Amplification of postwildfire peak flow by debris
Jason W. Kean, Luke McGuire, Francis K. Rengers, Joel B. Smith, Dennis M. Staley
2016, Geophysical Research Letters (43) 8545-8553
In burned steeplands, the peak depth and discharge of postwildfire runoff can substantially increase from the addition of debris. Yet methods to estimate the increase over water flow are lacking. We quantified the potential amplification of peak stage and discharge using video observations of postwildfire runoff, compiled data on postwildfire...
Structured decision making for managing pneumonia epizootics in bighorn sheep
Sarah N. Sells, Michael S. Mitchell, Victoria L. Edwards, Justin A. Gude, Neil J. Anderson
2016, Journal of Wildlife Management (80) 957-969
Good decision-making is essential to conserving wildlife populations. Although there may be multiple ways to address a problem, perfect solutions rarely exist. Managers are therefore tasked with identifying decisions that will best achieve desired outcomes. Structured decision making (SDM) is a method of decision analysis used to identify the most...
Origin of the pulse-like signature of shallow long-period volcano seismicity
Bernard A. Chouet, Phillip B. Dawson
2016, Journal of Geophysical Research B: Solid Earth (121) 5931-5941
Short-duration, pulse-like long-period (LP) events are a characteristic type of seismicity accompanying eruptive activity at Mount Etna in Italy in 2004 and 2008 and at Turrialba Volcano in Costa Rica and Ubinas Volcano in Peru in 2009. We use the discrete wave number method to compute the free surface response...
Coseismic slip and early afterslip of the 2015 Illapel, Chile, earthquake: Implications for frictional heterogeneity and coastal uplift
William D. Barnhart, Jessica R. Murray, Richard W. Briggs, Francisco Gomez, Charles P. J. Miles, Jerry L. Svarc, Sebástian Riquelme, Bryan J. Stressler
2016, Journal of Geophysical Research B: Solid Earth (121) 6172-6191
Great subduction earthquakes are thought to rupture portions of the megathrust, where interseismic coupling is high and velocity-weakening frictional behavior is dominant, releasing elastic deformation accrued over a seismic cycle. Conversely, postseismic afterslip is assumed to occur primarily in regions of velocity-strengthening frictional characteristics that may correlate with lower interseismic...
Teleconnected ocean forcing of Western North American droughts and pluvials during the last millennium
Cody C. Routson, Connie A. Woodhouse, Jonathan T. Overpeck, Julio L. Betancourt, Nicholas P. McKay
2016, Quaternary Science Reviews (146) 238-250
Western North America (WNA) is rich in hydroclimate reconstructions, yet questions remain about the causes of decadal-to-multidecadal hydroclimate variability. Teleconnection patterns preserved in annually-resolved tree-ring reconstructed drought maps, and anomalies in a global network of proxy sea surface temperature (SST) reconstructions, were used to reassess the evidence linking ocean forcing...
Observations and modeling of fjord sedimentation during the 30 year retreat of Columbia Glacier, AK
Katherine B Love, Bernard Hallet, Thomas L. Pratt, Shad O’Neel
2016, Journal of Glaciology (62) 778-793
To explore links between glacier dynamics, sediment yields and the accumulation of glacial sediments in a temperate setting, we use extensive glaciological observations for Columbia Glacier, Alaska, and new oceanographic data from the fjord exposed during its retreat. High-resolution seismic data indicate that 3.2 × 108 m3 of...
Geochemistry of the Black Sea during the last 15 kyr: A protracted evolution of its hydrography and ecology
David Z. Piper
2016, Paleoceanography (31) 1117-1137
The Black Sea is a 2200 m deep anoxic, marine sea connected to the Mediterranean Sea via the Dardanelles Strait, Marmara Sea, and the 3 km wide, 35 m deep Bosphorus Strait. The biogeochemistry of sediment from the Anatolia slope has recorded changes to the hydrography leading up to and following the input...
Using the North American Breeding Bird Survey to assess broad-scale response of the continent's most imperiled avian community, grassland birds, to weather variability
Jessica Gorzo, Anna M. Pidgeon, Wayne E. Thogmartin, Andrew J. Allstadt, Volker C. Radeloff, Patricia J. Heglund, Stephen J. Vavrus
2016, The Condor (118) 502-512
Avian populations can respond dramatically to extreme weather such as droughts and heat waves, yet patterns of response to weather at broad scales remain largely unknown. Our goal was to evaluate annual variation in abundance of 14 grassland bird species breeding in the northern mixed-grass prairie in relation to annual...
