Selected water-quality data from the Cedar River and Cedar Rapids well fields, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, 2017–22
Shannon M. Meppelink, Stephen J. Kalkhoff
2026, Data Report 1224
The Cedar River alluvial aquifer is the source of drinking water in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Production wells are completed in the alluvial aquifer approximately 40 to 80 feet below land surface. The City of Cedar Rapids and the U.S. Geological Survey have studied the groundwater-flow system and water quality of...
Ecology of Lake Erie – Wetlands and lake-wide planktonic communities: A synthesis
Stuart A. Ludsin, Mohiuddin Munawar, Anna G. Boegehold, D. Andrew R. Drake, Kurt P. Kowalski, Lauren M. Pintor
2026, Aquatic Ecosystem Health & Management (28) 122-131
No abstract available....
Abundance and movement patterns of fish accessing a reconnected Lake Erie coastal wetland: Insights from high-resolution sonar data
Kurt P. Kowalski, Alexandra A. Bozimowski, McKenzie K.H. Smith, Michael R. Eggleston, Maxwell F. Ramsay, Holly J. Eschenburg
2026, Aquatic Ecosystem Health & Management (28) 66-85
Coastal wetlands of the Laurentian Great Lakes are complex ecosystems that provide essential biological services, including providing habitat for a suite of fish species. As restoration efforts for these coastal wetlands increase, there is a need to characterize how well restored areas support the life histories of wetland, riverine, and...
A chromosome-level genome assembly of a vernal pool specialist amphibian, the Western Spadefoot, Spea hammondii
Ben Thompsky, Eric Beraut, Robert D. Cooper, Merly Escalona, Robert E. Espinoza, Robert N. Fisher, Courtney Miller, Oanh Nguyen, Samuel Sacco, Ruta Sahasrabudhe, William E. Seligmann, Erin Tofflemier, Ian J. Wang, H. Bradley Schaffer
2026, Journal of Heredity
We assembled and annotated a chromosome-level genome for the Western Spadefoot, Spea hammondii (Anura, Scaphiopodidae) representing one of only three amphibians included in the California Conservation Genomics Project (CCGP). Spea hammondii is a vernal pool breeding anuran native to California and northwestern Baja California which has undergone both range contractions and local extirpations across...
Mineral chemistry perspective on remobilization of stored magma at Kamakai'a Hills, Southwest Rift Zone of Kilauea, Island of Hawai'i, USA
Drew T. Downs, May Sas
2026, Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research (474)
Differentiated magmas stored in the rift zones of Kīlauea have received more attention in recent years following eruption of andesite during the early phase of 2018 lower East Rift Zone activity. Despite this growing interest, some of the most voluminous eruptions of differentiated rift zone magmas remain...
How wildlife respond to tropical cyclones: Short-term tactics and long-term impacts
Erin L. Koen, Mohamed Khalil Meliane, Zachery B. Holmes, Karl E. Miller, William J. Barichivich, Emilie Dedeban, Alex Furst, Miranda Imeri, Peyton E. Niebanck, Samantha Nunn, Kailee Pearson, Nicole Rita, Brier Ryver, Dakotah Shaffer, Susan C. Walls, E. Hance Ellington
2026, Biological Reviews
From butterflies to lizards and from sharks to seabirds, wildlife exhibit tactics to survive the impacts of tropical cyclones, also known as hurricanes, cyclones, or typhoons depending on where they occur. Some species seek refuge during the storm by moving, some remain in place and ride it...
Simulated seasonal loads of total nitrogen and total phosphorus by major source from watersheds draining to Washington waters of the Salish Sea, 2005 through 2020
Noah M. Schmadel, Cristiana Figueroa-Kaminsky, Daniel R. Wise, Jamie K. Wasielewski, Zachary Johnson, Robert W. Black
2026, Scientific Investigations Report 2026-5001
The U.S. Geological Survey and the Washington State Department of Ecology (Ecology) have developed watershed models of seasonal load estimates of total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorus (TP) discharging into the Washington State waters of the Salish Sea from 2005 through 2020. The modeling approach used was dynamic SPARROW (SPAtially...
