Exposure to risk factors experienced during migration is not associated with recent Vermivora warbler population trends
Gunnar R. Kramer, David E. Andersen, David A. Buehler, Petra B. Wood, Sean M. Peterson, J.A. Lehman, Kyle R. Aldinger, Lesley P. Bulluck, Sergio Harding, John A. Jones, John P. Loegering, Curtis Smalling, Rachel Vallender, Henry M. Streby
2023, Landscape Ecology (38) 2357-2380
ContextUnderstanding the factors limiting populations of animals is critical for effective conservation. Determining which factors limit populations of migratory species can be especially challenging because of their reliance on multiple, often geographically distant regions during their annual cycles.ObjectivesWe investigated whether distribution-wide variation in recent breeding population...
U.S. Geological Survey Colorado Water Science Center postcard
Jeannette H. Oden
2023, General Information Product 224
The U.S. Geological Survey Colorado Water Science Center provides timely, high-quality science information on Colorado’s water resources to help planners, managers, and others to make the decisions necessary for the use of these limited and shared resources throughout the State. ...
Ecological effects of pinyon-juniper removal in the Western United States—A synthesis of scientific research, January 2014–March 2021
Douglas J. Shinneman, Susan K. McIlroy, Sharon A Poessel, Rosemary L. Downing, Tracey N. Johnson, Aaron C. Young, Todd E. Katzner
2023, Open-File Report 2023-1041
Executive SummaryIncreasing density of pinyon (Pinus spp.) and juniper (Juniperus spp.) woodlands (hereinafter “pinyon-juniper”), as well as expansion of these woodlands into adjacent shrublands and grasslands, has altered ecosystem function and wildlife habitat across large areas of the interior western United States. Although there are many natural and human-caused drivers...
Cooperative joint inversion of magnetotelluric and microseismic data for imaging the Geysers geothermal field, California, USA
Evan Um, Michael Commer, Roland Gritto, Jared R. Peacock, David Alumbaugh, Steve P. Jarpe, Craig Hartline
2023, Geophysics (88) WB45-WB54
The Geysers geothermal field located in northern California, USA, is the world’s largest electricity-generating geothermal facility. To delineate the spatio-temporal distribution of reservoir steam and recharge water, we have collected microseismic and magnetotelluric (MT) data using a dense array of stations in 2021. The microseismic and MT data have been...
Simulation of future streamflow and irrigation demand based on climate and urban growth projections in the Cape Fear and Pee Dee River Basins, North Carolina and South Carolina, 2055–65
Laura N. Gurley, Ana Maria Garcia, Cassandra A. Pfeifle, Georgina M. Sanchez
2023, Scientific Investigations Report 2023-5036
Water resources in the coastal region of North Carolina and South Carolina (Coastal Carolinas) are currently under stress from competing ecological and societal needs. Projected changes in climate and population are expected to place even more stress on water resources in the region. The Coastal Carolinas Focus Area Study...
Age-0 sablefish size and growth indices from seabird diets at Middleton Island, Gulf of Alaska
Mayumi L. Arimitsu, Scott A. Hatch
2023, Open-File Report 2023-1049
Sablefish (Anoplopoma fimbria) is a commercially valuable groundfish species in Alaska, with the population assessed annually by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Alaska Fisheries Science Center. Sablefish recruit into the commercially fished population at 2 years old and are poorly sampled by most surveys before that age. However, information...
Dispersive currents explain patterns of population connectivity in an ecologically and economically important fish
Claire Schraidt, Amanda Susanne Ackiss, Wesley Alan Larson, Mark D Rowe, Tomas O Hook, Mark R. Christie
2023, Evolutionary Applications (16) 1284-1301
How to identify the drivers of population connectivity remains a fundamental question in ecology and evolution. Answering this question can be challenging in aquatic environments where dynamic lake and ocean currents coupled with high levels of dispersal and gene flow can decrease the utility...
Linear and landscape disturbances alter Mojave desert tortoise movement behavior
Steven J. Hromada, Todd Esque, Amy G. Vandergast, K. Kristina Drake, Felicia Chen, Benjamin O Gottsacker, Jordan Andrew Swart, Ken E Nussear
2023, Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution (11)
Introduction: Animal movements are influenced by landscape features; disturbances to the landscape can alter movements, dispersal, and ultimately connectivity among populations. Faster or longer movements adjacent to a localized disturbance or within disturbed areas could indicate reduced habitat quality whereas slower or shorter movements and reduced movements may indicate greater...
