The 1868 Hayward fault, California, earthquake: Implications for earthquake scaling relations on partially creeping faults
Susan E. Hough, Stacey Martin
2015, Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (105) 2894-2909
The 21 October 1868 Hayward, California, earthquake is among the best-characterized historical earthquakes in California. In contrast to many other moderate-to-large historical events, the causative fault is clearly established. Published magnitude estimates have been fairly consistent, ranging from 6.8 to 7.2, with 95% confidence limits including values as low as...
U.S. Geological Survey National Water Census: Colorado River Basin Geographic Focus Area Study
Breton W. Bruce, David W. Clow, Molly A. Maupin, Matthew P. Miller, Gabriel B. Senay, Graham A. Sexstone, David D. Susong
2015, Fact Sheet 2015-3080
Introduction The U.S. Geological Survey’s (USGS) concept of a national census (or accounting) of water resources has evolved over the last several decades as the Nation has experienced increasing concern over water availability for multiple competing uses. The implementation of a USGS National Water Census was described in the USGS 2007...
Portfolio theory as a management tool to guide conservation and restoration of multi-stock fish populations
Mark R. DuFour, Cassandra J. May, Edward F. Roseman, Stuart A. Ludsin, Christopher S. Vandergoot, Jeremy J. Pritt, Michael E. Fraker, Jeremiah J. Davis, Jeffery T. Tyson, Jeffery G. Miner, Elizabeth A. Marschall, Christine M. Mayer
2015, Ecosphere (6)
Habitat degradation and harvest have upset the natural buffering mechanism (i.e., portfolio effects) of many large-scale multi-stock fisheries by reducing spawning stock diversity that is vital for generating population stability and resilience. The application of portfolio theory offers a means to guide management activities by quantifying the importance of multi-stock...
Seasonal variation in habitat use of juvenile Steelhead in a tributary of Lake Ontario
Emily W. Studdert, James H. Johnson
2015, Northeastern Naturalist (22) 717-729
We examined seasonal-habitat use by subyearling and yearling Oncorhynchus mykiss (Rainbow Trout or Steelhead) in Trout Brook, a tributary of the Salmon River, NY. We determined daytime fish-habitat use and available habitat during August and October of the same year and observed differences in habitat selection among year classes. Water...
Mortality patterns in endangered Hawaiian geese (Nene; Branta sandvicensis)
Thierry M. Work, Julie Dagenais, Robert Rameyer, Renee Breeden
2015, Journal of Wildlife Diseases (51) 688-695
Understanding causes of death can aid management and recovery of endangered bird populations. Toward those ends, we systematically examined 300 carcasses of endangered Hawaiian Geese (Nene; Branta sandvicensis) from Hawaii, Maui, Molokai, and Kauai between 1992 and 2013. The most common cause of death was emaciation, followed by trauma (vehicular strikes...
Increased land use by Chukchi Sea polar bears in relation to changing sea ice conditions
Karyn D. Rode, Ryan H. Wilson, Eric V. Regehr, Michelle St. Martin, David C. Douglas, Jay Olson
2015, PLoS ONE (10)
Recent observations suggest that polar bears (Ursus maritimus) are increasingly using land habitats in some parts of their range, where they have minimal access to their preferred prey, likely in response to loss of their sea ice habitat associated with climatic warming. We used location data from female polar bears...
Evaluation of the U.S. Geological Survey standard elevation products in a two-dimensional hydraulic modeling application for a low relief coastal floodplain
Emitt C. Witt III
2015, Journal of Hydrology (531) 759-767
Growing use of two-dimensional (2-D) hydraulic models has created a need for high resolution data to support flood volume estimates, floodplain specific engineering data, and accurate flood inundation scenarios. Elevation data are a critical input to these models that guide the flood-wave across the landscape allowing the computation of valuable...
Probabilistic 3-D time-lapse inversion of magnetotelluric data: Application to an enhanced geothermal system
Marina Rosas-Carbajal, Nicolas Linde, Jared R. Peacock, F. I. Zyserman, Thomas Kalscheuer, Stephan Thiel
2015, Geophysical Journal International (203) 1946-1960
Surface-based monitoring of mass transfer caused by injections and extractions in deep boreholes is crucial to maximize oil, gas and geothermal production. Inductive electromagnetic methods, such as magnetotellurics, are appealing for these applications due to their large penetration depths and sensitivity to changes in fluid conductivity and fracture connectivity. In...
