Book review: Implementing the Endangered Species Act on the Platte Basin water commons
Mark H. Sherfy
2014, The Prairie Naturalist (46) 115-116
The Platte River is a unique midcontinent ecosystem that is world-renowned for its natural resources, particularly the spectacular spring concentrations of migratory birds, such as sandhill cranes (Grus canadensis), ducks, and geese. The Platte River basin also provides habitat for four federally listed endangered or threatened species—interior least tern (Sternula...
Unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) activities at the Department of the Interior
Bruce K. Quirk, Michael E. Hutt
2014, Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing (80) 1089-1095
The U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) is responsible for protecting and managing the natural resources and heritage on almost 20% of the land in the United States. The DOI’s mission requires access to remotely sensed data over vast lands, including areas that are remote and potentially dangerous to access....
Population dynamics modeling of introduced smallmouth bass in the upper Colorado River basin
André R. Breton, Dana L. Winkelman, Kevin R. Bestgen, John A. Hawkins
2014, Report
The purpose of these analyses was to identify an effective control strategy to further reduce smallmouth bass in the upper Colorado River basin from the current level. Our simulation results showed that “the surge”, an early to mid-summer increase in electrofishing effort targeting nest-guarding male smallmouth bass, should be...
Volcanology: Lessons learned from Synthetic Aperture Radar imagery
Virginie Pinel, Michael P. Poland, Andrew Hooper
2014, Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research (289) 81-113
Twenty years of continuous Earth observation by satellite SAR have resulted in numerous new insights into active volcanism, including a better understanding of subsurface magma storage and transport, deposition of volcanic materials on the surface, and the structure and development of volcanic edifices. This massive archive of data has resulted...
Paleogeomorphology of the early Colorado River inferred from relationships in Mohave and Cottonwood Valleys, Arizona, California and Nevada
Philip Pearthree, Kyle House
2014, Geosphere (10) 1139-1160
Geologic investigations of late Miocene–early Pliocene deposits in Mohave and Cottonwood valleys provide important insights into the early evolution of the lower Colorado River system. In the latest Miocene these valleys were separate depocenters; the floor of Cottonwood Valley was ∼200 m higher than the floor of Mohave Valley. When...
Carryover effects and climatic conditions influence the postfledging survival of greater sage-grouse
Erik J. Blomberg, James S. Sedinger, Daniel Gibson, Peter S. Coates, Michael L. Casazza
2014, Ecology and Evolution (4) 4488-4499
Prebreeding survival is an important life history component that affects both parental fitness and population persistence. In birds, prebreeding can be separated into pre- and postfledging periods; carryover effects from the prefledging period may influence postfledging survival. We investigated effects of body condition at fledging, and climatic variation, on postfledging...
Fate of injected CO2 in the Wilcox Group, Louisiana, Gulf Coast Basin: Chemical and isotopic tracers of microbial–brine–rock–CO2 interactions
Jenna L. Shelton, Jennifer C. McIntosh, Peter D. Warwick, Amelia Lee Zhi Yi
2014, Applied Geochemistry (51) 155-169
The “2800’ sandstone” of the Olla oil field is an oil and gas-producing reservoir in a coal-bearing interval of the Paleocene–Eocene Wilcox Group in north-central Louisiana, USA. In the 1980s, this producing unit was flooded with CO2 in an enhanced oil recovery (EOR) project, leaving ∼30% of the injected CO2 in the...
Ecohydrology of dry regions: storage versus pulse soil water dynamics
William K. Lauenroth, Daniel R. Schlaepfer, John B. Bradford
2014, Ecosystems (17) 1469-1479
Although arid and semiarid regions are defined by low precipitation, the seasonal timing of temperature and precipitation can influence net primary production and plant functional type composition. The importance of precipitation seasonality is evident in semiarid areas of the western U.S., which comprise the Intermountain (IM) zone, a region that...
Dynamics and ecological consequences of the 2013−2014 koa moth outbreak at Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge.
Paul C. Banko, Robert W. Peck, Stephanie G. Yelenik, Eben H. Paxton, Frank J. Bonaccorso, Kristina Montoya-Aiona, David Foote
2014, Technical Report HCSU-058
A massive outbreak of the koa moth (Geometridea: Scotorythra paludicola) defoliated more than a third of the koa (Acacia koa) forest on Hawai‘i Island during 2013−2014. This was the largest koa moth outbreak ever recorded and the first on the island since 1953. The outbreak spread to sites distributed widely...
