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Desert scrublands comprise the lower to mid-elevation portions of four different ecosystems including the Chihuahuan, Great Basin, Mojave and Sonoran Deserts. Together the area inside their outer boundaries includes over 8% of the surface area of the United States. Despite significant differences in the flora and fauna of these bioregions...

Michigan faces many challenges related to water resources, including flooding, drought, water-quality degradation and impairment, varying water availability, watershed-management issues, stormwater management, aquatic-ecosystem impairment, and invasive species. Michigan’s water resources include approximately 36,000 miles of streams, over 11,000 inland lakes, 3,000 miles of shoreline along the Great Lakes (MDEQ, 2016),...

Marked uncertainties persist regarding the climatic evolution of the Mediterranean region during the Holocene. For instance, whether moisture availability gradually decreased, remained relatively constant, or increased during the last 7000 years remains a matter of debate. To assess Holocene limnology, hydrology and moisture dynamics, the coastal lakes Lago Preola and...

Indigenous Arctic and Subarctic communities currently are facing a myriad of social and environmental changes. In response to these changes, studies concerning indigenous knowledge (IK) and climate change vulnerability, resiliency, and adaptation have increased dramatically in recent years. Risks to lives and livelihoods are often the focus of adaptation research;...

Canada Basin of the Arctic Ocean is the least studied ocean basin in the World. Marine seismic field programs were conducted over the past 6 years using Canadian and American icebreakers. These expeditions acquired more than 14,000 line-km of multibeam bathymetric and multi-channel seismic reflection data over abyssal plain, continental...

Pharmaceutical contaminants are growing aquatic-health concerns and largely attributed to wastewater treatment facility (WWTF) discharges. Five biweekly water samples from 59 small Piedmont (United States) streams were analyzed for 108 pharmaceuticals and degradates using high-performance liquid chromatography and tandem mass spectrometry. The antidiabetic metformin was detected in 89% of samples...

We have developed pyEMU, a python framework for Environmental Modeling Uncertainty analyses, open-source tool that is non-intrusive, easy-to-use, computationally efficient, and scalable to highly-parameterized inverse problems. The framework implements several types of linear (first-order, second-moment (FOSM)) and non-linear uncertainty analyses. The FOSM-based analyses can also be completed prior to parameter...

Comparison of whole-fish polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) and total mercury (Hg) concentrations in mature males with those in mature females may provide insights into sex differences in behavior, metabolism, and other physiological processes. In eight species of fish, we observed that males exceeded females in whole-fish PCB concentration by 17...

Geologic, sediment texture, and physiographic zone maps characterize the sea floor of Vineyard and western Nantucket Sounds, Massachusetts. These maps were derived from interpretations of seismic-reflection profiles, high-resolution bathymetry, acoustic-backscatter intensity, bottom photographs/video, and surficial sediment samples collected within the 494-square-kilometer study area. Interpretations of seismic stratigraphy and mapping of...

A Presidential disaster was declared in northwestern Massachusetts, following flooding from tropical storm Irene on August 28, 2011. During the storm, 3 to 10 inches of rain fell on soils that were susceptible to flash flooding because of wet antecedent conditions. The gage height at one U.S. Geological Survey streamgage...

The U.S. Geological Survey developed flood elevations in cooperation with the Federal Emergency Management Agency for a 14.3-mile reach of the Green River in Colrain, Leyden, and Greenfield, Massachusetts, to assist landowners and emergency management workers to prepare for and recover from floods. The river reach extends from the U.S....

For the final phase of wastewater treatment operations at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in Burlington County, New Jersey, treated effluent is pumped to 12 infiltration basins on a Land Application Site to recharge the unconfined Kirkwood-Cohansey aquifer system. Two of the 12 infiltration basins are operationally ineffective because discharged effluent fails...

The vertical avoidance behavior of the tadpole madtom (Noturus gyrinus) exposed to environmentally relevant concentrations of the granular formulation of the lampricide Bayluscide® was evaluated. The lampricide formulation (3.2 percent active ingredient coated on a sand granule) is used to control larval sea lamprey populations in the Great Lakes. The...

The combined geothermal discharge from over 10,000 features in Yellowstone National Park (YNP) can be can be estimated from the Cl flux in the Madison, Yellowstone, Falls, and Snake Rivers. Over the last 30 years, the Cl flux in YNP Rivers has been calculated using discharge measurements and Cl concentrations...

Atrazine has been implicated in reproductive dysfunction of exposed organisms, and previous studies documented decreased egg production in Japanese medaka (Oryzias latipes) and fathead minnows (Pimephales promelas) during 30-d to 38-d exposures to 0.5 µg/L, 5 µg/L, and 50 µg/L atrazine. The authors evaluated possible mechanisms underlying the reduction in egg production. Gene...

We present the first regional trends in anuran occupancy for eight states of the southeastern United States, based on 13 y (2001–2013) of North American Amphibian Monitoring Program (NAAMP) data. The NAAMP is a longterm monitoring program in which observers collect anuran calling observation data at fixed locations along random...

Habitat selection is an active behavioral process that may vary across spatial and temporal scales. Animals choose an area of primary utilization (i.e., home range) then make decisions focused on resource needs within patches. Dominance may affect the spatial distribution of conspecifics and concomitant habitat selection. Size-dependent social dominance hierarchies...

Continuous gravity data collected near the summit eruptive vent at Kīlauea Volcano, Hawaiʻi, during 2011–2015 show a strong correlation with summit-area surface deformation and the level of the lava lake within the vent over periods of days to weeks, suggesting that changes in gravity reflect variations in volcanic activity. Joint...

1. Drylands represent our planet's largest terrestrial biome and, due to their extensive area, maintain large stocks of carbon (C). Accordingly, understanding how dryland C cycling will respond to climate change is imperative for accurately forecasting global C cycling and future climate. However, it remains difficult to predict how increased...

The Brawley seismic zone (BSZ), in the Salton trough of southern California, has a history of earthquake swarms and geothermal energy exploitation. Some earthquake rate changes may have been induced by fluid extraction and injection activity at local geothermal fields, particularly at the North Brawley Geothermal Field (NBGF) and at...

Exploration for tight oil in the frontier Santanghu Basin of northwest China has resulted in recent commercial discoveries sourced from the lacustrine Upper Permian Lucaogou Formation, already considered a “world class source rock” in the Junggar Basin to the west. Here we apply an integrated analytical program to carbonate-dominated mudrocks...

The spatial scale of environmental layers is an important factor to consider in developing an understanding of ecological processes. This study employed Maxent modeling to investigate the geographic distribution of goitered gazelle, Gazella subgutturosa (Güldenstädt, 1780), in central Iran using uncorrelated variables at a spatial resolution of 250 m. We...

Understanding fault slip rates in the eastern California shear zone (ECSZ) using GPS geodesy is complicated by potentially overlapping strain signals due to many sub-parallel strike-slip faults and by inconsistencies with geologic slip rates. The role of fault system geometry in describing ECSZ deformation may be investigated with total variation...

The recent interest in exploration for shale gas increases the demand for a reliable, compatible resource assessment. Many different assessment methods are used, commonly depending on types and quantity of data available, which may lead to significantly divergent results for the same shale-gas play. This study compares results obtained using...

Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs) consolidate information from varied biodiversity observation sources. Here we demonstrate the links between data sources, EBVs and indicators and discuss how different sources of biodiversity observations can be harnessed to inform EBVs. We classify sources of primary observations into four types: extensive and intensive monitoring schemes,...