Long-term growth-increment chronologies reveal diverse influences of climate forcing on freshwater and forest biota in the Pacific Northwest
Bryan A. Black, Jason B. Dunham, Brett W. Blundon, Jayne Brim-Box, Alan J. Tepley
2015, Global Change Biology (21) 594-604
Analyses of how organisms are likely to respond to a changing climate have focused largely on the direct effects of warming temperatures, though changes in other variables may also be important, particularly the amount and timing of precipitation. Here, we develop a network of eight growth-increment width chronologies for freshwater...
Integrating climate change into northeast and midwest State Wildlife Action Plans
Michelle D. Staudinger, Toni L. Morelli, Alexander Bryan, editor(s)
2015, Report
The Department of Interior Northeast Climate Science Center (NE CSC) conducts research that responds to the regional natural resource management community’s needs to anticipate, monitor, and adapt to climate change. The NE CSC is supported by a consortium of partners that includes the University of Massachusetts Amherst, College of Menominee...
Denitrification in the Mississippi River network controlled by flow through river bedforms
Jesus D. Gomez-Velez, Judson W. Harvey, M. Bayani Cardenas, Brian Kiel
2015, Nature Geoscience (8) 941-945
Increasing nitrogen concentrations in the world’s major rivers have led to over-fertilization of sensitive downstream waters. Flow through channel bed and bank sediments acts to remove riverine nitrogen through microbe-mediated denitrification reactions. However, little is understood about where in the channel network this biophysical process is most efficient, why certain...
Songbirds as sentinels of mercury in terrestrial habitats of eastern North America
Allyson K. Jackson, David C. Evers, Evan M. Adams, Daniel A. Cristol, Collin A. Eagles-Smith, Samuel T. Edmonds, Carrie E. Gray, Bart Hoskins, Oksana P. Lane, Amy Sauer, Timothy Tear
2015, Ecotoxicology (24) 453-467
Mercury (Hg) is a globally distributed environmental contaminant with a variety of deleterious effects in fish, wildlife, and humans. Breeding songbirds may be useful sentinels for Hg across diverse habitats because they can be effectively sampled, have well-defined and small territories, and can integrate pollutant exposure over time and space....
Evaluating the use of side-scan sonar for detecting freshwater mussel beds in turbid river environments
Jarrod Powers, Shannon K. Brewer, James M. Long, Thomas Campbell
2015, Hydrobiologia (743) 127-137
Side-scan sonar is a valuable tool for mapping habitat features in many aquatic systems suggesting it may also be useful for locating sedentary biota. The objective of this study was to determine if side-scan sonar could be used to identify freshwater mussel (unionid) beds and the required environmental conditions. We...
Estimating sturgeon abundance in the Carolinas using side-scan sonar
H. Jared Flowers, Joseph E. Hightower
2015, Marine and Coastal Fisheries: Dynamics, Management, and Ecosystem Science (7) 1-9
Sturgeons (Acipenseridae) are one of the most threatened taxa worldwide, including species in North Carolina and South Carolina. Populations of Atlantic Sturgeon Acipenser oxyrinchus in the Carolinas have been significantly reduced from historical levels by a combination of intense fishing and habitat loss. There is a need for estimates of...
Brittle Faults
Soumyajit Mukherjee
2015, Book chapter
Brittle shear zones/fault zones are usually defined by curved brittle P-planes bound by usually straight Y-planes. These shears may affect as a narrow zone within the rock bodies. Brittle sheared lenses of rocks vary in geometry, and the P-planes may curve only near the Y-planes. Fault gouge zones sometimes contain...
Elk habitat suitability map for North Carolina
Steven G. Williams, David T. Cobb, Jaime A. Collazo
2015, Journal of the Southeastern Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (2) 181-186
Although eastern elk (Cervus elaphus canadensis) were extirpated from the eastern United States in the 19th century, they were successfully reintroduced in the North Carolina portion of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in the early 2000s. The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission (NCWRC) is evaluating the prospect of reintroducing...
Survival and recovery rates of mottled ducks banded in Texas and Louisiana
David A. Haukos
2015, Journal of the Southeastern Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (2) 214-220
The Western Gulf Coast population of the mottled duck (Anas fulvigula) is dependent on the Gulf coastal marsh to complete its entire life cycle. Band recovery data can be used to monitor mottled duck populations by estimating annual survival, indexing harvest rate, and assessing movements. Band returns from hunting seasons...
Contrasting fish assemblages in free-flowing and impounded tributaries to the Upper Delaware River: Implications for conserving biodiversity
Barry P. Baldigo, Mari-Beth Delucia, Walter D. Keller, George E. Schuler, Colin D. Apse, Tara Moberg
2015, Book chapter, Advances in Environmental Research
The Neversink River and the Beaver Kill in southeastern New York are major tributaries to the Delaware River, the longest undammed river east of the Mississippi. While the Beaver Kill is free flowing for its entire length, the Neversink River is subdivided by the Neversink Reservoir, which likely affects the...
