A comparison of two sampling designs for fish assemblage assessment in a large river
Ian A. Kiraly, Stephen M. Coghlan Jr., Joseph D. Zydlewski, Daniel Hayes
2014, Transactions of the American Fisheries Society (143) 508-518
We compared the efficiency of stratified random and fixed-station sampling designs to characterize fish assemblages in anticipation of dam removal on the Penobscot River, the largest river in Maine. We used boat electrofishing methods in both sampling designs. Multiple 500-m transects were selected randomly and electrofished in each of nine...
Multiple plumage traits convey information about age and within-age-class qualities of a canopy-dwelling songbird, the Cerulean Warbler
Than J. Boves, David A. Buehler, Petra Bohall Wood, Amanda D. Rodewald, Jeffrey L. Larkin, Patrick D. Keyser, T. Ben Wigley
2014, The Auk (131) 20-31
Colorful plumage traits in birds may convey multiple, redundant, or unreliable messages about an individual. Plumage may reliably convey information about disparate qualities such as age, condition, and parental ability because discrete tracts of feathers may cause individuals to incur different intrinsic or extrinsic costs. Few studies have examined the...
Effect of hunter selectivity on harvest rates of radio-collared white-tailed deer in Pennsylvania
Frances E. Buderman, Duane R. Diefenbach, C.S. Rosenberry, Bret D. Wallingford, Eric S. Long
2014, Journal of Wildlife Management (78) 1456-1465
Radio transmitters are a commonly used tool for monitoring the fates of harvested species, although little research has been devoted to whether a visible radio transmitter changes a hunters' willingness to harvest that animal. We initially surveyed deer hunters to assess their willingness to harvest radio-collared deer and predicted radio...
Selection of forest canopy gaps by male Cerulean Warblers in West Virginia
Kelly A. Perkins, Petra Bohall Wood
2014, Wilson Journal of Ornithology (126) 288-297
Forest openings, or canopy gaps, are an important resource for many forest songbirds, such as Cerulean Warblers (Setophaga cerulea). We examined canopy gap selection by this declining species to determine if male Cerulean Warblers selected particular sizes, vegetative heights, or types of gaps. We tested whether these parameters differed among...
Status of whitebarkpine in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem: A step-trend analysis comparing 2004-2007 to 2008-2011
Erin Shanahan, Kathryn M. Irvine, Dave Roberts, Andrea R. Litt, Kristin Legg, Rob Daley, Nina Chambers
2014, Natural Resource Technical Report NPS/GRYN/NRTR—2014/917
Whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis) is a foundation and keystone species in upper subalpine environments of the northern Rocky Mountains that strongly influences the biodiversity and productivity of high-elevation ecosystems (Tomback et al. 2001, Ellison et al. 2005). Throughout its historic range, whitebark pine has decreased significantly as a major component...
Natural hazards and risk reduction in Hawaii
James P. Kauahikaua, Robert I. Tilling
Michael P. Poland, T. Jane Takahashi, Claire M. Landowski, editor(s)
2014, Professional Paper 1801-10
Significant progress has been made over the past century in understanding, characterizing, and communicating the societal risks posed by volcanic, earthquake, and tsunami hazards in Hawai‘i. The work of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO), with a century-long commitment to serving the public with credible hazards information, contributed substantially to this...
Best practices for continuous monitoring of temperature and flow in wadeable streams
Jen Stamp, Anna I. Hamilton, Michelle Craddock, Laila Parker, Allison H. Roy, Daniel J. Isaak, Zachary Holden, Margaret Passmore, Britta Bierwagen
2014, Report
The United States Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) is working with its regional offices, states, tribes, river basin commissions and other entities to establish Regional Monitoring Networks (RMNs) for freshwater wadeable streams. To the extent possible, uninterrupted, biological, temperature and hydrologic data will be collected on an ongoing basis at...
Aquatic invasive species: Lessons from cancer research
Adam J. Sepulveda, Andrew Ray, Robert K. Al-Chokhachy, Clint C. Muhlfeld, Robert E. Gresswell, Jackson A. Gross, Jeffrey L. Kershner
2014, American Scientist (100) 234-242
Aquatic invasive species are disrupting ecosystems with increasing frequency. Successful control of these invasions has been rare: Biologists and managers have few tools for fighting aquatic invaders. In contrast, the medical community has long worked to develop tools for preventing and fighting cancer. Its successes are marked by a coordinated...
