Drought monitoring and assessment: Remote sensing and modeling approaches for the Famine Early Warning Systems Network
Gabriel Senay, Naga Manohar Velpuri, Stefanie Bohms, Michael Budde, Claudia Young, James Rowland, James Verdin
2015, Book chapter
Drought monitoring is an essential component of drought risk management. It is usually carried out using drought indices/indicators that are continuous functions of rainfall and other hydrometeorological variables. This chapter presents a few examples of how remote sensing and hydrologic modeling techniques are being used to generate a suite of...
Having it both ways? Land use change in a U.S. midwestern agricultural ecoregion
Roger F. Auch, Chris R. Laingen
2015, Professional Geographer (67) 84-97
Urbanization has been directly linked to decreases in area of agricultural lands and, as such, has been considered a threat to food security. Although the area of land used to produce food has diminished, often overlooked have been changes in agricultural output. The Eastern Corn Belt Plains (ECBP) is an...
The origin of Mauna Loa's Nīnole Hills: Evidence of rift zone reorganization
Jeffrey Zurek, Glyn Williams-Jones, Frank A. Trusdell, Simon Martin
2015, Geophysical Research Letters (42) 8358-8366
In order to identify the origin of Mauna Loa volcano's Nīnole Hills, Bouguer gravity was used to delineate density contrasts within the edifice. Our survey identified two residual anomalies beneath the Southwest Rift Zone (SWRZ) and the Nīnole Hills. The Nīnole Hills anomaly is elongated, striking northeast, and in inversions...
Fluid-faulting interactions: Fracture-mesh and fault-valve behavior in the February 2014 Mammoth Mountain, California, earthquake swarm
David R. Shelly, Taka’aki Taira, Stephanie Prejean, David P. Hill, Douglas S. Dreger
2015, Geophysical Research Letters (42) 5803-5812
Faulting and fluid transport in the subsurface are highly coupled processes, which may manifest seismically as earthquake swarms. A swarm in February 2014 beneath densely monitored Mammoth Mountain, California, provides an opportunity to witness these interactions in high resolution. Toward this goal, we employ massive waveform-correlation-based event detection and relative...
San Andreas tremor cascades define deep fault zone complexity
David R. Shelly
2015, Nature Geoscience (8) 145-252
Weak seismic vibrations - tectonic tremor - can be used to delineate some plate boundary faults. Tremor on the deep San Andreas Fault, located at the boundary between the Pacific and North American plates, is thought to be a passive indicator of slow fault slip. San Andreas Fault tremor migrates at...
Using SO2 camera imagery and seismicity to examine degassing and gas accumulation at Kīlauea Volcano, May 2010
Patricia A Nadeau, Cynthia A. Werner, Gregory P. Waite, Simon A Carn, Ian D Brewer, Tamar Elias, Andrew Sutton, Christoph Kern
2015, Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research (300) 70-80
SO2 camera measurements at Kīlauea Volcano, Hawaii, in May of 2010 captured two occurrences of lava lake rise and fall within the Halema'um'au Crater summit vent. During high lava stands we observed diminished SO2 emission rates and decreased seismic tremor. Similar events at Kīlauea have been described as the result...
An ignimbrite caldera from the bottom up: Exhumed floor and fill of the resurgent Bonanza caldera, Southern Rocky Mountain volcanic field, Colorado
Peter W. Lipman, Matthew J. Zimmerer, William C. McIntosh
2015, Geosphere (11) 1902-1947
Among large ignimbrites, the Bonanza Tuff and its source caldera in the Southern Rocky Mountain volcanic field display diverse depositional and structural features that provide special insights concerning eruptive processes and caldera development. In contrast to the nested loci for successive ignimbrite eruptions at many large multicyclic calderas elsewhere, Bonanza...
Stable-isotope and solute-chemistry approaches to flow characterization in a forested tropical watershed, Luquillo Mountains, Puerto Rico
Martha A. Scholl, James B. Shanley, Sheila F. Murphy, Jane K Willenbring, Marcie Occhi, Grizelle Gonzalez
2015, Applied Geochemistry (63) 484-497
The prospect of changing climate has led to uncertainty about the resilience of forested mountain watersheds in the tropics. In watersheds where frequent, high rainfall provides ample runoff, we often lack understanding of how the system will respond under conditions of decreased rainfall or drought. Factors that govern water supply,...
