Stratigraphic reconnaissance of the Middle Jurassic Red Glacier Formation, Tuxedni Group, at Red Glacier, Cook Inlet, Alaska
David L. LePain, Richard G. Stanley
2015, Report
The Alaska Division of Geological & Geophysical Surveys (DGGS) and U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) are implementing ongoing programs to characterize the petroleum potential of Cook Inlet basin. Since 2009 this program has included work on the Mesozoic stratigraphy of lower Cook Inlet, including the Middle Jurassic Tuxedni Group between Tuxedni...
Status and trends of the Lake Huron offshore demersal fish community, 1976-2012
Edward F. Roseman, Stephen C. Riley, Steve A. Farha, Bryan M. Maitland, Taaja R. Tucker, Stacy A. Provo, Matthew W. McLean
2015, Report
The USGS Great Lakes Science Center has conducted trawl surveys to assess annual changes in the offshore demersal fish community of Lake Huron since 1973. Sample sites include five ports in U.S. waters with less frequent sampling near Goderich, Ontario. The 2012 fall bottom trawl survey was carried out between...
Structured decision making for management of warm-water habitat for manatees. Final report to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Michael Kosempa, Julien Martin, Fred A. Johnson, Ron Mezich, Brad Stith, Charles J. Deutsch, Michelle Masi, Holly H. Edwards
2015, Report
Geomorphology, active tectonics, and landscape evolution in the Mid-Atlantic region
Frank J. Pazzaglia, Mark W. Carter, Claudio Berti, Ronald C. Counts, Gregory S. Hancock, David Harbor, Richard W. Harrison, Matthew J. Heller, Shannon A. Mahan, Helen Malenda, Ryan McKeon, Michelle S. Nelson, Phillip Prince, Tammy M. Rittenour, James Spotilla, G. Richard Whittecar
2015, Book chapter, GSA Field Guides
In 2014, the geomorphology community marked the 125th birthday of one of its most influential papers, “The Rivers and Valleys of Pennsylvania” by William Morris Davis. Inspired by Davis’s work, the Appalachian landscape rapidly became fertile ground for the development and testing of several grand landscape evolution paradigms, culminating with...
Evaluation of perchlorate sources in the Rialto-Colton and Chino California subbasins using chlorine and oxygen isotope ratio analysis
Paul B. Hatzinger, J.K. Bohlke, John A. Izbicki, Nicholas F. Teague, Neil C. Sturchio
2015, Report
Perchlorate (ClO4-) in groundwater can be from synthetic or natural sources, the latter of which include both historical application of imported nitrate fertilizers from the Atacama Desert of Chile and naturally deposited ClO4- that forms atmospherically and accumulates in arid regions such as the southwestern US. The objective of this...
Species conservation profile of the smallmouth bass micropterus dolomieu
Shannon K. Brewer
Michael D. Tringali, James M. Long, Timothy W. Birdsong, Michael S. Allen, editor(s)
2015, Book chapter, Black bass diversity: Multidisciplinary science for conservation
No abstract available...
Wyoming Basin Rapid Ecoregional Assessment
Natasha B. Carr, Cynthia P. Melcher, editor(s)
2015, Open-File Report 2015-1155
The Wyoming Basin Rapid Ecoregional Assessment was conducted in partnership with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The overall goals of the BLM Rapid Ecoregional Assessments (REAs) are to identify important ecosystems and wildlife habitats at broad spatial scales; identify where these resources are at risk from Change Agents, including...
Demographic rates and population viability of black bears in Louisiana
Jared S. Laufenberg, Joseph D. Clark, Michael J. Hooker, Carrie L. Lowe, Kaitlin C. O’Connell-Goode, Jesse C. Troxler, Maria M. Davidson, Michael J. Chamberlain, Richard B. Chandler
2015, Wildlife Monographs (194) 1-37
The Louisiana black bear (Ursus americanus luteolus) was reduced to a few small, fragmented, and isolated subpopulations in the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley by the mid-twentieth century resulting from loss and fragmentation of habitat. In 1992, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) granted the Louisiana black bear threatened...