Influence of modeling assumptions on pedestrian evacuation success for non-eruptive lahar hazards at Mount Rainier, Washington
Nathan J. Wood, Jeff Peters
2026, International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction (139)
Previous efforts to characterize lahar threats posed to communities downstream of volcanoes have focused primarily on delineating hazard zones that lack information on lahar-arrival times and exposure estimates that implicitly treat threats to be the same regardless of distance from the volcano. Estimated lahar-arrival times, travel times for individuals to...
Fifteen years of WRTDS for advancing water-quality science: A critical review of methodological developments and global applications
Qian Zhang, Robert M. Hirsch, Laura A. DeCicco, Jennifer C. Murphy
2026, Environmental Science and Technology (60) 11170-11182
Contamination by nutrients, major ions, and metals poses a major threat to global water sustainability. Understanding how these pollutants vary across time and space requires long-term monitoring and robust statistical approaches. Traditional methods, however, often struggle to account for streamflow variability, seasonality, and nonlinear responses. Introduced in 2010, the Weighted...
Towards affordable wetland evapotranspiration monitoring using the Variance-Bowen Ratio method: Insights from three contrasting wetlands
Tianxin Wang, Gabriel B. Senay, Joseph Verfaille, Daphne J. Szutu, MacKenzie Friedrichs, Jack R. Eggleston, Dennis Baldocchi
2026, Water Resources Research (62)
Accurate measurement of evapotranspiration (ET) is essential for sustainable water management. Standard methods such as eddy covariance (EC) are costly, while alternatives such as surface renewal are cheaper but require calibration and complex data processing. This study evaluates the utility of the Variance-Bowen Ratio (VBR) method for estimating ET across...
Global glacier mass change in 2025
Michael Zemp, Ethan Z. Welty, Samuel U. Nussbaumer, Jacqueline Bannwart, Isabelle Gärtner-Roer, Albin Wells, Andreas Peter Ahlstrøm, Brian Anderson, Liss Marie Andreassen, Mohd. Farooq Azam, Jamie Barnett, Carlo Baroni, Nicholas Edward Barrand, Andreas Bauder, Eric Bernard, Etienne Berthier, Giulia Bertolotti, Tobias Bolch, Mylène Bonnefoy-Demongeot, Matthias H. Braun, David Burgess, David Cappelletti, Jonathan L. Carrivick, Luca Carturan, Daniele Cat Berro, Jorge Luis Ceballos, Guillermo Cobos, Rolando Cruz, Nicolas Cullen, Bolívar Cáceres, Johanna Dahlkvist, Otgonbayar Demberel, Simon de Villiers, Roberto Dinale, Eugene Drozdov, Inés Dussaillant, Luzmila Dávila, Nelly Elagina, Hallgeir Elvehøy, Alexander Erofeev, Daniel Falaschi, Andrea Fischer, Mauro Fischer, Caitlyn Florentine, Koji Fujita, Stephan Peter Galos, Ayon Garcia, Noel Gourmelen, Federico Grosso, Afanasiy Gubanov, Andri Gunnarsson, Anne Guyez, Lea Hartl, Martin Hoelzle, Jorge Huenante, Romain Hugonnet, Matthias Huss, Bernhard Hynek, Takuro Imazu, Rodolfo Iturraspe, Livia Jakob, Sharad Joshi, Neamat Karimi, Nina Kirchner, Bjarne Kjøllmoen, Jack Kohler, Stanislav Kutuzov, Ivan Lavrentiev, James Matthew Lea, Amerigo Lendvai, Huilin Li, Shenghai Li, Zhongqin Li, Andreas Linsbauer, Sebastián Marinsek, Enrico Mattea, Christoph Mayer, Christopher McNeil, Luca Mercalli, Alexandra Messerli, Carolyn Michael, Umberto Morra di Cella, Francisco Navarro, Hofiz Navruzshoev, Anton Neureiter, Gennady Nosenko, Massimo Pecci, Mauri Pelto, Victor Popovnin, Rainer Prinz, Carla Puigdomenech, Heather Purdie, Finnur Pálsson, Alberto Rossotto, Lucas Ruiz, Louis Sass, Erik Schytt Mannerfelt, Riccardo Scotti, Donghui Shangguan, Brenda Shepherd, Delphine Six, Andrey Smirnov, Ireneusz Sobota, Markus Strudl, Shin Sugiyama, Emmanuel Thibert, Laura Thomson, Thorsteinn Thorsteinsson, Levan Tielidze, Florian Tolle, Pavel Toropov, Paolo Tuccella, Gulomjon Umirzakov, Ryskul Usubaliev, Lauren Vargo, Wei Yang, Bernhard Zagel
2026, Nature Reviews Earth and Environment (7) 213-215
Glaciers lost 408 ± 132 Gt of mass during the hydrological year 2025, equivalent to 1.1 ± 0.4 mm sea-level rise. Since 1975, glacier mass loss has totalled 9,583 ± 1,211 Gt, equivalent to 26.4 ± 3.3 mm of sea-level rise, with six of the highest mass-loss years on record...