Early Permian conodont fauna and stratigraphy of the Garden Valley Formation, Eureka County, Nevada
Bruce R. Wardlaw, Dora M. Gallegos, Valery V. Chernykh, Walter S. Snyder
2015, Micropaleontology (61) 369-387
The lower part of the Garden Valley Formation yields two distinct conodont faunas. One of late Asselian age dominated by Mesogondolella and Streptognathodus and one of Artinskian age dominated by Sweetognathus with Mesogondolella. The Asselian fauna contains the same species as those found in the type area of the Asselian...
Automated integration of lidar into the LANDFIRE product suite
Birgit Peterson, Kurtis Nelson, Carl Seielstad, Jason M. Stoker, W. Matt Jolly, Russell Parsons
2015, Remote Sensing Letters (6) 247-256
Accurate information about three-dimensional canopy structure and wildland fuel across the landscape is necessary for fire behaviour modelling system predictions. Remotely sensed data are invaluable for assessing these canopy characteristics over large areas; lidar data, in particular, are uniquely suited for quantifying three-dimensional canopy structure. Although lidar data are increasingly...
Flood trends: Not higher but more often
Robert M. Hirsch, Stacey A. Archfield
2015, Nature Climate Change (5) 198-199
Heavy precipitation has increased worldwide, but the effect of this on flood magnitude has been difficult to pinpoint. An alternative approach to analysing records shows that, in the central United States, floods have become more frequent but not larger....
Beyond temperature: Clumped isotope signatures in dissolved inorganic carbon species and the influence of solution chemistry on carbonate mineral composition
Aradhna K. Tripati, Pamela S. Hill, Robert A. Eagle, Jed L. Mosenfelder, Jianwu Tang, Edwin A. Schauble, John M. Eiler, Richard E. Zeebe, Joji Uchikawa, Tyler B. Coplen, Justin B. Ries, Drew Henry
2015, Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta (166) 344-371
“Clumped-isotope” thermometry is an emerging tool to probe the temperature history of surface and subsurface environments based on measurements of the proportion of 13C and 18O isotopes bound to each other within carbonate minerals in 13C18O16O22- groups (heavy isotope “clumps”). Although most clumped isotope geothermometry implicitly presumes carbonate crystals have attained...
Structural superposition in fault systems bounding Santa Clara Valley, California
Russell W. Graymer, Richard G. Stanley, David A. Ponce, Robert C. Jachens, Robert W. Simpson, Carl M. Wentworth
2015, Geosphere (11) 63-75
Santa Clara Valley is bounded on the southwest and northeast by active strike-slip and reverse-oblique faults of the San Andreas fault system. On both sides of the valley, these faults are superposed on older normal and/or right-lateral normal oblique faults. The older faults comprised early components of the San Andreas...
Reticulite‐producing fountains from ring fractures in Kīlauea Caldera ca. 1500 CE
Michael May, Rebecca J. Carey, Don Swanson, Bruce F. Houghton
Rebecca Carey, Valerie Cayol, Michael P. Poland, Dominique Weis, editor(s)
2015, Book chapter, Hawaiian volcanoes: From source to surface
A widely dispersed reticulite bed occurs close to the base of the Keanakākoʻi Tephra at Kīlauea Volcano. It can be divided into six subunits in the northern sector of the volcano; the reticulite also occurs in the southern sector, but outcrops are sparse owing to penecontemporaneous erosion and burial. Multilobate isopachs for...
Modifications to risk-targeted seismic design maps for subduction and near-fault hazards
Abbie B. Liel, Nico Luco, Meera Raghunandan, C. Champion
Terje Haukaas, editor(s)
2015, Conference Paper, Proceedings of the 12th international conference on applications of statistics and probability in civil engineering (ICASP12)
ASCE 7-10 introduced new seismic design maps that define risk-targeted ground motions such that buildings designed according to these maps will have 1% chance of collapse in 50 years. These maps were developed by iterative risk calculation, wherein a generic building collapse fragility curve is convolved with the U.S. Geological...
Using the Maxent program for species distribution modelling to assess invasion risk
Catherine S. Jarnevich, Nicholas E. Young
R.C Venette, editor(s)
2015, Book chapter, Pest Risk Modelling and Mapping for Invasive Alien Species
MAXENT is a software package used to relate known species occurrences to information describing the environment, such as climate, topography, anthropogenic features or soil data, and forecast the presence or absence of a species at unsampled locations. This particular method is one of the most popular species distribution modelling techniques...
Bioenergetics modeling of percid fishes
Charles P. Madenjian
Patrick Kestemont, Konrad Dabrowski, Robert C. Summerfelt, editor(s)
2015, Book chapter, Biology and culture of percid fishes
A bioenergetics model for a percid fish represents a quantitative description of the fish’s energy budget. Bioenergetics modeling can be used to identify the important factors determining growth of percids in lakes, rivers, or seas. For example, bioenergetics modeling applied to yellow perch (Perca flavescens) in the western...
