Adaptation with climate uncertainty: An examination of agricultural land use in the United States
Jianhong E. Mu, Bruce A. McCarl, Benjamin M. Sleeter, John T. Abatzoglou, Hongliang Zhang
2018, Land Use Policy (77) 392-401
This paper examines adaptation responses to climate change through adjustment of agricultural land use. The climate drivers we examine are changes in long-term climate normals (e.g., 10-year moving averages) and changes in inter-annual climate variability. Using US county level data over 1982 to 2012 from Census of Agriculture, we find...
Characterizing the sponge grounds of Grays Canyon, Washington, USA
Abby N. Powell, M. Elizabeth Clarke, Erica Fruh, Jason Chaytor, Henry M. Reiswig, Curt E. Whitmire
2018, Deep Sea Research Part II: Topical Studies in Oceanography (150) 146-155
Deep-sea sponge grounds are relatively understudied ecosystems that may provide key habitats for a large number of fish and invertebrates including commercial species. Glass sponge grounds have been discovered from the tropics to polar regions but there are only a few places with high densities of dictyonine sponges. Dictyonine glass...
Book review: A new view on the species abundance distribution Stochastic communities: A mathematical theory of biodiversity
Donald L. DeAngelis
2018, Trends in Ecology and Evolution (33) 572-574
The sampled relative abundances of species of a taxonomic group, whether birds, trees, or moths, in a natural community at a particular place vary in a way that suggests a consistent underlying pattern, referred to as the species abundance distribution (SAD). Preston [1] conjectured that the numbers of species, plotted...
Estimating lag to peak between rainfall and peak streamflow with a mixed-effects model
Pamela J. Lombard, David Holtschlag
2018, Journal of the American Water Resources Association (JAWRA) (54) 949-961
We test the use of a mixed-effects model for estimating lag to peak for small basins in Maine (drainage areas from 0.8 to 78 km2). Lag to peak is defined as the time between the center of volume of the excess rainfall during a storm event and the resulting peak...
Suspended-sediment concentrations and loads in the lower Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers decreased by half between 1980 and 2015
Scott Mize, Jennifer C. Murphy, Timothy H. Diehl, Dennis K. Demcheck
2018, Journal of Hydrology (564) 1-11
The Weighted Regressions on Time, Discharge, and Season (WRTDS) model was used to derive estimates of suspended-sediment concentration (SSC) and suspended-sediment load (SSL), their dependence on discharge, and their trends with confidence intervals, for one site each on the lowermost Mississippi...
Combined effects of temperature and salinity on the physiology of two geographically-distant eastern oyster populations
S. M. Casas, R. Filgueira, R. Lavaud, L. A. Comeau, Megan La Peyre, J. F. La Peyre
2018, Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology (506) 82-90
Understanding why a species occupies a certain geographic range and predicting how they will be affected by climate change require characterizing physiological traits in geographically-distant populations. The objective of this study was to perform a direct comparison of two eastern oyster (Crassostrea virginica) populations that occupy contrasting temperature and salinity...
Variation in home range size and patterns in adult female American crocodiles Crocodylus acutus
Kristen M. Hart, Jeffrey S. Beauchamp, Michael S. Cherkiss, Frank Mazzotti
2018, Endangered Species Research (36) 161-171
The American crocodile Crocodylus acutus is a threatened species that uses relatively deep, open-water habitats with low salinity. Adult female American crocodiles nest on sandy coastal beaches, islands or human-made berms, assist in the hatching process, and can travel long distances to nesting habitat. We satellite-tracked 15 adult female American crocodiles in...
Quantifying anthropogenic contributions to century-scale groundwater salinity changes, San Joaquin Valley, California, USA
Jeffrey A. Hansen, Bryant C. Jurgens, Miranda S. Fram
2018, Science of the Total Environment (642) 125-136
Total dissolved solids (TDS) concentrations in groundwater tapped for beneficial uses (drinking water, irrigation, freshwater industrial) have increased on average by about 100 mg/L over the last 100 years in the San Joaquin Valley, California (SJV). During this period land use in the SJV changed from natural vegetation and dryland...
DDT and related compounds in pore water of shallow sediments on the Palos Verdes Shelf, California, USA
Robert P. Eganhouse, Erica L. DiFilippo, James Pontolillo, William H. Orem, Paul C. Hackley, Brian Edwards
2018, Marine Chemistry (203) 78-90
For nearly two and a half decades following World War II, production wastes from the world's largest manufacturer of technical DDT (1-chloro-4-[2,2,2-trichloro-1-(4-chlorophenyl)ethyl]benzene) were discharged into sewers of Los Angeles County. Following treatment, the wastes were released via a submarine outfall system to nearshore coastal waters where a portion accumulated in...
