Merging machine learning and geostatistical approaches for spatial modeling of geoenergy resources
Gamze Erdogan Erten, Oktay Erten, C. Ozgen Karacan, Jeff Boisvert, Clayton V. Deutsch
2023, International Journal of Coal Geology (276)
Geostatistics is the most commonly used probabilistic approach for modeling earth systems, including quality parameters of various geoenergy resources. In geostatistics, estimates, either on a point or block support, are generated as a spatially-weighted average of surrounding samples. The optimal weights are determined through the stationary variogram model which accounts...
Effects of sucker gigging on fish populations in Oklahoma scenic rivers
D. Zetner, D. E. Shoup, Shannon K. Brewer
2023, Cooperator Science Series FWS/CSS-151-2023
Suckers (Catostomidae) are ecologically important, and some support popular fisheries, despite not being considered ‘sport fish’ in most states. Gigging suckers is a popular and culturally significant pastime in the Ozark Highlands, but little is known about the effect of gigging harvest on population dynamics of suckers. Therefore, research is...
DisasterNet: Causal Bayesian networks with normalizing flows for cascading hazards
Xuechun Li, Paula Madeline Burgi, Wei Ma, Haeyoung Noh, David J. Wald, Susu Xu
2023, Conference Paper, KDD '23: Proceedings of the 29th ACM SIGKDD conference on knowledge discovery and data mining
Sudden-onset hazards like earthquakes often induce cascading secondary hazards (e.g., landslides, liquefaction, debris flows, etc.) and subsequent impacts (e.g., building and infrastructure damage) that cause catastrophic human and economic losses. Rapid and accurate estimates of these hazards and impacts are critical for timely and effective post-disaster responses. Emerging remote sensing...
Response in the water quality of Delavan Lake, Wisconsin, to changes in phosphorus loading—Setting new goals for loading from its drainage basin
Dale M. Robertson, Benjamin J. Siebers, Reed A. Fredrick
2023, Scientific Investigations Report 2023-5073
During 1989–92, an extensive rehabilitation project was completed in and around Delavan Lake, Wisconsin, to improve the lake’s water quality. However, in 2016, the lake was listed by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources as impaired for excessive algal growth (high chlorophyll a concentrations), and high phosphorus input was listed...
Estimating streambed hydraulic conductivity for selected streams in the Mississippi Alluvial Plain using continuous resistivity profiling methods—Delta region
Ryan F. Adams, Benjamin Miller, Wade H. Kress, Burke J. Minsley, James R. Rigby
2023, Scientific Investigations Map 3500
Introduction The Mississippi Alluvial Plain is one of the most important agricultural regions in the United States, and crop productivity relies on groundwater irrigation from an aquifer system whose full capacity is unknown. Groundwater withdrawals from the Mississippi River Valley alluvial aquifer have resulted in substantial groundwater-level declines and reductions...
Development and application of a qPCR-based genotyping assay for Ophidiomyces ophidiicola to investigate the epidemiology of ophidiomycosis
Ellen Haynes, Jeffrey M. Lorch, Matthew C. Allender
2023, PLoS ONE (18)
Ophidiomycosis (snake fungal disease) is an infectious disease caused by the fungus Ophidiomyces ophidiicola to which all snake species appear to be susceptible. Significant variation has been observed in clinical presentation, progression of disease, and response to treatment, which may be due to genetic variation in the causative agent. Recent phylogenetic analysis...
Tracking carbon from subduction to outgassing along the Aleutian-Alaska Volcanic Arc
Taryn Lopez, Tobias P. Fischer, Terry Plank, Alberto Malinverno, Andrea Rizzo, Daniel J. Rasmussen, Elizabeth Cottrell, Cynthia Werner, Christoph Kern, Deborah Bergfeld, Tehnuka Ilanko, Janine L. Andrys, Katherine A. Kelley
2023, Science Advances (9)
Subduction transports volatiles between Earth’s mantle, crust, and atmosphere, ultimately creating a habitable Earth. We use isotopes to track carbon from subduction to outgassing along the Aleutian-Alaska Arc. We find substantial along-strike variations in the isotopic composition of volcanic gases, explained by different recycling efficiencies of subducting carbon to the...
