Monitoring Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem wetlands: Can long-term monitoring help us understand their future?
Andrew M. Ray, Adam J. Sepulveda, Blake R. Hossack, Debra Patla, David Thoma, Robert K. Al-Chokhachy, Andrea R. Litt
2015, Yellowstone Science (23) 44-53
In the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE), changes in the drying cycles of wetlands have been documented. Wetlands are areas where the water table is at or near the land surface and standing shallow water is present for much or all of the growing season. We discuss how monitoring data can...
Seismotectonic significance of the 2008–2010 Walloon Brabant seismic swarm in the Brabant Massif, Belgium
Koen Van Noten, Thomas Lecocq, Anjana K. Shah, Thierry Camelbeeck
2015, Tectonophysics (656) 20-38
Between 12 July 2008 and 18 January 2010 a seismic swarm occurred close to the town of Court-Saint-Etienne, 20 km SE of Brussels (Belgium). The Belgian network and a temporary seismic network covering the epicentral area established a seismic catalogue in which magnitude varies between ML -0.7 and ML 3.2. Based on waveform...
Conservation paleobiology: Leveraging knowledge of the past to inform conservation and restoration
Gregory P. Dietl, Susan M. Kidwell, Mark Brenner, David A. Burney, Karl W. Flessa, Stephen T. Jackson, Paul L. Koch
2015, Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences (43) 79-103
Humans now play a major role in altering Earth and its biota. Finding ways to ameliorate human impacts on biodiversity and to sustain and restore the ecosystem services on which we depend is a grand scientific and societal challenge. Conservation paleobiology is an emerging discipline that uses geohistorical data to...
Western juniper management: assessing strategies for improving greater sage-grouse habitat and rangeland productivity
Shahla Farzan, Derek J.N. Young, Allison G. Dedrick, Mattew Hamilton, Erik C. Porse, Peter S. Coates, Gabriel Sampson
2015, Environmental Management (56) 675-683
Western juniper (Juniperus occidentalis subsp. occidentalis) range expansion into sagebrush steppe ecosystems has affected both native wildlife and economic livelihoods across western North America. The potential listing of the greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) under the U.S. Endangered Species Act has spurred a decade of juniper removal efforts,...
Flood-inundation maps for the White River at Indianapolis, Indiana, 2014
Elizabeth A. Nystrom
2015, Scientific Investigations Report 2015-5051
Digital flood-inundation maps for a 6.4-mile reach of the White River in Indianapolis, Indiana, from 0.3 miles upstream of Michigan Street to the Harding Street Generating Station dam (at the confluence with Lick Creek), were created by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in cooperation with the Indiana Office of Community...
Database for the geologic map of Upper Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming
Atosa A. Abendini, Joel E. Robinson, L.J. Patrick Muffler, D. E. White, Melvin H. Beeson, A. H. Truesdell
2015, Data Series 911
This dataset contains contacts, geologic units, and map boundaries from Miscellaneous Investigations Series Map I-1371, "The Geologic map of upper Geyser Basin, Yellowstone, National Park, Wyoming". This dataset was constructed to produce a digital geologic map as a basis for ongoing studies of hydrothermal processes....
Scientific information in support of water resource management of the Big River area, Rhode Island
David S. Armstrong, John P. Masterson, Keith W. Robinson, Kathleen M. Crawley
2015, Fact Sheet 2015-3035
The Rhode Island Water Resources Board (RIWRB) is concerned that the demand for water may exceed the available public water supply in central and southern Rhode Island. Although water is often assumed to be plentiful in Rhode Island because of abundant rainfall, an adequate supply of water is not always...
Gravity data from the Sierra Vista Subwatershed, Upper San Pedro Basin, Arizona
Jeffrey R. Kennedy
2015, Open-File Report 2015-1086
Observations of very small changes of Earth’s gravitational field (time-lapse gravity) provide a direct, non-invasive method for measuring changes in aquifer storage change. An existing network of gravity stations in the Sierra Vista Subwatershed was revised in 2014 to better understand the spatial distribution of changes in aquifer storage, especially...
Habitat use patterns of the invasive red lionfish Pterois volitans: a comparison between mangrove and reef systems in San Salvador, Bahamas
Catalina Pimiento, James C. Nifong, Margaret E. Hunter, Eric Monaco, Brian R. Silliman
2015, Marine Ecology Progress Series (36) 28-37
The Indo-Pacific red lionfish Pterois volitans is widespread both in its native and its non-native habitats. The rapid invasion of this top predator has had a marked negative effect on fish populations in the Western Atlantic and the Caribbean. It is now well documented that lionfish are invading many tropical and sub-tropical...
