Sea level and turbidity controls on mangrove soil surface elevation change
Catherine E. Lovelock, Maria Fernanda Adame, Vicki Bennion, Matthew Hayes, Ruth Reef, Nadia Santini, Donald R. Cahoon
2015, Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science (153) 1-9
Increases in sea level are a threat to seaward fringing mangrove forests if levels of inundation exceed the physiological tolerance of the trees; however, tidal wetlands can keep pace with sea level rise if soil surface elevations can increase at the same pace as sea level rise. Sediment accretion on...
Point spread functions for earthquake source imaging: An interpretation based on seismic interferometry
Hisashi Nakahara, Matthew M. Haney
2015, Geophysical Journal International (202) 54-61
Recently, various methods have been proposed and applied for earthquake source imaging, and theoretical relationships among the methods have been studied. In this study, we make a follow-up theoretical study to better understand the meanings of earthquake source imaging. For imaging problems, the point spread function (PSF) is used to...
Exposure and food web transfer of pharmaceuticals in ospreys (Pandion haliaetus): Predictive model and empirical data
Rebecca S. Lazarus, Barnett A. Rattner, Bowen Du, Peter C. McGowan, Vicki S. Blazer, Mary Ann Ottinger
2015, Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management (11) 118-129
The osprey (Pandion haliaetus) is a well-known sentinel of environmental contamination, yet no studies have traced pharmaceuticals through the water–fish–osprey food web. A screening-level exposure assessment was used to evaluate the bioaccumulation potential of 113 pharmaceuticals and metabolites, and an artificial sweetener in this food web. Hypothetical concentrations in water...
Spatial and temporal variability in growth of southern flounder (Paralichthys lethostigma)
Stephen R. Midway, Tyler Wagner, Stephen A. Arnott, Patrick Biondo, Fernando Martinez-Andrade, Thomas F. Wadsworth
2015, Fisheries Research (167) 323-332
Delineation of stock structure is important for understanding the ecology and management of many fish populations, particularly those with wide-ranging distributions and high levels of harvest. Southern flounder (Paralichthys lethostigma) is a popular commercial and recreational species along the southeast Atlantic coast and Gulf of Mexico, USA. Recent studies have...
Linking state-and-transition simulation and timber supply models for forest biomass production scenarios
Jennifer Costanza, Robert C. Abt, Alexa McKerrow, Jaime Collazo
2015, AIMS Environmental Science (2) 180-202
We linked state-and-transition simulation models (STSMs) with an economics-based timber supply model to examine landscape dynamics in North Carolina through 2050 for three scenarios of forest biomass production. Forest biomass could be an important source of renewable energy in the future, but there is currently much uncertainty about how biomass...
Parameter estimation for groundwater models under uncertain irrigation data
Yonas Demissie, Albert J. Valocchi, Ximing Cai, Nicholas Brozovic, Gabriel B. Senay, Mekonnen Gebremichael
2015, Groundwater (53) 614-625
The success of modeling groundwater is strongly influenced by the accuracy of the model parameters that are used to characterize the subsurface system. However, the presence of uncertainty and possibly bias in groundwater model source/sink terms may lead to biased estimates of model parameters and model predictions when the standard...
Transport, dam passage, and size selection of adult Atlantic Salmon in the Penobscot River, Maine
Douglas B. Sigourney, Joseph D. Zydlewski, Edward Hughes, Oliver Cox
2015, North American Journal of Fisheries Management (35) 1164-1176
Prior to 2012, returning adult Atlantic Salmon Salmo salar had to pass through fishways at three dams in the lower section of the Penobscot River, Maine: Veazie Dam (river kilometer [rkm] 48; removed in 2013), Great Works Dam (rkm 60; removed in 2012), and Milford Dam (rkm 62). To facilitate...
Tracing the cycling and fate of the explosive 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene in coastal marine systems with a stable isotopic tracer, 15N-[TNT]
Richard W. Smith, Penny Vlahos, J.K. Bohlke, Thivanka Ariyarathna, Mark Ballentine, Christopher Cooper, Stephen Fallis, Thomas J. Groshens, Craig R. Tobias
2015, Environmental Science & Technology (49) 12223-12231
2,4,6-Trinitrotoluene (TNT) has been used as a military explosive for over a hundred years. Contamination concerns have arisen as a result of manufacturing and use on a large scale; however, despite decades of work addressing TNT contamination in the environment, its fate in marine ecosystems is not fully resolved. Here...