Integrating animal movement with habitat suitability for estimating dynamic migratory connectivity
Marielle L. van Toor, Bart Kranstauber, Scott H. Newman, Diann J. Prosser, John Y. Takekawa, Georgios Technitis, Robert Weibel, Martin Wikelski, Kamran Safi
2018, Landscape Ecology (33) 879-893
ContextHigh-resolution animal movement data are becoming increasingly available, yet having a multitude of empirical trajectories alone does not allow us to easily predict animal movement. To answer ecological and evolutionary questions at a population level, quantitative estimates of a species’ potential to link patches or populations are of...
Insular biogeographic origins and high phylogenetic distinctiveness for a recently depleted lizard fauna from Christmas Island, Australia
Paul M. Oliver, Mozes P. K. Blom, Harold G. Cogger, Robert N. Fisher, Jonathan Q. Richmond, John C. Z. Woinarski
2018, Biology Letters (14) 1-5
Striking faunal turnover across Asia and Australasia, most famously along the eastern edge of the Sunda Shelf or ‘Wallace's Line’, has been a focus of biogeographic research for over 150 years. Here, we investigate the origins of a highly threatened endemic lizard fauna (four species) on Christmas Island. Despite occurring...
Reductive dechlorination rates of 4,4′-DDE (1-chloro-4-[2,2-dichloro-1-(4-chlorophenyl)ethenyl]benzene) in sediments of the Palos Verdes Shelf, CA
Robert P. Eganhouse, Christopher R. Sherwood, James Pontolillo, Brian Edwards, Patrick J. Dickhudt
2018, Marine Chemistry (203) 10-21
Wastes from the world's largest manufacturer of DDT (1-chloro-4-[2,2,2-trichloro-1-(4-chlorophenyl)ethyl]benzene) were released into the Los Angeles County municipal sewer system from 1947 to 1971. Following primary treatment, the effluent was discharged through a submarine outfall system whereupon a portion of the DDT and associated degradation products were deposited in sediments of...
Harnessing big data to rethink land heterogeneity in Earth system models
Nathaniel W. Chaney, Marjolein H. J. Van Huijgevoort, Elena Shevliakova, Sergey Malyshev, Paul C. D. Milly, Paul P. G. Gauthier, Benjamin N. Sulman
2018, Hydrology and Earth System Sciences (22) 3311-3330
The continual growth in the availability, detail, and wealth of environmental data provides an invaluable asset to improve the characterization of land heterogeneity in Earth system models – a persistent challenge in macroscale models. However, due to the nature of these data (volume and complexity) and computational constraints, these data...
Thresholds and hotspots for shrub restoration following a heterogeneous megafire
Matthew Germino, David Barnard, Bill Davidson, Robert Arkle, David S. Pilliod, Matthew Fisk, Cara Applestein
2018, Landscape Ecology (33) 1177-1194
ContextReestablishing foundational plant species through aerial seeding is an essential yet challenging step for restoring the vast semiarid landscapes impacted by plant invasions and wildfire-regime shifts. A key component of the challenge stems from landscape variability and its effects on plant recovery.ObjectivesWe assessed landscape correlates, thresholds,...
Exposure to human-associated chemical markers of fecal contamination and self-reported illness among swimmers at recreational beaches
Melanie D Napier, Charles Poole, Jill R Stewart, David J Weber, Susan T. Glassmeyer, Dana W. Kolpin, Edward Furlong, Alfred P Dufour, Timothy J. Wade
2018, Environmental Science & Technology (52) 7513-7523
Anthropogenic chemicals have been proposed as potential markers of human fecal contamination in recreational water. However, to date, there are no published studies describing their relationships with illness risks. Using a cohort of swimmers at seven U.S. beaches, we examined potential...
A guide to processing bat acoustic data for the North American Bat Monitoring Program (NABat)
Brian E. Reichert, Cori Lausen, Susan Loeb, Ted Weller, Ryan Allen, Eric Britzke, Tara Hohoff, Jeremy Siemers, Braden Burkholder, Carl Herzog, Michelle Verant
2018, Open-File Report 2018-1068
The North American Bat Monitoring Program (NABat) aims to improve the state of conservation science for all species of bats shared by the United States, Canada, and Mexico. To accomplish this goal, NABat offers guidance and standardized protocols for acoustic monitoring of bats. In this document, “A Guide to Processing...