The Mississippi River: A place for fish
Harold Schramm, Brian Ickes
Yushun Chen, Duane Chapman, John Jackson, Daqing Chen, Zhongjie Li, Jack Kilgore, Quinton E. Phelps, Michael Eggleton, editor(s)
2016, Book chapter, Fishery Resources, Environment, and Conservation in the Mississippi and Yangtze (Changjiang) River Basins
The Mississippi River flows 3,734 km from its source at Lake Itasca, Minnesota to its outlet at the Gulf of Mexico. Along its course, it collects water from portions of two Canadian provinces and 41 % of the conterminous United States. Although greatly altered for navigation and flood control throughout...
Applications for General Purpose Command Buffers: The Emergency Conjunction Avoidance Maneuver
Robert J Scheid, Martin England
2016, Conference Paper, SpaceOps 2016 Conference
A case study is presented for the use of Relative Operation Sequence (ROS) command buffers to quickly execute a propulsive maneuver to avoid a collision with space debris. In this process, a ROS is custom-built with a burn time and magnitude, uplinked to the spacecraft, and executed in 15 percent...
Development and assessment of indices to determine stream fish vulnerability to climate change and habitat alteration
Nicholas A. Sievert, Craig P. Paukert, Yin-Phan Tsang, Dana M. Infante
2016, Ecological Indicators (67) 403-416
Understanding the future impacts of climate and land use change are critical for long-term biodiversity conservation. We developed and compared two indices to assess the vulnerability of stream fish in Missouri, USA based on species environmental tolerances, rarity, range size, dispersal ability and on the average connectivity of the streams...
Urban base flow with low impact development
Aditi Bhaskar, Dianna M. Hogan, Stacey A. Archfield
2016, Hydrological Processes (30) 3156-3171
A novel form of urbanization, low impact development (LID), aims to engineer systems that replicate natural hydrologic functioning, in part by infiltrating stormwater close to the impervious surfaces that generate it. We sought to statistically evaluate changes in a base flow regime because of urbanization with LID, specifically changes in...
Insights into plant water uptake from xylem-water isotope measurements in two tropical catchments with contrasting moisture conditions
Jaivime Evaristo, Jeffrey J. McDonnell, Martha A. Scholl, L. Adrian Bruijnzeel, Kwok P. Chun
2016, Hydrological Processes (30) 3210-3227
Water transpired by trees has long been assumed to be sourced from the same subsurface water stocks that contribute to groundwater recharge and streamflow. However, recent investigations using dual water stable isotopes have shown an apparent ecohydrological separation between tree-transpired water and stream water. Here we present evidence for such...
Overwintering strategies of migratory birds: a novel approach for estimating seasonal movement patterns of residents and transients
Viviana Ruiz-Gutierrez, William L. Kendall, James F. Saracco, Gary C. White
2016, Journal of Applied Ecology (53) 1035-1045
Our understanding of movement patterns in wildlife populations has played an important role in current ecological knowledge and can inform landscape conservation decisions. Direct measures of movement can be obtained using marked individuals, but this requires tracking individuals across a landscape or multiple sites.We demonstrate how movements...
Responses of a tall building in Los Angeles, California as inferred from local and distant earthquakes
Mehmet Çelebi, Hasan Ulusoy, Nori Nakata
2016, Earthquake Spectra (32) 1821-1843
Increasing inventory of tall buildings in the United States and elsewhere may be subjected to motions generated by near and far seismic sources that cause long-period effects. Multiple sets of records that exhibited such effects were retrieved from tall buildings in Tokyo and Osaka ~ 350 km and 770 km...
Fortnightly modulation of San Andreas tremor and low-frequency earthquakes
Nicholas van der Elst, Andrew Delorey, David R. Shelly, Paul Johnson
2016, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (113) 8601-8605
Earth tides modulate tremor and low-frequency earthquakes (LFEs) on faults in the vicinity of the brittle−ductile (seismic−aseismic) transition. The response to the tidal stress carries otherwise inaccessible information about fault strength and rheology. Here, we analyze the LFE response to the fortnightly tide, which modulates the amplitude of the daily...
Microbial pathogens in source and treated waters from drinking water treatment plants in the United States and implications for human health
Dawn N. King, Maura J. Donohue, Stephen J. Vesper, Eric N. Villegas, Michael W. Ware, Megan E. Vogel, Edward Furlong, Dana W. Kolpin, Susan T. Glassmeyer, Stacy Pfaller
2016, Science of the Total Environment (562) 987-995
An occurrence survey was conducted on selected pathogens in source and treated drinking water collected from 25 drinking water treatment plants (DWTPs) in the United States. Water samples were analyzed for the protozoa Giardia and Cryptosporidium (EPA Method 1623); the fungi Aspergillus fumigatus, Aspergillus niger and Aspergillus terreus (quantitative PCR...
