Structural equation model of total phosphorus loads in the Red River of the North Basin, USA and Canada
Karen R. Ryberg
2017, Journal of Environmental Quality (46) 1072-1080
Attribution of the causes of trends in nutrient loading is often limited to correlation, qualitative reasoning, or references to the work of others. This paper represents efforts to improve causal attribution of water-quality changes. The Red River of the North basin provides a regional test case because of international interest...
Local adaptation in Trinidadian guppies alters stream ecosystem structure at landscape scales despite high environmental variability
Troy N. Simon, Ronald D. Bassar, Andrew J. Binderup, Alex S. Flecker, Mary Freeman, James F. Gill, Michael C. Marshall, Steve A. Thomas, Joseph Travis, David N. Reznick, Catherine M. Pringle
2017, Copeia (105) 504-513
While previous studies have shown that evolutionary divergence alters ecological processes in small-scale experiments, a major challenge is to assess whether such evolutionary effects are important in natural ecosystems at larger spatial scales. At the landscape scale, across eight streams in the Caroni drainage, we found that the presence of...
Camera traps reveal an apparent mutualism between a common mesocarnivore and an endangered ungulate
Michael V. Cove, Andrew S. Maurer, Allan F. O’Connell
2017, Mammalian Biology (87) 143-145
Camera traps are commonly used to study mammal ecology and they occasionally capture previously undocumented species interactions. The key deer (Odocoileus virginianus clavium) is an endangered endemic subspecies of the Florida Keys, where it exists with few predators. We obtained a camera trap sequence of 80 photos in which a...
Projecting impacts of climate change on water availability using artificial neural network techniques
Eric D. Swain, Julieta Gomez-Fragoso, Sigfredo Torres-Gonzalez
2017, Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management (143)
Lago Loíza reservoir in east-central Puerto Rico is one of the primary sources of public water supply for the San Juan metropolitan area. To evaluate and predict the Lago Loíza water budget, an artificial neural network (ANN) technique is trained to predict river inflows. A method is...
Do you hear what I see? Vocalization relative to visual detection rates of Hawaiian hoary bats (Lasiurus cinereus semotus)
P. Marcos Gorresen, Paul M. Cryan, Kristina Montoya-Aiona, Frank Bonaccorso
2017, Ecology and Evolution (7) 6669-6679
Bats vocalize during flight as part of the sensory modality called echolocation, but very little is known about whether flying bats consistently call. Occasional vocal silence during flight when bats approach prey or conspecifics has been documented for relatively few species and situations. Bats flying alone in clutter-free airspace are...
Food abundance, prey morphology, and diet specialization influence individual sea otter tool use
Jessica A. Fujii, Katherine Ralls, M. Tim Tinker
2017, Behavioral Ecology (28) 1206-1216
Sea otters are well-known tool users, employing objects such as rocks or shells to break open invertebrate prey. We used a series of generalized linear mixed effect models to examine observational data on prey capture and tool use from 211 tagged individuals from 5 geographically defined study areas throughout the...
Isolation and characterization of the fall Chinook aquareovirus
Negar Makhsous, Nicole L. Jensen, Katherine H. Haman, William N. Batts, Keith R. Jerome, James Winton, Alexander L. Greninger
2017, Virology Journal (14) 1-7
BackgroundSalmon are paramount to the economy, ecology, and history of the Pacific Northwest. Viruses constitute one of the major threats to salmon health and well-being, with more than twenty known virus species that infect salmon. Here, we describe the isolation and characterization of the fall...
Geospatial tools effectively estimate nonexceedance probabilities of daily streamflow at ungauged and intermittently gauged locations in Ohio
William H. Farmer, G. F. Koltun
2017, Journal of Hydrology: Regional Studies (13) 208-221
Study regionThe state of Ohio in the United States, a humid, continental climate.Study focusThe estimation of nonexceedance probabilities of daily streamflows as an alternative means of establishing the relative magnitudes of streamflows associated with hydrologic and water-quality observations.New hydrological insights for the regionSeveral methods...
The extremely divergent maternally- and paternally-transmitted mitochondrial genomes are co-expressed in somatic tissues of two freshwater mussel species with doubly uniparental inheritance of mtDNA
Sophie Breton, Karim Bouvet, Gabrielle Auclair, Stephanie Ghazal, Bernard E. Sietman, Nathan A. Johnson, Stefano Bettinazzi, Donald T. Dtewart, Davide Guerra
2017, PLoS ONE (12) 1-13
Freshwater mussel species with doubly uniparental inheritance (DUI) of mtDNA are unique because they are naturally heteroplasmic for two extremely divergent mtDNAs with ~50% amino acid differences for protein-coding genes. The paternally-transmitted mtDNA (or M mtDNA) clearly functions in sperm in these species, but it is still unknown whether it...
