Predicting exotic annual grass abundance in rangelands of the western United States using various precipitation scenarios
Devendra Dahal, Stephen P. Boyte, Michael Oimoen
2023, Rangeland Ecology and Management (90) 221-230
Expansion of exotic annual grass (EAG), such as cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum L.) and medusahead (Taeniatherum caput-medusae [L.] Nevski), could cause irreversible changes to arid and semiarid rangeland ecosystems in the western United States. The distribution and abundance of EAG species are highly affected by weather variables such as temperature and precipitation. The study's goal is to...
Ground motion and seismic hazard in the central and eastern United States
Morgan P. Moschetti, Eric M. Thompson, Oliver S. Boyd, Davis T. Engler, Bruce Worden, Gabriel Christian Ferragut, Sanaz Rezaeian, Peter M. Powers
2023, Report
This report describes work carried out under the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Interagency Agreement to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) “Research to Support NRC’s Seismic Hazard Analyses” for Task 3, “Seismic Hazard and Ground Motion Models.” The focus of this work has been on evaluation of the Next Generation...
Fluorine-rich mafic lower crust in the southern Rocky Mountains: The role of pre-enrichment in generating fluorine-rich silicic magmas and porphyry Mo deposits
Joshua Mark Rosera, Ryan Edward Frazer, Ryan D. Mills, Kristin Jacob, Sean P. Gaynor, Drew S. Coleman, G. Lang Farmer
2023, American Mineralogist (108) 1573-1596
Fluorine-rich granites and rhyolites occur throughout the southern Rocky Mountains, but the origin of F-enrichment has remained unclear. We test if F-enrichment could be inherited from ancient mafic lower crust by: (1) measuring amphibole compositions, including F and Cl contents, of lower crustal mafic granulite xenoliths from northern Colorado to...
Constraints on the genesis of Au veins in interior Alaska: Evidence from geochronology and vein textures
Douglas C. Kreiner, William Thompson, Jonathan Saul Caine, Ashleigh Ball, Christopher S. Holm-Denoma, Paul O’Sullivan, Holly J. Stein
2023, Conference Paper, Proceedings of SGA 2023: Mineral resources in a changing world
The origin of Au-bearing, low sulfide quartz veins in the Pogo and Tibbs Creek regions of interior Alaska remain enigmatic. Intrusion-related Au and mesozonal orogenic vein models have both been proposed (Thompson and Newberry, 2000; Rhys et al., 2003; Goldfarb et al., 2022; Dilworth et al., 2007). To date, studies...
Induced seismicity and its impact on existing seismic hazard analysis
Charles Mueller, Allison Shumway
2023, Report
We develop a scheme for mapping changes in earthquake rates within a region in near-real-time. A specific goal of the work is to track recent changes in the rates of induced earthquakes in the central and eastern United States. We map rates in a time window of interest, map rates...
Interstate 15 wildlife crossing design considerations for focal wildlife species - Santa Ana-Palomar Mountains Linkage southern California
Trish Smith, Cheryl S. Brehme, Jill Carpenter, Nancy A. Frost, Megan Jennings, Barbara E. Kus, Scott Quinnell, Spring Straham, T. Winston Vickers
2023, Report
The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), along with landowners including San Diego State University, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, Western Riverside Regional Conservation Authority and Riverside County Flood Control District are developing wildlife crossing infrastructure projects along a 3-mile stretch of Interstate 15 (I-15)...
The consequences of neglecting reservoir storage in national-scale hydrologic models: An appraisal of key streamflow statistics
Glenn A. Hodgkins, Thomas M. Over, Robert W. Dudley, Amy M. Russell, Jacob H. LaFontaine
2023, Journal of the American Water Resources Association (60) 110-131
A better understanding of modeled streamflow errors related to basin reservoir storage is needed for large regions, which normally have many ungaged basins with reservoirs. We quantified the difference between modeled and observed streamflows for one process-based and three statistical-transfer hydrologic models, none of which explicitly accounted for reservoir storage....
Pre-eruptive outgassing and pressurization, and post-fragmentation bubble nucleation, recorded by vesicles in breadcrust bombs from vulcanian activity at Guagua Pichincha Volcano, Ecuador
Mathieu Colombier, Michael Manga, Heather M. Wright, Benjamin Bernard, Rebecca deGraffenried, Francisco Caceres, Pablo Samaniego, Jeremie Vasseur, K Jakata, Paul Cook, Donald B. Dingwell
2023, Journal of Geophysical Research - Solid Earth (128)
Breadcrust bombs formed during Vulcanian eruptions are assumed to originate from the shallow plug or dome. Their rim to core texture reflects the competition between cooling and degassing timescales, which results in a dense crust with isolated vesicles contrasting with a highly vesicular vesicle network in the...