Mineral resource of the month: Strontium
Joyce A. Ober
2014, Earth (January 2015)
Strontium occurs commonly in nature, ranking as the 15th most abundant chemical element on Earth. Only two minerals contain sufficient strontium, however, to be used commercially to produce strontium compounds: Strontianite (strontium carbonate) has a higher strontium content, but celestite (strontium sulfate) is by far the most abundant strontium mineral....
A multi-scaled approach to evaluating the fish assemblage structure within southern Appalachian streams USA.
Joseph Kirsch, James Peterson
2014, Transactions of the American Fisheries Society (143) 1358-1371
There is considerable uncertainty about the relative roles of stream habitat and landscape characteristics in structuring stream-fish assemblages. We evaluated the relative importance of environmental characteristics on fish occupancy at the local and landscape scales within the upper Little Tennessee River basin of Georgia and North Carolina. Fishes were sampled...
The effects of harvest on waterfowl populations
Evan G. Cooch, Matthieu Guillemain, G Scott Boomer, Jean-Dominique Lebreton, James D. Nichols
2014, Wildfowl (Special Issue 4) 220-276
Change in the size of populations over space and time is, arguably, the motivation for much of pure and applied ecological research. The fundamental model for the dynamics of any population is straightforward: the net change in the abundance is the simple difference between the number of individuals entering the population and the number...
Assessing the importance of terrain parameters on glide avalanche release
Erich H. Peitzsch, Jordy Hendrikx, Daniel B. Fagre
2014, Conference Paper, Proceedings of the International Snow Science Workshop
Glide snow avalanches are dangerous and difficult to predict. Despite recent research there is still a lack of understanding regarding the controls of glide avalanche release. Glide avalanches often occur in similar terrain or the same locations annually and observations suggest that topography may be critical. Thus, to gain an...
The critical role of islands for waterbird breeding and foraging habitat in managed ponds of the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project, South San Francisco Bay, California
Joshua T. Ackerman, C. Alex Hartman, Mark P. Herzog, Lacy M. Smith, Stacy M. Moskal, Susan E.W. De La Cruz, Julie L. Yee, John Y. Takekawa
2014, Open-File Report 2014-1263
The South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project aims to restore 50–90 percent of former salt evaporation ponds into tidal marsh in South San Francisco Bay, California. However, large numbers of waterbirds use these ponds annually as nesting and foraging habitat. Islands within ponds are particularly important habitat for nesting, foraging,...
Maximizing the social and ecological value of Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge, South Carolina as the effects of global change processes increase.
Raye Nilius, Sarah Dawsey, Mitchell J. Eaton, Julien Martin, Stephanie S. Romanach, Suzanne Baird, Michael Bryant, David J. Case, Fred A. Johnson, Gerard McMahon, Nancy Pau, Elizabeth Pienaar, Mary Ratnaswamy, Steven Seibert, Pamela Wingrove, Nathan J. Wood
2014, Conference Paper, Structured decision making workshop - Report
Coastal ecosystems in the eastern U.S. have been severely altered by processes associated with human development, including drainage of coastal wetlands, changes in hydrology that alter sediment and freshwater delivery to the coast, land clearing, agricultural and forestry activity, and the construction of seawalls and other structures that “harden” the...
Northwest
Philip W. Mote, Amy K. Snover, Susan M. Capalbo, Sanford D. Eigenbrode, Patricia Glick, Jeremy S. Littell, Richard Raymondi, Spencer Reeder
2014, Book chapter, National Climate Assessment
Key Messages 1. Changes in the timing of streamflow related to changing snowmelt are already observed and will continue, reducing the supply of water for many competing demands and causing far-reaching ecological and socioeconomic consequences. 2. In the coastal zone, the effects of sea level rise, erosion, inundation, threats to...
Yellowstone River Compact Commission sixty-third annual report, 2014
Wayne R. Berkas
2014, Report
No abstract available....
Sharp increase in central Oklahoma seismicity 2009-2014 induced by massive wastewater injection
Kathleen M. Keranen, Geoffrey A. Abers, Matthew Weingarten, Barbara A. Bekins, Shemin Ge
2014, Science (345) 448-451
Unconventional oil and gas production provides a rapidly growing energy source; however high-producing states in the United States, such as Oklahoma, face sharply rising numbers of earthquakes. Subsurface pressure data required to unequivocally link earthquakes to injection are rarely accessible. Here we use seismicity and hydrogeological models to show that...
