Sustaining Namāēw (Lake Sturgeon): Partner-led climate adaptation for Indigenous fisheries in the Laurentian Great Lakes
Holly Susan Embke, Robert Croll, Hannah Panci, Aaron D. Shultz, Sara Smith, Nick Boygo, Marvin DeFoe, Jennifer Gauthier, Gary Michaud, Michael Waasegiizhig Price, Donald Reiter, Jason Schlender, Frank Zomer
2025, Fisheries
Namāēw (Menominee; Lake Sturgeon Acipenser fulvescens) have long supported Indigenous culture and food sovereignty but have declined by over 80% in the Laurentian Great Lakes, exacerbating their sensitivity to climate change. Following interest from Indigenous leaders, we initiated a partnership-driven effort to (1) assess climate effects and (2) develop potential adaptation...
Daily fluctuating flows affect riparian plant species distributions from local to regional scales
Bradley J. Butterfield, Emily C. Palmquist
2025, Applied Vegetation Science (28)
AimsThe number of hydropower dams has grown globally over recent decades, with significant impacts on downstream riparian plant communities. Many of these dams generate daily fluctuating flows known as hydropeaking to meet sub-daily variation in energy demands. Hydropeaking can significantly impact riparian plant communities, with obligate riparian species tending to...
Evaluating deterrent locations and sequence in the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers and the Tennessee–Tombigbee Waterway to minimize invasive carp occupancy and abundance
Michael E. Colvin, Caleb A. Aldridge, Neal Jackson, Max Post van der Burg
2025, Open-File Report 2025-1039
Invasive carps, specifically silver carp (Hypophthalmichthys molitrix), bighead carp (H. nobilis), grass carp (Ctenopharyngodon idella), and black carp (Mylopharyngodon piceus), have proliferated in the Mississippi River Basin owing to escapes from aquaculture facilities and intentional releases. In the Water Resources and Development Act (WRDA) of 2020 Sec. 509, Congress directed...
Beach nourishment response and recent morphological evolution of Minnesota Point, Lake Superior
Collin Joseph Roland, Joel T. Groten, J. William Lund, Jenny L. Hanson
2025, Journal of Great Lakes Research (51)
Beach nourishments are a popular nature-based alternative to armoring for shoreline erosion mitigation, but nourishments have been criticized due to their environmental impacts and uncertain sustainability. Monitoring is often nonexistent or insufficient to constrain nourishment longevity and inform the renourishment interval required to maintain shoreline protection. This study uses a...
Evaluating large wood additions as a scalable method of urban stream restoration
Peter Grap, Stephen F. Matter, Adam Lehmann, Dylan Ward, Michael Thomas Booth
2025, River Research and Applications (41) 2032-2051
Urbanization is associated with increased erosion and habitat homogenization in stream ecosystems. This habitat degradation often has biological consequences, such as decreased species richness. Conventional stream restoration practices are costly, and projects are limited to small areas with easy access. A scalable, low-cost method of stream restoration is needed to...
Blowing in the wind: Anemochory in blackbrush habitat of South Texas
Beth Middleton, Emily J. Lain
2025, Plant Ecology (226) 1057-1064
Wind dispersal has the potential to carry seeds long-distances and could inform the management and restoration of natural vegetation along the U.S.-Mexico Border. Plant species with the potential to disperse seeds in arid landscapes fragmented by border barrier infrastructure include foundational native, invasive, and federally endangered plant species. Wind dispersal...
Female and male grizzly bears differ in their responses to low-intensity recreation in a protected area
Elise Loggers, Andrea R. Litt, Mark Haroldson, Kerry A. Gunther, Frank T. van Manen
2025, Journal of Wildlife Management (89)
Strategies animals use to navigate human-dominated landscapes frequently mimic anti-predator responses employed by prey species. Understanding how large carnivores respond to outdoor recreation is important for conservation, particularly in protected areas with preservation mandates. Visitation to Yellowstone National Park doubled from 1980 to 2015, increasing the need to examine potential...
Hydrologic variability and groundwater age of springs in eastern Oregon and northern Nevada, USA
Henry M. Johnson
2025, Journal of Hydrology (662)
The ecological importance of springs in semiarid regions is far greater than their small size and sparse distribution, yet little is known about the hydrologic functioning of these systems. During 2016–22, 261 springs were visited in the volcanic terrane of eastern Oregon and northern Nevada. When conditions were suitable, measurements...
A streamflow permanence classification model for forested streams that explicitly accounts for uncertainty and extrapolation
Jonathan D. Burnett, Kristin Jaeger, Sherri L Johnson, Steven M. Wondzell, Jason B. Dunham, Matthew Irwin Barker, Emily Dawn Heaston, