Glacier variability in the conterminous United States during the twentieth century
Gregory J. McCabe, Andrew G. Fountain
2013, Climate Change (116) 565-577
Glaciers of the conterminous United States have been receding for the past century. Since 1900 the recession has varied from a 24 % loss in area (Mt. Rainier, Washington) to a 66 % loss in the Lewis Range of Montana. The rates of retreat are generally similar with a rapid loss in...
Establishing an operational waterhole monitoring system using satellite data and hydrologic modelling: Application in the pastoral regions of East Africa
Gabriel B. Senay, Naga Manohar Velpuri, Henok Alemu, Shahriar Md Pervez, Kwabena O Asante, Gatarwa Karuki, Asefa Taa, Jay Angerer
2013, Pastoralism: Research, Policy and Practice (3) 1-16
Timely information on the availability of water and forage is important for the sustainable development of pastoral regions. The lack of such information increases the dependence of pastoral communities on perennial sources, which often leads to competition and conflicts. The provision of timely information is a challenging task, especially due...
Land use and carbon dynamics in the southeastern United States from 1992 to 2050
Shuqing Zhao, Shuguang Liu, Terry L. Sohl, Claudia Young, Jeremy M. Werner
2013, Environmental Research Letters (8) 1-9
Land use and land cover change (LUCC) plays an important role in determining the spatial distribution, magnitude, and temporal change of terrestrial carbon sources and sinks. However, the impacts of LUCC are not well understood and quantified over large areas. The goal of this study was to...
Semidiurnal temperature changes caused by tidal front movements in the warm season in seabed habitats on the Georges Bank northern margin and their ecological implications
Vincent G. Guida, Page C. Valentine, Leslie B. Gallea
2013, PLoS ONE (8)
Georges Bank is a large, shallow feature separating the Gulf of Maine from the Atlantic Ocean. Previous studies demonstrated a strong tidal-mixing front during the warm season on the northern bank margin between thermally stratified water in the Gulf of Maine and mixed water on the bank. Tides transport warm...
Desert fires fueled by native annual forbs: Effects of fire on communities of plants and birds in the Lower Sonoran Desert of Arizona
Todd C. Esque, Robert H. Webb, Cynthia S.A. Wallace, Charles van Riper III, Chris McCreedy, Lindsay A. Smythe
2013, Southwestern Naturalist (58) 223-233
In 2005, fire ignited by humans swept from Yuma Proving Grounds into Kofa National Wildlife Refuge, Arizona, burning ca. 9,255 ha of Wilderness Area. Fuels were predominantly the native forb Plantago ovata. Large fires at low elevations were rare in the 19th and 20th centuries, and fires fueled by native...
Origin of the Blytheville Arch, and long-term displacement on the New Madrid seismic zone, central United States
Thomas L. Pratt, Robert Williams, Jackson K. Odum, William J. Stephenson
2013, GSA Special Papers (493) 1-15
The southern arm of the New Madrid seismic zone of the central United States coincides with the buried, ~110 km by ~20 km Blytheville Arch antiform within the Cambrian–Ordovician Reelfoot rift graben. The Blytheville Arch has been interpreted at various times as a compressive structure, an igneous intrusion, or a...
Temporal and spatial variation in bird and human use of beaches in southern California
Kevin D. Lafferty, Donald A. Rodriguez, Angela Chapman
2013, SpringerPlus (2) 1-14
Southern California’s beaches can support a remarkable diversity of birds along the Pacific Flyway. We asked whether seasonal, annual, and spatial factors affect bird richness and abundance on public beaches. To do so, we conducted three years of monthly bird surveys on 12 sandy beaches in Ventura California. Across all...
Severe reduction in genetic variation in a montane isolate: The endangered Mount Graham red squirrel (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus grahamensis)
Robert R. Fitak, John L. Koprowski, Melanie Culver
2013, Conservation Genetics (14) 1233-1241
The Mount Graham red squirrel (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus grahamensis; MGRS) is endemic to the Pinaleño Mountains of Arizona at the southernmost extent of the species’ range. The MGRS was listed as federally endangered in 1987, and is currently at high risk of extinction due to declining population size and...
