. Fritz, Cindy A. Thatcher, Brian O. Blanton, Eugene Dzedzits
2016, Journal of Coastal Research (Special Issue 76) 149-161
Hurricane Sandy made landfall on October 29, 2012, near Brigantine, New Jersey, and had a transformative impact on Staten Island and the New York Metropolitan area. Of the 43 New York City fatalities, 23 occurred on Staten Island. The borough, with a population of approximately 500,000, experienced some of the...
Powell Center Newsletter, Volume 3, Issue 1
Marcia McNiff
2016, Report
Newsletter for the John Wesley Powell Center for Analysis and Synthesis, covering news from most of FY2016....
Marine ecoregion and Deepwater Horizon oil spill affect recruitment and population structure of a salt marsh snail
Steven C. Pennings, Scott Zengel, Jacob Oehrig, Merryl Alber, T. Dale Bishop, Donald R. Deis, Donna Devlin, A. Randall Hughes, John J. Hutchens Jr., Whitney M. Kiehn, Caroline R. McFarlin, Clay L. Montague, Sean P. Powers, C. Edward Proffitt, Nicolle Rutherford, Camille L. Stagg, Keith Walters
2016, Ecosphere (7)
Marine species with planktonic larvae often have high spatial and temporal variation in recruitment that leads to subsequent variation in the ecology of benthic adults. Using a combination of published and unpublished data, we compared the population structure of the salt marsh snail, Littoraria irrorata, between the South Atlantic Bight...
mizuRoute version 1: A river network routing tool for a continental domain water resources applications
Naoki Mizukami, Martyn P. Clark, Kevin Sampson, Bart Nijssen, Yixin Mao, Hilary McMillan, Roland J. Viger, Steven L. Markstrom, Lauren E. Hay, Ross Woods, Jeffrey R. Arnold, Levi D. Brekke
2016, Geoscientific Model Development (9) 2223-2238
This paper describes the first version of a stand-alone runoff routing tool, mizuRoute. The mizuRoute tool post-processes runoff outputs from any distributed hydrologic model or land surface model to produce spatially distributed streamflow at various spatial scales from headwater basins to continental-wide river systems. The tool can utilize both traditional...
Geological, geochemical, and reservoir characterization of the Uteland Butte member of the Green River Formation, Uinta Basin, Utah
Justin E. Birdwell, Michael D. Vanden Berg, Ronald C. Johnson, Tracey J. Mercier, Adam Boehlke, Michael E. Brownfield
Michael P. Dolan, Debra K. Higley, Paul G. Lillis, editor(s)
2016, Book chapter, Hydrocarbon source rocks in unconventional plays, Rocky Mountain Region
No abstract available....
Perspectives on bay-delta science and policy
Michael Healey, Michael D. Dettinger, Richard Norgaard
2016, San Francisco Estuary and Watershed Science (14) 1-25
The State of Bay–Delta Science 2008 highlighted seven emerging perspectives on science and management of the Delta. These perspectives had important effects on policy and legislation concerning management of the Delta ecosystem and water exports. From the collection of papers that make up the State of Bay–Delta Science 2016, we...
Habitat selection by Forster's Terns (Sterna forsteri) at multiple spatial scales in an urbanized estuary: The importance of salt ponds
Jill Bluso-Demers, Joshua T. Ackerman, John Y. Takekawa, Sarah H. Peterson
2016, Waterbirds (39) 375-387
The highly urbanized San Francisco Bay Estuary, California, USA, is currently undergoing large-scale habitat restoration, and several thousand hectares of former salt evaporation ponds are being converted to tidal marsh. To identify potential effects of this habitat restoration on breeding waterbirds, habitat selection of radiotagged Forster's Terns (Sterna forsteri) was...
A possible source mechanism of the 1946 Unimak Alaska far-field tsunami, uplift of the mid-slope terrace above a splay fault zone
Roland E. von Huene, John J. Miller, Dirk Klaeschen, Peter Dartnell
2016, Pure and Applied Geophysics (173) 4189-4201
In 1946, megathrust seismicity along the Unimak segment of the Alaska subduction zone generated the largest ever recorded Alaska/Aleutian tsunami. The tsunami severely damaged Pacific islands and coastal areas from Alaska to Antarctica. It is the charter member of “tsunami” earthquakes that produce outsized far-field tsunamis for the recorded magnitude....
Adult nest attendance and diet of nestling Resplendent Quetzals (Pharomachrus mocinno) in the Talamanca Mountains of southern Cosa Rica
Scott A. Carleton
2016, Ornitologia Neotropical (27) 181-188
Resplendent Quetzals (Pharomachrus mocinno) inhabit mid to high elevation forests from southern Mexico to Panama. Lipid rich fruits from the Lauraceae family have been found to account for a large proportion of adult diet across their annual life cycle. To better understand the relationship between quetzals and Lauraceae during the...
Climate-induced warming of lakes can be either amplified or suppressed by trends in water clarity
Kevin C. Rose, Luke A. Winslow, Jordan S. Read, Gretchen J. A. Hansen
2016, Limnology and Oceanography Letters (1) 44-53
Climate change is rapidly warming aquatic ecosystems including lakes and reservoirs. However, variability in lake characteristics can modulate how lakes respond to climate. Water clarity is especially important both because it influences the depth range over which heat is absorbed, and because it is changing in many lakes. Here, we...
