Effects of hydrology, watershed size, and agricultural practices on sediment yields in two river basins in Iowa and Mississippi
Gustavo Henrique Merten, Heather L. Welch, M.D. Tomer
2016, Journal of Soil and Water Conservation (71) 267-278
The specific sediment yield (SSY) from watersheds is the result of the balance between natural, scale-dependent erosion and deposition processes, but can be greatly altered by human activities. In general, the SSY decreases along the course of a river as sediments are trapped in alluvial plains and other sinks. However,...
INVASIVESNET towards an International Association for Open Knowledge on Invasive Alien Species
Frances Lucy, Helen Roy, Annie Simpson, James T. Carlton, John Mark Hanson, Kit Magellan, Marnie L. Campbell, Mark John Costello, Shyama Pagad, Chad L Hewitt, Justin McDonald, Phillip Cassey, Sidinei M Thomaz, Stelios Katsanevakis, Argyro Zenetos, Elena Tricarico, Angela Boggero, Quentin J. Groom, Tim Adriaens, Sonia Vanderhoeven, Mark E. Torchin, Ruth A. Hufbauer, Pam Fuller, Mary R Carman, David Bruce Conn, Jean R. S. Vitule, Joao Canning-Clode, Bella S Galil, Henn Ojaveer, Sarah A Bailey, Thomas W Therriault, Renata Claudi, Anna Gazda, Jaimie T A Dick, Joe Caffrey, Arne Witt, Marc Kenis, Maiju Lehtiniemi, Harry Helmisaari, Vadim E Panov
2016, Management of Biological Invasions (7) 131-139
In a world where invasive alien species (IAS) are recognised as one of the major threats to biodiversity, leading scientists from five continents have come together to propose the concept of developing an international association for open knowledge and open data on IAS—termed “INVASIVESNET”. This new association will facilitate greater...
Estimating population density and connectivity of American mink using spatial capture-recapture
Angela K. Fuller, Christopher S. Sutherland, J. Andrew Royle, Matthew P. Hare
2016, Ecological Applications (26) 1125-1135
Estimating the abundance or density of populations is fundamental to the conservation and management of species, and as landscapes become more fragmented, maintaining landscape connectivity has become one of the most important challenges for biodiversity conservation. Yet these two issues have never been formally integrated together in a model that...
Seeing the forest through the trees: Considering roost-site selection at multiple spatial scales
David S. Jachowski, Christopher T. Rota, Christopher A. Dobony, W. Mark Ford, John W. Edwards
2016, PLoS ONE (11)
Conservation of bat species is one of the most daunting wildlife conservation challenges in North America, requiring detailed knowledge about their ecology to guide conservation efforts. Outside of the hibernating season, bats in temperate forest environments spend their diurnal time in day-roosts. In addition to simple shelter, summer roost availability...
Wolf (Canis lupus) generation time and proportion of current breeding females by age
L. David Mech, Shannon M. Barber-Meyer, John Erb
2016, PLoS ONE (11) 1-13
Information is sparse about aspects of female wolf (Canis lupus) breeding in the wild, including age of first reproduction, mean age of primiparity, generation time, and proportion of each age that breeds in any given year. We studied these subjects in 86 wolves (113 captures) in the Superior National Forest...
Long-distance translocations to create a second millerbird population and reduce extinction risk
Holly Freifeld, Sheldon Plentovich, Chris Farmer, Charles Kohley, Peter Luscomb, Thierry M. Work, Daniel Tsukayama, George Wallace, Mark MacDonald, Sheila Conant
2016, Biological Conservation (199) 146-156
Translocation is a conservation tool used with increasing frequency to create additional populations of threatened species. In addition to following established general guidelines for translocations, detailed planning to account for unique circumstances and intensive post-release monitoring to document outcomes and guide management are essential components of these projects. Recent translocation...
Flexible characterization of animal movement pattern using net squared displacement and a latent state model
Guillaume Bastille-Rousseau, Jonathan Potts, Charles B. Yackulic, Jacqueline L. Frair, Hance Ellington, Stephen Blake
2016, Movement Ecology (4)
Background Characterizing the movement patterns of animals is an important step in understanding their ecology. Various methods have been developed for classifying animal movement at both coarse (e.g., migratory vs. sedentary behavior) and fine (e.g., resting vs. foraging) scales. A popular approach for classifying movements at...
A new panel of SNP markers for the individual identification of North American pumas
Robert R. Fitak, Ashwin Naidu, Ron W. Thompson, Melanie Culver
2016, Journal of Fish and Wildlife Management (7) 13-27
Pumas Puma concolor are one of the most studied terrestrial carnivores because of their widespread distribution, substantial ecological impacts, and conflicts with humans. Over the past decade, managing pumas has involved extensive efforts including the use of genetic methods. Microsatellites have been the most commonly used genetic markers; however, technical...
