Method- and species-specific detection probabilities of fish occupancy in Arctic lakes: Implications for design and management
Trevor B. Haynes, Amanda E. Rosenberger, Mark S. Lindberg, Matthew Whitman, Joel A. Schmutz
2013, Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences (70) 1055-1062
Studies examining species occurrence often fail to account for false absences in field sampling. We investigate detection probabilities of five gear types for six fish species in a sample of lakes on the North Slope, Alaska. We used an occupancy modeling approach to provide estimates of detection probabilities for each...
Air temperature, wind speed, and wind direction in the National Petroleum Reserve—Alaska and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, 1998–2011
Frank E. Urban, Gary D. Clow
2013, Open-File Report 2013-1063
This report provides air temperature, wind speed, and wind direction data collected on Federal lands in Arctic Alaska over the period August 1998 to July 2011 by the U.S. Department of the Interior's climate monitoring array, part of the Global Terrestrial Network for Permafrost. In addition to presenting data, this...
Community-based water-quality monitoring in the Yukon River Basin and the Kuskokwim Watershed
Nicole M. Herman-Mercer
2013, Witness the Arctic (2)
The unique partnership between the USGS and the YRITWC provides mutual benefits by fostering outreach efforts that have been essential for community empowerment and by generating scientific data for prohibitively large and remote regions that would be challenging for USGS scientists to sample as robustly alone. The addition of a...
Simulating boreal forest carbon dynamics after stand-replacing fire disturbance: insights from a global process-based vegetation model
C. Yue, P. Ciais, S. Luyssaert, P. Cadule, J. Harden, J. Randerson, V. Bellassen, T. Wang, S.L. Piao, B. Poulter, N. Viovy
2013, Biogeosciences (10) 8233-8252
Stand-replacing fires are the dominant fire type in North American boreal forests. They leave a historical legacy of a mosaic landscape of different aged forest cohorts. This forest age dynamics must be included in vegetation models to accurately quantify the role of fire in the historical and current regional forest...
Detecting unfrozen sediments below thermokarst lakes with surface nuclear magnetic resonance
Andrew D. Parsekian, Guido Grosse, Jan O. Walbrecker, Mike Muller-Petke, Kristina Keating, Lin Liu, Benjamin M. Jones, Rosemary Knight
2013, Geophysical Research Letters (40) 535-540
A talik is a layer or body of unfrozen ground that occurs in permafrost due to an anomaly in thermal, hydrological, or hydrochemical conditions. Information about talik geometry is important for understanding regional surface water and groundwater interactions as well as sublacustrine methane production in thermokarst lakes. Due to the...
Effects of currents and tides on fine-scale use of marine bird habitats in a Southeast Alaska hotspot
Gary S. Drew, John F. Piatt, David J. Hill
2013, MEPS (487) 275-286
Areas with high species richness have become focal points in the establishment of marine protected areas, but an understanding of the factors that support this diversity is still incomplete. In coastal areas, tidal currents—modulated by bathymetry and manifested in variable speeds—are a dominant physical feature of the environment. However, difficulties...
Controls on variations in MODIS fire radiative power in Alaskan boreal forests: implications for fire severity conditions
Kirsten Barrett, Eric S. Kasischke
2013, Remote Sensing and the Environment (130) 171-181
Fire activity in the Alaskan boreal forest, though episodic at annual and intra-annual time scales, has experienced an increase over the last several decades. Increases in burned area and fire severity are not only releasing more carbon to the atmosphere, but likely shifting vegetation composition in the region towards greater...
Clinoform deposition across a boundary between orogenic front and foredeep - an example from the Lower Cretaceous in Arctic Alaska
David W. Houseknecht, Marwan A. Wartes
2013, Terra Nova (25) 206-211
The Lower Cretaceous Fortress Mountain Formation occupies a spatial and temporal niche between syntectonic deposits at the Brooks Range orogenic front and post-tectonic strata in the Colville foreland basin. The formation includes basin-floor fan, marine-slope and fan-delta facies that define a clinoform depositional profile. Texture and composition of clasts in...
Soil data from fire and permafrost-thaw chronosequences in upland Picea mariana stands near Hess Creek and Tok, interior Alaska
Jonathan A. O’Donnell, Jennifer W. Harden, Kristen L. Manies, M. Torre Jorgenson, Mikhail Kanevskiy, Xiaomei Xu
2013, Open-File Report 2013-1045
Soils of the Northern Circumpolar Permafrost region harbor 1,672 petagrams (Pg) (1 Pg = 1,000,000,000 kilograms) of organic carbon (OC), nearly 50 percent of the global belowground OC pool (Tarnocai and others, 2009). Of that soil OC, nearly 88 percent is presently stored in perennially frozen ground. Recent climate warming...
