Developing spatially explicit footprints of plausible land-use scenarios in the Santa Cruz Watershed, Arizona and Sonora
Laura M. Norman, Mark Feller, Miguel L. Villarreal
2012, Landscape and Urban Planning (107) 225-235
The SLEUTH urban growth model is applied to a binational dryland watershed to envision and evaluate plausible future scenarios of land use change into the year 2050. Our objective was to create a suite of geospatial footprints portraying potential land use change that can be used to aid binational decision-makers...
Hotspot: the Snake River Geothermal Drilling Project--initial report
J.W. Shervais, D. Nielson, T. Lachmar, E. H. Christiansen, L. Morgan, Wayne C. Shanks, C. Delahunty, D.R. Schmitt, L.M. Liberty, D.D. Blackwell, J. M. Glen, J.A. Kessler, K.E. Potter, M.M. Jean, C.J. Sant, T. Freeman
2012, Geothermal Resources Council Transactions (36) 767-772
The Snake River volcanic province (SRP) overlies a thermal anomaly that extends deep into the mantle; it represents one of the highest heat flow provinces in North America. The primary goal of this project is to evaluate geothermal potential in three distinct settings: (1) Kimama site: inferred high sub-aquifer geothermal...
Development of a real-time PCR assay for detection of planktonic red king crab (Paralithodes camtschaticus (Tilesius 1815)) larvae
Pamela C. Jensen, Maureen K. Purcell, J. Frank Morado, Ginny L. Eckert
2012, Journal of Shellfish Research (31) 917-924
The Alaskan red king crab (Paralithodes camtschaticus) fishery was once one of the most economically important single-species fisheries in the world, but is currently depressed. This fishery would benefit from improved stock assessment capabilities. Larval crab distribution is patchy temporally and spatially, requiring extensive sampling efforts to locate and track...
Increased temperature and altered summer precipitation have differential effects on biological soil crusts in a dryland ecosystem
Shannon L. Johnson, Cheryl R. Kuske, Travis D. Carney, David C. Housman, La Verne Gallegos-Graves, Jayne Belnap
2012, Global Change Biology (18) 2583-2593
Biological soil crusts (biocrusts) are common and ecologically important members of dryland ecosystems worldwide, where they stabilize soil surfaces and contribute newly fixed C and N to soils. To test the impacts of predicted climate change scenarios on biocrusts in a dryland ecosystem, the effects of a 2–3 °C increase...
Applications of science and engineering to quantify and control the Deepwater Horizon oil spill
Marcia K. McNutt, Steven Chu, Jane Lubchenco, Tom Hunter, Gabrielle Dreyfus, Steven A. Murawski, David M. Kennedy
2012, PNAS (109) 20222-20228
The unprecedented engagement of scientists from government, academia, and industry enabled multiple unanticipated and unique problems to be addressed during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. During the months between the initial blowout on April 20, 2010, and the final well kill on September 19, 2010, researchers prepared options, analyses of...
Estimating risks to aquatic life using quantile regression
Travis S. Schmidt, William H. Clements, Brian S. Cade
2012, Freshwater Science (31) 709-723
One of the primary goals of biological assessment is to assess whether contaminants or other stressors limit the ecological potential of running waters. It is important to interpret responses to contaminants relative to other environmental factors, but necessity or convenience limit quantification of all factors that influence ecological potential. In...
Factors influencing geographic patterns in diversity of forest bird communities of eastern Connecticut, USA
Robert J. Craig, Robert W. Klaver
2012, Ecography (36) 599-609
At regional scales, the most important variables associated with diversity are latitudinally-based temperature and net primary productivity, although diversity is also influenced by habitat. We examined bird species richness, community density and community evenness in forests of eastern Connecticut to determine whether: 1) spatial and seasonal patterns exist in diversity,...
Radiometric calibration of the Landsat MSS sensor series
Dennis L. Helder, Sadhana Karki, Rajendra Bhatt, Esad Micijevik, David Aaron, Benjamin Jasinski
2012, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing (50) 2380-2399
Multispectral remote sensing of the Earth using Landsat sensors was ushered on July 23, 1972, with the launch of Landsat-1. Following that success, four more Landsat satellites were launched, and each of these carried the Multispectral Scanner System (MSS). These five sensors provided the only consistent multispectral space-based imagery of...
Golden Gate Bridge response: a study with low-amplitude data from three earthquakes
Mehmet Çelebi
2012, Earthquake Spectra (28) 487-510
The dynamic response of the Golden Gate Bridge, located north of San Francisco, CA, has been studied previously using ambient vibration data and finite element models. Since permanent seismic instrumentation was installed in 1993, only small earthquakes that originated at distances varying between ~11 to 122 km have been recorded....
