Photomosaics and event evidence from the Frazier Mountain paleoseismic site, trench 1, cuts 5–24, San Andreas Fault Zone, southern California (2010–2012)
Katherine M. Scharer, Tom E. Fumal, Ray J. Weldon II, Ashley R. Streig
2015, Open-File Report 2015-1147
The Frazier Mountain paleoseismic site is located within the northern Big Bend of the southern San Andreas Fault (lat 34.8122° N., lon 118.9034° W.), in a small structural basin formed by the fault (fig. 1). The site has been the focus of over a decade of paleoseismic study due to...
Wintering Bald Eagle count trends in the conterminous United States, 1986–2010
Wade Eakle, Laura S. Bond, Mark R. Fuller, Richard A Fischer, Karen Steenhof
2015, Journal of Raptor Research (49) 259-268
We analyzed counts from the annual Midwinter Bald Eagle Survey to examine state, regional, and national trends in counts of wintering Bald Eagles (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) within the conterminous 48 United States from 1986 to 2010. Using hierarchical mixed model methods, we report trends in counts...
Unusual behavior in the parental care of a house wren (Troglodytes aedon): Post fledging use of an old nest during cold nights
Micah N. Scholer
2015, Wilson Journal of Ornithology (127) 545-547
I report on the unusual behavior of an adult House Wren (Troglodytes aedon) leading recently fledged young back to the nest for two consecutive nights. The ambient temperature reached below 0°C during both nights. Despite disadvantages associated with remaining in the nest, this observation suggests that adult birds may assess...
Camera traps and mark-resight models: The value of ancillary data for evaluating assumptions
Arielle W. Parsons, Theodore R. Simons, Kenneth H. Pollock, Michael K. Stoskopf, Jessica J. Stocking, Allan F. O’Connell
2015, Journal of Wildlife Management (79) 1163-1172
Unbiased estimators of abundance and density are fundamental to the study of animal ecology and critical for making sound management decisions. Capture–recapture models are generally considered the most robust approach for estimating these parameters but rely on a number of assumptions that are often violated but rarely validated. Mark-resight models,...
Sediment yields from small, steep coastal watersheds of California
Jonathan A. Warrick, John M. Melack, Blair M. Goodridge
2015, Journal of Hydrology: Regional Studies (4) 516-534
Global inventories of sediment discharge to the ocean highlight the importance of small, steep watersheds (i.e., those having drainage areas less than 100,000 km2 and over 1000 m of relief) that collectively provide a dominant flux of sediment. The smallest of these coastal watersheds (e.g., those that have drainage areas...
Model averaging and muddled multimodel inferences
Brian S. Cade
2015, Ecology (96) 2370-7382
Three flawed practices associated with model averaging coefficients for predictor variables in regression models commonly occur when making multimodel inferences in analyses of ecological data. Model-averaged regression coefficients based on Akaike information criterion (AIC) weights have been recommended for addressing model uncertainty but they are not valid, interpretable estimates of...
Linking magma transport structures at Kīlauea volcano
Aaron G. Wech, Weston A. Thelen
2015, Geophysical Research Letters (42) 7090-7097
Identifying magma pathways is important for understanding and interpreting volcanic signals. At Kīlauea volcano, seismicity illuminates subsurface plumbing, but the broad spectrum of seismic phenomena hampers event identification. Discrete, long-period events (LPs) dominate the shallow (5-10 km) plumbing, and deep (40+ km) tremor has been observed offshore. However, our inability...
Developing nondestructive techniques for managing conflicts between fisheries and double-crested cormorant colonies
Yasuko Suzuki, Daniel D. Roby, Donald E. Lyons, Karen Courtot, Ken Collis
2015, Wildlife Society Bulletin (39) 764-771
Double-crested cormorants (Phalacrocorax auritus) have been identified as the source of significant mortality to juvenile salmonids (Oncorhynchus spp.) in the Columbia River Basin. Management plans for reducing the size of a large colony on East Sand Island (OR, USA) in the Columbia River estuary are currently being developed. We evaluated habitat...
A food web modeling analysis of a Midwestern, USA eutrophic lake dominated by non-native Common Carp and Zebra Mussels
Michael E. Colvin, Clay Pierce, Timothy W. Stewart
2015, Ecological Modelling (312) 26-40
Food web modeling is recognized as fundamental to understanding the complexities of aquatic systems. Ecopath is the most common mass-balance model used to represent food webs and quantify trophic interactions among groups. We constructed annual Ecopath models for four consecutive years during the first half-decade of a zebra mussel invasion...
