Standard methods for sampling freshwater fishes: Opportunities for international collaboration
Scott A. Bonar, Norman Mercado-Silva, Wayne A. Hubert, Beard Jr., Goran Dave, Jan Kubecka, Brian D. S. Graeb, Nigel P. Lester, Mark T. Porath, Ian J. Winfield
2017, Fisheries (42) 150-156
With publication of Standard Methods for Sampling North American Freshwater Fishes in 2009, the American Fisheries Society (AFS) recommended standard procedures for North America. To explore interest in standardizing at intercontinental scales, a symposium attended by international specialists in freshwater fish sampling was convened at the 145th Annual AFS Meeting in Portland,...
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...
Statistical principles of post-construction fatality monitoring design
Manuela M. Huso, Daniel Dalthorp, Fraenzi Korner-Nievergelt
2017, Book chapter, Wildlife and wind farms, conflicts and solutions, Vol. 2 Onshore: Monitoring and mitigation
No abstract available....
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...
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...
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...
The deadly fisheries safety issue no one discusses
Scott A. Bonar
2017, Fisheries (April 2017)
No abstract available....
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;...
Tree mortality across biomes is promoted by drought intensity, lower wood density and higher specific leaf area
Sarah Greenwood, Paloma Ruiz-Benito, Jordi Martínez-Vilalta, Francisco Lloret, Thomas Kitzberger, Craig D. Allen, Rod Fensham, Daniel C. Laughlin, Jens Kattge, Gerhard Bonisch, Nathan J. B. Kraft, Alistair S. Jump
2017, Ecology Letters (20) 539-553
Drought events are increasing globally, and reports of consequent forest mortality are widespread. However, due to a lack of a quantitative global synthesis, it is still not clear whether drought-induced mortality rates differ among global biomes and whether functional traits influence the risk of drought-induced mortality. To address these uncertainties,...
Himalayan thoroughfare: Migratory routes of ducks over the rooftop of the world
Tsewang Namgail, John Y. Takekawa, Sivananinthaperumal Balachandran, Eric C. Palm, Taej Mundkur, Victor Martin Velez, Diann J. Prosser, Scott H. Newman
H.H.T. Prins, Tsewang Namgail, editor(s)
2017, Book chapter, Bird migration across the Himalayas: Wetland functioning amidst mountains and glaciers
No abstract available....
Comparative life history of the south temperate Cape Penduline Tit (Anthoscopus minutus) and north temperate Remizidae species
Penn Lloyd, Bernhard D. Frauenknecht, Morne A. du Plessis, Thomas E. Martin
2017, Journal of Ornithology (158) 569-577
We studied the breeding biology of the south temperate Cape Penduline Tit (Anthoscopus minutus) in order to compare its life history traits with those of related north temperate members of the family Remizidae, namely the Eurasian Penduline Tit (Remiz pendulinus) and the Verdin (Auriparus...
Multiple models guide strategies for agricultural nutrient reductions
Donald Scavia, Margaret Kalcic, Rebecca Logsdon Muenich, Jennifer Read, Noel Aloysius, Isabella Bertani, Chelsie Boles, Remegio Confesor, Joseph DePinto, Marie Gildow, Jay Martin, Todd Redder, Dale M. Robertson, Scott P. Sowa, Yu-Chen Wang, Haw Yen
2017, Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment (15) 126-132
In response to degraded water quality, federal policy makers in the US and Canada called for a 40% reduction in phosphorus (P) loads to Lake Erie, and state and provincial policy makers in the Great Lakes region set a load-reduction target for the year 2025. Here, we configured five separate...
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...
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...
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...
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....
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)...
Spatiotemporal ecology of Apalone spinifera in a large, Great Plains river ecosystem
Brian J. Tornabene, Robert G. Bramblett, Alexander V. Zale, Stephen A. Leathe
2017, Herpetological Conservation and Biology (12) 252-271
Sparse information exists about the ecology of Spiny Softshell Turtles (Apalone spinifera) in large rivers, at the northwestern extent of their natural range, and in Montana, where they are disjunct from downstream populations and a State Species of Concern. We determined spatiotemporal ecology of 47 female and 12 male turtles...
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...
Field-scale observations of a transient geobattery resulting from natural attenuation of a crude oil spill
Jeffrey Heenan, Dimitris Ntarlagiannis, Lee Slater, Carol Beaver, S. Rossbach, A. Revil, E.A. Atekwana, Barbara A. Bekins
2017, Journal of Geophysical Research G: Biogeosciences (122) 918-929
We present evidence of a geobattery associated with microbial degradation of a mature crude oil spill. Self-potential measurements were collected using a vertical array of nonpolarizing electrodes, starting at the land surface and passing through the smear zone where seasonal water table fluctuations have resulted in the coating of hydrocarbons...
A comparison of age, size, and fecundity of harvested and reference White Sucker populations
Meg Begley, Stephen M. Coghlan Jr., Joseph D. Zydlewski
2017, North American Journal of Fisheries Management (37) 510-523
White Suckers Catostomus commersonii are an important source of fresh bait for the Maine lobster fishery. The Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife began issuing commercial harvest permits in 1991, without reporting requirements or limits on the number of permits. There is recent concern that overfishing may be occurring. To infer...
The future demographic niche of a declining grassland bird fails to shift poleward in response to climate change
Lisa A. McCauley, Christine Ribic, Lars Y. Pomara, Benjamin Zuckerberg
2017, Landscape Ecology (32) 807-821
ContextTemperate grasslands and their dependent species are exposed to high variability in weather and climate due to the lack of natural buffers such as forests. Grassland birds are particularly vulnerable to this variability, yet have failed to shift poleward in response to recent climate change...
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...
Groundwater conditions in Utah, Spring of 2017
Carole B. Burden
2017, Cooperative Investigations Report 58
This is the fifty-fourth in a series of annual reports that describe groundwater conditions in Utah. Reports in this series, published cooperatively by the U.S. Geological Survey and the Utah Department of Natural Resources, Division of Water Rights, and the Utah Department of Environmental Quality, Division of Water Quality, provide...
Geologic evidence for catastrophic marine inundation in 1200–1480 C.E. near the Puerto Rico Trench at Anegada, British Virgin Islands
Brian F. Atwater, Uri S. ten Brink, Anna Lisa Cescon, Nathalie Feuillet, Zamara Fuentes, Robert B. Halley, Carlos Nunez, Eduard G. Reinhardt, Jean Roger, Yuki Sawai, Michaela Spiske, Martitia P. Tuttle, Yong Wei, Jennifer Weil-Accardo
2017, Geosphere (13) 301-368
Extraordinary marine inundation scattered clasts southward on the island of Anegada, 120 km south of the Puerto Rico Trench, sometime between 1200 and 1480 calibrated years (cal yr) CE. Many of these clasts were likely derived from a fringing reef and from the sandy flat that separates the reef...