Does resolution of flow field observation influence apparent habitat use and energy expenditure in juvenile coho salmon?
Desiree D. Tullos, Cara Walter, Jason B. Dunham
2016, Water Resources Research (52) 5938-5950
This study investigated how the resolution of observation influences interpretation of how fish, juvenile Coho Salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch), exploit the hydraulic environment in streams. Our objectives were to evaluate how spatial resolution of the flow field observation influenced: (1) the velocities considered to be representative of habitat units; (2) patterns...
Population characteristics and the suppression of nonnative Burbot
Zachary B. Klein, Michael C. Quist, Darren T. Rhea, Anna C. Senecal
2016, North American Journal of Fisheries Management (36) 1006-1017
Burbot Lota lota were illegally introduced into the Green River, Wyoming, drainage and have since proliferated throughout the system. Burbot in the Green River pose a threat to native species and to socially, economically, and ecologically important recreational fisheries. Therefore, managers of the Green River are interested in implementing a...
sbtools: A package connecting R to cloud-based data for collaborative online research
Luke Winslow, Scott Chamberlain, Alison P. Appling, Jordan S. Read
2016, The R Journal (8) 387-398
The adoption of high-quality tools for collaboration and reproducible research such as R and Github is becoming more common in many research fields. While Github and other version management systems are excellent resources, they were originally designed to handle code and scale poorly to large text-based or binary datasets. A...
Damage and recovery assessment of the Philippines' mangroves following Super Typhoon Haiyan
Jordan Long, Chandra Giri, Jurgene H. Primavera, Mandar Trivedi
2016, Marine Pollution Bulletin (109) 734-743
We quantified mangrove disturbance resulting from Super Typhoon Haiyan using a remote sensing approach. Mangrove areas were mapped prior to Haiyan using 30 m Landsat imagery and a supervised decision-tree classification. A time sequence of 250 m eMODIS data was used to monitor mangrove condition prior to, and following, Haiyan. Based on...
Measuring, interpreting, and responding to changes in coral reefs: A challenge for biologists, geologist, and managers
Caroline S. Rogers, Jeff Miller
Dennis K. Hubbard, Caroline S. Rogers, Jere H. Lipps, George D. Stanley Jr., editor(s)
2016, Book chapter, Coral reefs at the crossroads
What, exactly, is a coral reef? And how have the world’s reefs changed in the last several decades? What are the stressors undermining reef structure and function? Given the predicted effects of climate change, do reefs have a future? Is it possible to “manage” coral reefs for resilience?...
Novel cell-based assay for detection of thyroid receptor beta-interacting environmental contaminants
Diana A. Stavreva, Lyuba Varticovski, Ludmila Levkova, Anuja A. George, Luke Davis, Gianluca Pegoraro, Vicki S. Blazer, Luke R. Iwanowicz, Gordon L. Hager
2016, Toxicology (368-369) 69-79
Even though the presence of endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) with thyroid hormone (TH)-like activities in the environment is a major health concern, the methods for their efficient detection and monitoring are still limited. Here we describe a novel cell assay, based on the translocation of a green fluorescent protein (GFP)—tagged...
The influence of vegetation cover on debris-flow density during an extreme rainfall in the northern Colorado Front Range
Francis K. Rengers, Luke McGuire, Jeffrey A. Coe, Jason W. Kean, Rex L. Baum, Dennis M. Staley, Jonathan W. Godt
2016, Geology (44) 823-826
We explored regional influences on debris-flow initiation throughout the Colorado Front Range (Colorado, USA) by exploiting a unique data set of more than 1100 debris flows that initiated during a 5 day rainstorm in 2013. Using geospatial data, we examined the influence of rain, hillslope angle, hillslope aspect, and vegetation...
Comment on “Geochemistry of buried river sediments from Ghaggar Plains, NW India: Multi-proxy records of variations in provenance, paleoclimate, and paleovegetation patterns in the late quaternary” by Ajit Singh, Debajyoti Paul, Rajiv Sinha, Kristina J. Thomsen, Sanjeev Gupta
Peter D. Clift, Liviu Giosan, Amy E. East
2016, Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology (455) 65-67
Singh et al. (2016) published a geochemical record of sediment compositions from the flood plain of the Ghaggar River in western India and use the changing provenance, particularly as traced by Nd isotope composition, to reconstruct how erosion patterns have changed over the past 100 k.y. In doing so they...
