Urbanization may limit impacts of an invasive predator on native mammal diversity
Brian E. Reichert, Adia R. Sovie, Brad J. Udell, Kristen M. Hart, Rena R. Borkhataria, Mathieu Bonneau, Robert Reed, Robert A. McCleery
2017, Diversity and Distributions (23) 355-367
AimOur understanding of the effects of invasive species on faunal diversity is limited in part because invasions often occur in modified landscapes where other drivers of community diversity can exacerbate or reduce the net impacts of an invader. Furthermore, rigorous assessments of the effects of invasive species on native communities...
Inter-nesting movements and habitat-use of adult female Kemp’s ridley turtles in the Gulf of Mexico
Donna J. Shaver, Kristen M. Hart, Ikuko Fujisaki, David N. Bucklin, Autumn Iverson, Cynthia Rubio, Thomas F. Backof, Patrick M. Burchfield, Raul de Jesus Gonzales Diaz Miron, Peter H. Dutton, Amy Frey, Jaime Peña, Daniel Gomez Gamez, Hector J. Martinez, Jaime Ortiz
2017, PLoS ONE (12)
Species vulnerability is increased when individuals congregate in restricted areas for breeding; yet, breeding habitats are not well defined for many marine species. Identification and quantification of these breeding habitats are essential to effective conservation. Satellite telemetry and switching state-space modeling (SSM) were used to define inter-nesting habitat of endangered...
From data to decisions: Processing information, biases, and beliefs for improved management of natural resources and environments
Pierre D. Glynn, Alexey A. Voinov, Carl D. Shapiro, Paul A. White
2017, Earth's Future (5) 356-378
Our different kinds of minds and types of thinking affect the ways we decide, take action, and cooperate (or not). Derived from these types of minds, innate biases, beliefs, heuristics, and values (BBHV) influence behaviors, often beneficially, when individuals or small groups face immediate, local, acute situations that they and...
The role of uplift and erosion in the persistence of saline groundwater in the shallow subsurface
Richard M. Yager, Kurt J. McCoy, Clifford I. Voss, Ward E. Sanford, Richard B. Winston
2017, Geophysical Research Letters (44) 3672-3681
In many regions of the world, the shallow (<300 m) subsurface is replenished with meteoric recharge within a few centuries or millennia, but in some regions saline groundwater persists despite abundant rainfall. Analyses of the flushing rate of shallow groundwater usually consider the permeability and recharge rate and a static landscape....
Using diets of Canis breeding pairs to assess resource partitioning between sympatric red wolves and coyotes
Joseph W. Hinton, Annaliese K. Ashley, Justin A. Dellinger, John L. Gittleman, Frank T. van Manen, Michael J. Chamberlain
2017, Journal of Mammalogy (98) 475-488
Foraging behaviors of red wolves (Canis rufus) and coyotes (Canis latrans) are complex and their ability to form congeneric breeding pairs and hybridize further complicates our understanding of factors influencing their diets. Through scat analysis, we assessed prey selection of red wolf, coyote, and congeneric breeding pairs formed by red...
Mitigating future avian malaria threats to Hawaiian forest birds from climate change
Wei Liao, Carter T. Atkinson, Dennis LaPointe, Michael D. Samuel
2017, PLoS ONE (12) 1-25
Avian malaria, transmitted by Culex quinquefasciatus mosquitoes in the Hawaiian Islands, has been a primary contributor to population range limitations, declines, and extinctions for many endemic Hawaiian honeycreepers. Avian malaria is strongly influenced by climate; therefore, predicted future changes are expected to expand transmission into higher elevations and intensify and...
Scale-specific habitat relationships influence patch occupancy: defining neighborhoods to optimize the effectiveness of landscape-scale grassland bird conservation
Michael Guttery, Christine Ribic, David W. Sample, Andy Paulios, Chris Trosen, John D. Dadisman, Daniel Schneider, Josephine Horton
2017, Landscape Ecology (32) 515-529
ContextBeyond the recognized importance of protecting large areas of contiguous habitat, conservation efforts for many species are complicated by the fact that patch suitability may also be affected by characteristics of the landscape within which the patch is located. Currently, little is known about the...
A decade of insights into grassland ecosystem responses to global environmental change
Elizabeth T. Borer, James B. Grace, W. Stanley Harpole, Andrew S. MacDougall, Eric W. Seabloom
2017, Nature Ecology & Evolution (1)
Earth’s biodiversity and carbon uptake by plants, or primary productivity, are intricately interlinked, underlie many essential ecosystem processes, and depend on the interplay among environmental factors, many of which are being changed by human activities. While ecological theory generalizes across taxa and environments, most empirical tests of factors controlling diversity...
A software tool to assess uncertainty in transient-storage model parameters using Monte Carlo simulations
Adam S. Ward, Christa A. Kelleher, Seth J. K. Mason, Thorsten Wagener, Neil McIntyre, Brian L. McGlynn, Robert L. Runkel, Robert A. Payn
2017, Freshwater Science (36) 195-217
Researchers and practitioners alike often need to understand and characterize how water and solutes move through a stream in terms of the relative importance of in-stream and near-stream storage and transport processes. In-channel and subsurface storage processes are highly variable in space and time and difficult to measure. Storage estimates...