From the Island of the Blue Dolphins: A unique 19th century cache feature from San Nicolas Island, California
Jon M. Erlandson, Lisa Thomas-Barnett, Rene L. Vellanoweth, Steven J. Schwartz, Daniel R. Muhs
2013, Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology (8) 66-78
A cache feature salvaged from an eroding sea cliff on San Nicolas Island produced two redwood boxes containing more than 200 artifacts of Nicoleño, Native Alaskan, and Euro-American origin. Outside the boxes were four asphaltum-coated baskets, abalone shells, a sandstone dish, and a hafted stone knife. The boxes, made from...
Review: groundwater in Alaska (USA)
J.B. Callegary, C.P. Kikuchi, Joshua C. Koch, M. R. Lilly, S. A. Leake
2013, Hydrogeology Journal (21) 25-39
Groundwater in the US state of Alaska is critical to both humans and ecosystems. Interactions among physiography, ecology, geology, and current and past climate have largely determined the location and properties of aquifers as well as the timing and magnitude of fluxes to, from, and within the groundwater system. The...
Geochemistry, petrography, and zircon U-Pb geochronology of Paleozoic metaigneous rocks in the Mount Veta area of east-central Alaska: implications for the evolution of the westernmost part of the Yukon-Tanana terrane
Cynthia Dusel-Bacon, Warren C. Day, John N. Aleinikoff
2013, Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences (50) 826-846
We report the results of new mapping, whole-rock major, minor, and trace-element geochemistry, and petrography for metaigneous rocks from the Mount Veta area in the westernmost part of the allochthonous Yukon–Tanana terrane (YTT) in east-central Alaska. These rocks include tonalitic mylonite gneiss and mafic metaigneous rocks from the Chicken metamorphic...
Spatial heterogeneity in statistical power to detect changes in lake area in Alaskan National Wildlife Refuges
Samuel Nicol, Jennifer K. Roach, Brad Griffith
2013, Landscape Ecology (28) 507-517
Over the past 50 years, the number and size of high-latitude lakes have decreased throughout many regions; however, individual lake trends have been variable in direction and magnitude. This spatial heterogeneity in lake change makes statistical detection of temporal trends challenging, particularly in small analysis areas where weak trends are...
Population ecology of polar bears in Davis Strait, Canada and Greenland
Elizabeth L. Peacock, Mitchell K. Taylor, Jeffrey L. Laake, Ian Stirling
2013, Journal of Wildlife Management (77) 463-476
Until recently, the sea ice habitat of polar bears was understood to be variable, but environmental variability was considered to be cyclic or random, rather than progressive. Harvested populations were believed to be at levels where density effects were considered not significant. However, because we now understand that polar bear...
Shallow groundwater in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley, Alaska—Conceptualization and simulation of flow
Colin P. Kikuchi
2013, Scientific Investigations Report 2013-5049
The Matanuska-Susitna Valley is in the Upper Cook Inlet Basin and is currently undergoing rapid population growth outside of municipal water and sewer service areas. In response to concerns about the effects of increasing water use on future groundwater availability, a study was initiated between the Alaska Department of Natural...
Water quality of streams draining abandoned and reclaimed mined lands in the Kantishna Hills area, Denali National Park and Preserve, Alaska, 2008–11
Timothy P. Brabets, Robert T. Ourso
2013, Scientific Investigations Report 2013-5048
The Kantishna Hills are an area of low elevation mountains in the northwest part of Denali National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Streams draining the Kantishna Hills are clearwater streams that support several species of fish and are derived from rain, snowmelt, and subsurface aquifers. However, the water quality of many...
Macroscopic, histologic, and ultrastructural lesions associated with avian keratin disorder in Black-capped Chickadees (Poecile atricapillus)
Caroline R. Van Hemert, A. G. Armién, J.E. Blake, Colleen M. Handel, T. M. O'Hara
2013, Veterinary Pathology (50) 500-513
An epizootic of beak abnormalities (avian keratin disorder) was recently detected among wild birds in Alaska. Here we describe the gross, histologic, and ultrastructural features of the disease in 30 affected adult black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapillus). Grossly, there was elongation of the rhamphotheca, with varying degrees of lateral deviation, crossing,...