Management applications of discontinuity theory
David G. Angeler, Craig R. Allen, Chris Barichievy, Tarsha Eason, Ahjond S. Garmestani, Nicholas A.J. Graham, Dean Granholm, Lance H. Gunderson, Melinda Knutson, Kirsty L. Nash, R. John Nelson, Magnus Nystrom, Trisha Spanbauer, Craig A. Stow, Shana M. Sundstrom
2015, Journal of Applied Ecology (53) 688-698
Human impacts on the environment are multifaceted and can occur across distinct spatiotemporal scales. Ecological responses to environmental change are therefore difficult to predict, and entail large degrees of uncertainty. Such uncertainty requires robust tools for management to sustain ecosystem goods and services and maintain resilient ecosystems.We...
Non-perturbational surface-wave inversion: A Dix-type relation for surface waves
Matthew M. Haney, Victor C. Tsai
2015, Geophysics (80) EN167-EN177
We extend the approach underlying the well-known Dix equation in reflection seismology to surface waves. Within the context of surface wave inversion, the Dix-type relation we derive for surface waves allows accurate depth profiles of shear-wave velocity to be constructed directly from phase velocity data, in contrast to perturbational methods....
Combined effects of climate, predation, and density dependence on Greater and Lesser Scaup population dynamics
Beth E. Ross, Mevin Hooten, Jean-Michel DeVink, David N. Koons
2015, Ecological Applications (25) 1606-1617
An understanding of species relationships is critical in the management and conservation of populations facing climate change, yet few studies address how climate alters species interactions and other population drivers. We use a long-term, broad-scale data set of relative abundance to examine the influence of climate, predators, and density dependence...
Robust global ocean cooling trend for the pre-industrial Common Era
Helen V. McGregor, Michael N. Evans, Hugues Goosse, Guillaume Leduc, Belen Martrat, Jason A. Addison, P. Graham Mortyn, Delia W. Oppo, Marit-Solveig Seidenkrantz, Marie-Alexandrine Sicre, Steven J. Phipps, Kandasamy Selvaraj, Kaustubh Thirumalai, Helena L. Filipsson, Vasile Ersek
2015, Nature Geoscience (8) 671-677
The oceans mediate the response of global climate to natural and anthropogenic forcings. Yet for the past 2,000 years — a key interval for understanding the present and future climate response to these forcings — global sea surface temperature changes and the underlying driving mechanisms are poorly constrained. Here we...
Low productivity of Chinook salmon strongly correlates with high summer stream discharge in two Alaskan rivers in the Yukon drainage
Jason R. Neuswanger, Mark S. Wipfli, Matthew J. Evenson, Nicholas F. Hughes, Amanda E. Rosenberger
2015, Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences (72) 1125-1137
Yukon River Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) populations are declining for unknown reasons, creating hardship for thousands of stakeholders in subsistence and commercial fisheries. An informed response to this crisis requires understanding the major sources of variation in Chinook salmon productivity. However, simple stock–recruitment models leave much of the variation in...
Evidence for slip partitioning and bimodal slip behavior on a single fault: Surface slip characteristics of the 2013 Mw7.7 Balochistan, Pakistan earthquake
William D. Barnhart, Richard W. Briggs, Nadine G. Reitman, Ryan D. Gold, Gavin P. Hayes
2015, Earth and Planetary Science Letters (420) 1-11
Deformation is commonly accommodated by strain partitioning on multiple, independent strike-slip and dip-slip faults in continental settings of oblique plate convergence. As a corollary, individual faults tend to exhibit one sense of slip – normal, reverse, or strike-slip – until whole-scale changes in boundary conditions reactivate preexisting faults in a...
Eocene and Miocene extension, meteoric fluid infiltration, and core complex formation in the Great Basin (Raft River Mountains, Utah)
Katharina Methner, Andreas Mulch, Christian Teyssier, Michael L. Wells, Michael A. Cosca, Raphael Gottardi, Aude Gebelin, C. Page Chamberlain
2015, Tectonics (34) 680-693
Metamorphic core complexes (MCCs) in the North American Cordillera reflect the effects of lithospheric extension and contribute to crustal adjustments both during and after a protracted subduction history along the Pacific plate margin. While the Miocene-to-recent history of most MCCs in the Great Basin, including the Raft River-Albion-Grouse Creek MCC,...