Implanting 8-mm passive integrated transponder tags into small Brook Trout: Effects on growth and survival in the laboratory
Matthew J. O’Donnell, Benjamin H. Letcher
2017, North American Journal of Fisheries Management (37) 605-611
Passive integrated transponder (PIT) tags are commonly used to investigate relationships between individual fish and their environment. The recent availability of smaller tags has provided the opportunity to tag smaller fish. In this study, we implanted 8-mm PIT tags into small Brook Trout Salvelinus fontinalis (35–50 mm FL; 0.35–1.266 g)...
Microbial methane from in situ biodegradation of coal and shale: A review and reevaluation of hydrogen and carbon isotope signatures
David S. Vinson, Neal E. Blair, Anna M. Martini, Steve Larter, William H. Orem, Jennifer C. McIntosh
2017, Chemical Geology (453) 128-145
Stable carbon and hydrogen isotope signatures of methane, water, and inorganic carbon are widely utilized in natural gas systems for distinguishing microbial and thermogenic methane and for delineating methanogenic pathways (acetoclastic, hydrogenotrophic, and/or methylotrophic methanogenesis). Recent studies of coal and shale gas systems have characterized in situ microbial communities...
Evidence for strong lateral seismic velocity variation in the lower crust and upper mantle beneath the California margin
Voon Lai, Robert Graves, Shengji Wei, Don Helmberger
2017, Earth and Planetary Science Letters 202-211
Regional seismograms from earthquakes in Northern California show a systematic difference in arrival times across Southern California where long period (30–50 seconds) SH waves arrive up to 15 seconds earlier at stations near the coast compared with sites towards the east at similar epicentral distances. We attribute this time difference...
Coping with historic drought in California rangelands: Developing a more effective institutional response
Joel R. Brown, Pelayo Alvarez, Kristin B. Byrd, Helena Deswood, Emile Elias, Sheri Spiegal
2017, Rangelands (39) 73-78
Drought response is widely varied depending on both the characteristics of the drought and the ability of individual ranchers to respond.Assistance from institutions during drought has not typically considered preemptive, during, and post-drought response as a strategic approach, which recognizes biophysical, sociological, and economic complexities of drought.A USDA Southwest Climate...
Climate drives adaptive genetic responses associated with survival in big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata)
Lindsay Chaney, Bryce A. Richardson, Matthew J. Germino
2017, Evolutionary Applications (10) 313-322
A genecological approach was used to explore genetic variation for survival in Artemisia tridentata(big sagebrush). Artemisia tridentata is a widespread and foundational shrub species in western North America. This species has become extremely fragmented, to the detriment of dependent wildlife, and efforts to restore it are now a land management priority. Common-garden experiments...
Community stability within the St. Marys River fish community: Evidence from trawl surveys
Jeffrey S. Schaeffer, Anjanette K. Bowen, David G. Fielder
2017, Journal of Great Lakes Research (43) 399-404
A trawl survey was conducted in the Saint Marys River during 2010–2011 and we compared our results to a prior trawl survey conducted during 1979–1983 to look for long-term changes in the fish community, especially in terms of changes induced by invasive species. We found no substantive temporal differences in...
Bacterial, fungal, and plant communities exhibit no biomass or compositional response to two years of simulated nitrogen deposition in a semiarid grassland
Theresa A. McHugh, Ember M. Morrissey, Rebecca C. Mueller, La Verne Gallegos-Graves, Cheryl R. Kuske, Sasha C. Reed
2017, Environmental Microbiology (19) 1600-1611
Nitrogen (N) deposition affects myriad aspects of terrestrial ecosystem structure and function, and microbial communities may be particularly sensitive to anthropogenic N inputs. However, our understanding of N deposition effects on microbial communities is far from complete, especially for drylands where data are comparatively rare. To address the need for...
Hazus® estimated annualized earthquake losses for the United States
Kishor S. Jaiswal, Doug Bausch, Jesse Rozelle, John Holub, Sean McGowan
2017, Report
Large earthquakes can cause social and economic disruption that can be unprecedented to any given community, and the full recovery from these impacts may or may not always be achievable. In the United States (U.S.), the 1994 M6.7 Northridge earthquake in California remains the third costliest disaster in U.S. history;...
Circumpolar analysis of the Adélie Penguin reveals the importance of environmental variability in phenological mismatch
Casey Youngflesh, Stephanie Jenouvrier, Yun Li, Rubao Ji, David G. Ainley, Grant Ballard, Christophe Barbraud, Karine Delord, Katie M. Dugger, Loiuse M. Emmerson, William R. Fraser, Jefferson T. Hinke, Phil O’B. Lyver, Silvia Olmastroni, Colin J. Southwell, Susan G. Trivelpiece, Wayne Z. Trivelpiece, Heather J. Lynch
2017, Ecology (98) 940-951
Evidence of climate-change-driven shifts in plant and animal phenology have raised concerns that certain trophic interactions may be increasingly mismatched in time, resulting in declines in reproductive success. Given the constraints imposed by extreme seasonality at high latitudes and the rapid shifts in phenology seen in the Arctic, we would...