Validation of mercury tip-switch and accelerometer activity sensors for identifying resting and active behavior in bears
Jasmine Ware, Karyn D. Rode, Anthony M. Pagano, Jeffrey F. Bromaghin, Charles T. Robbins, Joy Erlenbach, Shannon Jensen, Amy Cutting, Nicole Nicassio-Hiskey, Amy Hash, Megan A. Owen, Heiko Jansen
2015, Ursus (26) 8-18
Activity sensors are often included in wildlife transmitters and can provide information on the behavior and activity patterns of animals remotely. However, interpreting activity-sensor data relative to animal behavior can be difficult if animals cannot be continuously observed. In this study, we examined the performance of a mercury tip-switch and...
White-tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus) fawn risk from Gray Wolf (Canis lupus) predation during summer
L. David Mech, Aaron Morris, Shannon M. Barber-Meyer
2015, Canadian Field-Naturalist (129) 368-373
Little is known about how often various prey animals are at risk of predation by Gray Wolves (Canis lupus). We used a system to monitor the presence during the day of two radio-collared Gray Wolves within 2 km of a radio-collared White-tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus) with a fawn or fawns...
Alpine biodiversity and assisted migration: The case of the American pika (Ochotona princeps)
Jennifer L. Wilkening, Chris Ray, Nathan G. Ramsay, Kelly Klingler
2015, Biodiversity (16) 1-13
Alpine mammals are predicted to be among the species most threatened by climate change, due to the projected loss and further fragmentation of alpine habitats. As temperature or precipitation regimes change, alpine mammals may also be faced with insurmountable barriers to dispersal. The slow rate or inability to adjust to...
On the prediction of threshold friction velocity of wind erosion using soil reflectance spectroscopy
Junran Li, Cody B. Flagg, Gregory S. Okin, Thomas H. Painter, Kebonye Dintwe, Jayne Belnap
2015, Aeolian Research (19) 129-136
Current approaches to estimate threshold friction velocity (TFV) of soil particle movement, including both experimental and empirical methods, suffer from various disadvantages, and they are particularly not effective to estimate TFVs at regional to global scales. Reflectance spectroscopy has been widely used to obtain TFV-related soil properties (e.g., moisture, texture,...
Foreward
James L. Coleman, Paul J. Post, David E. Brown
2015, Conference Paper
No abstract available....
Western water and climate change
Michael D. Dettinger, Bradley Udall, Aris P. Georgakakos
2015, Ecological Applications (25) 2069-2093
The western United States is a region long defined by water challenges. Climate change adds to those historical challenges, but does not, for the most part, introduce entirely new challenges; rather climate change is likely to stress water supplies and resources already in many cases stretched to, or beyond, natural...
A practical guide to the use of major elements, trace elements, and isotopes in compositional data analysis: Applications for deep formation brine geochemistry
Madalyn S. Blondes, Mark A. Engle, Nicholas Geboy
2015, Conference Paper, Proceedings of the International Workshop on Compositional Data Analysis
In the geosciences, isotopic ratios and trace element concentrations are often used along with major element concentrations to help determine sources of and processes affecting geochemical variation. Compositional Data Analysis (CoDA) is a set of tools, generally attuned to major element data, concerned with the proper statistical treatment and removal...
Current land bird distribution and trends in population abundance between 1982 and 2012 on Rota, Mariana Islands
Richard J. Camp, Kevin W. Brinck, P. Marcos Gorresen, Fred A. Amidon, Paul M. Radley, S. Paul Berkowitz, Paul C. Banko
2015, Journal of Fish and Wildlife Management (6) 511-540
The western Pacific island of Rota is the fourth largest human-inhabited island in the Mariana archipelago and designated an Endemic Bird Area. Between 1982 and 2012, 12 point-transect distance-sampling surveys were conducted to assess bird population status. Surveys did not consistently sample the entire island; thus, we used a ratio...
Meteorological variables to aid forecasting deep slab avalanches on persistent weak layers
Alex Marienthal, Jordy Hendrikx, Karl W. Birkeland, Kathryn M. Irvine
2015, Cold Regions Science and Technology (120) 227-236
Deep slab avalanches are particularly challenging to forecast. These avalanches are difficult to trigger, yet when they release they tend to propagate far and can result in large and destructive avalanches. We utilized a 44-year record of avalanche control and meteorological data from Bridger Bowl ski area in southwest Montana...