Morphodynamics of prograding beaches: A synthesis of seasonal- to century-scale observations of the Columbia River littoral cell
Peter Ruggiero, George Kaminsky, Guy R. Gelfenbaum, Nicholas Cohn
2016, Marine Geology (376) 51-68
Findings from nearly two decades of research focused on the Columbia River littoral cell (CRLC), a set of rapidly prograding coastal barriers and strand-plains in the U.S. Pacific Northwest, are synthesized to investigate the morphodynamics associated with prograding beaches. Due to a large sediment supply from the Columbia...
Combined use of thermal methods and seepage meters to efficiently locate, quantify, and monitor focused groundwater discharge to a sand-bed stream
Donald O. Rosenberry, Martin A. Briggs, Geoffrey N. Delin, Danielle K. Hare
2016, Water Resources Research (52) 4486-4503
Quantifying flow of groundwater through streambeds often is difficult due to the complexity of aquifer-scale heterogeneity combined with local-scale hyporheic exchange. We used fiber-optic distributed temperature sensing (FO-DTS), seepage meters, and vertical temperature profiling to locate, quantify, and monitor areas of focused groundwater discharge in a geomorphically simple sand-bed stream....
Population viability analysis for endangered Roanoke logperch
James H. Roberts, Paul L. Angermeier, Gregory B. Anderson
2016, Journal of Fish and Wildlife Management (7) 46-64
A common strategy for recovering endangered species is ensuring that populations exceed the minimum viable population size (MVP), a demographic benchmark that theoretically ensures low long-term extinction risk. One method of establishing MVP is population viability analysis, a modeling technique that simulates population trajectories and forecasts extinction risk based on...
Differences in coastal subsidence in southern Oregon (USA) during at least six prehistoric megathrust earthquakes
Yvonne Milker, Alan R. Nelson, Benjamin P. Horton, Simon E. Engelhart, Lee-Ann Bradley, Robert C. Witter
2016, Quaternary Science Reviews (142) 143-163
Stratigraphic, sedimentologic (including CT 3D X-ray tomography scans), foraminiferal, and radiocarbon analyses show that at least six of seven abrupt peat-to-mud contacts in cores from a tidal marsh at Talbot Creek (South Slough, Coos Bay), record sudden subsidence (relative sea-level rise) during great megathrust earthquakes at the Cascadia subduction zone....
Development and use of mathematical models and software frameworks for integrated analysis of agricultural systems and associated water use impacts
K. R. Fowler, E.W. Jenkins, M. Parno, J.C. Chrispell, A. I. Colon, Randall T. Hanson
2016, AIMS Agriculture and Food (1) 208-226
The development of appropriate water management strategies requires, in part, a methodology for quantifying and evaluating the impact of water policy decisions on regional stakeholders. In this work, we describe the framework we are developing to enhance the body of resources available to policy makers, farmers, and other community members...
Planning for ex situ conservation in the face of uncertainty
Stefano Canessa, Sarah J. Converse, Matt West, Nick Clemann, Graeme Gillespie, Michael McFadden, Aimee J. Silla, Kirsten M Parris, Michael A McCarthy
2016, Conservation Biology (30) 599-609
Ex situ conservation strategies for threatened species often require long-term commitment and financial investment to achieve management objectives. We present a framework that considers the decision to adopt ex situ management for a target species as the end point of several linked decisions. We used a decision tree to intuitively...
One thousand years of fires: Integrating proxy and model data
Natalie M. Kehrwald, Julie C. Aleman, Michael Coughlan, Colin J. Courtney Mustaphi, Esther N. Githumbi, Brian I. Magi, Jennifer R. Marlon, Mitchell J. Power
2016, Frontiers of Biogeography (8)
The current fires raging across Indonesia are emitting more carbon than the annual fossil fuel emissions of Germany or Japan, and the fires are still consuming vast tracts of rainforest and peatlands. The National Interagency Fire Center (www.nifc.gov) notes that 2015 is one worst fire years on record in the...
Where the wild things are: A research agenda for studying wildlife-wilderness relationship
Michael K. Schwartz, Beth Hahn, Blake R. Hossack
2016, Journal of Forestry (114) 311-319
We explore the connection between US designated wilderness areas and wildlife with the goal of establishing a research agenda for better understanding this complex relationship. Our research agenda has two components. The first, “wildlife for wilderness,” considers the impact of wildlife on wilderness character. Whereas studies show that wildlife is...