Land-use and land-cover change
Daniel G. Brown, Colin Polsky, Paul V. Bolstad, Samuel D. Brody, David Hulse, Roger Kroh, Thomas Loveland, Allison Thompson
J. M. Melillo, Terese Richmond, G.W. Yohe, editor(s)
2014, Report, Climate change impacts in the United States: The third national climate assessment
No abstract available....
Can managers compensate for coyote predation of white-tailed deer?
Kelly F. Robinson, Duane R. Diefenbach, Angela K. Fuller, Jeremy E. Hurst, Christopher S. Rosenberry
2014, Journal of Wildlife Management (78) 571-579
Many studies have documented that coyotes (Canis latrans) are the greatest source of natural mortality for white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) neonates (<3 months old). With the range expansion of coyotes eastward in North America, many stakeholders are concerned that coyote predation may be affecting deer populations adversely. We hypothesized that...
Paleoclimate
Patrick J. Bartlein, Steven W. Hostetler, Jay R. Alder
G. Ohring, editor(s)
2014, Book chapter, Climate Change in North America
As host to one of the major continental-scale ice sheets, and with considerable spatial variability of climate related to its physiography and location, North America has experienced a wide range of climates over time. The aim of this chapter is to review the history of those climate variations, focusing in...
Effects of fine sediment, hyporheic flow, and spawning site characteristics on survival and development of bull trout embryos
Tracy Bowerman, Bethany Neilson, Phaedra Budy
2014, Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences (71) 1059-1071
Successful spawning is imperative for the persistence of salmonid populations, but relatively little research has been conducted to evaluate factors affecting early life-stage survival for bull trout (Salvelinus confluentus), a threatened char. We conducted a field experiment to assess the relationship between site-specific environmental factors and bull trout embryo survival...
Characterization of microsatellite loci from two-spotted octopus Octopus bimaculatus Verrill 1883 from pyrosequencing reads
J. F. Dominguez-Contreras, A. Munguía-Vega, B. P. Ceballos-Vazquez, M. Arellano-Martinez, Melanie Culver
2014, Conservation Genetics Resources (6) 465-468
We characterized 22 novel microsatellite loci in the two-spotted octopus Octopus bimaculatus using 454 pyrosequencing reads. All loci were polymorphic and will be used in studies of marine connectivity aimed at increasing sustainability of the resource. The mean number alleles per locus was 13.09 (range 7–19) and observed heterozygosities ranged...
A review of pipe and bamboo artificial refugia as sampling tools in anuran studies
Brad M. Glorioso, J. Hardin Waddle
2014, Herpetological Conservation and Biology (9) 609-625
Artificial pipe-like refugia have been used for more than 40 years in anuran studies, and have captured 28 species, primarily (82%) hylid treefrogs. Early pipe-like refugia were made using cut pieces of bamboo in the tropical forests of Puerto Rico, but most recent studies have used synthetic pipes and have...
The Lepanto Cu–Au deposit, Philippines: A fossil hyperacidic volcanic lake complex
Byron R. Berger, Richard W. Henley, Heather A. Lowers, Michael Pribil
2014, Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research (271) 70-82
Hyperacidic lakes and associated solfatara in active volcanoes are the expression of magmatic gas expansion from source to surface. Here we show for the first time, that the vein system that comprises the ~ 2 Ma high-sulfidation, Lepanto copper–gold deposit in the Mankayan district (Philippines) was associated with a contemporary hyperacidic volcanic...
Reanalysis of historical U.S. Geological Survey sediment samples for geochemical data from the western part of the Wrangellia terrane, Anchorage, Gulkana, Healy, Mt. Hayes, Nabesna, and Talkeetna Mountains quadrangles, Alaska
Melanie B. Werdon, Jaime S. Azain, Matthew Granitto
2014, Report
The State of Alaska’s Strategic and Critical Minerals (SCM) Assessment project, a State-funded Capital Improvement Project (CIP), is designed to evaluate Alaska’s statewide potential for SCM resources. The SCM Assessment is being implemented by the Alaska Division of Geological & Geophysical Surveys (DGGS), and involves obtaining new airborne-geophysical, geological, and...