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances and pesticides in black bears (Ursus americanus) and grizzly bears (Ursus arctos horribilis) from Montana's Cabinet-Yaak ecosystem: A baseline assessment of emerging and legacy contaminants
Brian C. Balmer, Marina D. Rodriguez, Justin E. Teisberg, Michelle L. Hladik, Wayne F. Kasworm, Amber Kornak, Thomas G. Radandt, Landon M. Keele, Erin L. Pulster
2026, Environmental Pollution (398)
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and pesticides are globally distributed contaminants that persist in terrestrial food webs, yet baseline data for large omnivores in the continental U.S. remain limited. This study quantified PFAS and pesticides in whole blood from free-ranging black bears (Ursus americanus, n = 15) and grizzly...
When is a parasite a problem?
Kevin D. Lafferty
James E. Byers, April M. Blakeslee, John P Wares, editor(s)
2026, Book chapter, The ecology and evolution of marine parasites and disease
A parasite’s perceived societal impact depends on the disease it causes and the perception of the affected host species. For instance, doctors and veterinarians have a mission to treat parasites that infect humans or that impact host species that have some utilitarian or aesthetic value for society. Marine scientists have...
Growth, movement, and survival of precocial shorebird chicks are constrained by their environment.
Feipeng Huang, Chris Tyson, Brett R. Addis, Cory Elowe, Lauren Puleo, Stephan Saint-Juste, Maria Stager, Rose J. Swift, Luke Wilde, Nathan R. Senner
2026, Behavioral Ecology (37)
Young animals are often less mobile than adults, while also having high energetic demands. They may therefore be more vulnerable to local-scale changes in environmental conditions. In particular, when 1 sex must grow more rapidly than the other to achieve a larger adult size, that sex may experience especially dramatic...
First vertebrate assemblage from the middle member of the Fremouw Formation (Lower Triassic) of Antarctica
C. Henrik Woolley, Julia A. McIntosh, Roger M.H. Smith, Christian A. Sidor
2026, Antarctic Science (38) 278-297
The Fremouw Formation of the Central Transantarctic Mountains preserves the southernmost record of Early to Middle Triassic terrestrial ecosystems that developed in the aftermath of the end-Permian mass extinction. Although the well-studied vertebrate fossil assemblage in the lower member of the Fremouw Formation provides a detailed snapshot...
Permafrost thaw controls iron flux from wetlands and sulfide-bearing rocks to Arctic rivers and streams
Roman J. Dial, Caitlynn Hanna, Patrick F Sullivan, David Cooper, Christopher Tino, Daniel D Gregory, Charles Diamond, Michael Rieser, Dmitry Nicolsky, Kenneth Hill, Go Iwahana, Joshua C. Koch, Michael P. Carey, Lance Miller, Timothy J. Lyons
2026, Communications Earth & Environment (7)
Recent warming has caused widespread iron mobilization into Arctic waterbodies that degrades ecosystems and threatens natural resources. Yet, understanding where and when iron flux occurs remains limited. Here, we investigate iron loading across regional to local scales in Arctic Alaska using climate, water chemistry, and borehole data together with mapped...
Between quiescence and crisis: Hawaiian Volcano Observatory communication and response strategies on the Island of Hawaiʻi
Katie Mulliken, Ken Hon, David Alan Phillips, Janet Babb, Frank A. Trusdell, Christina Neal, Michael H. Zoeller, Michael Poland, Wendy K. Stovall
2026, Bulletin of Volcanology (88)
Over the past two centuries, eruptions of Mauna Loa volcano have damaged infrastructure and destroyed several communities on the Island of Hawaiʻi. Future eruptions will impact existing population centers and critical infrastructure, which continue to grow each year. The U.S. Geological Survey Hawaiian Volcano Observatory has developed and practiced methods...