Evaluating the role of land cover and climate uncertainties in computing gross primary production in Hawaiian Island ecosystems
Heather L. Kimball, Paul Selmants, Alvaro Moreno, Running Steve W, Christian P. Giardina
2017, PLoS ONE (12)
Gross primary production (GPP) is the Earth’s largest carbon flux into the terrestrial biosphere and plays a critical role in regulating atmospheric chemistry and global climate. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS)-MOD17 data product is a widely used remote sensing-based model that provides global estimates of spatiotemporal trends in GPP....
Glacial conditioning of stream position and flooding in the braid plain of the Exit Glacier foreland, Alaska
Janet H. Curran, Michael G. Loso, Haley B. Williams
2017, Geomorphology (293 ) 272-288
Flow spilling out of an active braid plain often signals the onset of channel migration or avulsion to previously occupied areas. In a recently deglaciated environment, distinguishing between shifts in active braid plain location, considered reversible by fluvial processes at short timescales, and more permanent glacier-conditioned changes in stream position can be critical to...
Holistic assessment of occurrence and fate of metolachlor within environmental compartments of agricultural watersheds
Claire E. Rose, Richard H. Coupe, Paul D. Capel, Richard M. Webb
2017, Science of the Total Environment (612) 708-719
Background: Metolachlor [(RS)-2-Chloro-N-(2-ethyl-6-methyl-phenyl)-N-(1-methoxypropan-2-yl)acetamide] and two degradates (metolachlor ethane-sulfonic acid and metolachlor oxanilic acid) are commonly observed in surface and groundwater. The behavior and fate of these compounds were examined over a 12-year period in seven agricultural watersheds in the United States. They were quantified in air, rain, streams, overland flow,...
Assessing coastal wetland vulnerability to sea-level rise along the northern Gulf of Mexico coast: Gaps and opportunities for developing a coordinated regional sampling network
Michael J. Osland, Kereen T. Griffith, Jack C. Larriviere, Laura C. Feher, Donald R. Cahoon, Nicholas M. Enwright, David A. Oster, John M. Tirpak, Mark S. Woodrey, Renee C. Collini, Joseph J. Baustian, Joshua L. Breithaupt, Julia A Cherry, Jeremy R. Conrad, Nicole Cormier, Carlos A. Coronado-Molina, Joseph F. Donoghue, Sean A. Graham, Jennifer W. Harper, Mark W. Hester, Rebecca J. Howard, Ken W. Krauss, Daniel Kroes, Robert R. Lane, Karen L. McKee, Irving A. Mendelssohn, Beth A. Middleton, Jena A. Moon, Sarai Piazza, Nicole M. Rankin, Fred H. Sklar, Gregory D. Steyer, Kathleen M. Swanson, Christopher M. Swarzenski, William Vervaeke, Jonathan M Willis, K. Van Wilson
2017, PLoS ONE (12)
Coastal wetland responses to sea-level rise are greatly influenced by biogeomorphic processes that affect wetland surface elevation. Small changes in elevation relative to sea level can lead to comparatively large changes in ecosystem structure, function, and stability. The surface elevation table-marker horizon (SET-MH) approach is being used globally to quantify...
Atoll groundwater movement and its response to climatic and sea-level fluctuations
Ferdinand K. J. Oberle, Peter W. Swarzenski, Curt D. Storlazzi
2017, Water (9)
Groundwater resources of low-lying atoll islands are threatened due to short-term and long-term changes in rainfall, wave climate, and sea level. A better understanding of how these forcings affect the limited groundwater resources was explored on Roi-Namur in the Republic of the Marshall Islands. As part of a 16-month study,...
USA National Phenology Network’s volunteer-contributed observations yield predictive models of phenological transitions
Theresa M. Crimmins, Michael A. Crimmins, Katherine L. Gerst, Alyssa H. Rosemartin, Jake Weltzin
2017, PLoS ONE (12) 1-17
In support of science and society, the USA National Phenology Network (USA-NPN) maintains a rapidly growing, continental-scale, species-rich dataset of plant and animal phenology observations that with over 10 million records is the largest such database in the United States. Contributed voluntarily by professional and citizen scientists, these opportunistically collected...
Studies of wolf x coyote hybridization via artificial insemination
L. David Mech, Cheryl S. Asa, Margaret Callahan, Bruce W. Christensen, Fran Smith, Julie K. Young
2017, PLoS ONE (12) 1-12
Following the production of western gray wolf (Canis lupus) x western coyote (Canis latrans) hybrids via artificial insemination (AI), the present article documents that the hybrids survived in captivity for at least 4 years and successfully bred with each other. It further reports that backcrossing one of the hybrids to...