Downscaling global land-use/land-cover projections for use in region-level state-and-transition simulation modeling
Jason T. Sherba, Benjamin M. Sleeter, Adam W. Davis, Owen P. Parker
2015, AIMS Environmental Science (2) 623-647
Global land-use/land-cover (LULC) change projections and historical datasets are typically available at coarse grid resolutions and are often incompatible with modeling applications at local to regional scales. The difficulty of downscaling and reapportioning global gridded LULC change projections to regional boundaries is a barrier to the use of these datasets...
Evidence of a higher late-Holocene treeline along the Continental Divide in central Colorado
Paul E. Carrara, John McGeehin
2015, The Holocene (25) 1829-1837
Using a combination of 23 radiocarbon ages and annual ring counts from 18 Rocky Mountain bristlecone pine (Pinus aristata) remnants above the local present-day limits, a period of higher treeline has been determined for two sites near the Continental Divide in central Colorado. The highest remnants were found about 30 m...
Use of phosphorus to reduce blooms of the benthic diatom Didymosphenia geminata in an oligotrophic stream
Daniel A. James, Max L. Bothwell, Steven R. Chipps, John Carreiro
2015, Freshwater Science (34) 1272-1281
Blooms of the benthic alga, Didymosphenia geminata [Lyngbye (Schmidt)], were first documented in Rapid Creek, South Dakota, in 2002 and have since been associated with changes to aquatic resources. Low concentration of P has been associated with D. geminata stalk development (i.e., blooms), so we considered elevating P as a...
Comparing ecoregional classifications for natural areas management in the Klamath Region, USA
Daniel A. Sarr, Andrew Duff, Eric C. Dinger, Sarah L. Shafer, Michael Wing, Nathaniel E. Seavy, John D. Alexander
2015, Natural Areas Journal (35) 360-377
We compared three existing ecoregional classification schemes (Bailey, Omernik, and World Wildlife Fund) with two derived schemes (Omernik Revised and Climate Zones) to explore their effectiveness in explaining species distributions and to better understand natural resource geography in the Klamath Region, USA. We analyzed presence/absence data derived from digital distribution...
Early Holocene Great Salt Lake
Charles G. Oviatt, David B. Madsen, David M. Miller, Robert S. Thompson, John P. McGeehin
2015, Quaternary Research (84) 57-68
Shorelines and surficial deposits (including buried forest-floor mats and organic-rich wetland sediments) show that Great Salt Lake did not rise higher than modern lake levels during the earliest Holocene (11.5–10.2 cal ka BP; 10–9 14C ka BP). During that period, finely laminated, organic-rich muds (sapropel) containing brine-shrimp cysts and...
Tectonic and sedimentary linkages between the Belt-Purcell basin and southwestern Laurentia during the Mesoproterozoic ca. 1.60-1.40 Ga
James V. Jones III, Christohper G Dainel, Michael F Doe
2015, Lithosphere (7) 465-472
Mesoproterozoic sedimentary basins in western North America provide key constraints on pre-Rodinia craton positions and interactions along the western rifted margin of Laurentia. One such basin, the Belt-Purcell basin, extends from southern Idaho into southern British Columbia and contains a >18-km-thick succession of siliciclastic sediment deposited ca. 1.47–1.40 Ga. The...
Evaluating the relationship between biomass, percent groundcover and remote sensing indices across six winter cover crop fields in Maryland, United States
Kusuma Prabhakara, W. Dean Hively, Greg W. McCarty
2015, International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation (39) 88-102
Winter cover crops are an essential part of managing nutrient and sediment losses from agricultural lands. Cover crops lessen sedimentation by reducing erosion, and the accumulation of nitrogen in aboveground biomass results in reduced nutrient runoff. Winter cover crops are planted in the fall and are usually terminated in early...
Soil surface organic layers in Arctic Alaska: spatial distribution, rates of formation, and microclimatic effects
Carson Baughman, Daniel H. Mann, David L. Verbyla, Michael L. Kunz
2015, Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences (120) 1150-1164
Organic layers of living and dead vegetation cover the ground surface in many permafrost landscapes and play important roles in ecosystem processes. These soil surface organic layers (SSOLs) store large amounts of carbon and buffer the underlying permafrost and its contained carbon from changes in aboveground climate. Understanding the dynamics of SSOLs...