Timing of reproduction underlies fitness tradeoffs for a salmonid fish
Jeffrey R Baldock, Robert Al-Chokhachy, Matthew R. Campbell, Annika W. Walters
2023, Oikos (2023)
Life history diversity is generated and maintained in part by density-dependent fitness tradeoffs that inhibit a single trait value from reaching fixation. While central to our understanding of evolution, demonstrating density dependence in the strength of fitness tradeoffs is difficult in natural systems. The...
Landowner and biologist perceptions of game bird predators and management
Samantha R. Fina, Larry M. Gigliotti, Aaron T. Pearse, Joshua D. Stafford
2023, Wildlife Society Bulletin (47)
Nest survival has been identified as one of the most influential vital rates causing population change in game birds, and depredation, often influenced by habitat loss and fragmentation, is the primary cause of nest failure of upland game birds. We were interested in quantifying and comparing the perspectives of landowners...
Compound flood model for the lower Nooksack River and delta, western Washington—Assessment of vulnerability and nature-based adaptation opportunities to mitigate higher sea level and stream flooding
Eric E. Grossman, Nathan R. vanArendonk, Cornelis M. Nederhoff
2023, Scientific Investigations Report 2023-5047
Higher sea level and stream runoff associated with climate change is expected to lead to greater lowland flooding across the Pacific Northwest. Increases in stream runoff that range from 20 to 32 percent by the 2040s and from 52 to 72 percent by the 2080s is expected to steadily increase...
Surrogate regression models estimating nitrate concentrations at six springs in Gooding County, south-central Idaho, 2018–22
Kenneth D. Skinner
2023, Scientific Investigations Report 2023-5095
Populations of endangered Banbury Springs limpet (Idaholanx fresti) and threatened Bliss Rapids snail (Taylorconcha serpenticola) are declining in springs north of the Snake River along the southern Gooding County boundary, in south-central Idaho. One hypothesis for the decline is that increased macrophyte growth, associated with elevated nitrate concentrations in the...
Quantifying site effects and their influence on earthquake source parameter estimations using a dense array in Oklahoma
Hilary Chang, Rachel E. Abercrombie, Nori Nakata, Colin Pennington, Kilian B. Kemna, Elizabeth S. Cochran, Rebecca M. Harrington
2023, Journal of Geophysical Research Solid Earth (128)
We investigate the effects of site response on source parameter estimates using earthquakes recorded by the LArge-n Seismic Survey in Oklahoma (LASSO). While it is well known that near-surface unconsolidated sediments can cause an apparent breakdown of earthquake self-similarity, the influence of laterally varying site conditions remains...
Eastern Indigo snake (Drymarchon couperi) shelter site use In peninsular Florida, USA, and implicatIons for habItat conservatIon
M. Rebecca Bolt, Javan Mathias Bauder, Michael L. Legare, Christopher L. Jenkins, Betsie B. Rothermel, David R. Breininger
2023, Herpetological Conservation and Biology (18) 362-373
Shelters are critical for many species as protection from predators and extreme temperatures. Successful conservation of reptiles requires understanding both shelter site requirements and availability. The Eastern Indigo Snake (EIS; Drymarchon couperi) is endemic to the southeastern U.S. and is federally listed. Recovery has focused on maximizing unfragmented landscapes, with...
Estimating fat content in barred owls (Strix varia) with predictive models developed from direct measures of proximate body composition
Ryan C. Baumbusch, Katie M. Dugger, David Wiens
2023, Conservation Physiology (11)
Body condition indices and related metrics can help assess habitat quality and other ecological processes, and ideally, these metrics are based on measures of lipids directly extracted from the species of interest. In recent decades, barred owls (Strix varia) have become a species of conservation concern as they invaded older...
Improvements and evaluation of the agro-hydrologic VegET model for large-area water budget analysis and drought monitoring
Gabriel B. Senay, Stefanie Kagone, Gabriel Edwin Lee Parrish, Kul Bikram Khand, Olena Boiko, Naga Manohar Velpuri
2023, Hydrology (10)
We enhanced the agro-hydrologic VegET model to include snow accumulation and melt processes and the separation of runoff into surface runoff and deep drainage. Driven by global weather datasets and parameterized by land surface phenology (LSP), the enhanced VegET model was implemented in the cloud to simulate daily soil moisture...
Macroscale analyses suggest invasive plant impacts depend more on the composition of invading plants than on environmental context
Evelyn M. Beaury, Helen Sofaer, Regan Early, Ian S. Pearse, Dana M. Blumenthal, Jeffrey Corbin, Jeffrey M. Diez, Jeffrey Dukes, David Barnett, Ines Ibanez, Laís Petri, Montserrat Vilà, Bethany A. Bradley
2023, Global Ecology and Biogeography (23) 1964-1976
AimNative biodiversity is threatened by the spread of non-native invasive species. Many studies demonstrate that invasions reduce local biodiversity but we lack an understanding of how impacts vary across environments at the macroscale. Using ~11,500 vegetation surveys from ecosystems across the United States, we quantified how the...