The effects of changing land cover on streamflow simulation in Puerto Rico
Ashley E. Van Beusekom, Lauren E. Hay, Roland J. Viger, William A. Gould, Jaime Collazo, Azad Henareh Khalyani
2014, Journal of the American Water Resources Association (50) 1575-1593
This study quantitatively explores whether land cover changes have a substantive impact on simulated streamflow within the tropical island setting of Puerto Rico. The Precipitation Runoff Modeling System (PRMS) was used to compare streamflow simulations based on five static parameterizations of land cover with those based on dynamically varying parameters...
Impacts of drought and crayfish invasion on stream ecosystem structure and function
Daniel D. Magoulick
2014, River Research and Applications (30) 1309-1317
Drought and seasonal drying can be important disturbance events in many small streams, leading to intermittent or isolated habitats. Many small streams contain crayfish populations that are often keystone or dominant species in these systems. I conducted an experiment in stream mesocosms to examine the effects of drought and potential...
The role of citizen science in bird conservation: The Christmas Bird Count and Breeding Bird Survey
John R. Sauer, Gregory S. Butcher
2014, All Bird Bulletin 3-6
Many birders in the United States, Canada, and Mexico are critical participants in bird monitoring and conservation activities. This linkage between recreational birders and avian conservation surveys is not new. It was established long before the internet and long before any fast communication facilitated the connection of birders to scientists....
Assessing and managing freshwater ecosystems vulnerable to global change
David G. Angeler, Craig R. Allen, Hannah E. Birge, Stina Drakare, Brendan G. McKie, Richard K. Johnson
2014, Ambio (43) 113-125
Freshwater ecosystems are important for global biodiversity and provide essential ecosystem services. There is consensus in the scientific literature that freshwater ecosystems are vulnerable to the impacts of environmental change, which may trigger irreversible regime shifts upon which biodiversity and ecosystem services may be lost. There are profound uncertainties regarding...
Fitness in animals correlates with proximity to discontinuities in body mass distributions.
David G. Angeler, Craig R. Allen, Anna Vila-Gispert, David Almeida
2014, Ecological Complexity (20) 213-218
Discontinuous structure in landscapes may cause discontinuous, aggregated species body-mass patterns, reflecting the scales of structure available to animal communities within a landscape. Empirical analyses have shown that the location of species within body mass aggregations, which reflect this scale-specific organization, is non-random with regard to several ecological phenomena, including...
Characterizing riverbed sediment using high-frequency acoustics 1: spectral properties of scattering
Daniel D. Buscombe, Paul E. Grams, Matthew A. Kaplinski
2014, Journal of Geophysical Research F: Earth Surface (119) 2674-2691
Bed-sediment classification using high-frequency hydro-acoustic instruments is challenging when sediments are spatially heterogeneous, which is often the case in rivers. The use of acoustic backscatter to classify sediments is an attractive alternative to analysis of topography because it is potentially sensitive to grain-scale roughness. Here, a new method is presented...
Genetic structure of Florida green turtle rookeries as indicated by mitochondrial DNA control region sequences
Brian M. Shamblin, Dean A. Bagley, Llewellyn M. Ehrhart, Nicole A. Desjardin, R. Erik Martin, Kristen M. Hart, Eugenia Naro-Maciel, Kirt Rusenko, John C. Stiner, Debra Sobel, Chris Johnson, Thomas Wilmers, Laura J. Wright, Campbell J. Nairn
2014, Conservation Genetics (16) 673-685
Green turtle (Chelonia mydas) nesting has increased dramatically in Florida over the past two decades, ranking the Florida nesting aggregation among the largest in the Greater Caribbean region. Individual beaches that comprise several hundred kilometers of Florida’s east coast and Keys support tens to thousands of nests annually. These beaches...
Inhalable desert dust, urban emissions, and potentially biotoxic metals in urban Saharan-Sahelian air
Virginia H. Garrison, Michael S. Majewski, Lassana Konde, Ruth E. Wolf, Richard D. Otto, Yutaka Tsuneoka
2014, Science of the Total Environment 383-394
Saharan dust incursions and particulates emitted from human activities degrade air quality throughout West Africa, especially in the rapidly expanding urban centers in the region. Particulate matter (PM) that can be inhaled is strongly associated with increased incidence of and mortality from cardiovascular and respiratory diseases and cancer. Air samples...