Time-varying interseismic strain rates and similar seismic ruptures on the Nias-Simeulue patch of the Sunda megathrust
Aron J. Meltzner, Kerry E. Sieh, Hong-Wei Chiang, Chung-Che Wu, Louisa L.H. Tsang, Chuan-Chou Shen, Emma M. Hill, Bambang W. Suwargadi, Danny H. Natawidjaja, Belle Philibosian, Richard W. Briggs
2015, Quaternary Science Reviews (122) 258-281
Fossil coral microatolls from fringing reefs above the great (MW 8.6) megathrust rupture of 2005 record uplift during the historically reported great earthquake of 1861. Such evidence spans nearly the entire 400-km strike length of the 2005 rupture, which was previously shown to be bounded by two persistent barriers...
Introduction to the special issue on the 2012 Haida Gwaii and 2013 Craig earthquakes at the Pacific–North America plate boundary (British Columbia and Alaska)
Thomas S. James, John F. Cassidy, Garry C. Rogers, Peter J. Haeussler
2015, Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (105) 1053-1057
The 27 October 2012 Mw 7.8 Haida Gwaii thrust earthquake and the 5 January 2013 Mw 7.5 Craig strike‐slip earthquake are the focus of this special issue. They occurred along the transform boundary between the Pacific and North American plates (Fig. 1). The most identifiable feature of the plate boundary, the strike‐slip Queen Charlotte fault,...
Incorporating temporal variation in seabird telemetry data: time variant kernel density models
Andrew Gilbert, Evan M. Adams, Carl Anderson, Alicia Berlin, Timothy D. Bowman, Emily Connelly, Scott Gilliland, Carrie E. Gray, Christine Lepage, Dustin Meattey, William Montevecchi, Jason Osenkowski, Lucas Savoy, Iain Stenhouse, Kathryn Williams
2015, Report
A key component of the Mid-Atlantic Baseline Studies project was tracking the individual movements of focal marine bird species (Red-throated Loon [Gavia stellata], Northern Gannet [Morus bassanus], and Surf Scoter [Melanitta perspicillata]) through the use of satellite telemetry. This element of the project was a collaborative effort with the Department...
Net ecosystem production and organic carbon balance of U.S. East Coast estuaries: A synthesis approach
Maria Herrmann, Raymond G. Najjar, W. Michael Kemp, Richard B. Alexander, Elizabeth W. Boyer, Wei-Jun Cai, Peter C. Griffith, Kevin D. Kroeger, S. Leigh McCallister, Richard A. Smith
2015, Global Biogeochemical Cycles (29) 96-111
Net ecosystem production (NEP) and the overall organic carbon budget for the estuaries along the East Coast of the United States are estimated. We focus on the open estuarine waters, excluding the fringing wetlands. We developed empirical models relating NEP to loading ratios of dissolved inorganic nitrogen to total organic...
Cenozoic stratigraphy and structure of the Chesapeake Bay region
David S. Powars, Lucy E. Edwards, Susan M. Kidwell, J. Stephen Schindler
2015, Book
The Salisbury embayment is a broad tectonic downwarp that is filled by generally seaward-thickening, wedge-shaped deposits of the central Atlantic Coastal Plain. Our two-day field trip will take us to the western side of this embayment from the Fall Zone in Washington, D.C., to some of the bluffs along Aquia...
A revision of the Norian Conchostracan Zonation in North America and its implications for Late Triassic North American tectonic history
Robert E. Weems, Spencer G. Lucas
2015, Book chapter, Fossil Record 4. New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science Bulletin 67
Collections of Upper Triassic (Norian) conchostracans from the upper Cumnock and lower Sanford formations (North Carolina), Bull Run Formation (Virginia), Gettysburg Formation (Pennsylvania), Passaic Formation (New Jersey), Blomidon Formation (Nova Scotia), and Redonda Formation (New Mexico) have significantly expanded our knowledge of the Norian conchostracan faunas in these units. These...
Kinematics of shallow backthrusts in the Seattle fault zone, Washington State
Thomas L. Pratt, K.G. Troost, Jackson K. Odum, William J. Stephenson
2015, Geosphere (11) 1948-1974
Near-surface thrust fault splays and antithetic backthrusts at the tips of major thrust fault systems can distribute slip across multiple shallow fault strands, complicating earthquake hazard analyses based on studies of surface faulting. The shallow expression of the fault strands forming the Seattle fault zone of Washington State shows the...
Paleoseismologic evidence for large-magnitude (Mw 7.5-8.0) earthquakes on the Ventura blind thrust fault: Implications for multifault ruptures in the Transverse Ranges of southern California
Lee J. McAuliffe, James F. Dolan, Edward J. Rhodes, Judith Hubbard, John H. Shaw, Thomas L. Pratt
2015, Geosphere (11) 1629-1650
Detailed analysis of continuously cored boreholes and cone penetrometer tests (CPTs), high-resolution seismic-reflection data, and luminescence and 14C dates from Holocene strata folded above the tip of the Ventura blind thrust fault constrain the ages and displacements of the two (or more) most recent earthquakes. These two earthquakes, which are...