Satellite tracking of Galapagos Petrel Pterodroma phaeopygia reveals distribution and movements during chick rearing
Carolina B. Proaño, Sebastian M. Cruz, Josh Adams, Martin Wikelski
2026, Marine Ornithology: Journal of Seabird Research and Conservation (54) 63-74
We tracked 19 adult Galapagos Petrels Pterodroma phaeopygia during the chick-rearing seasons in 2009 and 2010 (Santa Cruz Island [n = 16] and Floreana Island [n = 3]) in the Galápagos Islands, Ecuador. Eight petrels performed 27 complete foraging trips lasting 0.6 to 18.8 days. Short trips (3.2 ± 2.1 days; 785 km; max displacement 671 km) and long trips...
Drought resistance is greater in montane conifers compared to coastal conifers in northern California
Gabriel J. Roletti, Rosemary L. Sherriff, Lucy P. Kerhoulas, Wallis Robinson, Jill J. Beckmann, Phillip J. van Mantgem
2026, Forest Ecology and Management (612)
Frequent and intense droughts are rapidly altering stand dynamics in western North American forests. The ecological and geographical diversity of northern California provides a unique opportunity to measure these responses across species, habitat types, and levels of competitive pressure. This study used dendrochronological techniques and linear mixed-effects models to assess...
Events during migration and winter
Aaron T. Pearse, Courtney L. Amundson, Mark P. Vrtiska
Bart M. Ballard, Michael G. Brasher, Joseph P. Fleskes, editor(s)
2026, Book chapter, Migrating and wintering waterfowl
No abstract available....
Long-term monotonic trends in water budget components in the contiguous United States: Insights from two hydrologic models
Phillip J. Goodling, Sydney Foks, Jessica Ayers
2026, Journal of the American Water Resources Association (62)
Characterizing changes to water availability for domestic, industrial, agricultural, and other uses is essential to support water management. To better quantify these changes, the U.S. Geological Survey and National Science Foundation National Center for Atmospheric Research produced two hydrologic models simulating water budget components from 1980 to 2021 over the...
Distribution and abundance of Least Bell’s Vireo (Vireo bellii pusillus) and Southwestern Willow Flycatcher (Empidonax traillii extimus) at the Hansen Dam Basin, Los Angeles County, California—2025 data summary
Suellen Lynn, Barbara E. Kus
2026, Data Report 1222
Executive Summary We surveyed for Least Bell’s Vireos (Vireo bellii pusillus; vireo) and Southwestern Willow Flycatchers (Empidonax traillii extimus; flycatcher) along Big Tujunga Creek in the Hansen Dam Basin in Los Angeles County, California, in 2025. Four vireo surveys were completed between April 17 and July 2, 2025, and three flycatcher...
Deep groundwater total dissolved solids mapping in the Dakota Group, Williston Basin, USA
Michael J. Stephens, Bennett Eugene Hoogenboom, Lyndsay B. Ball, Will Chang
2026, Groundwater (64) 335-349
Growing concern about the quantity of available freshwater around the world has led to interest in surveying groundwater total dissolved solids (TDS) below water well depths. Deep TDS has not been systematically mapped, and there is much to learn about the distribution and controls on deeper groundwater. In sedimentary basins...
Sampling and analysis plan for the water-quality monitoring program in Lake Koocanusa and upper Kootenai River, Montana, water years 2022–23
Lindsey R. King, Sara L. Caldwell Eldridge, Melissa A. Schaar, Travis S. Schmidt, Thomas Chapin, Ashley M. Bussell
2026, Open-File Report 2026-1005
The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, collected water-quality samples and environmental data in Lake Koocanusa (also known as “Koocanusa Reservoir”), the Kootenai River, and the Tobacco River during water years 2022–23. The transboundary Lake Koocanusa is in southeastern British Columbia, Canada, and northwestern Montana,...
Seabed maps showing topography, ruggedness, backscatter intensity, sediment mobility, and the distribution of geologic substrates in quadrangle 3 of the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary region offshore of Boston, Massachusetts
Page C. Valentine, VeeAnn A. Cross
2026, Scientific Investigations Map 3544
The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the National Marine Sanctuary Program of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has conducted seabed mapping and related research in the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary (SBNMS) region since 1993. The area being mapped using geophysical and geological data includes the SBNMS and...