Grasshopper sparrow reproductive success and habitat use on reclaimed surface mines varies by age of reclamation
Petra Wood, Frank K. Ammer
2015, Wildlife Society Bulletin (39) 512-520
We studied 3 mountaintop mining–valley fill (MTMVF) complexes in southern West Virginia, USA to examine grasshopper sparrow (Ammodramus savannarum pratensis) demographic response to different age classes of mine land reclamation. For 71 nests monitored during the 2001–2002 breeding seasons, overall nest success (36%) was within the range of nest success...
Linking resource selection and mortality modeling for population estimation of mountain lions in Montana
Hugh S. Robinson, Toni K. Ruth, Justin A. Gude, David Choate, Rich DeSimone, Mark Hebblewhite, Marc R. Matchett, Michael S. Mitchell, Kerry Murphy, Jim Williams
2015, Ecological Modelling (312) 11-25
To be most effective, the scale of wildlife management practices should match the range of a particular species’ movements. For this reason, combined with our inability to rigorously or regularly census mountain lion populations, several authors have suggested that mountain lions be managed in a source-sink or metapopulation framework. We...
Modelling multi-hazard hurricane damages on an urbanized coast with a Bayesian Network approach
H.C.W. van Verseveld, A. R. Van Dongeren, Nathaniel G. Plant, W.S. Jager, C. den Heijer
2015, Coastal Engineering (103) 1-14
Hurricane flood impacts to residential buildings in coastal zones are caused by a number of hazards, such as inundation, overflow currents, erosion, and wave attack. However, traditional hurricane damage models typically make use of stage-damage functions, where the stage is related to flooding depth only. Moreover, these models are...
Re-colonization by common eiders Somateria mollissima in the Aleutian Archipelago following removal of introduced arctic foxes Vulpes lagopus
Margaret R. Petersen, Sarah A. Sonsthagen, Matthew G. Sexson
2015, Journal of Avian Biology (46) 538-549
Islands provide refuges for populations of many species where they find safety from predators, but the introduction of predators frequently results in elimination or dramatic reductions in island-dwelling organisms. When predators are removed, re-colonization for some species occurs naturally, and inter-island phylogeographic relationships and current movement patterns can illuminate processes...
The forcing of monthly precipitation variability over Southwest Asia during the Boreal cold season
Andrew Hoell, Shraddhanand Shukla, Mathew Barlow, Forest Cannon, Colin Kelley, Christopher C. Funk
2015, Journal of Climate (28) 7038-7056
Southwest Asia, deemed as the region containing the countries of Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and Pakistan, is water scarce and receives nearly 75% of its annual rainfall during8 the boreal cold season of November-April. The forcing of Southwest Asia precipitation has been previously examined for the entire boreal cold season from...
Improving efficiency and reliability of environmental DNA analysis for silver carp
Jon J. Amberg, S. Grace McCalla, Emy Monroe, Richard Lance, Kelly Baerwaldt, Mark P. Gaikowski
2015, Journal of Great Lakes Research (41) 367-373
Natural resource agencies have established surveillance programs which use environmental DNA (eDNA) for the early detection of bighead carp Hypophthalmichthys nobilis and silver carp Hypophthalmichthys molitrix before they establish populations within the Great Lakes. This molecular monitoring technique must be highly accurate and precise for confident interpretation and also efficient,...
On critiques of “Stationarity is dead: Whither water management?”
Paul C.D. Milly, Julio L. Betancourt, Malin Falkenmark, Robert M. Hirsch, Zbigniew W. Kundzewicz, Dennis P. Lettenmaier, Ronald J. Stouffer, Michael D. Dettinger, Valentina Krysanova
2015, Water Resources Research (51) 7785-7789
We review and comment upon some themes in the recent stream of critical commentary on the assertion that “stationarity is dead,” attempting to clear up some misunderstandings; to note points of agreement; to elaborate on matters in dispute; and to share further relevant thoughts....
Mid-Cretaceous oblique rifting of West Antarctica: Emplacement and rapid cooling of the Fosdick Mountains migmatite-cored gneiss dome
Rory McFadden, Christian Teyssier, Christine Siddoway, Michael A. Cosca, C. Mark Fanning
2015, LITHOS (232) 306-318
In Marie Byrd Land, West Antarctica, the Fosdick Mountains migmatite-cored gneiss dome was exhumed from mid- to lower middle crustal depths during the incipient stage of the West Antarctic Rift system in the mid-Cretaceous. Prior to and during exhumation, major crustal melting and deformation included transfer and emplacement of...
The climate space of fire regimes in north-western North America
Ellen Whitman, Enric Batllori, Marc-Andre Parisien, Carol Miller, Jonathan D. Coop, Meg A. Krawchuk, Geneva W. Chong, Sandra L. Haire
2015, Journal of Biogeography (42) 1736-1749
Aim. Studies of fire activity along environmental gradients have been undertaken, but the results of such studies have yet to be integrated with fire-regime analysis. We characterize fire-regime components along climate gradients and a gradient of human influence. Location. We focus on a climatically diverse region of north-western North America...