Estimating true instead of apparent survival using spatial Cormack-Jolly-Seber models
Michael Schaub, J. Andrew Royle
2014, Methods in Ecology and Evolution (5) 1316-1326
Survival is often estimated from capture–recapture data using Cormack–Jolly–Seber (CJS) models, where mortality and emigration cannot be distinguished, and the estimated apparent survival probability is the product of the probabilities of true survival and of study area fidelity. Consequently, apparent survival is lower than true survival unless study area fidelity...
Contaminants of emerging concern in fresh leachate from landfills in the conterminous United States
Jason R. Masoner, Dana W. Kolpin, Edward T. Furlong, Isabelle M. Cozzarelli, James L. Gray, Eric A. Schwab
2014, Environmental Science: Processes and Impacts (16) 2335-2354
To better understand the composition of contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) in landfill leachate, fresh leachate from 19 landfills was sampled across the United States during 2011. The sampled network included 12 municipal and 7 private landfills with varying landfill waste compositions, geographic and climatic settings, ages of waste, waste...
Composition of dust deposited to snow cover in the Wasatch Range (Utah, USA): Controls on radiative properties of snow cover and comparison to some dust-source sediments
Richard L. Reynolds, Harland L. Goldstein, Bruce M. Moskowitz, Ann C. Bryant, S. McKenzie Skiles, Raymond F. Kokaly, Cody B. Flagg, Kimberly Yauk, Thelma S. Berquo, George N. Breit, Michael Ketterer, Daniel Fernandez, Mark E. Miller, Thomas H. Painter
2014, Aeolian Research (15) 73-90
Dust layers deposited to snow cover of the Wasatch Range (northern Utah) in 2009 and 2010 provide rare samples to determine the relations between their compositions and radiative properties. These studies are required to comprehend and model how such dust-on-snow (DOS) layers affect rates of snow melt through changes in...
A comparison of passive and active acoustic sampling for a bat community impacted by White-nose syndrome
Laci S. Coleman, W. Mark Ford, Christopher A. Dobony, Eric R. Britzke
2014, Journal of Fish and Wildlife Management (5) 217-226
In the summers of 2011 and 2012, we compared passive and active acoustic sampling for bats at 31 sites at Fort Drum Military Installation, New York. We defined active sampling as acoustic sampling that occurred in 30-min intervals between the hours of sunset and 0200 with a user present to...
Geomorphological Fieldwork
Mary J Thornbush, Casey D Allen, Faith A. Fitzpatrick
2014, Book
Geomorphological Fieldwork addresses a topic that always remains popular within the geosciences and environmental science. More specifically, the volume conveys a growing legacy of field-based learning for young geomorphologists that can be used as a student book for field-based university courses and postgraduate research requiring fieldwork or field schools. The...
Effects of a dual-pump crude-oil recovery system, Bemidji, Minnesota, USA
Geoffrey N. Delin, William N. Herkelrath
2014, Groundwater Monitoring & Remediation (34) 57-67
A crude-oil spill occurred in 1979 when a pipeline burst near Bemidji, MN. In 1998, the pipeline company installed a dual-pump recovery system designed to remove crude oil remaining in the subsurface at the site. The remediation from 1999 to 2003 resulted in removal of about 115,000 L of crude...
Late Holocene slip rate and ages of prehistoric earthquakes along the Maacama Fault near Willits, Mendocino County, northern California
Carol S. Prentice, Martin C. Larsen, Harvey M. Kelsey, Judith Zachariasen
2014, Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (104) 2966-2984
The Maacama fault is the northward continuation of the Hayward–Rodgers Creek fault system and creeps at a rate of 5.7±0.1 mm/yr (averaged over the last 20 years) in Willits, California. Our paleoseismic studies at Haehl Creek suggest that the Maacama fault has produced infrequent large earthquakes in addition to creep. Fault...
Relationships between land cover and dissolved organic matter change along the river to lake transition
James H. Larson, Paul C. Frost, Marguerite A. Xenopoulos, Clayton J. Williams, Ana M. Morales-Williams, Jonathan M. Vallazza, J. C. Nelson, William B. Richardson
2014, Ecosystems (17) 1413-1425
Dissolved organic matter (DOM) influences the physical, chemical, and biological properties of aquatic ecosystems. We hypothesized that controls over spatial variation in DOM quantity and composition (measured with DOM optical properties) differ based on the source of DOM to aquatic ecosystems. DOM quantity and composition should be better predicted by...