Dating base flow in streams using dissolved gases and diurnal temperature changes
Ward E. Sanford, Gerolamo C. Casile, Karl B. Haase
2015, Water Resources Research (51) 9790-9803
A method is presented for using dissolved CFCs or SF6 to estimate the apparent age of stream base flow by indirectly estimating the mean concentration of the tracer in the inflowing groundwater. The mean value is estimated simultaneously with the mean residence times of the gas and water in the...
Collapse risk of buildings in the Pacific Northwest region due to subduction earthquakes
Meera Raghunandan, Abbie B. Liel, Nico Luco
2015, Earthquake Spectra (31) 2087-2115
Subduction earthquakes similar to the 2011 Japan and 2010 Chile events will occur in the future in the Cascadia subduction zone in the Pacific Northwest. In this paper, nonlinear dynamic analyses are carried out on 24 buildings designed according to outdated and modern building codes for the cities of Seattle,...
The Swinomish Indian Tribal Community prepares for climate change impacts
Eric E. Grossman, Jamie Donatuto, Sarah Grossman, Larry W. Campbell
2015, Report
From changes in traditional foods to concerns of displacement from rising seas, this coastal community in the Pacific Northwest is assessing potential impacts to make decisions for their future....
A guide to the use of distance sampling to estimate abundance of Karner blue butterflies
Ralph Grundel
2015, Report
This guide is intended to describe the use of distance sampling as a method for evaluating the abundance of Karner blue butterflies at a location. Other methods for evaluating abundance exist, including mark-release-recapture and index counts derived from Pollard-Yates surveys, for example. Although this guide is not intended to be...
Management of aspen in a changing environment
Douglas J. Shinneman, Anne S. Halford, Cheri Howell, Kevin Krasnow, Eva K. Strand
Jeanne Chambers, editor(s)
2015, Report
Aspen communities are biologically rich and ecologically valuable, yet they face myriad threats, including changing climate, altered fire regimes, and excessive browsing by domestic and wild ungulates. Recognizing the different types of aspen communities that occur in the Great Basin, and being able to distinguish between seral and stable aspen stands,...
Practitioners' views of science needs for the Great Lakes coastal ecosystem
Victoria Pebbles, Elizabath C. Lillard, Paul W. Seelbach, Lisa Reynolds Fogarty
2015, Report
In 2014, the U.S. Geological Survey Great Lake Science Center (USGS-GLSC) and the USGS-Michigan Water Science Center partnered with the Great Lakes Commission (GLC) to conduct a series of four workshops with coastal practitioners and managers across the Great Lakes basin to highlight the need for, and get input on,...
Optimization and resilience in natural resources management
Byron K. Williams, Fred A. Johnson
Craig Allen, Ahjond S. Garmestani, editor(s)
2015, Book chapter, Adaptive management of social-ecological systems
We consider the putative tradeoff between optimization and resilience in the management of natural resources, using a framework that incorporates different sources of uncertainty that are common in natural resources management. We address one-time decisions, and then expand the decision context to the more complex problem of iterative decision making....
Seasonal foraging responses of beavers to sodium-enhanced foods: An experimental assessment with field feeding trials
Jennifer Strules, Stephen DeStefano
2015, Journal of Mammalogy (97) 89-101
Salt drive is a seasonal phenomenon common to several classes of wild herbivores. Coincident with shifts of nutrient quality when plants resume growth in the spring, sodium is secondarily lost as surplus potassium is excreted. The beaver (Castor canadensis) is an herbivore whose dietary niche closely follows that of other...
Application-ready expedited MODIS data for operational land surface monitoring of vegetation condition
Jesslyn F. Brown, Daniel M. Howard, Bruce K. Wylie, Aaron M. Friesz, Lei Ji, Carolyn Gacke
2015, Remote Sensing (7) 16226-16240
Monitoring systems benefit from high temporal frequency image data collected from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) system. Because of near-daily global coverage, MODIS data are beneficial to applications that require timely information about vegetation condition related to drought, flooding, or fire danger. Rapid satellite data streams in operational applications...