Lake formation, characteristics and evolution in retroarc deposystems: A synthesis of data from the modern Andean orogen and its associated basins
Andrew S. Cohen, Michael M. McGlue, Geoffrey S. Ellis, Hiran Zani, Peter W. Swarzenski, Mario L. Assine, Aguinaldo Silva
Peter G. DeCelles, Mihai N. Ducea, Barbara Carrapa, Paul Kapp, editor(s)
2015, Book chapter, Geodynamic of a cordilleran orogenic system: The central Andes of Argentina and northern Chile
Lake deposystems are commonly associated with retroarc mountain belts in the geological record. These deposystems are poorly characterized in modern retroarcs, placing limits on our ability to interpret environmental signals from ancient deposits. To address this problem, we have synthesized our existing knowledge about the distribution, morphometrics, and sedimentary geochemical...
Sea lamprey mark type, wounding rate, and parasite-host preference and abundance relationships for lake trout and other species in Lake Ontario
Brian F. Lantry, Jean Adams, Gavin Christie, Teodore Schaner, James Bowlby, Michael Keir, Jana Lantry, Paul Sullivan, Daniel Bishop, Ted Treska, Bruce Morrison
2015, Report
We examined how the frequency of attacks by Sea Lamprey on fishes in Lake Ontario varied in response to Sea Lamprey abundance and preferred host abundance (Lake Trout >432mm). For this analysis we assembled seven data sets. Two fishery independent surveys for Lake Trout: US Geological Survey (USGS)/New York State...
Discrete-storm water-table fluctuation method to estimate episodic recharge.
John R. Nimmo, Charles Horowittz, Lara Mitchell
2015, Groundwater (53) 282-292
We have developed a method to identify and quantify recharge episodes, along with their associated infiltration-related inputs, by a consistent, systematic procedure. Our algorithm partitions a time series of water levels into discrete recharge episodes and intervals of no episodic recharge. It correlates each recharge episode with a specific interval...
Uranium Sequestration During Biostimulated Reduction and In Response to the Return of Oxic Conditions In Shallow Aquifers
Christopher C. Fuller, Kelly J. Johnson, Katherine Akstin, David M. Singer, Steven B. Yabusaki, Yi Fang, M. Fuhrmann
2015, Report
A proposed approach for groundwater remediation of uranium contamination is to generate reducing conditions by stimulating the growth of microbial populations through injection of electron donor compounds into the subsurface. Sufficiently reducing conditions will result in reduction of soluble hexavalent uranium, U(VI), and precipitation of the less soluble +4 oxidation...
From icefield to ocean - Explore the many ways that glaciers influence Alaska's Coastal Ecosystems.
Shad O’Neel, Eran Hood, Kristin Timm
2015, Report
No abstract available....
An updated conceptual model of Delta Smelt biology: Our evolving understanding of an estuarine fish
Randy Baxter, Larry R. Brown, Gonzalo Castillo, Louise Conrad, Steven D. Culberson, Matthew P. Dekar, Melissa Dekar, Frederick Feyrer, Thaddeus Hunt, Kristopher Jones, Joseph Kirsch, Anke Mueller-Solger, Matthew Nobriga, Steven B. Slater, Ted Sommer, Kelly Souza, Gregg Erickson, Stephanie Fong, Karen Gehrts, Lenny Grimaldo, Bruce Herbold
2015, Technical Report 90
The main purpose of this report is to provide an up-to-date assessment and conceptual model of factors affecting Delta Smelt (Hypomesus transpacificus) throughout its primarily annual life cycle and to demonstrate how this conceptual model can be used for scientific and management purposes. The Delta Smelt is a small estuarine...
Complex interactions between global change drivers influence mountain forest and slpine GHG sequestration and stream chemistry
Jill Baron, Melannie D. Hartman
2015, Conference Paper, Mountain Views
Many mountain ecosystems are experiencing coincident increases in temperature, levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) and atmospheric nitrogen (N) deposition. All are important controls on rates of plant growth, soil microbial activity, nutrient cycling, and stream N export. It is difficult for experimental studies to explore ecosystem responses to more than one or two treatments at...
Automated lidar-derived canopy height estimates for the Upper Mississippi River System
Enrika Hlavacek
2015, Thesis
Land cover/land use (LCU) classifications serve as important decision support products for researchers and land managers. The LCU classifications produced by the U.S. Geological Survey’s Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center (UMESC) include canopy height estimates that are assigned through manual aerial photography interpretation techniques. In an effort to improve upon...
