Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Task Force---Gulf of Mexico Ecosystem Science Assessment and Needs
Shelby Walker, Alyssa M. Dausman, Dawn L. Lavoie, editor(s)
2012, Report
The Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Task Force (GCERTF) was established by Executive Order 13554 as a result of recommendations from “America’s Gulf Coast: A Long-term Recovery Plan after the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill” by Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus (Mabus Report). The GCERTF consists of members from 11 Federal...
Ultra-high resolution four dimensional geodetic imaging of engineered structures for stability assessment
Gerald W. Bawden, Sandra Bond, J. H. Podoski, O. Kreylos, L. H. Kellogg
2012, Conference Paper, GeoCongress 2012
We used ground-based Tripod LiDAR (T-LiDAR) to assess the stability of two engineered structures: a bridge spanning the San Andreas fault following the M6.0 Parkfield earthquake in Central California and a newly built coastal breakwater located at the Kaumālapa`u Harbor Lana'i, Hawaii. In the 10 weeks following the earthquake, we...
Subducted seamounts and recent earthquakes beneath the central Cascadia forearc
Anne M. Trehu, Richard J. Blakely, Mark C. Williams
2012, Geology (40) 103-106
Bathymetry and magnetic anomalies indicate that a seamount on the Juan de Fuca plate has been subducted beneath the central Cascadia accretionary complex and is now located ∼45 km landward of the deformation front. Passage of this seamount through the accretionary complex has resulted in a pattern of uplift followed...
Impact of wildfire and slope aspect on soil temperature in a mountainous environment
Brian A. Ebel
2012, Vadose Zone Journal (11)
Soil temperature changes after landscape disturbance impact hydrology, ecology, and geomorphology. This study used field measurements to examine wildfire and aspect effects on soil temperatures. Combustion of the litter and duff layers on north-facing slopes removed pre-fire aspect-driven soil temperature controls.Wildfire is one of the most significant disturbances in mountainous...
Use of occupancy models to evaluate expert knowledge-based species-habitat relationships
Monica N. Iglecia, Jaime A. Collazo, Alexa McKerrow
2012, Avian Conservation and Ecology (7) 1-13
Expert knowledge-based species-habitat relationships are used extensively to guide conservation planning, particularly when data are scarce. Purported relationships describe the initial state of knowledge, but are rarely tested. We assessed support in the data for suitability rankings of vegetation types based on expert knowledge for three terrestrial avian species in...
Science summary in support of Manatee Protection Area (MPA) design in Puerto Rico
C. Ashton Drew, Louise B. Alexander-Vaughn, Jaime A. Collazo
2012, Cooperator Science Series FWS/CSS-101-2012
The Antillean manatee (Trichechus manatus manatus), a subspecies of the West Indian manatee, is listed as endangered by the US Department of Interior. In accordance with its listing, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Caribbean Field Office (USFWS) is mandated to create one or more Manatee Protection Areas (MPAs) for...
Communicating science: from cuneiform to the contemporary and beyond
Cecil A. Jennings
Cecil A. Jennings, Thomas E. Lauer, Bruce C. Vondracek, editor(s)
2012, Book chapter, Scientific Communication for Natural Resource Professionals
No abstract available....
Relating stick-slip friction experiments to earthquake source parameters
Arthur F. McGarr
2012, Geophysical Research Letters (39)
Analytical results for parameters, such as static stress drop, for stick-slip friction experiments, with arbitrary input parameters, can be determined by solving an energy-balance equation. These results can then be related to a given earthquake based on its seismic moment and the maximum slip within its rupture zone, assuming that...
Have recent earthquakes exposed flaws in or misunderstandings of probabilistic seismic hazard analysis?
Thomas C. Hanks, Gregory C. Beroza, Shinji Toda
2012, Seismological Research Letters (83) 759-764
In a recent Opinion piece in these pages, Stein et al. (2011) offer a remarkable indictment of the methods, models, and results of probabilistic seismic hazard analysis (PSHA). The principal object of their concern is the PSHA map for Japan released by the Japan Headquarters for Earthquake Research Promotion (HERP),...