Mineral Resource of the Month: Bromine
Emily Schnebele
2015, Earth (September 2015)
Bromine, along with mercury, is one of only two elements that are liquid at room temperature. Bromine is a highly volatile and corrosive reddish-brown liquid that evaporates easily and converts to a metal at extreme pressures — above about 540,000 times atmospheric pressure. Bromine occurs in seawater, evaporitic (salt) lakes...
Catchment-wide survival of wild- and hatchery-reared Atlantic salmon smolts in a changing system
Daniel S. Stich, Michael M. Bailey, Christopher M. Holbrook, Michael T. Kinnison, Joseph D. Zydlewski
2015, Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences (72) 1352-1365
We developed a hierarchical multistate model to estimate survival of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) smolts in the Penobscot River, USA, over a decade during which two mainstem dams were removed from the catchment. We investigated effects of (i) environmental factors, (ii) rearing history, and (iii) management actions, including dam removal,...
Monitoring landscape-level distribution and migration Phenology of Raptors using a volunteer camera-trap network
David S. Jachowski, Todd E. Katzner, Jane L. Rodrigue, W. Mark Ford
2015, Wildlife Society Bulletin (39) 553-563
Conservation of animal migratory movements is among the most important issues in wildlife management. To address this need for landscape-scale monitoring of raptor populations, we developed a novel, baited photographic observation network termed the “Appalachian Eagle Monitoring Program” (AEMP). During winter months of 2008–2012, we partnered with professional and citizen...
Global patterns and environmental controls of perchlorate and nitrate co-occurrence in arid and semi-arid environments
W Andrew Jackson, J.K. Bohlke, Brian J. Andraski, Lynne S. Fahlquist, Laura M. Bexfield, Frank D. Eckardt, John B. Gates, Alfonso F. Davila, Christopher P. McKay, Balaji Rao, Ritesh Sevanthi, Srinath Rajagopalan, Nubia Estrada, Neil C. Sturchio, Paul B. Hatzinger, Todd A. Anderson, Greta J. Orris, Julio L. Betancourt, David A. Stonestrom, Claudio Latorre, Yanhe Li, Gregory J. Harvey
2015, Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta (164) 502-522
Natural perchlorate (ClO4−) is of increasing interest due to its wide-spread occurrence on Earth and Mars, yet little information exists on the relative abundance of ClO4− compared to other major anions, its stability, or long-term variations in production that may impact the observed distributions. Our objectives were to evaluate the...
Heat flux from magmatic hydrothermal systems related to availability of fluid recharge
M. C. Harvey, J.V. Rowland, G. Chiodini, C.F. Rissmann, S. Bloomberg, P.A. Hernandez, A. Mazot, F. Viveiros, Cynthia A. Werner
2015, Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research (302) 225-236
Magmatic hydrothermal systems are of increasing interest as a renewable energy source. Surface heat flux indicates system resource potential, and can be inferred from soil CO2 flux measurements and fumarole gas chemistry. Here we compile and reanalyze results from previous CO2 flux surveys worldwide to compare heat flux from a...
Atypical den use of Carolina Northern Flying Squirrels (Glaucomys sabrinus coloratus) in the southern Appalachian Mountains
Corinne A. Diggins, Christine A. Kelly, W. Mark Ford
2015, Southeastern Naturalist (14) N44-N49
Glaucomys sabrinus coloratus (Carolina Northern Flying Squirrel) is a federally endangered subspecies that occurs in high elevation forests of the southern Appalachian Mountains. Denning sites may be a limiting factor for this subspecies in areas where cavity trees are not abundant or where interspecific competition from other tree squirrels occurs....
Temporal variation in viral hemorrhagic septicemia virus antibodies in freshwater drum (Aplodinotus grunniens) indicates cyclic transmission in Lake Winnebago, Wisconsin
Anna Wilson-Rothering, Susan Marcquenski, Ryan P. Koenigs, Ronald Bruch, Kendall Kamke, Daniel A. Isermann, Andrew Thurman, Kathy Toohey-Kurth, Tony Goldberg
2015, Journal of Clinical Microbiology (53) 2889-2894
Viral hemorrhagic septicemia virus (VHSV) is an emerging pathogen that causes mass mortality in multiple fish species. In 2007, the Great Lakes freshwater strain, type IVb, caused a large die-off of freshwater drum (Aplodinotus grunniens) in Lake Winnebago, Wisconsin, USA. To evaluate the persistence and transmission of...