Can orchards help connect Mediterranean ecosystems? Animal movement data alter conservation priorities
Theresa M. Nogeire, Frank W. Davis, Kevin R. Crooks, Brad H. McRae, Lisa M. Lyren, Erin E. Boydston
2015, American Midland Naturalist (174) 105-116
As natural habitats become fragmented by human activities, animals must increasingly move through human-dominated systems, particularly agricultural landscapes. Mapping areas important for animal movement has therefore become a key part of conservation planning. Models of landscape connectivity are often parameterized using expert opinion and seldom distinguish between the risks and...
Methods used to parameterize the spatially-explicit components of a state-and-transition simulation model
Rachel Sleeter, William Acevedo, Christopher E. Soulard, Benjamin M. Sleeter
2015, AIMS Environmental Science (2) 668-693
Spatially-explicit state-and-transition simulation models of land use and land cover (LULC) increase our ability to assess regional landscape characteristics and associated carbon dynamics across multiple scenarios. By characterizing appropriate spatial attributes such as forest age and land-use distribution, a state-and-transition model can more effectively simulate the pattern and spread of...
NACSN, note 67--Application for revision of Articles 36 and 37, Lithodemic units of the North American stratigraphic code
Robert M. Easton, Lucy E. Edwards, Randall C. Orndorff, Manuel Duguet, Ismael Ferrusquia-Villafranca
2015, Stratigraphy (12) 39-45
Currently the North American Stratigraphic Code, (NACSN 2005, Article 37) sets restrictions on the use of the term “complex” for lithodemic units. With exceptions for “volcanic complex” and “structural complex,” a complex must consist of more than one genetic class of rock (i.e., sedimentary, igneous or metamorphic). Thus, the use...
Ecosystem carbon stocks and sequestration potential of federal lands across the conterminous United States
Zhengxi Tan, Shuguang Liu, Terry L. Sohl, Yiping Wu, Claudia J. Young
2015, PNAS (112) 12723-12728
Federal lands across the conterminous United States (CONUS) account for 23.5% of the CONUS terrestrial area but have received no systematic studies on their ecosystem carbon (C) dynamics and contribution to the national C budgets. The methodology for US Congress-mandated national biological C sequestration potential assessment was used to evaluate...
USGS National Wildlife Health Center quarterly mortality report January 2015 to March 2015
Anne Ballmann, Barbara L. Bodenstein, Robert J. Dusek, Daniel A. Grear, Jennifer G. Chipault
2015, Wildlife Disease Association Newsletter 4-6
No abstract available....
Water's Way at Sleepers River watershed – revisiting flow generation in a post-glacial landscape, Vermont USA
James B. Shanley, Stephen D. Sebestyen, Jeffrey J. McDonnell, Brian L. McGlynn, Thomas Dunne
2015, Hydrological Processes (29) 3447-3459
The Sleepers River Research Watershed (SRRW) in Vermont, USA, has been the site of active hydrologic research since 1959 and was the setting where Dunne and Black demonstrated the importance and controls of saturation-excess overland flow (SOF) on streamflow generation. Here, we review the early studies from the SRRW and...
Life history diversity of Snake River finespotted cutthroat trout: managing for persistence in a rapidly changing environment
Kristen M. Homel, Robert E. Gresswell, Jeffrey L. Kershner
2015, North American Journal of Fisheries Management (35) 789-801
Over the last century, native trout have experienced dramatic population declines, particularly in larger river systems where habitats associated with different spawning life history forms have been lost through habitat degradation and fragmentation. The resulting decrease in life history diversity has affected the capacity of populations to respond to environmental...
Up in arms: Immune and nervous system response to sea star wasting disease
Lauren E Fuess, Morgan E. Eiselord, Collin J. Closek, Allison M. Tracy, Ruth Mauntz, Sarah Gignoux-Wolfsohn, Monica M Moritsch, Reyn Yoshioka, Colleen A. Burge, Drew Harvell, Carolyn S. Friedman, Paul K. Hershberger, Steven B. Roberts
2015, PLoS ONE (10)
Echinoderms, positioned taxonomically at the base of deuterostomes, provide an important system for the study of the evolution of the immune system. However, there is little known about the cellular components and genes associated with echinoderm immunity. The 2013–2014 sea star wasting disease outbreak is an emergent, rapidly spreading disease,...
Predicting redox conditions in groundwater at a regional scale
Anthony J. Tesoriero, Silvia Terziotti, Daniel B. Abrams
2015, Environmental Science & Technology (49) 9657-9664
Defining the oxic-suboxic interface is often critical for determining pathways for nitrate transport in groundwater and to streams at the local scale. Defining this interface on a regional scale is complicated by the spatial variability of reaction rates. The probability of oxic groundwater in the Chesapeake Bay watershed was predicted...