Panel regressions to estimate low-flow response to rainfall variability in ungaged basins
Maoya Bassiouni, Richard M. Vogel, Stacey A. Archfield
2016, Water Resources Research (52) 9470-9494
Multicollinearity and omitted-variable bias are major limitations to developing multiple linear regression models to estimate streamflow characteristics in ungaged areas and varying rainfall conditions. Panel regression is used to overcome limitations of traditional regression methods, and obtain reliable model coefficients, in particular to understand the elasticity of streamflow to rainfall....
Occurrence of triclocarban and triclosan in an agro-ecosystem following application of biosolids
Jessica J. Sherburne, Amanda M. Anaya, Kimberly J. Fernie, Jennifer S. Forbey, Edward T. Furlong, Dana W. Kolpin, Alfred M. Dufty, Chad A. Kinney
2016, Environmental Science & Technology (50) 13206-13214
Triclocarban (TCC) and triclosan (TCS), two of the most commonly used antimicrobial compounds, can be introduced into ecosystems by applying wastewater treatment plant biosolids to agricultural fields. Concentrations of TCC and TCS were measured in different trophic levels within a terrestrial food web encompassing land-applied biosolids, soil, earthworms (Lumbricus), deer...
Reinforcement and validation of the analyses and conclusions related to fishway evaluation data from Bunt et al.: ‘Performance of fish passage structures at upstream barriers to migration’
C.M. Bunt, Theodore R. Castro-Santos, Alexander Haro
2016, River Research and Applications (32) 2125-2137
Detailed re-examination of the datasets that were used for a meta-analysis of fishway attraction and passage revealed a number of errors that we addressed and corrected. We subsequently re-analysed the revised dataset, and results showed no significant changes in the primary conclusions of the original study; for most species, effective...
Movement reveals scale dependence in habitat selection of a large ungulate
Joseph Northrup, Charles R. Anderson Jr., Mevin Hooten, George Wittemyer
2016, Ecological Applications (26) 2746-2757
Ecological processes operate across temporal and spatial scales. Anthropogenic disturbances impact these processes, but examinations of scale dependence in impacts are infrequent. Such examinations can provide important insight to wildlife–human interactions and guide management efforts to reduce impacts. We assessed spatiotemporal scale dependence in habitat selection of mule deer (Odocoileus...
Assessment of trace element accumulation by earthworms in an orchard soil remediation study using soil amendments
Tiziana Centofantia, Rufus L. Chaney, W. Nelson Beyer, Laura L. McConnell, A. P. Davis, Dana Jackson
2016, Water, Air, & Soil Pollution (227)
This study assessed potential bioaccumulation of various trace elements in grasses and earthworms as a consequence of soil incorporation of organic amendments for in situ remediation of an orchard field soil contaminated with organochlorine and Pb pesticide residues. In this experiment, four organic amendments of differing total organic carbon content...
Managing adaptively for multifunctionality in agricultural systems
Jennifer Hodbod, Olivier Barreteau, Craig R. Allen, Daniele Magda
2016, Journal of Environmental Management (183) 379-388
The critical importance of agricultural systems for food security and as a dominant global landcover requires management that considers the full dimensions of system functions at appropriate scales, i.e. multifunctionality. We propose that adaptive management is the most suitable management approach for such goals, given its ability to reduce uncertainty...
Identifying alternate pathways for climate change to impact inland recreational fishers
Len M. Hunt, Eli P. Fenichel, David C. Fulton, Robert Mendelsohn, Jordan W. Smith, Tyler D. Tunney, Abigail J. Lynch, Craig P. Paukert, James E. Whitney
2016, Fisheries (41) 362-372
Fisheries and human dimensions literature suggests that climate change influences inland recreational fishers in North America through three major pathways. The most widely recognized pathway suggests that climate change impacts habitat and fish populations (e.g., water temperature impacting fish survival) and cascades to impact fishers. Climate change also impacts recreational...
Uncertainty quantification and propagation for projections of extremes in monthly area burned under climate change: A case study in the coastal plain of Georgia, USA
Adam J. Terando, Brian J. Reich, Krishna Pacifici, Jennifer Costanza, Alexa McKerrow, Jaime A. Collazo
Karin L. Riley, Peter Webley, Matthew Thompson, editor(s)
2016, Book chapter, Natural hazard uncertainty assessment: Modeling and decision support
Human‐caused climate change is predicted to affect the frequency of hazard‐linked extremes. Unusually large wildfires are a type of extreme event that is constrained by climate and can be a hazard to society but also an important ecological disturbance. This chapter focuses on changes in the frequency of extreme monthly...
Unmanned aircraft systems in wildlife research: Current and future applications of a transformative technology
Katherine S. Christie, Sophie L. Gilbert, Casey L. Brown, Michael Hatfield, Leanne Hanson
2016, Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment (14) 241-251
Unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) – also called unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones – are an emerging tool that may provide a safer, more cost-effective, and quieter alternative to traditional research methods. We review examples where UAS have been used to document wildlife abundance, behavior, and habitat, and illustrate the...