Geochemical and mineralogical sampling of the Devonian shales in the Broadtop synclinorium, Appalachian basin, in Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania
Catherine B. Enomoto, James L. Coleman Jr., Christopher S. Swezey, Patrick W. Niemeyer, Frank T. Dulong
2015, Open-File Report 2015-1061
Reconnaissance field mapping and outcrop sampling for geochemical and mineralogical analyses indicate that the Middle Devonian Marcellus Shale in the Broadtop synclinorium and nearby areas from southeastern West Virginia to south-central Pennsylvania has an organic content sufficiently high and a thermal maturity sufficiently moderate to be considered for a shale...
Indian National Gas Hydrate Program Expedition 01 report
Timothy S. Collett, M. Riedel, R. Boswell, J. Presley, P. Kumar, A. Sathe, A. Sethi, M.V. Lall, NGHP Expedition Scientists
2015, Scientific Investigations Report 2012-5054
Gas hydrate is a naturally occurring “ice-like” combination of natural gas and water that has the potential to serve as an immense resource of natural gas from the world’s oceans and polar regions. However, gas-hydrate recovery is both a scientific and a technical challenge and much remains to be learned...
Historic and forecasted population and land-cover change in eastern North Carolina, 1992-2030
Peter R. Claggett, Hearn Jr., David I. Donato
2015, Open-File Report 2014-1125
The Southeast Regional Partnership for Planning and Sustainability (SERPPAS) was formed in 2005 as a partnership between the Department of Defense (DOD) and State and Federal agencies to promote better collaboration in making resource-use decisions. In support of this goal, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) conducted a study to evaluate...
Temporal and basin-specific population trends of quagga mussels on soft sediment of a multi-basin reservoir
Timothy J Caldwell, Michael R. Rosen, Sudeep Chandra, Kumud Acharya, Andrea M Caires, Clinton J. Davis, Melissa Thaw, Daniel M. Webster
2015, Book chapter, Biology and management of invasive Quagga and Zebra Mussels in the western United States
Invasive quagga (Dreissena bugnesis) and zebra (Dreissena ploymorpha) mussels have rapidly spread throughout North America. Understanding the relationships between environmental variables and quagga mussels during the early stages of invasion will help management strategies and allow researchers to predict patterns of future invasions. Quagga mussels were detected in Lake Mead,...
Size distribution of rare earth elements in coal ash
Clint Scott, Amrika Deonarine, Allan Kolker, Monique Adams, James Holland
2015, Conference Paper
Rare earth elements (REEs) are utilized in various applications that are vital to the automotive, petrochemical, medical, and information technology industries. As world demand for REEs increases, critical shortages are expected. Due to the retention of REEs during coal combustion, coal fly ash is increasingly considered a potential resource. Previous...
Peak flow regression equations For small, ungaged streams in Maine: Comparing map-based to field-based variables
Pamela J. Lombard, Glenn A. Hodgkins
2015, Scientific Investigations Report 2015-5049
Regression equations to estimate peak streamflows with 1- to 500-year recurrence intervals (annual exceedance probabilities from 99 to 0.2 percent, respectively) were developed for small, ungaged streams in Maine. Equations presented here are the best available equations for estimating peak flows at ungaged basins in Maine with drainage areas from...
Summary of oceanographic and water-quality measurements in Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge, Wells, Maine, in 2013
Ellyn T. Montgomery, Neil K. Ganju, Patrick J. Dickhudt, Jonathan Borden, Marinna A. Martini, Sandra M. Brosnahan
2015, Open-File Report 2015-1072
Suspended-sediment transport is a critical element controlling the geomorphology of tidal wetland complexes. Wetlands rely on organic material and inorganic sediment deposition to maintain their elevation relative to sea level. The U.S. Geological Survey performed observational deployments to measure suspended-sediment concentration and water flow rates in the tidal channels of...
Coupled interactions between volatile activity and Fe oxidation state during arc crustal processes
Madeleine C.S. Humphreys, R Brooker, D.C. Fraser, A Burgisser, Margaret T. Mangan, C McCammon
2015, Journal of Petrology 1-20
Arc magmas erupted at the Earth’s surface are commonly more oxidized than those produced at mid-ocean ridges. Possible explanations for this high oxidation state are that the transfer of fluids during the subduction process results in direct oxidation of the sub-arc mantle wedge, or that oxidation is caused by the...