Application of a bioenergetics model for hatchery production: Largemouth bass fed commercial diets
Isak J. Csargo, Michael L. Brown, Steven R. Chipps
2012, North American Journal of Aquaculture (74) 352-359
Fish bioenergetics models based on natural prey items have been widely used to address research and management questions. However, few attempts have been made to evaluate and apply bioenergetics models to hatchery-reared fish receiving commercial feeds that contain substantially higher energy densities than natural prey. In this study, we evaluated...
Estimating discharge measurement uncertainty using the interpolated variance estimator
T. Cohn, J. Kiang, R. Mason Jr.
2012, Journal of Hydraulic Engineering (139) 502-510
Methods for quantifying the uncertainty in discharge measurements typically identify various sources of uncertainty and then estimate the uncertainty from each of these sources by applying the results of empirical or laboratory studies. If actual measurement conditions are not consistent with those encountered in the empirical or laboratory studies, these...
Interactive terrain visualization enables virtual field work during rapid scientific response to the 2010 Haiti earthquake
Eric Cowgill, Tony S. Bernardin, Michael E. Oskin, Christopher Bowles, M. Burak Yikilmaz, Oliver Kreylos, Austin J. Elliott, Scott Bishop, Ryan D. Gold, Alexander Morelan, Gerald W. Bawden, Bernd Hamann, Louise Kellogg
2012, Geosphere (8) 787-804
The moment magnitude (Mw) 7.0 12 January 2010 Haiti earthquake is the first major earthquake for which a large-footprint LiDAR (light detection and ranging) survey was acquired within several weeks of the event. Here, we describe the use of virtual reality data visualization to analyze massive amounts (67 GB on...
Strategies to control a common carp population by pulsed commercial harvest
Michael E. Colvin, Clay Pierce, Timothy W. Stewart, Scott E. Grummer
2012, North American Journal of Fisheries Management (32) 1251-1264
Commercial fisheries are commonly used to manage nuisance fishes in freshwater systems, but such efforts are often unsuccessful. Strategies for successfully controlling a nuisance population of common carp Cyprinus carpio by pulsed commercial harvest were evaluated with a combination of (1) field sampling, (2) population estimation and CPUE indexing, and (3) simulation...
The walk is never random: subtle landscape effects shape gene flow in a continuous white-tailed deer population in the Midwestern United States
Stacie J. Robinson, Michael D. Samuel, Davin L. Lopez, Paul Shelton
2012, Molecular Ecology (21) 4190-4205
One of the pervasive challenges in landscape genetics is detecting gene flow patterns within continuous populations of highly mobile wildlife. Understanding population genetic structure within a continuous population can give insights into social structure, movement across the landscape and contact between populations, which influence ecological interactions, reproductive dynamics or pathogen...
Fixed recurrence and slip models better predict earthquake behavior than the time- and slip-predictable models 1: repeating earthquakes
Justin L. Rubinstein, William L. Ellsworth, Kate Huihsuan Chen, Naoki Uchida
2012, Journal of Geophysical Research B: Solid Earth (117)
The behavior of individual events in repeating earthquake sequences in California, Taiwan and Japan is better predicted by a model with fixed inter-event time or fixed slip than it is by the time- and slip-predictable models for earthquake occurrence. Given that repeating earthquakes are highly regular in both inter-event time...
Fundamental questions of earthquake statistics, source behavior, and the estimation of earthquake probabilities from possible foreshocks
Andrew J. Michael
2012, Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (102) 2547-2562
Estimates of the probability that an ML 4.8 earthquake, which occurred near the southern end of the San Andreas fault on 24 March 2009, would be followed by an M 7 mainshock over the following three days vary from 0.0009 using a Gutenberg–Richter model of aftershock statistics (Reasenberg and Jones,...
Bathythermal habitat use by strains of Great Lakes- and Finger Lakes-origin lake trout in Lake Huron after a change in prey fish abundance and composition
Roger A. Bergstedt, Ray L. Argyle, Charles C. Krueger, William W. Taylor
2012, Transactions of the American Fisheries Society (141) 263-274
A study conducted in Lake Huron during October 1998–June 2001 found that strains of Great Lakes-origin (GLO) lake trout Salvelinus namaycush occupied significantly higher temperatures than did Finger Lakes-origin (FLO; New York) lake trout based on data from archival (or data storage) telemetry tags that recorded only temperature. During 2002...