Book review: New concepts and discoveries: the Geological Society of Nevada 2015 Symposium Proceedings
Warren C. Day
2016, Economic Geology (111) 543-546
The Nevada Geological Society has a long history of convening meetings and workshops focused on the geology and metallogeny of the western United States relevant to the mineral exploration and mining community across the Great Basin. One outgrowth of the Geological Society of Nevada’s 2015 Symposium is a two-volume set,...
Yucca brevifolia fruit production, predispersal seed predation, and fruit removal by rodents during two years of contrasting reproduction
Mark I. Borchert, Lesley DeFalco
2016, American Journal of Botany (103) 830-836
PREMISE OF THE STUDY: The distribution of Yucca brevifolia, a keystone species of the Mojave Desert, may contract with climate change, yet reproduction and dispersal are poorly understood. We tracked reproduction, seed predation, and fruit dispersal for two years and discuss whether Y. brevifolia is a masting species. METHODS: Fruit...
Physiological comparisons of plasma and tissue metrics of selected inland and coastal steelhead kelts.
Zachary L. Penney, Christine M. Moffitt, Bryan Jones, Brian Marston
2016, Environmental Biology of Fishes (99) 487-498
The physiological status of migrating steelhead kelts (Oncorhynchus mykiss) from the Situk River, Alaska, and two tributaries of the Clearwater River, Idaho, was evaluated to explore potential differences in post-spawning survival related to energy reserves. Blood plasma samples were analyzed for metrics related to nutritional and osmotic status,...
Cyanotoxins in inland lakes of the United States: Occurrence and potential recreational health risks in the EPA National Lakes Assessment 2007
Keith A. Loftin, Jennifer L. Graham, Elizabeth Hilborn, Sarah Lehmann, Michael T. Meyer, Julie E. Dietze, Christopher Griffith
2016, Harmful Algae (56) 77-90
A large nation-wide survey of cyanotoxins (1161 lakes) in the United States (U.S.) was conducted during the EPA National Lakes Assessment 2007. Cyanotoxin data were compared with cyanobacteria abundance- and chlorophyll-based World Health Organization (WHO) thresholds and mouse toxicity data to evaluate potential recreational risks. Cylindrospermopsins, microcystins, and saxitoxins were...
Diet and macronutrient optimization in wild ursids: A comparison of grizzly bears with sympatric and allopatric black bears
Cecily M. Costello, Steven L. Cain, Shannon R Pils, Leslie Frattaroli, Mark A. Haroldson, Frank T. van Manen
2016, PLoS ONE (11) 1-22
When fed ad libitum, ursids can maximize mass gain by selecting mixed diets wherein protein provides 17 ± 4% of digestible energy, relative to carbohydrates or lipids. In the wild, this ability is likely constrained by seasonal food availability, limits of intake rate as body size increases, and competition. By...
A possible transoceanic tsunami directed toward the U.S. west coast from the Semidi segment, Alaska convergent margin
Roland E. von Huene, John J. Miller, Peter Dartnell
2016, Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems (17) 645-659
The Semidi segment of the Alaska convergent margin appears capable of generating a giant tsunami like the one produced along the nearby Unimak segment in 1946. Reprocessed legacy seismic reflection data and a compilation of multibeam bathymetric surveys reveal structures that could generate such a tsunami. A 200 km long...
Storm-event-transport of urban-use pesticides to streams likely impairs invertebrate assemblages
Kurt D. Carpenter, Kathryn Kuivila, Michelle Hladik, Tana Haluska, Michael B. Cole
2016, Environmental Monitoring and Assessment (188)
Insecticide use in urban areas results in the detection of these compounds in streams following stormwater runoff at concentrations likely to cause toxicity for stream invertebrates. In this 2013 study, stormwater runoff and streambed sediments were analyzed for 91 pesticides dissolved in water and 118 pesticides on sediment. Detections included...
Bayesian estimation of magma supply, storage, and eruption rates using a multiphysical volcano model: Kīlauea Volcano, 2000–2012
Kyle R. Anderson, Michael P. Poland
2016, Earth and Planetary Science Letters (447) 161-171
Estimating rates of magma supply to the world's volcanoes remains one of the most fundamental aims of volcanology. Yet, supply rates can be difficult to estimate even at well-monitored volcanoes, in part because observations are noisy and are usually considered independently rather than as part of a holistic system. In...
Nitrosation and nitration of fulvic acid, peat and coal with nitric acid
Kevin A. Thorn, Larry G. Cox
2016, PLoS ONE (11)
Nitrohumic acids, produced from base extraction of coals and peats oxidized with nitric acid, have received considerable attention as soil ammendments in agriculture. The nitration chemistry however is incompletely understood. Moreover, there is a need to understand the reaction of nitric acid with natural organic matter (NOM) in general, in...