Assessment of environmental DNA for detecting presence of imperiled aquatic amphibian species in isolated wetlands
Anna M. McKee, Daniel L. Calhoun, William J. Barichivich, Stephen F. Spear, Caren S. Goldberg, Travis C Glenn
2015, Journal of Fish and Wildlife Management (6) 498-510
Environmental DNA (eDNA) is an emerging tool that allows low-impact sampling for aquatic species by isolating DNA from water samples and screening for DNA sequences specific to species of interest. However, researchers have not tested this method in naturally acidic wetlands that provide breeding habitat for a number of imperiled...
Changes in depth occupied by Great Lakes lake whitefish populations and the influence of survey design
Michael D. Rennie, Brian Weidel, Randall M. Claramunt, Erin S. Dunlob
2015, Journal of Great Lakes Research (41) 1150-1161
Understanding fish habitat use is important in determining conditions that ultimately affect fish energetics, growth and reproduction. Great Lakes lake whitefish (Coregonus clupeaformis) have demonstrated dramatic changes in growth and life history traits since the appearance of dreissenid mussels in the Great Lakes, but the role of habitat occupancy in...
Seismic hazard in the Nation's breadbasket
Oliver S. Boyd, Kathleen Haller, Nico Luco, Morgan P. Moschetti, Charles Mueller, Mark D. Petersen, Sanaz Rezaeian, Justin L. Rubinstein
2015, Earthquake Spectra (S1) 109-130
The USGS National Seismic Hazard Maps were updated in 2014 and included several important changes for the central United States (CUS). Background seismicity sources were improved using a new moment-magnitude-based catalog; a new adaptive, nearest-neighbor smoothing kernel was implemented; and maximum magnitudes for background sources were updated. Areal source zones...
Geospatial resources for the geologic community: The USGS National Map
Emitt C. Witt III
2015, Journal of Geology (123) 283-294
Geospatial data are a key component of investigating, interpreting, and communicating the geological sciences. Locating geospatial data can be time-consuming, which detracts from time spent on a study because these data are not obviously placed in central locations or are served from many disparate databases. The National Map of the...
Water quality and fish dynamics in forested wetlands associated with an oxbow lake
Caroline S. Andrews, Leandro E. Miranda, Robert Kroger
2015, Southeastern Naturalist (14) 623-634
Forested wetlands represent some of the most distinct environments in the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley. Depending on season, water in forested wetlands can be warm, stagnant, and oxygen-depleted, yet may support high fish diversity. Fish assemblages in forested wetlands are not well studied because of difficulties in sampling heavily structured...
Hybridization between Dusky Grouse and Sharp-tailed Grouse
Ryan P. O’Donnell
2015, Western Birds (46) 351-352
Cache County, Utah, 7 April 2013: rare hybrid combination of grouse noted. Hybridization between Dusky Grouse (Dendragapus obscurus) and Sharp-tailed Grouse (Tympanuchus phasianellus) has been rarely documented in the wild. The only published record was of one collected from Osoyoos, British Columbia, in 1906 (Brooks 1907, Lincoln 1950). There is...
Monitoring changes in seismic velocity related to an ongoing rapid inflation event at Okmok volcano, Alaska
Ninfa Bennington, Matthew M. Haney, Silvio De Angelis, Clifford Thurber, Jeff Freymueller
2015, Journal of Geophysical Research (120) 5664-5676
Okmok is one of the most active volcanoes in the Aleutian Arc. In an effort to improve our ability to detect precursory activity leading to eruption at Okmok, we monitor a recent, and possibly ongoing, GPS-inferred rapid inflation event at the volcano using ambient noise interferometry (ANI). Applying this method,...
Seismic source characterization for the 2014 update of the U.S. National Seismic Hazard Model
Morgan P. Moschetti, Peter M. Powers, Mark D. Petersen, Oliver S. Boyd, Rui Chen, Edward H. Field, Arthur D. Frankel, Kathleen Haller, Stephen Harmsen, Charles S. Mueller, Russell Wheeler, Yuehua Zeng
2015, Earthquake Spectra (31) S31-S57
We present the updated seismic source characterization (SSC) for the 2014 update of the National Seismic Hazard Model (NSHM) for the conterminous United States. Construction of the seismic source models employs the methodology that was developed for the 1996 NSHM but includes new and updated data, data types, source models,...