Transport and fate of microbial pathogens in agricultural settings
Scott A. Bradford, Veronica L. Morales, Wei Zhang, Ronald W. Harvey, Aaron I. Packman, Arvind Mohanram, Claire Welty
2013, Critical Reviews in Environmental Science and Technology (43) 775-893
An understanding of the transport and survival of microbial pathogens (pathogens hereafter) in agricultural settings is needed to assess the risk of pathogen contamination to water and food resources, and to develop control strategies and treatment options. However, many knowledge gaps still remain in predicting the fate and transport of...
Overcoming the momentum of anachronism: American geologic mapping in a twenty-first-century world
Kyle House, Ryan Clark, Joe Kopera
2013, GSA Special Papers (502) 103-125
The practice of geologic mapping is undergoing conceptual and methodological transformation. Profound changes in digital technology in the past 10 yr have potential to impact all aspects of geologic mapping. The future of geologic mapping as a relevant scientific enterprise depends on widespread adoption of new technology and ideas about...
Monte Carlo simulations of product distributions and contained metal estimates
Mark E. Gettings
2013, Natural Resources Research (22) 239-254
Estimation of product distributions of two factors was simulated by conventional Monte Carlo techniques using factor distributions that were independent (uncorrelated). Several simulations using uniform distributions of factors show that the product distribution has a central peak approximately centered at the product of the medians of the factor distributions. Factor...
Use of gene-expression programming to estimate Manning’s roughness coefficient for high gradient streams
H. Azamathulla, Robert D. Jarrett
2013, Water Resources Management (27) 715-729
Manning’s roughness coefficient (n) has been widely used in the estimation of flood discharges or depths of flow in natural channels. Therefore, the selection of appropriate Manning’s nvalues is of paramount importance for hydraulic engineers and hydrologists and requires considerable experience, although extensive guidelines are available. Generally,...
Knowledge, transparency, and refutability in groundwater models, an example from the Death Valley regional groundwater flow system
Mary C. Hill, Claudia C. Faunt, Wayne Belcher, Donald S. Sweetkind, Claire R. Tiedeman, Dmitri Kavetski
2013, Physics and Chemistry of the Earth, Parts A/B/C (64) 105-116
This work demonstrates how available knowledge can be used to build more transparent and refutable computer models of groundwater systems. The Death Valley regional groundwater flow system, which surrounds a proposed site for a high level nuclear waste repository of the United States of America, and the Nevada National Security...
Characterizing LEDAPS surface reflectance products by comparisons with AERONET, field spectrometer, and MODIS data
Tom Maiersperger, Pat Scaramuzza, Larry Leigh, S. Shrestha, Kevin Gallo, Calli B. Jenkerson, John L. Dwyer
2013, Remote Sensing of Environment (136) 1-13
This study provides a baseline quality check on provisional Landsat Surface Reflectance (SR) products as generated by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center using Landsat Ecosystem Disturbance Adaptive Processing System (LEDAPS) software. Characterization of the Landsat SR products leveraged comparisons between aerosol optical thickness...
Simulating the water budget of a Prairie Potholes complex from LiDAR and hydrological models in North Dakota, USA
Shengli Huang, Claudia Young, Omar I. Abdul-Aziz, Devendra Dahal, Min Feng, Shuguang Liu
2013, Hydrological Sciences Journal (58) 1434-1444
Hydrological processes of the wetland complex in the Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) are difficult to model, partly due to a lack of wetland morphology data. We used Light Detection And Ranging (LiDAR) data sets to derive wetland features; we then modelled rainfall, snowfall, snowmelt, runoff, evaporation, the “fill-and-spill” mechanism, shallow...
Seed harvesting is influenced by associational effects in mixed seed neighbourhoods, not just by seed density
Steven M. Ostoja, Eugene W. Schupp, Susan Durham, Robert C. Klinger
2013, Functional Ecology (27) 775-785
Rodents frequently forage in a density-dependent manner, increasing harvesting in patches with greater seed densities. Although seldom considered, seed harvesting may also depend on the species identities of other individuals in the seed neighbourhood. When the seed harvest of a focal species increases in association with another...
Report A: Fish distribution and population dynamics in Rock Creek, Klickitat County, Washington
Brady Allen, Carrie S. Munz, Elaine Harvey
2013, Report, Rock Creek fish and habitat assessment for prioritization of restoration and protection actions
The U.S. Geological Survey collaborated with the Yakama Nation starting in fall of 2009 to study the fish populations in Rock Creek, a Washington State tributary of the Columbia River 21 kilometers upstream of John Day Dam. Prior to this study, very little was known about the ESA-listed (threatened) Mid-Columbia...