Potential economic consequences along migratory flyways from reductions in breeding habitat of migratory waterbirds
Wayne E. Thogmartin, James H. Devries, Darius J. Semmens, James E. Diffendorfer, James A. Dubovksy, Jonathan J. Derbridge, Brady J. Mattsson
2023, Biological Conservation (285)
The migration of species, often across continents, makes it difficult to quantify the cumulative effects of local- and regional-scale conservation actions. Further, variation in stakeholder interests, differing jurisdictional governance processes, priorities, and monitoring abilities across the migratory range shapes place-specific differences in...
Assessing contaminants of emerging concern in the Great Lakes Ecosystem: A decade of method development and practical application
Gerald T. Ankley, Steven R. Corsi, Christine M. Custer, Drew R. Ekman, Stephanie L. Hummel, Kimani L. Kimbrough, Heiko L. Schoenfuss, Daniel L. Villeneuve
2023, Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (42) 2506-2518
Assessing the ecological risk of contaminants in the field typically involves consideration of a complex mixture of compounds which may or may not be detected via instrumental analyses. Further, there are insufficient data to predict the potential biological effects of many detected compounds, leading...
Earth’s mantle composition revealed by mantle plumes
Dominique Weis, Karen Harpp, Lauren N Harrison, Maud Boyet, Catherine Chauvel, Cinzia Farnetani, Val Finlayson, Kanai Lee, Rita Parai, Anat Shahar, Nicole Williamson
2023, Nature Reviews in Earth and Environment (4) 604-625
Mantle plumes originate at depths near the core−mantle boundary (~2,800 km). As such, they provide invaluable information about the composition of the deep mantle and insight into convection, crustal formation, and crustal recycling, as well as global heat and volatile budgets. In this Review, we discuss the effectiveness and challenges...
Carbon sequestration and subsidence reversal in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and Suisun Bay: Management opportunities for climate mitigation and adaptation
Lisamarie Windham-Myers, Patty Oikawa, Steve Deverel, Dylan Chapple, Judith Z. Drexler, Dylan Stern
2023, San Francisco Estuary and Watershed Science (20)
The aquatic landscapes of the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta (hereafter, the Delta) and Suisun Bay represent both a significant past and future soil carbon stock. Historical alterations of hydrologic flows have led to depletion of soil carbon stocks via emissions of carbon dioxide...
Near surface sediments introduce low frequency noise into gravity models
Geoffrey Phelps, Collin Cronkite-Ratcliff
2023, Applied Computing and Geosciences (19)
3D geologic modeling and mapping often relies on gravity modeling to identify key geologic structures, such as basin depth, fault offset, or fault dip. Such gravity models generally assume either homogeneous or spatially uncorrelated densities within modeled rock bodies and overlying sediments, with average densities typically derived from surface and drill-hole sampling....
CGS: Coupled growth and survival model with cohort fairness
Erhu He, Yue Wan, Benjamin Letcher, Jennifer H. Fair, Yiquin Xie, Xiaowei Jia
2023, Conference Paper, Proceedings of the Thirty-Second International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence
Fish modeling in complex environments is critical for understanding drivers of population dynamics in aquatic systems. This paper proposes a Bayesian network method for modeling fish survival and growth over multiple connected rivers. Traditional fish survival models capture the effect of multiple environmental drivers (e.g., stream temperature, stream flow)...
Modeling the water-quality effects to the Klamath River from recirculation in drains and canals, Oregon and California, 2006–15
Erik A. Smith, Annett B. Sullivan
2023, Scientific Investigations Report 2023-5059
The potential recirculation of Klamath Strait Drain (hereafter called by its local name, “Klamath Straits Drain”) water into Ady Canal to reduce the drain discharge of high nutrient loads into the Klamath River was assessed by the U.S. Geological Survey for the Bureau of Reclamation. To study the feasibility of...
Hydrogeology and simulated groundwater availability in reaches 3 and 4 of the Washita River aquifer, southern Oklahoma, 1980–2017
Ian M.J. Rogers, S. Jerrod Smith, Nicole C. Gammill, Natalie J. Gillard, Kayla A. Lockmiller, Evin J. Fetkovich, Jessica S. Correll, Sean P. Hussey
2023, Scientific Investigations Report 2023-5072
The 1973 Oklahoma Groundwater Law (Oklahoma Statutes §82–1020.5) requires that the Oklahoma Water Resources Board conduct hydrologic investigations of the State’s aquifers to determine the maximum annual yield for each groundwater basin. Because more than 20 years have elapsed since the final order was issued, the U.S. Geological Survey, in...
