Decoupling processes and scales of shoreline morphodynamics
Cheryl J. Hapke, Nathaniel G. Plant, Rachel E. Henderson, William C. Schwab, Timothy R. Nelson
2016, Marine Geology (381) 42-53
Behavior of coastal systems on time scales ranging from single storm events to years and decades is controlled by both small-scale sediment transport processes and large-scale geologic, oceanographic, and morphologic processes. Improved understanding of coastal behavior at multiple time scales is required for refining models that predict potential erosion hazards...
Dynamic reusable workflows for ocean science
Richard P. Signell, Filipe Fernandez, Kyle Wilcox
2016, Journal of Marine Science and Engineering (4)
Digital catalogs of ocean data have been available for decades, but advances in standardized services and software for catalog search and data access make it now possible to create catalog-driven workflows that automate — end-to-end — data search, analysis and visualization of data from multiple distributed sources. Further, these workflows...
Food webs of the Delta, Suisun Bay and Suisun Marsh: an update on current understanding and possibilities for management
Larry R. Brown, Wim J. Kimmerer, Louise Conrad, Sarah Lesmeister, Anke Mueller-Solger
2016, San Francisco Estuary and Watershed Science (14) 1-41
This paper reviews and highlights recent research findings on foodweb processes since an earlier review by Kimmerer et al. (2008). We conduct this review within a conceptual framework of the Delta-Suisun food web, which includes both temporal and spatial components. The temporal component is based on knowledge that the landscape...
Snake fungal disease: An emerging threat to wild snakes
Jeffrey M. Lorch, Susan Knowles, Julia S. Lankton, Kathy Michell, Jaime L. Edwards, Joshua M. Kapfer, Richard A. Staffen, Erik R. Wild, Katie Z. Schmidt, Anne Ballmann, Doug Blodgett, Terence M. Farrell, Brad M. Glorioso, Lisa A. Last, Steven J. Price, Krysten L. Schuler, Christopher Smith, James F. X. Wellehan Jr., David S. Blehert
2016, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (371)
Since 2006, there has been a marked increase in the number of reports of severe and often fatal fungal skin infections in wild snakes in the eastern USA. The emerging condition, referred to as snake fungal disease (SFD), was initially documented in rattlesnakes, where the infections were believed to pose...
Estimating selected low-flow frequency statistics and harmonic-mean flows for ungaged, unregulated streams in Indiana
Gary R. Martin, Kathleen K. Fowler, Leslie D. Arihood
2016, Scientific Investigations Report 2016-5102
Information on low-flow characteristics of streams is essential for the management of water resources. This report provides equations for estimating the 1-, 7-, and 30-day mean low flows for a recurrence interval of 10 years and the harmonic-mean flow at ungaged, unregulated stream sites in Indiana. These equations were developed...
Conserving the Greater Sage-grouse: A social-ecological systems case study from the California-Nevada region
Alison L Duvall, Alexander L. Metcalf, Peter S. Coates
2016, Rangeland Ecology and Management (70) 129-140
The Endangered Species Act (ESA) continues to serve as one of the most powerful and contested federal legislative mandates for conservation. In the midst of heated debates, researchers, policy makers, and conservation practitioners champion the importance of cooperative conservation and social-ecological systems approaches, which forge partnerships at multiple levels and...
Assessing conservation tools for an at-risk shorebird: Feasibility of headstarting for American Oystercatchers Haematopus palliatus
Samantha A. Collins, Felicia J. Sanders, Patrick G.R. Jodice
2016, Bird Conservation International (26) 451-465
Management of threatened and endangered populations of wildlife increasingly relies upon active intervention such as predator control, habitat manipulation, and ex situ breeding or care. One tool that has received consideration for the management of declining or threatened avian populations is headstarting, or the artificial incubation of eggs and...
Joint analysis of geodetic and earthquake fault-plane solution data to constrain magmatic sources: A case study from Kīlauea Volcano
Christelle Wauthier, Diana C. Roman, Michael P. Poland
2016, Earth and Planetary Science Letters (455) 38-48
A joint analysis of geodetic and seismic datasets from Kīlauea Volcano during a period of magmatic unrest in 2006 demonstrates the effectiveness of this combination for testing and constraining models of magma dynamics for a complex, multi-source system. At the end of 2003, Kīlauea's summit began a four-year-long period of...
Extending ordinal regression with a latent zero-augmented beta distribution
Kathryn M. Irvine, T.J. Rodhouse, Ilai. N. Keren
2016, Journal of Agricultural, Biological, and Environmental Statistics (21) 619-640
Ecological abundance data are often recorded on an ordinal scale in which the lowest category represents species absence. One common example is when plant species cover is visually assessedwithin bounded quadrats and then assigned to pre-defined cover class categories.We present an ordinal beta hurdle model that directly models ordinal category probabilitieswith a biologically realistic...
