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Contamination from acid mine drainage affects ecosystems and usability of groundwater for domestic and municipal purposes. The Captain Jack Superfund Site outside of Ward, Boulder County, Colorado, USA, hosts a draining mine adit that was remediated through emplacement of a hydraulic bulkhead to preclude acid mine drainage from entering...

Floodplains provide critical ecosystem services to people by regulating floodwaters and retaining sediments and nutrients. Geospatial analyses, field data collection, and modeling were integrated to quantify a portfolio of services that floodplains provide to downstream communities within the Chesapeake Bay and Delaware River watersheds. The portfolio of services included floodplain...

The variability of earthquake ground motions has a strong control on probabilistic seismic hazard analysis (PSHA), particularly for the low frequencies of exceedance used for critical facilities. We use a crossed mixed‐effects model to partition the variance components from simulated ground motions of M<mi...

We evaluated the ability of three debris-flow runout models (RAMMS, FLO2D and D-Claw) to predict the number of damaged buildings in simulations of the 9 January 2019 Montecito, California, debris-flow event. Observations of building damage after the event were combined with OpenStreetMap building footprints to construct a database of all potentially...

In the semi-arid regions of the western United States, postfire debris flows are typically runoff generated. The U.S. Geological Survey has been studying the mechanisms of postfire debris-flow initiation for multiple decades to generate operational models for forecasting the timing, location, and magnitude of postfire debris flows. Here we discuss challenges...

Methane (CH4) is a potent greenhouse gas and its concentrations have tripled in the atmosphere since the industrial revolution. There is evidence that global warming has increased CH4 emissions from freshwater ecosystems<a id="ref-link-section-d293024e611" title="Yvon-Durocher, G. et al. Methane fluxes show consistent temperature dependence across microbial to ecosystem scales. Nature 507, 488–491...

ContextIndividual species often drive habitat restoration action; however, management under this paradigm may negatively affect non-target species. Prioritization frameworks which explicitly consider benefits to target species while minimizing consequences for non-target species may improve management strategies and outcomes.ObjectivesWe examined extents to which conifer removal, an approach...

How does an earthquake affect buried pipeline networks? It is well known that the seismic performance of buried pipelines depends on ground failures (GFs) as well as strong ground shaking (SGS), but it is unclear how the various types of earthquake hazards should be collectively combined, as existing methodologies tend...

IntroductionOregon’s physical environments and vegetation are diverse. The varied geologic and climatic conditions combined with increasing population have created the need for high-quality elevation data that can be used for infrastructure management, forestry and wildfire management, agriculture, natural resources conservation, and other business uses. Critical applications that meet the State’s...

The effects of interior headland restoration on estuarine sediment transport processes were assessed through process-based numerical modeling. Three proposed interior headland restoration scenarios in the Grand Bay estuary (Mississippi/Alabama) were modeled using Delft3D to understand impacts on suspended sediment concentrations, bed level morphology, and sediment fluxes under present-day conditions and...

The Cherokee coal bed is a locally thick and laterally continuous coal bed in the Overland Member of the Paleocene Fort Union Formation in south-central Wyoming. It represents a significant resource that is easily accessible and may be extractable through both surface and underground mining methods. A database of more...

Digital flood-inundation maps for a 3.4-mile reach of Fourmile Creek at Silver Grove, Kentucky, were created by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in cooperation with the City of Silver Grove and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Louisville District. Because the City of Silver Grove is subject to flooding from...

Water withdrawn from rivers and streams accounts for approximately 80 percent of the public water supply in West Virginia. Localized and (or) seasonal droughts may threaten future water availability in the state, particularly in rural communities located in the headwaters of unregulated watersheds. Monthly water withdrawal data obtained from the...

Background: Burn severity significantly increases the likelihood and volume of post-wildfire debris flows. Pre-fire severity predictions can expedite mitigation efforts because precipitation contributing to these hazards often occurs shortly after wildfires, leaving little time for post-fire planning and management.Aim: The aim of this study was to predict burn severity using pre-fire conditions...

ObjectiveA central challenge in applied ecology is understanding how organisms are spatially and temporally distributed and how management might be tailored to maintain or restore species distributions. The niche concept is central to understanding species distributions, but the diversity of niche definitions requires that multiple dimensions be...

Accurate maps of built structures around stream channels, such as dams, culverts, and bridges, are vital in monitoring infrastructure, risk management, and hydrologic modeling. Hydrologic modeling is essential for research and decisionmaking related to infrastructure and development planning, emergency management, ecology, and developing hydrographic data. Technological advances in remote sensing...

To effectively manage species and habitats at multiple scales, population and land managers require rapid information on wildlife use of managed areas and responses to landscape conditions and management actions. GPS tracking studies of wildlife are particularly informative to species ecology, habitat use, and...

No abstract available....

ObjectiveConservation and restoration of aquatic species is difficult, especially for rare species, because their habitats are typically disturbed, obscuring the natural ability of the habitat to support each species. The Lake Erie population of Silver Chub Macrhybopsis storeriana struggles to sustain itself in a habitat disturbed by a wide...

This study focused on the mixing of a solute, assumed to be conservative, introduced to one arm of an afterbay reservoir, between Keswick and Shasta Dams on the Sacramento River near Redding, California. Rhodamine water tracer (WT) dye served as the solute in a field experiment, and was introduced over...

Diet analysis is a vital tool for understanding trophic interactions and is frequently used to inform conservation and management. Molecular approaches can identify diet items that are impossible to distinguish using more traditional visual-based methods. Yet, our understanding of how different variables, such as predator species or prey ration size,...

We developed the first-ever bathymetric module for the NASA Ames Stereo Pipeline (ASP) open-source topographic software called Satellite Triangulated Sea Depth, or SaTSeaD, to derive nearshore bathymetry from stereo imagery. Correct bathymetry measurements depend on water surface elevation, and whereas previous methods considered the water surface horizontal, our bathymetric...

BackgroundNative pinyon (Pinus spp.) and juniper (Juniperus spp.) trees are expanding into shrubland communities across the Western United States. These trees often outcompete with native sagebrush (Artemisia spp.) associated species, resulting in increased canopy fuels and reduced surface fuels. Woodland expansion often results in longer fire return intervals with potential for...

Agriculture is the most dominant land use globally and is projected to increase in the future to support a growing human population but also threatens ecosystem structure and services. Bacteria mediate numerous biogeochemical pathways within ecosystems. Therefore, identifying linkages between stressors associated with agricultural land use and responses of bacterial...

Anthropogenic resource subsidization across western ecosystems has contributed to widespread increases in generalist avian predators, including common ravens (Corvus corax; hereafter, raven). Ravens are adept nest predators and can negatively impact species of conservation concern. Predation effects from ravens are especially concerning for greater...