Rapid crop cover mapping for the conterminous United States
Devendra Dahal, Bruce K. Wylie, Daniel Howard
2018, Scientific Reports (8)
Timely crop cover maps with sufficient resolution are important components to various environmental planning and research applications. Through the modification and use of a previously developed crop classification model (CCM), which was originally developed to generate historical annual crop cover maps, we hypothesized that such crop cover maps could be...
Diurnal patterns of methane flux from a seasonal wetland: mechanisms and methodology
Sheel Bansal, Brian Tangen, Raymond Finocchiaro
2018, Wetlands (45) 4933-4943
Methane emissions from wetlands are temporally dynamic. Few chamber-based studies have explored diurnal variation in methane flux with high temporal replication. Using an automated sampling system, we measured methane flux every 2.5 to 4 h for 205 diel cycles during three growing seasons (2013–2015) from a seasonal wetland in the Prairie...
Dryland photoautotrophic soil surface communities endangered by global change
Emilio Rodriguez-Caballero, Jayne Belnap, Burkhard Budel, Paul J. Crutzen, Meinrat O. Andreae, Ulrich Poschl, Bettina Weber
2018, Nature Geoscience (11) 185-189
Photoautotrophic surface communities forming biological soil crusts (biocrusts) are crucial for soil stability as well as water, nutrient and trace gas cycling at regional and global scales. Quantitative information on their global coverage and the environmental factors driving their distribution patterns, however, are not readily available. We use observations and...
Seagrass impact on sediment exchange between tidal flats and salt Marsh, and the sediment budget of shallow bays
Carmine Donatelli, Neil Kamal Ganju, Sergio Fagherazzi, Nicoletta Leonardi
2018, Geophysical Research Letters (45) 4933-4943
Seagrasses are marine flowering plants that strongly impact their physical and biological surroundings and are therefore frequently referred to as ecological engineers. The effect of seagrasses on coastal bay resilience and sediment transport dynamics is understudied. Here we use six historical maps of seagrass distribution in Barnegat Bay, USA, to investigate...
Bedrock geologic map of the Littleton and Lower Waterford quadrangles, Essex and Caledonia Counties, Vermont, and Grafton County, New Hampshire
Douglas W. Rankin
2018, Open-File Report 2018-1087
The bedrock geologic map of the Littleton and Lower Waterford quadrangles covers an area of approximately 107 square miles (277 square kilometers) north and south of the Connecticut River in east-central Vermont and adjacent New Hampshire. This map was created as part of a larger effort to produce a new...
Preface to the Focus Section on the Collaboratory for the Study of Earthquake Predictability (CSEP): New results and future directions
Andrew J. Michael, Maximillian J. Werner
2018, Seismological Research Letters (89) 1226-1228
The Collaboratory for the Study of Earthquake Predictability (CSEP; Jordan, 2006) carries out fully prospective tests of earthquake forecasts, using fixed and standardized statistical tests and authoritative data sets, to assess the predictive skill of forecast models and to make objective comparisons between models. CSEP conducts...
The complete mitochondrial genome of the stalk-forming diatom Didymosphenia geminata
Aaron W. Aunins, Donald Hamilton, Tim L. King
2018, Mitochondrial DNA Part B (2) 676-677
The complete mitogenome of the stalk-forming diatom Didymosphenia geminata collected from Mineral County, WV, USA was sequenced on the Ion Torrent PGM and Proton sequencers. The D. geminata mitogenome is 37,765 bp and encodes 35 protein coding genes, 25 tRNAs, and both large and small subunit ribosomal RNA genes. The nad11 gene is split into two...
Divergent effects of land-use, propagule pressure, and climate on woody riparian invasion
Laura G Perry, Lindsay V. Reynolds, Patrick B. Shafroth
2018, Biological Invasions (20) 3271-3295
Landscape-scale analyses of biological invasion are needed to understand the relative importance of environmental drivers that vary at larger scales, such as climate, propagule pressure, resource availability, and human disturbance. One poorly understood landscape-scale question is, how does human land-use influence riparian plant invasion? To evaluate...
Global and local sources of mercury deposition in coastal New England reconstructed from a multi-proxy, high-resolution, estuarine sediment record
William. F Fitzgerald, Daniel R Engstrom, Chad Hammerschmidt, Carl Lamborg, Prentiss Balcom, Ana Lima-Braun, Michael H. Bothner, Christopher M. Reddy
2018, Environmental Science & Technology (52) 7614-7620
Historical reconstruction of mercury (Hg) accumulation in natural archives, especially lake sediments, has been essential to understanding human perturbation of the global Hg cycle. Here we present a high-resolution chronology of Hg accumulation between 1727 and 1996 in a varved sediment...