Linking soil moisture balance and source-responsive models to estimate diffuse and preferential components of groundwater recharge
M.O. Cuthbert, R. Mackay, J. R. Nimmo
2012, Hydrology and Earth System Sciences (9) 8455-8492
Results are presented of a detailed study into the vadose zone and shallow water table hydrodynamics of a field site in Shropshire, UK. A conceptual model is developed and tested using a range of numerical models, including a modified soil moisture balance model (SMBM) for estimating groundwater recharge in the...
Fragilariopsis diatom evolution in Pliocene and Pleistocene Antarctic shelf sediments
Charlotte Sjunneskog, Christina Riesselman, Diane Winter, Reed Scherer
2012, Micropaleontology (58) 273-289
The late Pliocene – early Pleistocene sediment record in the AND-1B core from the McMurdo Sound, Ross Sea, Antarctica, displays a rich diversity and high abundance of diatoms, including several new morphologies within the genus Fragilariopsis. These new morphologies exhibit similarities to the extinct late Miocene/early Pliocene species Fragilariopsis aurica...
Modeling species invasions in Ecopath with Ecosim: an evaluation using Laurentian Great Lakes models
Brian J. Langseth, Mark Rogers, Hongyan Zhang
2012, Ecological Modelling (247) 251-261
Invasive species affect the structure and processes of ecosystems they invade. Invasive species have been particularly relevant to the Laurentian Great Lakes, where they have played a part in both historical and recent changes to Great Lakes food webs and the fisheries supported therein. There is increased interest in understanding...
Rare earths, the lanthanides, yttrium and scandium
G. Bedinger, D. Bleiwas
2012, Mining Engineering (64) 86-88
In 2011, rare earths were recovered from bastnasite concentrates at the Mountain Pass Mine in California. Consumption of refined rare-earth products decreased in 2011 from 2010. U.S. rare-earth imports originated primarily from China, with lesser amounts from Austria, Estonia, France and Japan. The United States imported all of its demand...
Structural equation modeling and the analysis of long-term monitoring data
James B. Grace, Jon E. Keeley, Darren Johnson, A Kenneth Bollen Kenneth
2012, Book chapter, Design and analysis of long-term ecological monitoring studies
The analysis of long-term monitoring data is increasingly important; not only for the discovery and documentation of changes in environmental systems, but also as an enterprise whose fruits validate the allocation of effort and scarce funds to monitoring. In simple terms, we may distinguish between the detection of change in...
Rapid late Pleistocene/Holocene uplift and coastal evolution of the southern Arabian (Persian) Gulf
Warren W. Wood, Richard M. Bailey, B. A. Hampton, Thomas F. Kraemer, Zhong Lu, David W. Clark, Rhodri H. R. James, Khalid Al Ramadan
2012, Quaternary Research (77) 215-220
The coastline along the southern Arabian Gulf between Al Jubail, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and Dubai, UAE, appears to have risen at least 125 m in the last 18,000 years. Dating and topographic surveying of paleo-dunes (43–53 ka), paleo-marine terraces (17–30 ka), and paleo-marine shorelines (3.3–5.5 ka)...
Wintering waterfowl respond to Wetlands Reserve Program lands in the Central Valley of California
Jeffrey J. Buler, Wylie C. Barrow Jr., Lori A. Randall
2012, Report
Daytime use by wintering waterfowl at Wetlands Reserve Program (WRP) sites within the northern Central Valley of California (CVC) increased dramatically after wetland restoration and was sustained for up to 8 years post-restoration. The magnitude of the increase in waterfowl density at WRP sites after wetland restoration was greater with...
Sensitivity of spring phenology to warming across temporal and spatial climate gradients in two independent databases
Benjamin I. Cook, Elizabeth M. Wolkovich, T. Jonathan Davies, Toby R. Ault, Julio L. Betancourt, Jenica M. Allen, Kjell Bolmgren, Elsa E. Cleland, Theresa Crimmins, Nathan J. B. Kraft, Lesley T. Lancaster, Susan J. Mazer, Gregory J. McCabe, Brian J. McGill, Camille Parmesan, Stephanie Pau, James Regetz, Nicolas Salamin, Mark D. Schwartz, Steven E. Travers
2012, Ecosystems (15) 1283-1294
Disparate ecological datasets are often organized into databases post hoc and then analyzed and interpreted in ways that may diverge from the purposes of the original data collections. Few studies, however, have attempted to quantify how biases inherent in these data (for example, species richness, replication, climate) affect their suitability...