Increasing capture efficiency of pallid sturgeon Scaphirhynchus albus (Forbes and Richardson, 1905) and the reliability of catch rate estimates
R. J. DeVries, D. A. Hann, H.L. Schramm Jr.
2015, Journal of Applied Ichthyology (31) 603-608
This study evaluated the effects of environmental parameters on the probability of capturing endangered pallid sturgeon (Scaphirhynchus albus) using trotlines in the lower Mississippi River. Pallid sturgeon were sampled by trotlines year round from 2008 to 2011. A logistic regression model indicated water temperature (T; P < 0.01) and depth (D; P = 0.03)...
Velocity bias induced by flow patterns around ADCPs and associated deployment platforms
David S. Mueller
2015, Conference Paper
Velocity measurements near the Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP) are important for mapping surface currents, measuring velocity and discharge in shallow streams, and providing accurate estimates of discharge in the top unmeasured portion of the water column. Improvements to ADCP performance permit measurement of velocities much closer (5 cm) to...
Repeated count surveys help standardize multi-agency estimates of American Oystercatcher (Haematopus palliatus) abundance
Nathan J. Hostetter, Beth Gardner, Sara H. Schweitzer, Ruth Boettcher, Alexandra L. Wilke, Lindsay Addison, William R. Swilling, Kenneth H. Pollock, Theodore R. Simons
2015, The Condor (117) 354-363
The extensive breeding range of many shorebird species can make integration of survey data problematic at regional spatial scales. We evaluated the effectiveness of standardized repeated count surveys coordinated across 8 agencies to estimate the abundance of American Oystercatcher (Haematopus palliatus) breeding pairs in the southeastern United States. Breeding season...
Changes in total phosphorus concentration in the Red River of the North Basin, 1970-2012
Karen R. Ryberg, F. Adnan Akyuz, Wei Lin
2015, Conference Paper, ASABE/CSBE North Central Intersectional Meeting Papers
The Red River of the North drains much of eastern North Dakota and northwestern Minnesota and flows north into Manitoba, Canada, ultimately into Lake Winnipeg; therefore, water quality is an International concern. With increased runoff in the past few decades, phosphorus flux (the amount of phosphorus transported by the river)...
Tidal management sffects sub-adult fish assemblages in impounded South Carolina Marshes
Ben L. Carswell, James Peterson, Cecil A. Jennings
2015, Wetlands Ecology and Management (23) 1015-1031
In coastal South Carolina, most impounded marshes are managed for waterfowl; fewer are managed for fishes. Tidal control is central to each strategy but raises concerns that nursery function could be impaired. This research examined the assemblage composition of fishes during early-life stages. We sampled two impoundments of each management...
Increasing seismicity in the U. S. midcontinent: Implications for earthquake hazard
William L. Ellsworth, Andrea L. Llenos, Arthur F. McGarr, Andrew J. Michael, Justin L. Rubinstein, Charles S. Mueller, Mark D. Petersen, Eric Calais
2015, The Leading Edge (34) 618-626
Earthquake activity in parts of the central United States has increased dramatically in recent years. The space-time distribution of the increased seismicity, as well as numerous published case studies, indicates that the increase is of anthropogenic origin, principally driven by injection of wastewater coproduced with oil and gas from tight...
Book Reivew: A chance for lasting survival: Ecology and behavior of wild giant pandas
Frank T. van Manen
2015, The Quarterly Review of Biology (90) 238-239
“If we watch species going extinct in front of us, how useful is that we publish 100 or even 1,000 papers by studying them?” (p. 330). This quote from senior author Pan Wenshi captures an important essence of this book. A translation of a 2001 monograph originally published in Chinese,...
Measurements of the initiation of post-wildfire runoff during rainstorms using in situ overland flow detectors
John A. Moody, Richard G. Martin
2015, Earth Surface Processes and Landforms (40) 1043-1056
Overland flow detectors (OFDs) were deployed in 2012 on a hillslope burned by the 2010 Fourmile Canyon fire near Boulder, Colorado, USA. These detectors were simple, electrical resistor-type instruments that output a voltage (0–2·5 V) and were designed to measure and record the time of runoff initiation, a signal proportional...