Long short-term memory models to quantify long-term evolution of streamflow discharge and groundwater depth in Alabama
Hossein Gholizadeh, Yong Zhang, Jonathan Frame, Xiufen Gu, Christopher Green
2023, Science of the Total Environment (901)
Long short-term memory (LSTM) models have been shown to be efficient for rainfall-runoff modeling, and to a lesser extent, for groundwater depth forecasting. In this study, LSTMs were applied to quantify the spatiotemporal evolution of surface and subsurface hydrographs in Alabama in the Southeastern United States,...
Biophysical factors control invasive annual grass hot spots in the Mojave Desert
Tanner Corless Smith, Tara B.B. Bishop, Michael C. Duniway, Miguel L. Villarreal, Anna C. Knight, Seth M. Munson, Eric K. Waller, Ryan Jensen, Richard A. Gill
2023, Biological Invasions (25) 3839-3859
Invasive annual grasses can promote ecosystem state changes and habitat loss in the American Southwest. Non-native annual grasses such as Bromus spp. and Schismus spp. have invaded the Mojave Desert and degraded habitat through increased fire occurrence, severity, and shifting plant community composition. Thus, it is important to identify and...
Potassium-39-derived 36Ar production during fission-neutron irradiation and its effect on 40Ar/39Ar ages
Jack N. Carter, Paul R. Renne, Leah E. Morgan
2023, Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta (357) 26-34
Various interference reactions producing unwanted Ar isotopes from K, Ca, Cl and Ar require correction to satisfy the 40Ar/39Ar age equation. Using GEANT4, we design and build a model Cadmium Lined In Core Irradiation Tube (CLICIT) irradiation facility, as used in the...
A seasonally ice-free Arctic Ocean during the Last Interglacial
Flor Vermassen, Matt O’Regan, Agatha de Boer, Freederik Schenk, Mohammad Razmjooei, Gabriel West, Thomas M. Cronin, Martin Jakobsson, Helen Coxall
2023, Nature Geoscience (16) 723-729
The extent and seasonality of Arctic sea ice during the Last Interglacial (129,000 to 115,000 years before present) is poorly known. Sediment-based reconstructions have suggested extensive ice cover in summer, while climate model outputs indicate year-round conditions in the Arctic Ocean ranging from ice free to...
Evidence of population-level impacts and resiliency for Gulf of Mexico shelf taxa following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill
W.F. Patterson, K.L. Robinson, B.K. Barnett, M. Campbell, D.C. Chagaris, J. P. Chanton, K. Daly, D. Hanisko, F. Hernandez, S.A. Murawski, A.G. Pollock, D. Portnoy, Erin L. Pulster
2023, Frontiers in Marine Science (10)
The goal of this paper was to review the evidence of population-level impacts of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill (DWH) on Gulf of Mexico (GOM) continental shelf taxa, as well as evidence of resiliency following the DWH. There is considerable environmental and biological evidence that GOM shelf taxa were exposed to...
Bayesian spatio-temporal survival analysis for all types of censoring with application to a wildlife disease study
Kehui Yao, Jun Zhu, Daniel J. O'Brien, Daniel P. Walsh
2023, Environmetrics (34)
In this article, we consider modeling arbitrarily censored survival data with spatio-temporal covariates. We demonstrate that under the piecewise constant hazard function, the likelihood for uncensored or right-censored subjects is proportional to the likelihood of multiple conditionally independent Poisson random variables. To address left- or interval-censored subjects, we propose to...
Understanding drivers of mercury in lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush), a top-predator fish in southwest Alaska's parklands
Krista K. Bartz, Michael P. Hannam, Tammy L. Wilson, Ryan F. Lepak, Jacob M. Ogorek, Daniel Young, Collin A. Eagles-Smith, David P. Krabbenhoft
2023, Environmental Pollution (330)
Mercury (Hg) is a widespread element and persistent pollutant, harmful to fish, wildlife, and humans in its organic, methylated form. The risk of Hg contamination is driven by factors that regulate Hg loading, methylation, bioaccumulation, and biomagnification. In remote locations, with infrequent access and limited data, understanding the relative importance...