A pheromone outweighs temperature in influencing migration of sea lamprey
Cory O. Brant, Ke Li, Nicholas S. Johnson, Weiming Li
2015, Royal Society Open Science (2) 1-7
Organisms continuously acquire and process information from surrounding cues. While some cues complement one another in delivering more reliable information, others may provide conflicting information. How organisms extract and use reliable information from a multitude of cues is largely unknown. We examined movement decisions of sea lampreys (Petromyzon marinus L.) exposed...
A field investigation of the basaltic ring structures of the Channeled Scabland and the relevance to Mars
Laszlo P. Keszthelyi, Windy L. Jaeger
2015, Geomorphology (240) 34-43
The basaltic ring structure (BRS) is a class of peculiar features only reported in the Channeled Scabland of eastern Washington State. They have been suggested to be good analogs, however, for some circular features on Mars. BRSs are found where Pleistocene floods scoured the Columbia River Basin, stripping off the...
Geospatial compilation and digital map of centerpivot irrigated areas in the mid-Atlantic region, United States
Jason S. Finkelstein, Mark R. Nardi
2015, Data Series 932
To evaluate water availability within the Northern Atlantic Coastal Plain, the U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the University of Delaware Agricultural Extension, created a dataset that maps the number of acres under center-pivot irrigation in the Northern Atlantic Coastal Plain study area. For this study, the extent of the...
Estimated abundance of wild burros surveyed on Bureau of Land Management Lands in 2014
Paul C. Griffin
2015, Open-File Report 2015-1084
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) requires accurate estimates of the numbers of wild horses (Equus ferus caballus) and burros (Equus asinus) living on the lands it manages. For over ten years, BLM in Arizona has used the simultaneous double-observer method of recording wild burros during aerial surveys and has...
Water quality of the Little Arkansas River and Equus Beds Aquifer before and concurrent with large-scale artificial recharge, south-central Kansas, 1995-2012
Daniel J. Tappa, Jennifer L. Lanning-Rush, Brian J. Klager, Cristi V. Hansen, Andrew C. Ziegler
2015, Scientific Investigations Report 2015-5023
The city of Wichita artificially recharged about 1 billion gallons of water into the Equus Beds aquifer during 2007–2012 as part of Phase I recharge of the Artificial Storage and Recovery project. This report, prepared in cooperation by the U.S. Geological Survey and the city of Wichita, Kansas, summarizes Little Arkansas River...
Water quality of the Little Arkansas River and Equus Beds Aquifer before and concurrent with large-scale artificial recharge, south-central Kansas, 1995-2012
Daniel J. Tappa, Jennifer L. Lanning-Rush, Andrew C. Ziegler
2015, Fact Sheet 2015-3010
This fact sheet describes baseline water quality of the Equus Beds aquifer and Little Arkansas River and water-quality effects of artificial recharge by the city of Wichita associated with Phase I (2007–present) of the Aquifer Storage and Recovery project. During 1995 through 2012, more than 8,800 surface water and groundwater water-quality samples...
Hydrology of the middle San Pedro area, southeastern Arizona
Jeffrey T. Cordova, Jesse E. Dickinson, Kimberly R. Beisner, Candice B. Hopkins, Jeffrey R. Kennedy, Donald R. Pool, Edward P. Glenn, Pamela L. Nagler, Blakemore E. Thomas
2015, Scientific Investigations Report 2013-5040
In the middle San Pedro Watershed in southeastern Arizona, groundwater is the primary source of water supply for municipal, domestic, industrial, and agricultural use. The watershed comprises two smaller subareas, the Benson subarea and the Narrows-Redington subarea. Early 21st century projections for heavy population growth in the watershed have not...
Quantification of shoreline change along Hatteras Island, North Carolina: Oregon Inlet to Cape Hatteras, 1978-2002, and associated vector shoreline data
Cheryl J. Hapke, Rachel E. Henderson
2015, Open-File Report 2015-1002
Shoreline change spanning twenty-four years was assessed along the coastline of Cape Hatteras National Seashore, at Hatteras Island, North Carolina. The shorelines used in the analysis were generated from georeferenced historical aerial imagery and are used to develop shoreline change rates for Hatteras Island, from Oregon Inlet to Cape Hatteras....