Origins of mineral deposits, Belt-Purcell Basin, United States and Canada: An introduction
Stephen E. Box, Arthur A. Bookstrom, Robert G. Anderson
2012, Economic Geology (107) 1081-1088
The fill of the Mesoproterozoic Belt-Purcell Basin, which straddles the United States-Canada border within the Rocky Mountains of western North America (Fig. 1), consists of marine and nonmarine clastic and carbonate strata 15 to 20 km thick. Three giant metal-producing ore deposits or districts account...
The principal rare earth elements deposits of the United States: A summary of domestic deposits and a global perspective
Keith R. Long, Bradley S. Van Gosen, Nora K. Foley, Daniel Cordier
2012, Book chapter, Non-renewable resource issues
Demand for the rare earth elements (REE, lanthanide elements) is estimated to be increasing at a rate of about 8% per year due to increasing applications in consumer products, computers, automobiles, aircraft, and other advanced technology products. Much of this demand growth is driven by new technologies that increase...
Identifying fluorescent pulp mill effluent in the Gulf of Maine and its watershed
Kaelin M. Cawley, Kenna D. Butler, George R. Aiken, Laurel G. Larsen, Thomas G. Huntington, Diane M. McKnight
2012, Marine Pollution Bulletin (64) 1678-1687
Using fluorescence spectroscopy and parallel factor analysis (PARAFAC) we characterized and modeled the fluorescence properties of dissolved organic matter (DOM) in samples from the Penobscot River, Androscoggin River, Penobscot Bay, and the Gulf of Maine (GoM). We analyzed excitation-emission matrices (EEMs) using an existing PARAFAC model (Cory and McKnight, 2005)...
Design and implementation of the next generation Landsat satellite communications system
Grant R. Mah, Michael O’Brien, Howard Garon, Claire Mott, Alan Ames, Ken Dearth
2012, Conference Paper, Proceedings from the International Telemetering Conference
The next generation Landsat satellite, Landsat 8 (L8), also known as the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM), uses a highly spectrally efficient modulation and data formatting approach to provide large amounts of downlink (D/L) bandwidth in a limited X-Band spectrum allocation. In addition to purely data throughput and bandwidth considerations,...
KINEROS2/AGWA: Model use, calibration and validation
D.C. Goodrich, I.S. Burns, C.L. Unkrich, Darius J. Semmens, D.P. Guertin, M. Hernandez, S. Yatheendradas, Jeffrey R. Kennedy, Lainie R. Levick
2012, Transactions of the ASABE (55) 1561-1574
KINEROS (KINematic runoff and EROSion) originated in the 1960s as a distributed event-based model that conceptualizes a watershed as a cascade of overland flow model elements that flow into trapezoidal channel model elements. KINEROS was one of the first widely available watershed models that interactively coupled a finite difference approximation...
A new perspective on the geometry of the San Andreas Fault in southern California and its relationship to lithospheric structure
Gary S. Fuis, Daniel S. Scheirer, Victoria E. Langenheim, Monica D. Kohler
2012, Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (102) 236-251
The widely held perception that the San Andreas fault (SAF) is vertical or steeply dipping in most places in southern California may not be correct. From studies of potential‐field data, active‐source imaging, and seismicity, the dip of the SAF is significantly nonvertical in many locations. The direction of dip appears...
Copper(II) binding by dissolved organic matter: Importance of the copper-to-dissolved organic matter ratio and implications for the Biotic Ligand Model
Alison M. Craven, George R. Aiken, Joseph N. Ryan
2012, Environmental Science & Technology (46) 9948-9955
The ratio of copper to dissolved organic matter (DOM) is known to affect the strength of copper binding by DOM, but previous methods to determine the Cu2+–DOM binding strength have generally not measured binding constants over the same Cu:DOM ratios. In this study, we used a competitive ligand exchange–solid-phase extraction...
Laboratory investigations of the effects of nitrification-induced acidification on Cr cycling in vadose zone material partially derived from ultramafic rocks
Christopher T. Mills, Martin B. Goldhaber
2012, Science of the Total Environment (435-436) 363-373
Sacramento Valley (California, USA) soils and sediments have high concentrations of Cr(III) because they are partially derived from ultramafic material. Some Cr(III) is oxidized to more toxic and mobile Cr(VI) by soil Mn oxides. Valley soils typically have neutral to alkaline pH at which Cr(III) is highly immobile. Much of...
