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Lunar red spots are small spectrally red features that have been proposed to be the result of non-mare volcanism. Studies have shown that a number of red spots are silicic, and are spectrally distinct from both highlands and mare compositions. In this work, we use data from LRO Diviner, Mini-RF,...

Lava flow hazards are usually thought to end when the erupting vent becomes inactive, but this is not always the case. At Kīlauea in August 2014, a spiny ʻaʻā flow erupted from the levee of a crusted perched lava lake that...

Amphibians are among the most sensitive taxa to climate change, and species inhabiting arid and semiarid landscapes at the extremes of their range are especially vulnerable to drought. The Jack Creek, Oregon, USA, population of Oregon spotted frogs (Rana pretiosa) faces unique challenges because...

Introduction: Declining hunter populations across North America present wildlife management agencies with the prospect of declining revenues for wildlife conservation and management and the need for new tools to evaluate management strategies and predict future status of game species and hunters.Methods: Here we present a modeling framework and potential decision support tool...

The Indio subbasin of the Coachella Valley is a desert area of southern California where a growing population depends primarily on groundwater for drinking and agricultural uses. The aquifer system has been supplemented with Colorado River water through managed recharge and widespread irrigation since the mid-20th century. We use a...

Organisms that rely on salt marsh habitat are an important trophic link, helping to maintain estuarine ecosystem productivity. We used GIS to quantify intertidal (assumed salt marsh) area from aerial photographs taken in 1939 and from software-supplied satellite imagery taken in 2021 for tidal creeks in North Carolina (USA)...

With sea level rise threatening coastal development, decision-makers are beginning to act by modifying shorelines. Previous research has shown that hardening or softening shorelines may change the tidal range under future sea level rise. Tidal range can also be changed by natural factors. Coastal marshes, which humans...

The soil and groundwater at the Central Chemical facility, Hagerstown, Maryland, are contaminated due to the blending and production of pesticides and fertilizers during much of the 20th century. Remedial investigations focus on two operable units (OU) consisting of the surface soils and waste disposal lagoon (OU-1) and the groundwater...

Sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus) is an invasive species that is a significant source of mortality for populations of valued fish species across the North American Great Lakes. Large annual control programs are needed to reduce the species' impacts; however, the number of successfully spawning adults...

The Canada Basin (CB) formed during a short period of seafloor spreading inferred to be Early Cretaceous in age. Brookian strata of inferred Early Cretaceous–Holocene age comprise the sedimentary fill of the Canada Basin Tectono-Sedimentary Element (CB TSE). Although the CB has remained tectonically quiet since seafloor...

Position-specific (PS) carbon isotope compositions of light hydrocarbons such as propane and butane isomers (n-butane and i-butane) can provide a wealth of information on the history of natural gases in the subsurface reservoirs and other environments. For PS carbon isotope analysis...

Global reconstructions of Pliocene climate provide important insights into how the climate system operates under elevated temperatures and atmospheric CO2 levels. These reconstructions have been used extensively in paleoclimate modeling experiments for comparison to simulated conditions, and as boundary conditions.Most previous work focused on the Late Pliocene interval known as...

BackgroundShallow, tropical coral reefs face compounding threats from habitat degradation due to coastal development and pollution, impacts from storms and sea-level rise, and pulse disturbances like blast fishing, mining, dredging, and ship groundings that reduce coral reefs’ height and variability. One approach toward restoring coral reef structure from...

In the coming decades, coastal flooding will become more frequent due to sea-level rise and potential changes in storms. To produce global storm surge projections from 1950 to 2050, we force the Global Tide and Surge Model with a ∼25-km resolution climate model ensemble from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project...

Karst aquifers are a vital groundwater resource globally, but features such as rapid recharge and conduit flow make them highly vulnerable to land-surface contamination. We apply environmental age tracers to the south-central Texas Edwards aquifer, a karst resource in a rapidly urbanizing and drought-prone region, to assess vulnerability to land-surface...

Post-wildfire debris flows (PFDF) threaten life and property in western North America. They are triggered by short-duration, high-intensity rainfall. Following a wildfire, rainfall thresholds are developed that, if exceeded, indicate high likelihood of a PFDF. Existing weather forecast products allow forecasters to identify favorable atmospheric conditions for rainfall intensities that...

Effective species management and conservation benefit from knowledge of species distribution and status. Surveys to obtain that information often involve replicate sampling, which increases survey effort and costs. We simultaneously modeled species distribution, abundance and spatial correlation, and compared the uncertainty in replicate abundance estimates of the endangered palila (Loxioides...

Understanding the accuracy and appropriate application scale of satellite-derived maps of vegetation cover is essential for effective management of the vast, remote rangelands of the world. However, the underlying models are updated frequently and may combine with rapidly changing vegetation conditions to cause variations in accuracy and precision over time. We sought...

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) assessed undiscovered potash resources in the Elk Point Basin in Canada and the United States as part of a global mineral resource assessment. The Elk Point Basin is a large, Middle Devonian (Givetian) intracratonic evaporite basin covering approximately 1,200,000 square kilometers (km2) and filled mainly...

Feral horse (Equus caballus) population management is a challenging problem around the world because populations often exhibit density-independent growth, can exert negative ecological effects on ecosystems, and require great cost to be managed. However, strong value-based connections between people and horses cause contention around management decisions. To help make informed...

Blue carbon, a convenient term to encompass the climate mitigation value of coastal carbon dynamics, has received global policy attention and growing datasets to support management actions. Carbon stock assessments in mangroves, seagrass, and tidal marshes document significant carbon storage in soils. Models illustrate significant downward fluxes of carbon dioxide...

Understanding land surface change in and sediment export out of proglacial landscapes is critical for understanding geohazard and flood risks over engineering timescales and characterizing landscape evolution over geomorphic timescales. We used automated Structure from Motion software to process historical aerial photographs and, with modern lidar data, generated a high-resolution DEM time series with coverage over...

Introduction: Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is an increasing public health concern for humans, animals, and the environment. However, the contributions of spatially distributed sources of AMR in the environment are not well defined.Methods: To identify the sources of environmental AMR, the novel microbial Find, Inform, and Test (FIT) model was applied...

ObjectiveThe distinct population segment (DPS) of Yelloweye Rockfish Sebastes ruberrimus inhabiting the Puget Sound/Georgia Basin was listed under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in 2010, and a formal recovery plan for the DPS was published by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries in 2017. In this recovery plan, the...

The Puerto Rican Nightjar Antrostomus noctitherus is an endemic Caprimulgid found in dry coastal and lower montane forests of south-western Puerto Rico. Information on the species (e.g. abundance, nesting biology) has been mostly restricted to forest reserves (i.e. Guánica Forest and Susúa Forest) with limited information available from private lands. We...