Megathrust earthquakes and sea-level change: A tribute to George Plafker
Jeffrey T. Freymueller
2015, Quaternary Science Reviews (113) 1-2
For numerous scientific disciplines that contribute to the understanding of megathrust earthquakes, 2014 was an anniversary year of two great, >Mw9, earthquakes; fifty years since the March 27 1964 earthquake in Alaska and ten years since the December 26 2004 Aceh-Andaman earthquake and attendant tsunami. 2014 was also the final...
Projection of corn production and stover-harvesting impacts on soil organic carbon dynamics in the U.S. Temperate Prairies
Yiping Wu, Shuguang Liu, Claudia J. Young, Devendra Dahal, Terry L. Sohl, Brian Davis
2015, Scientific Reports (5)
Terrestrial carbon sequestration potential is widely considered as a realistic option for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. However, this potential may be threatened by global changes including climate, land use, and management changes such as increased corn stover harvesting for rising production of cellulosic biofuel. Therefore, it is critical to investigate...
Risk management of El Chichón and Tacaná Volcanoes: Lessons learned from past volcanic crises: Chapter 8
Servando De la Cruz-Reyna, Robert I. Tilling
2015, Book chapter, Active Volcanoes of Chiapas (Mexico): El Chichón and Tacaná
Before 1985, Mexico lacked civil-protection agencies with a mission to prevent and respond to natural and human-caused disasters; thus, the government was unprepared for the sudden eruption of El Chichón Volcano in March–April 1982, which produced the deadliest volcanic disaster in the country’s recorded history (~2,000 fatalities). With the sobering...
Postearthquake relaxation evidence for laterally variable viscoelastic structure and water content in the Southern California mantle
Frederick Pollitz
2015, Journal of Geophysical Research B: Solid Earth (120) 2672-2696
I reexamine the lower crust and mantle relaxation following two large events in the Mojave Desert: the 1992 M7.3 Landers and 1999 M7.1 Hector Mine, California, earthquakes. Time series from continuous GPS sites out to 300 km from the ruptures are used to constrain models of postseismic relaxation. Crustal motions...
Celestine-bearing geodes from Wayne and Emery counties, southeastern Utah: Genesis and mineralogy
Daniel E. Kile, Richard D. Dayvault, William C. Hood, H. Steven Hatch
2015, Rocks & Minerals (90) 314-337
Geodes containing celestine with associated quartz, calcite, chlorite, and other minerals occur in the Jurassic Curtis Formation of Emery and Wayne counties off the east and south flanks of the San Rafael Swell in southeastern Utah. The two areas discussed in this article produce geodes to 25 cm wide containing...
Sedimentology of SPICE (Steptoean positive carbon isotope excursion): A high-resolution trace fossil and microfabric analysis of the middle to late Cambrian Alum Shale Formation, southern Sweden
Sven Egenhoff, Neil Fishman, Per Ahlberg, Jorg Maletz, Allison Jackson, Ketki Kolte, Heather A. Lowers, James Mackie, Warren Newby, Matthew Petrowsky
2015, Book chapter, Paying Attention to Mudrocks: Priceless!
The Cambrian Alum Shale Formation in the Andrarum-3 core from Scania, southern Sweden, consists of black siliciclastic mudstone with minor carbonate intercalations. Four facies comprise three siliciclastic mudstones and one fine-grained carbonate. The facies reflect deposition along a transect from deep ramp to basin on a Cambrian shelf. The three...
Updating the USGS seismic hazard maps for Alaska
Charles Mueller, Richard W. Briggs, Robert L. Wesson, Mark D. Petersen
2015, Quaternary Science Reviews (113) 39-47
The U.S. Geological Survey makes probabilistic seismic hazard maps and engineering design maps for building codes, emergency planning, risk management, and many other applications. The methodology considers all known earthquake sources with their associated magnitude and rate distributions. Specific faults can be modeled if slip-rate or recurrence information is available....
The influence of Tamarix ramosissima defoliation on population movements of the northern tamarisk beetle (Diorhabda carinulata) within the Colorado Plateau: Chapter 18
Levi R. Jamison, Charles van Riper III, Dan W. Bean
2015, Book chapter, The Colorado Plateau VI: Science and Management at the Landscape Scale
The northern tamarisk beetle (Diorhabda carinulata) was introduced to the Colorado Plateau within the Colorado River Basin in 2004, in an effort to control invasive/exotic tamarisk (Tamarix ramosissima) plants. Since release, there has been rapid beetle colonization and subsequent defoliation of tamarisk along the Colorado River corridor. We collected plant...