Linkages between sea-ice coverage, pelagic-benthic coupling, and the distribution of spectacled eiders: observations in March 2008, 2009 and 2010, northern Bering Sea
L. W. Cooper, Matthew G. Sexson, J.M. Grebmeier, R. Gradinger, C.W. Mordy, J.R. Lovvorn
2013, Deep-Sea Research Part II: Topical Studies in Oceanography (94) 31-43
Icebreaker-based sampling in the northern Bering Sea south of St. Lawrence Island in March of 2008, 2009, and 2010 has provided new data on overall ecosystem function early in the annual productive cycle. While water-column chlorophyll concentrations (−2 integrated over the whole water column) are two orders of...
Lateglacial and Holocene climate, disturbance and permafrost peatland dynamics on the Seward Peninsula, western Alaska
Stephanie D. Hunt, Zicheng Yu, Miriam C. Jones
2013, Quaternary Science Reviews (63) 42-58
Northern peatlands have accumulated large carbon (C) stocks, acting as a long-term atmospheric C sink since the last deglaciation. How these C-rich ecosystems will respond to future climate change, however, is still poorly understood. Furthermore, many northern peatlands exist in regions underlain by permafrost, adding to the challenge of projecting...
Local-area-enhanced, 2.5-meter resolution natural-color and color-infrared satellite-image mosaics of the Nuristan mineral district in Afghanistan
Philip A. Davis, Laura E. Cagney, Scott A. Arko, Michelle L. Harbin
Philip A. Davis, editor(s)
2013, Data Series 709-X
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Defense Task Force for Business and Stability Operations, prepared databases for mineral-resource target areas in Afghanistan. The purpose of the databases is to (1) provide useful data to ground-survey crews for use in performing detailed assessments of the...
Evidence that life history characteristics of wild birds influence infection rates and exposure to influenza A viruses
Craig R. Ely, Jeffrey S. Hall, Joel A. Schmutz, John M. Pearce, John Terenzi, James S. Sedinger, S. Ip
2013, PLoS ONE (8)
We report on life history characteristics, temporal, and age-related effects influencing the frequency of occurrence of avian influenza (AI) viruses in four species of migratory geese breeding on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, Alaska. Emperor geese (Chen canagica), cackling geese (Branta hutchinsii), greater white-fronted geese (Anser albifrons), and black brant (Branta bernicla),...
Development and characterization of 21 polymorphic microsatellite markers for the barren-ground shrew, Sorex ugyunak (Mammalia: Sorcidae), through next-generation sequencing, and cross-species amplification in the masked shrew, S. cinereus
Sarah A. Sonsthagen, G. Kevin Sage, Megan C. Fowler, Andrew G. Hope, J.A. Cook, Sandra L. Talbot
2013, Conservation Genetics Resources (5) 315-318
We used next generation shotgun sequencing to develop 21 novel microsatellite markers for the barren-ground shrew (Sorex ugyunak), which were polymorphic among individuals from northern Alaska. The loci displayed moderate allelic diversity (averaging 6.81 alleles per locus) and heterozygosity (averaging 70 %). Two loci deviated from Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium (HWE)...
Lead isotope determinations from sulfide mineral occurrences--Russian Far East
Stan E. Church, Nikolai A. Goryachev, Vladimir I. Shpikerman
2013, Data Series 743
The lead isotope database for sulfide deposits and occurrences in the Russian Far East was funded by the Mineral Resources Program, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in conjunction with the collaborative studies of mineral resources by the Russian Academy of Sciences and the U. S. Geological Survey (Nokleberg and others, 1996)....
Potential population-level effects of increased haulout-related mortality of Pacific walrus calves
Mark S. Udevitz, Rebecca L. Taylor, Joel L. Garlich-Miller, Lori T. Quakenbush, Jonathan A. Snyder
2013, Polar Biology (36) 291-298
Availability of summer sea ice has been decreasing in the Chukchi Sea during recent decades, and increasing numbers of Pacific walruses have begun using coastal haulouts in late summer during years when sea ice retreats beyond the continental shelf. Calves and yearlings are particularly susceptible to being crushed during disturbance...
Movements and dive patterns of short-finned pilot whales (Globicephala macrorhynchus) released from a mass stranding in the Florida Keys
Randall S. Wells, Erin M. Fougeres, Arthur G. Cooper, Robert O. Stevens, Micah Brodsky, Robert Lingenfelser, Chris Dold, David C. Douglas
2013, Aquatic Mammals (39) 61-72
Short-finned pilot whales (Globicephala macrorhynchus) are among the most common cetaceans to engage in mass strandings in the southeastern United States. Because these are primarily pelagic, continental shelf-edge animals, much of what is known about this species has derived from mass stranding events. Post-release monitoring via satellite-linked telemetry was conducted...