Classification of California streams using combined deductive and inductive approaches: Setting the foundation for analysis of hydrologic alteration
Matthew I. Pyne, Daren M. Carlisle, Christopher P. Konrad, Eric D. Stein
2017, Ecohydrology (10)
Regional classification of streams is an early step in the Ecological Limits of Hydrologic Alteration framework. Many stream classifications are based on an inductive approach using hydrologic data from minimally disturbed basins, but this approach may underrepresent streams from heavily disturbed basins or sparsely gaged arid regions. An alternative is...
Earning their stripes: The potential of tiger trout and other salmonids as biological controls of forage fishes in a western reservoir
Lisa K. Winters, Phaedra E. Budy, Gary P. Thiede
2017, North American Journal of Fisheries Management (37) 380-394
Maintaining a balance between predator and prey populations can be an ongoing challenge for fisheries managers, especially in managing artificial ecosystems such as reservoirs. In a high-elevation Utah reservoir, the unintentional introduction of the Utah Chub Gila atraria and its subsequent population expansion prompted managers to experimentally shift from exclusively stocking Rainbow...
2016 status of the Lake Ontario Lower Trophic levels
Kristen T. Holeck, Lars G. Rudstam, Christopher Hotaling, Russ McCullough, Dave Lemon, Web Pearsall, Jana Lantry, Mike Connerton, Steve LaPan, Zy Biesinger, Brian F. Lantry, Maureen Walsh, Brian Weidel
2017, Book chapter, Annual Report Bureau of Fisheries Lake Ontario Unit and St. Lawrence River Unit to Great Lakes Fishery Commission’s Lake Ontario Committee.
Significant Findings for Year 2016: 1) Offshore spring total phosphorus (TP) in 2016 was 6.2 μg/L, higher than 2014 and 2015 (4.0 and 4.2 μg/L); there was no significant decline 2001 - 2016. Offshore soluble reactive phosphorus (SRP) was very low in 2016; Apr/May – Oct mean values were <1 μg/L....
Twenty years of water-quality studies in the Cheney Reservoir Watershed, Kansas, 1996-2016
Jennifer L. Graham, Guy M. Foster, Ariele R. Kramer
2017, Fact Sheet 2017-3019
Since 1996, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in cooperation with the City of Wichita, has done studies in the Cheney Reservoir watershed to understand environmental effects on water-quality conditions. Early studies (1996–2001) determined subwatershed sources of contaminants, nutrient and sediment loading to Cheney Reservoir, changes in reservoir sediment quality over...
Occurrence of cyanobacteria, microcystin, and taste-and-odor compounds in Cheney Reservoir, Kansas, 2001-16
Jennifer L. Graham, Guy M. Foster, Thomas J. Williams, Ariele R. Kramer, Theodore D. Harris
2017, Scientific Investigations Report 2017-5016
Cheney Reservoir, located in south-central Kansas, is one of the primary drinking-water supplies for the city of Wichita and an important recreational resource. Since 1990, cyanobacterial blooms have been present occasionally in Cheney Reservoir, resulting in increased treatment costs and decreased recreational use. Cyanobacteria, the cyanotoxin microcystin, and the taste-and-odor...
Semiautomatic approaches to account for 3-D distortion of the electric field from local, near-surface structures in 3-D resistivity inversions of 3-D regional magnetotelluric data
Brian D. Rodriguez
2017, Open-File Report 2017-1007
This report summarizes the results of three-dimensional (3-D) resistivity inversion simulations that were performed to account for local 3-D distortion of the electric field in the presence of 3-D regional structure, without any a priori information on the actual 3-D distribution of the known subsurface geology. The methodology used a...
A global threats overview for Numeniini populations: synthesising expert knowledge for a group of declining migratory birds.
James W. Pearce-Higgins, Daniel J. Brown, David J.T. Douglas, José A. Alves, Mariagrazia Bellio, Pierrick Bocher, Graeme M. Buchannan, Rob Clay, Jesse R. Conklin, Nicola Crockford, Peter Dann, Jaanus Elts, Christian Friis, Richard A. Fuller, Jennifer A. Gill, Ken Gosbell, James A. Johnson, Rocio Marquez-Ferrando, Jose A. Masero, David S. Melville, Spike Millington, Clive Minton, Taej Mundkur, Erika Nol, Hannes Pehlak, Theunis Piersma, Danny I. Rogers, Daniel R. Ruthrauff, Nathan R. Senner, Junid Nazeer Shah, Rob D. Sheldon, Sergej A. Soloviev, Pavel S. Tomkovich, Yvonne I. Verkuil
2017, Bird Conservation International (27) 6-34
The Numeniini is a tribe of 13 wader species (Scolopacidae, Charadriiformes) of which seven are Near Threatened or globally threatened, including two Critically Endangered. To help inform conservation management and policy responses, we present the results of an expert assessment of the threats that members of this taxonomic group face...