Weak support for disappearance and restricted emergence/persistence of highly pathogenic influenza A in North American waterfowl
Andrew M. Ramey, Erica Spackman, Mia Kim Torchetti, Thomas J. DeLiberto
2016, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (113) E6551-E6552
Krauss et al. (1) use lack of detection of highly pathogenic (HP) H5 clade 2.3.4.4 (henceforth "H5") influenza A viruses (IAVs) from >22,000 wild bird samples collected in North America in 2014–2015 to argue that HP H5 IAVs disappeared from waterfowl and that unresolved mechanisms restrict emergence and perpetuation of...
Assessment of hydrogeologic terrains, well-construction characteristics, groundwater hydraulics, and water-quality and microbial data for determination of surface-water-influenced groundwater supplies in West Virginia
Mark D. Kozar, Katherine S. Paybins
2016, Scientific Investigations Report 2016-5048
In January 2014, a storage tank leaked, spilling a large quantity of 4-methylcyclohexane methanol into the Elk River in West Virginia and contaminating the water supply for more than 300,000 people. In response, the West Virginia Legislature passed Senate Bill 373, which requires the West Virginia Department of Health and...
Changes in phosphorus concentrations and loads in the Assabet River, Massachusetts, October 2008 through April 2014
Jennifer G. Savoie, Leslie A. DeSimone, John R. Mullaney, Marc J. Zimmerman, Marcus C. Waldron
2016, Scientific Investigations Report 2016-5063
Treated effluent discharged from municipal wastewater-treatment plants to the Assabet River in central Massachusetts includes phosphorus, which leads to increased growth of nuisance aquatic plants that decrease the river’s water quality and aesthetics in impounded reaches during the growing season. To improve the river’s water quality and aesthetics, the U.S....
Estimating denning date of wolves with daily movement and GPS location fix failure
Patrick B. Walsh, Suresh Sethi, Bryce C. Lake, Buck A. Mangipane, Ryan Nielson, Stacey Lowe
2016, Wildlife Society Bulletin (40) 663-668
We used Global Positioning System (GPS) radiotelemetry data from 7 breeding female wolves (Canis lupus; n = 14 dennings) in 3 regions across Alaska, USA, during 2008–2011 to develop and compare methods for estimating the onset of denning, and thus infer timing of parturition. We developed and tested 2 estimators based on a...
Tearing the terroir: Details and implications of surface rupture and deformation from the 24 August 2014 M6.0 South Napa earthquake, California
Stephen B. DeLong, Andrea Donnellan, Daniel J. Ponti, Ron S. Rubin, James J. Lienkaemper, Carol S. Prentice, Timothy E. Dawson, Gordon G. Seitz, David P. Schwartz, Kenneth W. Hudnut, Carla M. Rosa, Alexandra J. Pickering, Jay W. Parker
2016, Earth and Space Science (3) 416-430
The Mw 6.0 South Napa earthquake of 24 August 2014 caused slip on several active fault strands within the West Napa Fault Zone (WNFZ). Field mapping identified 12.5 km of surface rupture. These field observations, near-field geodesy and space geodesy, together provide evidence for more than ~30 km of surface deformation with a...
3-D high-speed imaging of volcanic bomb trajectory in basaltic explosive eruptions
D. Gaudin, J Taddeucci, Bruce F. Houghton, Tim R. Orr, D. Andronico, E. Del Bello, U. Kueppers, T. Ricci, P. Scarlato
2016, Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems (17) 4268-4275
Imaging, in general, and high speed imaging in particular are important emerging tools for the study of explosive volcanic eruptions. However, traditional 2-D video observations cannot measure volcanic ejecta motion toward and away from the camera, strongly hindering our capability to fully determine crucial hazard-related parameters such as explosion directionality...
Genetic and phenotypic variation along an ecological gradient in lake trout Salvelinus namaycush
Shauna M. Baillie, Andrew M. Muir, Michael J. Hansen, Charles C. Krueger, Paul Bentzen
2016, BMC Evolutionary Biology (16) 1-16
BackgroundAdaptive radiation involving a colonizing phenotype that rapidly evolves into at least one other ecological variant, or ecotype, has been observed in a variety of freshwater fishes in post-glacial environments. However, few studies consider how phenotypic traits vary with regard to neutral genetic partitioning along...