Putting down roots: Afforestation and bank cohesion of Icelandic Rivers
Sara L. Rathburn, Prostur Eysteinsson, Thorsteinn Saemundsson, John T. Kemper, Celeste D. Wieting, Jonathan M. Friedman
2023, River Research and Applications (39) 1669-1681
Riparian vegetation is widely recognized as a critical component of functioning fluvial systems. Human pressures on woody vegetation including riparian areas have had lasting effects, especially at high latitude. In Iceland, prior to human settlement, native downy birch woodlands covered approximately 15%–40% of the...
Invasive Brook Stickleback Culaea inconstans occurrence, habitat drivers, and spatial overlap with native fishes in Wyoming, USA
Jacob S. Ruthvena, Josh Leonard, Annika W. Walters
2023, Hydrobiologia (859) 3595-3610
A central focus of modern fisheries management is eradicating invaders that threaten imperiled native fishes. However, vast landscapes and limited funding and personnel resources demand a prioritized approach to management. Brook Stickleback Culaea inconstans (Kirtland, 1840) is an aquatic invasive species in Wyoming, USA, that may pose a...
Wetland management practices and secretive marsh bird habitat in the Mississippi Flyway: A review
Kristen M. Malone, Elisabeth B. Webb, Doreen C. Mengel, Laura Kearns, Ann E. McKellar, Sumner W. Matteson, Benjamin R. Williams
2023, The Journal of Wildlife Management (87)
Management regimes on publicly owned freshwater wetlands in the Mississippi Flyway of North America (i.e., Flyway) have historically emphasized waterfowl, but there is limited information on how waterfowl-focused wetland management affects other wetland-dependent wildlife. Secretive marsh birds (SMBs) depend on wetlands with emergent vegetation...
Pollinator conservation and climate science at the U.S. Geological Survey
Elise R. Irwin, Jonathan R. Mawdsley
2023, Fact Sheet 2023-3026
Introduction Ecosystems—whether agricultural, urban, or natural—depend on pollinators, great and small. Pollinators in the form of bees, birds, butterflies, bats, and even moths provide vital, but often invisible services, from contributing to biodiverse terrestrial wildlife and plant communities to supporting healthy watersheds. Pollinator declines worldwide have been noted as land-use and...
Turkey Vulture survival is reduced in areas of greater road density
Adrian Naveda-Rodriguez, Keith L. Bildstein, David R. Barber, Jean-Francois Therrien, Michael L. Avery, Bryan M. Kluever, Scott A. Rush, Francisco Vilella
2023, Article
The demography of, and factors that influence these metrics, are largely unknown for most vultures in the Americas. Survivorship of Turkey Vultures (Cathartes aura) may be influenced by landscape heterogeneity and human disturbance. We quantified the effects of landscape composition (Shannon’s diversity index) and configuration (contagion, edge density, and largest...
China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and artisanal cobalt mining from 2000 through 2020
Andrew L. Gulley
2023, PNAS (120)
From 2000 through 2020, demand for cobalt to manufacture batteries grew 26-fold. Eighty-two percent of this growth occurred in China and China’s cobalt refinery production increased 78-fold. Diminished industrial cobalt mine production in the early-to-mid 2000s led many Chinese companies to purchase ores from artisanal cobalt miners in the Democratic...
A body composition model with multiple storage compartments for polar bears (Ursus maritimus)
Stephanie R. Penk, Pranav Sadana, Louise C. Archer, Anthony M. Pagano, Marc R. L. Cattet, Nicholas J. Lunn, Gregory W. Thiemann, Peter K. Molnar
2023, Article
Climate warming is rapidly altering Arctic ecosystems. Polar bears (Ursus maritimus) need sea ice as a platform from which to hunt seals, but increased sea-ice loss is lengthening periods when bears are without access to primary hunting habitat. During periods of food scarcity, survival depends on the energy that a...
Ensemble estimation of historical evapotranspiration for the conterminous U.S.
Meredith Reitz, Ward E. Sanford, Samuel Saxe
2023, Water Resources Research (59)
Evapotranspiration (ET) is the largest component of the water budget, accounting for the majority of the water available from precipitation. ET is challenging to quantify because of the uncertainties associated with the many ET equations currently in use, and because observations of ET are uncertain and sparse....
The influence of vegetated marshes on wave transformation in sheltered estuaries
Rae M. Taylor-Burns, Cornelis M. Nederhoff, Jessica R. Lacy, Patrick L. Barnard
2023, Coastal Engineering (184)
Assessing the influence of marshes on mitigating flooding along estuarine shorelines under the pressures of sea level rise requires understanding wave transformation across the marsh. A numerical model was applied to investigate how vegetated marshes influence wave transformation. XBeach non-hydrostatic (XB-NH) was calibrated and validated with...