U.S. Geological Survey sage-grouse and sagebrush ecosystem research annual report for 2017
Steven E. Hanser, editor(s)
2017, Circular 1436
The sagebrush (Artemisia spp.) ecosystem extends across a large portion of the Western United States, and the greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) is one of the iconic species of this ecosystem. Greater sage-grouse populations occur in 11 States and are dependent on relatively large expanses of sagebrush-dominated habitat. Sage-grouse populations have...
Validation of the USGS Landsat Burned Area Essential Climate Variable (BAECV) across the conterminous United States
Melanie K. Vanderhoof, Nicole Fairaux, Yen-Ju G. Beal, Todd Hawbaker
2017, Remote Sensing of Environment (198) 393-406
The Landsat Burned Area Essential Climate Variable (BAECV), developed by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), capitalizes on the long temporal availability of Landsat imagery to identify burned areas across the conterminous United States (CONUS) (1984–2015). Adequate validation of such products is critical for their proper usage and interpretation. Validation of...
Climate, wildfire, and erosion ensemble foretells more sediment in western USA watersheds
Joel B. Sankey, Jason R. Kreitler, Todd Hawbaker, Jason L. McVay, Mary Ellen Miller, Erich R. Mueller, Nicole M. Vaillant, Scott E. Lowe, Temuulen T. Sankey
2017, Geophysical Research Letters (44) 8884-8892
The area burned annually by wildfires is expected to increase worldwide due to climate change. Burned areas increase soil erosion rates within watersheds, which can increase sedimentation in downstream rivers and reservoirs. However, which watersheds will be impacted by future wildfires is largely unknown. Using an ensemble of climate, fire,...
From coseismic offsets to fault-block mountains
George A. Thompson, Thomas E. Parsons
2017, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (114) 9820-9825
In the Basin and Range extensional province of the western United States, coseismic offsets, under the influence of gravity, display predominantly subsidence of the basin side (fault hanging wall), with comparatively little or no uplift of the mountainside (fault footwall). A few decades later, geodetic measurements [GPS and interferometric synthetic...
Experimental observations on the decay of environmental DNA from bighead and silver carps
Richard F. Lance, Katy E. Klymus, Catherine A. Richter, Xin Guan, Heather L. Farrington, Matthew R. Carr, Nathan Thompson, Duane Chapman, Kelly L. Baerwaldt
2017, Management of Biological Invasions (8) 343-359
Interest in the field of environmental DNA (eDNA) is growing rapidly and eDNA surveys are becoming an important consideration for aquatic resource managers dealing with invasive species. However, in order for eDNA monitoring to mature as a research and management tool, there are several critical knowledge gaps that must be...
Survivorship across the annual cycle of a migratory passerine, the willow flycatcher
Eben H. Paxton, Scott L. Durst, Mark K. Sogge, Thomas J. Koronkiewicz, Kristina L. Paxton
2017, Journal of Avian Biology (48) 1126-1131
Annual survivorship in migratory birds is a product of survival across the different periods of the annual cycle (i.e. breeding, wintering, and migration), and may vary substantially among these periods. Determining which periods have the highest mortality, and thus are potentially limiting a population, is important especially for species of...
Comparison of acoustic recorders and field observers for monitoring tundra bird communities
Skyler T. Vold, Colleen M. Handel, Lance B. McNew
2017, Wildlife Society Bulletin (41) 566-576
Acoustic recorders can be useful for studying bird populations but their efficiency and accuracy should be assessed in pertinent ecological settings before use. We investigated the utility of an acoustic recorder for monitoring abundance of tundra‐breeding birds relative to point‐count surveys in northwestern Alaska, USA, during 2014. Our objectives were...
Assessment of forest degradation in Vietnam using Landsat time series data
James Vogelmann, Phung Van Khoa, Xuan Lan, Jacob S. Shermeyer, Hua Shi, Michael C. Wimberly, Hoang Tat Duong, Le Van Huong
2017, Forests (8) 1-22
Landsat time series data were used to characterize forest degradation in Lam Dong Province, Vietnam. We conducted three types of image change analyses using Landsat time series data to characterize the land cover changes. Our analyses concentrated on the timeframe of 1973–2014, with much emphasis on the latter part of...
New zircon (U-Th)/He and U/Pb eruption age for the Rockland tephra, western USA
Matthew A. Coble, Seth D. Burgess, Erik W. Klemetti
2017, Quaternary Science Reviews (172) 109-117
Eruption ages of a number of prominent Quaternary volcanic deposits remain inaccurately and/or imprecisely constrained, despite their importance as regional stratigraphic markers in paleo-environment reconstruction and as evidence of climate-altering eruptions. Accurately dating volcanic deposits presents challenging analytical considerations, including poor radiogenic yield, scarcity of datable minerals, and contamination of...