The During Nearshore Event Experiment (DUNEX): A collaborative coastal community experiment to address coastal resilience
Jessamin A. Straub, Mary A. Cialone, Britt Raubenheimer, Jenna A. Brown, Nicole Elko, Katherine L. Brodie
2023, Shore & Beach (91) 23-29
The During Nearshore Event Experiment (DUNEX) was a large-scale coastal field effort focused on improving understanding of during-storm nearshore processes to ultimately develop predictive technologies, engineering solutions, and actions to enhance coastal resilience. The experiments were conducted on the North Carolina coast by a multidisciplinary group of over 30 research...
Towards improved code-based performance objectives for liquefaction hazard analysis
Andrew James Makdisi, Steven L. Kramer
2023, Conference Paper, Proceedings, 4th international conference on applications of statistics and probability in civil engineering (ICASP14)
Ground failure due to liquefaction in loose sand deposits poses substantial risks to the built environment, and has caused significant damage in past earthquakes to a wide range of infrastructure. Advances in liquefaction hazard analysis in practice have largely stagnated in recent years; the state of practice remains rooted in...
CONUS404: The NCAR-USGS 4-km long-term regional hydroclimate reanalysis over the CONUS
R. M. Rasmussen, F. Chen, C. H. Liu, K. Ikeda, A. Prein, J. Kim, T. Schneider, A. Dai, D. Gochis, A. Dugger, Y. Zhang, A. Jaye, J. Dudhia, C. He, M. Harrold, L. Xue, S. Chen, A. Newman, E. Dougherty, R. Abolafia-Rozenzweig, N. Lybarger, Roland J. Viger, David P. Lesmes, Katherine Skalak, John Brakebill, Donald Walter Cline, Krista A. Dunne, K. Rasmussen, G. Miguez-Macho
2023, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (104) E1382-E1408
A unique, high-resolution, hydroclimate reanalysis, 40-plus-year (October 1979–September 2021), 4 km (named as CONUS404), has been created using the Weather Research and Forecasting Model by dynamically downscaling of the fifth-generation European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) atmospheric reanalysis of the global climate dataset (ERA5) over the conterminous United States....
Evaluation of alternative groundwater-withdrawal scenarios on water levels in Kingsbury Pond, upper Charles River Basin, eastern Massachusetts
Paul M. Barlow, Paul J. Friesz, Jeffrey R. Barbaro
2023, Scientific Investigations Report 2023-5083
Kingsbury Pond is a glacial kettle pond in the town of Norfolk, Massachusetts, in the Mill River Basin, which is part of the Upper Charles River Basin in eastern Massachusetts. The pond is hydraulically connected to the surrounding groundwater-flow system, and water levels in the pond fluctuate in response to...
Waterfowl show spatiotemporal trends in influenza A H5 and H7 infections but limited taxonomic variation
Cody M. Kent, Sarah N. Bevins, Jennifer M. Mullinax, Jeffery D. Sullivan, Diann Prosser
2023, Ecological Applications (33)
Influenza A viruses in wild birds pose threats to the poultry industry, wild birds, and human health under certain conditions. Of particular importance are wild waterfowl, which are the primary reservoir of low pathogenicity influenza viruses that ultimately cause high pathogenicity outbreaks in poultry farms. Despite much work on the...