Burn severity mapping in Australia 2009
Randy McKinley, J. Clark, Jennifer Lecker
2012, Conference Paper, International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Volume XXXIX-B8
In 2009, the Victoria Department of Sustainability and Environment estimated approximately 430,000 hectares of Victoria Australia were burned by numerous bushfires. Burned Area Emergency Response (BAER) teams from the United States were deployed to Victoria to assist local fire managers. The U.S. Geological Survey Earth Resources Observation and Science Center...
Basin-floor Lake Bonneville stratigraphic section as revealed in paleoseismic trenches at the Baileys Lake site, West Valley fault zone, Utah
Michael D. Hylland, Christopher B. DuRoss, Greg N. McDonald, Susan S. Olig, Charles G. Oviatt, Shannon A. Mahan, Anthony J. Crone, Stephen Personius
2012, Book chapter, Selected topics in engineering and environmental geology in Utah
Recent paleoseismic trenching on the Granger fault of the West Valley fault zone in Salt Lake County, Utah, exposed a nearly complete section of late Pleistocene Lake Bonneville deposits, and highlights challenges related to accurate interpretation of basin-floor stratigraphy in the absence of numerical age constraints. We used radiocarbon and...
Roles of saltcedar (Tamarix spp.) and capillary rise in salinizing a non-flooding terrace on a flow-regulated desert river
E. P. Glenn, K. Morino, Pamela L. Nagler, R. S. Murray, S. Pearlstein, K. R. Hultine
2012, Journal of Arid Environments (79) 56-65
Tamarix spp. (saltcedar) secretes salts and has been considered to be a major factor contributing to the salinization of river terraces in western US riparian zones. However, salinization can also occur from the capillary rise of salts from the aquifer into the vadose zone. We investigated the roles of saltcedar and...
Prevalence and effects of West Nile virus on wild American kestrel (Falco sparverius) populations in Colorado
Robert J. Dusek, William M. Iko, Erik K. Hofmeister
Ellen Paul, editor(s)
2012, Book chapter, Emerging avian disease
To assess the potential impacts of West Nile virus (WNV) on a wild population of free-ranging raptors, we investigated the prevalence and effects of WNV on American Kestrels (Falco sparverius) breeding along the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains in northern Colorado. We monitored kestrel nesting activity at 131 nest...
Avian community responses to vegetation structure within chained and hand-cut pinyon-juniper woodlands on the Colorado Plateau
Charles van Riper III, Claire Crow
2012, Book chapter, The Colorado Plateau V: Research, environmental planning, and management for collaborative conservation
We investigated relationships between breeding birds and vegetation characteristics in fuels-reduction treatment areas within pinyon-juniper woodlands at locations over the Colorado Plateau. The goal of this study was to document differences in avian community responses to two types of pinyon-juniper fuels-reduction treatments (chained vs. hand-cut), relative to control sites. We...
Conducting fisheries investigations
Alexander V. Zale, Donna L. Parrish, Trent M. Sutton
2012, Book chapter, Fisheries techniques
No abstract available....
Ecological impacts of non-native species
John W. Wilkinson
2012, Book chapter, Conservation and decline of amphibians: ecological aspects, effect of humans, and management
Non-native species are considered one of the greatest threats to freshwater biodiversity worldwide (Drake et al. 1989; Allen and Flecker 1993; Dudgeon et al. 2005). Some of the first hypotheses proposed to explain global patterns of amphibian declines included the effects of non-native species (Barinaga 1990; Blaustein and Wake 1990;...
Nest defense- Grassland bird responses to snakes
Kevin S. Ellison, Christine Ribic
2012, Studies in Avian Biology (43) 149-159
Predation is the primary source of nest mortality for most passerines; thus, behaviors to reduce the impacts of predation are frequently quantified to study learning, adaptation, and coevolution among predator and prey species. Video surveillance of nests has made it possible to examine real-time parental nest defense. During 1999-2009, we...