Lightning rings and gravity waves: Insights into the giant eruption plumefrom Tonga’s Hunga Volcano on 15 January 2022
Alexa R. Van Eaton, Jeff Lapierre, Sonja A. Behnke, Chris Vagasky, Christopher J. Schultz, Michael J. Pavolonis, Kristopher Bedka, Konstantin Khlopenkov
2023, Geophysical Research Letters (50)
On 15 January 2022, Hunga Volcano in Tonga produced the most violent eruption in the modern satellite era, sending a water-rich plume at least 58 km high. Using a combination of satellite- and ground-based sensors, we investigate the astonishing rate of volcanic lightning (>2,600 flashes min−1) and what...
Hydrogeomorphic changes along mid-Atlantic coastal plain rivers transitioning from non-tidal to tidal: Implications for a rising sea level
Daniel Kroes, Gregory E. Noe, Cliff R. Hupp, Thomas Rossiter Doody, P.A. Bukaveckas
2023, Estuaries and Coasts (46) 1438-1458
Sea level rise is affecting reaches of coastal rivers by increasing water levels and propagating tides inland. The transition of river systems into tidal estuaries has been neglected in hydrogeomorphic studies. A better understanding of transitioning reaches is critical to understanding ecosystem dynamics, services, and developing predictive capabilities of change...
High-resolution InSAR reveals localized pre-eruptive deformation inside the crater of Agung Volcano, Indonesia
Mark Bemelmans, Juliet Biggs, Michael P. Poland, James Wookey, Susanna Ebmeier, Angela K. Diefenbach, Devy Damil Syahbana
2023, Journal of Geophysical Research B: Solid Earth (128)
During a volcanic crisis, high-rate, localized deformation can indicate magma close to the surface, with important implications for eruption forecasting. However, only a few such examples have been reported, because frequent, dense monitoring is needed. High-resolution Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is capable of achieving <1 m spatial resolution and sub-weekly revisit...
Land development and road salt usage drive long-term changes in major-ion chemistry of streamwater in six exurban and suburban watersheds, southeastern Pennsylvania, 1999-2019
Marissa Lee Rossi, Peleg Kremer, Charles A. Cravotta III, Krista E. Seng, Steven T. Goldsmith
2023, Frontiers in Environmental Science (11)
In urbanized areas, the “freshwater salinization syndrome” (FSS), which pertains to long-term increases in concentrations of major ions and metals in fresh surface waters, has been attributed to road salt application. In addition to FSS, the water composition changes as an influx of sodium (Na+) in recharge may displace calcium...
A new DNA extraction method (HV-CTAB-PCI) for amplification of nuclear markers from open ocean-retrieved faeces of an herbivorous marine mammal, the dugong
Vicky Ooi, Lee McMichael, Margaret Hunter, Aristide Takoukam Kamla, Janet M. Lanyon
2023, PLoS ONE (18)
Non-invasively collected faecal samples are an alternative source of DNA to tissue samples, that may be used in genetic studies of wildlife when direct sampling of animals is difficult. Although several faecal DNA extraction methods exist, their efficacy varies between species. Previous attempts to amplify mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) markers from...
Identifying hydrologic signatures associated with streamflow depletion caused by groundwater pumping
Dana A. Lapides, Samuel Zipper, John C. Hammond
2023, Hydrological Processes (37)
Groundwater pumping can reduce streamflow in nearby waterways (‘streamflow depletion’), a process which must be accounted for in integrated management of surface and groundwater resources. However, causal identification of streamflow depletion from hydrographs alone is challenging because pumping impacts are masked by other drivers of hydrologic variability. To identify potential...
Evaluating population trends of juvenile Atlantic Sturgeon at low abundance in a dynamic estuarine environment (Hudson River, New York)
Mark Richard Dufour, Song S. Qian
2023, Fisheries Management and Ecology (30) 507-520
Evaluating population trends in dynamic estuarine environments can be challenging, especially when survey data include a high percentage of zero observations. In fishery-independent surveys, zeros that come from reduced susceptibility to sample gears and reduced availability of the population to the survey impact survey catchability and negatively bias relative abundance...
Assembly of the largest squamate reference genome to date: The western fence lizard, Sceloporus occidentalis
Anusha P. Bishop, Erin P. Westeen, Michael L. Yuan, Merly Escalona, Eric Beraut, Colin Fairbairn, Mohan P. A. Marimuthu, Oanh Nguyen, Noravit Chumchim, Erin Toffelmier, Robert N. Fisher, H. Bradley Shaffer, Ian J. Wang
2023, Journal of Heredity
Spiny lizards (genus Sceloporus) have long served as important systems for studies of behavior, thermal physiology, dietary ecology, vector biology, speciation, and biogeography. The western fence lizard, Sceloporus occidentalis, is found across most of the major biogeographical regions in the western United States and northern Baja California, Mexico, inhabiting a wide...