First observation of the ground-state electron-capture of 40K
L. Hariasz, M. Stukel, P.C.F. Di Stefano, B.C. Rasco, K.P. Rykaczewski, N.T. Brewer, D.W. Stracener, Y. Liu, Z. Gai, C. Rouleau, J. B. Carter, J. Kostensalo, J. Suhonen, H. Davis, E.D. Lukosi, K.C. Goetz, R.K. Grzywacz, M. Mancuso, F. Petricca, A. Fijalkowska, M. Wolinska-Cichocka, J. Ninkovic, P. Lechner, R.B. Ickert, Leah E. Morgan, P.R. Renne, I. Yavin
2023, Physical Review C (108)
Potassium-40 is a widespread, naturally occurring isotope whose radioactivity impacts estimated geological ages spanning billions of years, nuclear structure theory, and subatomic rare-event searches—including those for dark matter and neutrinoless double-beta decay. The decays of this long-lived isotope must be precisely known for its use as a geochronometer, and to...
Rare 40K decay with implications for fundamental physics and geochronology
M. Stukel, L. Hariasz, P.C.F. Di Stefano, B.C. Rasco, K.P. Rykaczewski, N.T. Brewer, D.W. Stracener, Y. Liu, Z. Gai, C. Rouleau, J. B. Carter, J. Kostensalo, J. Suhonen, H. Davis, E.D. Lukosi, K.C. Goetz, R.K. Grzywacz, M. Mancuso, F. Petricca, A. Fijalkowska, M. Wolinska-Cichocka, J. Ninkovic, P. Lechner, R.B. Ickert, Leah E. Morgan, P.R. Renne, I. Yavin
2023, Physical Review Letters (131)
Potassium-40 is a widespread, naturally occurring isotope whose radioactivity impacts subatomic rare-event searches, nuclear structure theory, and estimated geological ages. A predicted electron-capture decay directly to the ground state of argon-40 has never been observed. The KDK (potassium decay) collaboration reports strong evidence of this rare decay mode. A blinded...
Satellite tracking reveals use of Biscayne National Park by sea turtles tagged in multiple locations
Kristen Hart, Allison Benscoter, Haley M. Turner, Michael Cherkiss, Andrew Crowder, Jacquelyn C. Guzy, David Roche, Christopher R. Sasso, Glenn D. Goodwin, Derek A. Burkholder
2023, Regional Studies in Marine Science (65)
Although historical observations date back to the 1800’s, there is little information on sea turtle occupancy within Biscayne National Park (BNP). The park is located along the Florida reef tract and is dominated by the Gulfstream, which acts as a corridor for many marine animals. Here we used satellite telemetry to determine areas of use in...
Variations in climate drive behavior and survival of small desert tortoises
Kristin H. Berry, Jeremy S Mack, Kemp M. Anderson
2023, Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution (11)
In the Mojave Desert, timing and amounts of precipitation profoundly affect availability of water and annual plant foods necessary for the threatened Agassiz’s desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii) to survive, especially during prolonged droughts. As part of recovery actions to increase declining populations, we translocated 83 juvenile and young desert tortoises...
Vertebrate population changes induced by hunting in Amazonian sustainable-use protected areas
Ricardo Sampaio, Ronaldo G. Morato, J. Andrew Royle, Mark I. Abrahams, Carlos A. Peres, Adriano G. Chiarello
2023, Biological Conservation (284)
The purported sustainability of sustainable-use reserves (SURs) has been questioned in recent decades due to anthropogenic disturbance, including widespread game hunting. A fuller understanding of the drivers of harvest-induced game population changes in SURs is needed to inform this debate. We deployed 720 <a class="topic-link" title="Learn more about camera traps from...
Incorporating metapopulation dynamics to inform invasive species management: Evaluating bighead and silver carp control strategies in the Illinois River
Jahn Kallis, Richard A. Erickson, David P. Coulter, Alison A. Coulter, Marybeth K. Brey, Matt Catalano, John M. Dettmers, James E. Garvey, Kevin Irons, Elizabeth A. Marschall, Kenneth A Rose, Mark L. Wildhaber, David C. Glover
2023, Journal of Applied Ecology (60) 1841-1853
1. Invasive species management can benefit from predictive models that incorporate spatially explicit demographics and dispersal to guide resource allocation decisions. 2. We used invasive bigheaded carps (Hypophthalmichthys spp.) in the Illinois River, USA as a case study to create a spatially explicit model to evaluate the allocation of future...