Building sandbars in Grand Canyon
Paul E. Grams, John C. Schmidt, Scott Wright, David J. Topping, Theodore S. Melis, David M. Rubin
2015, Newsletter
Now, by implementing a new strategy that calls for repeated releases of large volumes of water from the dam, the U.S. Department of the Interior seeks to increase the size and number of these sandbars. Three years into the “High Flow Experiment” protocol, the releases appear to be achieving the...
Assessing shoreline exposure and oyster habitat suitability maximizes potential success for sustainable shoreline protection using restored oyster reefs
Megan K. LaPeyre, Kayla Serra, T. Andrew Joyner, Austin T. Humphries
2015, PeerJ (3)
Oyster reefs provide valuable ecosystem services that contribute to coastal resilience. Unfortunately, many reefs have been degraded or removed completely, and there are increased efforts to restore oysters in many coastal areas. In particular, much attention has recently been given to the restoration of shellfish reefs along eroding shorelines to...
Sediment and discharge yields within a minimally disturbed, headwater watershed in North Central Pennsylvania, USA, with an emphasis on Superstorm Sandy
Kelly O. Maloney, Dustin R. Shull
2015, Water and Environment Journal (29) 402-411
We estimated discharge and suspended sediment (SS) yield in a minimally disturbed watershed in North Central Pennsylvania, USA, and compared a typical storm (September storm, 4.80 cm) to a large storm (Superstorm Sandy, 7.47 cm rainfall). Depending on branch, Sandy contributed 9.7–19.9 times more discharge and 11.5–37.4 times more SS...
The influence of food abundance, food dispersion and habitat structure on territory selection and size of an Afrotropical terrestrial insectivore
Thomas R. Stanley, William D. Newmark
2015, Ostrich (87) 199-207
Most tropical insectivorous birds, unlike their temperate counterparts, hold and defend a feeding and breeding territory year-around. However, our understanding of ecological factors influencing territory selection and size in tropical insectivores is limited. Here we examine three prominent hypotheses relating food abundance, food dispersion (spatial arrangement of food items), and...
Remote Sensing of Actual Evapotranspiration from Cropland: Chapter 3
Trent Biggs, George P. Petropoulos, Naga Manohar Velpuri, Michael Marshall, Edward P. Glenn, Pamela L. Nagler, Alex Messina
Prasad S. Thenkabail, editor(s)
2015, Book chapter, Remote sensing handbook, Vol. III: Remote sensing of water resources, disasters, and urban studies
No abstract available....
Estimation of historic flows and sediment loads to San Francisco Bay,1849–2011
H.R. Moftakhari, D.A. Jay, S.A. Talke, David H. Schoellhamer
2015, Journal of Hydrology (529) 1247-1261
River flow and sediment transport in estuaries influence morphological development over decadal and century time scales, but hydrological and sedimentological records are typically too short to adequately characterize long-term trends. In this study, we recover archival records and apply a rating curve approach to develop the first instrumental estimates of...
Resolving bathymetry from airborne gravity along Greenland fjords
Alexandra Boghosian, Kirsty Tinto, James R. Cochran, David Porter, Stefan Elieff, Bethany L. Burton, Robin E. Bell
2015, Journal of Geophysical Research B: Solid Earth (120) 8516-8533
Recent glacier mass loss in Greenland has been attributed to encroaching warming waters, but knowledge of fjord bathymetry is required to investigate this mechanism. The bathymetry in many Greenland fjords is unmapped and difficult to measure. From 2010 to 2012, National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Operation IceBridge collected a unique...
A geochemical and geophysical assessment of coastal groundwater discharge at select sites in Maui and O’ahu, Hawai’i
Peter W. Swarzenski, H. Dulaiova, M.L. Dalier, C.R. Glenn, C.G. Smith, Curt D. Storlazzi
2015, Book chapter, Coastal research library: Groundwater in the coastal zones of Asia-Pacific
This chapter summarizes fieldwork conducted to derive new estimates of coastal groundwater discharge and associated nutrient loadings at select coastal sites in Hawai’i, USA. Locations for this work were typically identified based on pronounced, recent ecosystem degradation that may at least partially be attributable to sustained coastal groundwater discharge. Our...