Statistical correction of lidar-derived digital elevation models with multispectral airborne imagery in tidal marshes
Kevin Buffington, Bruce D. Dugger, Karen M. Thorne, John Y. Takekawa
2016, Remote Sensing of Environment (186) 616-625
Airborne light detection and ranging (lidar) is a valuable tool for collecting large amounts of elevation data across large areas; however, the limited ability to penetrate dense vegetation with lidar hinders its usefulness for measuring tidal marsh platforms. Methods to correct lidar elevation data are available, but a reliable method...
Mapping annual forest cover in sub-humid and semi-arid regions through analysis of landsat and PALSAR imagery
Yuanwei Qin, Xiangming Xiao, Jie Wang, Jinwei Dong, Kayti Ewing, Bruce Hoagland, Daniel J Hough, Todd D Fagin, Zhenhua Zou, George L. Geissler, George Z. Xian, Thomas Loveland
2016, Remote Sensing (8)
Accurately mapping the spatial distribution of forests in sub-humid to semi-arid regions over years is a challenging task and causes difficulty to forest management. Relatively large uncertainties still exist in the spatial distribution of forests and deforestation in the sub-humid and semi-arid regions. Numerous publications have used either optical or...
Simulated effects of groundwater withdrawals from aquifers in Ocean County and vicinity, New Jersey
Stephen J. Cauller, Lois M. Voronin, Mary M. Chepiga
2016, Scientific Investigations Report 2016-5035
Rapid population growth since the 1930s in Ocean County and vicinity, New Jersey, has placed increasing demands upon the area’s freshwater resources. To examine effects of groundwater withdrawals, a three-dimensional groundwater-flow model was developed to simulate the groundwater-flow systems of five area aquifers: the unconfined Kirkwood-Cohansey aquifer system and...
Selected techniques for monitoring water movement through unsaturated alluvium during managed aquifer recharge
Joseph M. Nawikas, David R. O’Leary, John A. Izbicki, Matthew K. Burgess
2016, Open-File Report 2016-1180
Managed aquifer recharge is used to augment natural recharge to aquifers. It can be used to replenish aquifers depleted by pumping or to store water during wetter years for withdrawal during drier years. Infiltration from ponds is a commonly used, inexpensive approach for managed aquifer recharge.At some managed...
Plastic debris in 29 Great Lakes tributaries: Relations to watershed attributes and hydrology
Austin K. Baldwin, Steven R. Corsi, Sherri A. Mason
2016, Environmental Science & Technology (50) 10377-10385
Plastic debris is a growing contaminant of concern in freshwater environments, yet sources, transport, and fate remain unclear. This study characterized the quantity and morphology of floating micro- and macroplastics in 29 Great Lakes tributaries in six states under different land covers, wastewater effluent contributions, population densities, and hydrologic conditions....
Wyoming Landscape Conservation Initiative—A case study in partnership development
Frank D’Erchia
2016, Circular 1423
The Wyoming Landscape Conservation Initiative (WLCI) is a successful example of collaboration between science and natural resource management at the landscape scale. In southwestern Wyoming, expanding energy and mineral development, urban growth, and other changes in land use over recent decades, combined with landscape-scale drivers such as climate change...
Importance of regional variation in conservation planning: A rangewide example of the Greater Sage-Grouse
Kevin Doherty, Jeffrey S. Evans, Peter S. Coates, Lara Juliusson, Bradley C. Fedy
2016, Ecosphere (7)
We developed rangewide population and habitat models for Greater Sage-Grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) that account for regional variation in habitat selection and relative densities of birds for use in conservation planning and risk assessments. We developed a probabilistic model of occupied breeding habitat by statistically linking habitat characteristics within 4 miles of...
A synthetic review of notoedres species mites and mange
Janet E. Foley, L.E. Serieys, N. Stephenson, S. Riley, C. Foley, M. Jennings, G. Wengert, W. Vickers, Erin E. Boydston, Lisa L. Lyren, J. Moriarty, D.L. Clifford
2016, Parasitology (143) 1847-1861
Notoedric mange, caused by obligately parasitic sarcoptiform Notoedres mites, is associated with potentially fatal dermatitis with secondary systemic disease in small mammals, felids and procyonids among others, as well as an occasional zoonosis. We describe clinical spectra in non-chiropteran hosts, review risk factors and summarize ecological and epidemiological studies....
Abstract volume for the 2016 biennial meeting of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory
Jacob B. Lowenstern, editor(s)
2016, Open-File Report 2016-1104
IntroductionEvery two years, scientists, natural resource managers, outreach specialists, and a variety of other interested parties get together for the biennial meeting of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory (YVO). Each time, the theme varies. In past years, we have focused the meeting around topics including monitoring plans, emergency response, geodesy,...