The challenges of remote monitoring of wetlands
Alisa L. Gallant
2015, Remote Sensing (7) 10938-10950
Wetlands are highly productive and support a wide variety of ecosystem goods and services. Various forms of global change impose compelling needs for timely and reliable information on the status of wetlands worldwide, but several characteristics of wetlands make them challenging to monitor remotely: they lack a single, unifying land-cover...
Baseline and premining geochemical characterization of mined sites
D. Kirk Nordstrom
2015, Applied Geochemistry (57) 17-34
A rational goal for environmental restoration of new, active, or inactive mine sites would be ‘natural background’ or the environmental conditions that existed before any mining activities or other related anthropogenic activities. In a strictly technical sense, there is no such thing as natural background (or entirely non-anthropogenic) existing today...
A reply to Iversen et al.'s comment “Monitoring of animal abundance by environmental DNA - An increasingly obscure perspective”
Katy E. Klymus, Cathy A. Richter, Duane Chapman, Craig P. Paukert
2015, Biological Conservation (192) 481-482
We appreciate the conversation put forward by Iversen et al. (2015) in their response to our article “Quantification of eDNA shedding rates from invasive bighead carp Hypophthalmichthys nobilis and silver carp Hypophthalmichthys molitrix” in the 2015 environmental DNA special issue of Biological Conservation.We agree with Iversen et al.'s concern about...
Measuring storm tide and high-water marks caused by Hurricane Sandy in New York: Chapter 2
Amy E. Simonson, Riley Behrens
2015, Book chapter, Learning from the Impacts of Superstorm Sandy
In response to Hurricane Sandy, personnel from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) deployed a temporary network of storm-tide sensors from Virginia to Maine. During the storm, real-time water levels were available from tide gages and rapid-deployment gages (RDGs). After the storm, USGS scientists retrieved the storm-tide sensors and RDGs and...
Suspended-sediment transport and storage: A demonstration of acoustic methods in the evaluation of reservoir management strategies for a small water-supply reservoir in western Colorado
Cory A. Williams, Rodney J. Richards, Kent L. Collins
2015, Conference Paper
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) and local stakeholder groups are evaluating reservoir-management strategies within Paonia Reservoir. This small reservoir fills to capacity each spring and requires approximately half of the snowmelt-runoff volume from its sediment-laden source waters, Muddy Creek. The U.S. Geological Survey is currently conducting high-resolution (15-minute data-recording...
Using monitoring and modeling to define the hazard posed by the reactivated Ferguson rock slide, Merced Canyon, California
Jerome V. De Graff, Alan J. Gallegos, Mark E. Reid, Richard G. Lahusen, Roger P. Denlinger
2015, Natural Hazards (76) 769-789
Rapid onset natural disasters such as large landslides create a need for scientific information about the event, which is vital to ensuring public safety, restoring infrastructure, preventing additional damage, and resuming normal economic activity. At the same time, there is limited data available upon which to base reliable scientific responses....
Decision support system for optimally managing water resources to meet multiple objectives in the Savannah River Basin
Edwin A. Roehl Jr., Paul Conrads
2015, Journal of South Carolina Water Resources (2) 16-23
Managers of large river basins face conflicting demands for water resources such as wildlife habitat, water supply, wastewater assimilative capacity, flood control, hydroelectricity, and recreation. The Savannah River Basin, for example, has experienced three major droughts since 2000 that resulted in record low water levels in its reservoirs, impacting dependent...
Geomicrobial interactions with arsenic and antimony
Ronald S. Oremland
2015, Book chapter, Ehrlich’s Geomicrobiology
Although arsenic and antimony are generally toxic to life, some microorganisms exist that can metabolize certain forms of these elements. Some can use arsenite or stibnite as potential or sole energy sources, whereas others can use aresenate and antimonite (as was discovered only recently) as terminal electron acceptors. Still other...
Nutrient attenuation in rivers and streams, Puget Sound Basin, Washington
Rich W. Sheibley, Christopher P. Konrad, Robert W. Black
2015, Scientific Investigations Report 2015-5074
Nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus are important for aquatic ecosystem health. Excessive amounts of nutrients, however, can make aquatic ecosystems harmful for biota because enhanced growth and decay cycles of aquatic algae can reduce dissolved oxygen in the water. In Puget Sound marine waters, low dissolved oxygen concentrations are...