Effect of dissolved organic matter source and character on microbial Hg methylation in Hg–S–DOM solutions
Andrew M. Graham, George R. Aiken, Cynthia Gilmour
2013, Environmental Science & Technology (47) 5746-5754
Dissolved organic matter (DOM) is a key component of fate and transport models for most metals, including mercury (Hg). Utilizing a suite of diverse DOM isolates, we demonstrated that DOM character, in addition to concentration, influences inorganic Hg (Hg(II)i) bioavailability to Hg-methylating bacteria. Using a model Hg-methylating bacterium, Desulfovibrio desulfuricansND132, we...
Projecting the land cover change and its environmental impacts in the Cedar River Basin in the Midwestern United States
Yiping Wu, Shuguang Liu, Terry L. Sohl, Claudia Young
2013, Environmental Research Letters (8) 1-13
The physical surface of the Earth is in constant change due to climate forcing and human activities. In the Midwestern United States, urban area, farmland, and dedicated energy crop (e.g., switchgrass) cultivation are predicted to expand in the coming decades, which will lead to changes in hydrological processes. This study...
Broad timescale forcing and geomorphic mediation of tidal marsh flow and temperature dynamics
Christopher Enwright, Steven Culberson, Jon R. Burau
2013, Estuaries and Coasts (36) 1319-1339
Tidal marsh functions are driven by interactions between tides, landscape morphology, and emergent vegetation. Less often considered are the diurnal pattern of tide extremes and seasonal variation of solar insolation in the mix of tidal marsh driver interactions. This work demonstrates how high-frequency hydroperiod and water temperature variability emerges from...
Cross-scale morphology
Craig R. Allen, Crawford S. Holling, Ahjond S. Garmestani
Abdel H. El-Shaarawi, Walter W. Piegorsch, editor(s)
2013, Book chapter, Encyclopedia of environmetrics
The scaling of physical, biological, ecological and social phenomena is a major focus of efforts to develop simple representations of complex systems. Much of the attention has been on discovering universal scaling laws that emerge from simple physical and geometric processes. However, there are regular patterns of departures both from...
Blending local scale information for developing agricultural resilience in Ethiopia
Christopher C. Funk, Gregory Husak, A.S Mahiny, Gary Eilerts, James Rowland
2013, Book chapter, Understanding and addressing threats to essential resources
This brief article looks at the intersection of climate, land cover/land use, and population trends in the world's most food insecure country, Ethiopia. As a result of warming in the Indian and Western Pacific oceans, Ethiopia has experienced substantial drying over the past 20 years. We intersect the spatial pattern...
Galveston Bay: Chapter D in Emergent wetlands status and trends in the northern Gulf of Mexico: 1950-2010
Lawrence R. Handley, Kathryn A. Spear, Eleonor Taylor, Cindy A. Thatcher
2013, Report, Emergent wetlands status and trends in the northern Gulf of Mexico: 1950-2010
The Galveston Bay estuary is located on the upper Texas Gulf coast (Lester and Gonzalez, 2002). It is composed of four major sub-bays - Galveston, Trinity, East, and West Bays. It is Texas’ largest estuary on the Gulf Coast with a total area of 155,399 hectares (384,000 acres) and 1,885...
Riparian restoration in the context of Tamarix control in the western United States: Chapter 23
Patrick B. Shafroth, David M. Merritt, Mark K. Briggs, Vanessa B. Beauchamp, Kenneth D. Lair, Michael L. Scott, Anna Sher
Anna Sher, Martin F. Quigley, editor(s)
2013, Book chapter
This chapter focuses on the restoration of riparian systems in the context of Tamarix control—that is, Tamarix-dominated sites are converted to a replacement vegetation type that achieves specific management goals and helps return parts of the system to a desired and more natural state or dynamic. It reviews research related...
Telemetry-based mortality estimates of juvenile spot in two North Carolina estuarine creeks
Sarah E. Friedl, Jeffery A. Buckel, Joseph E. Hightower, Frederick S. Scharf, Kenneth H. Pollock
2013, Transactions of the American Fisheries Society (142) 399-415
We estimated natural mortality rates (M) of age-1 Spot Leiostomus xanthurus by using a sonic telemetry approach. Sonic transmitters were surgically implanted into a total of 123 age-1 Spot in two North Carolina estuarine creeks during spring 2009 and 2010, and the fish were monitored by using a stationary acoustic...
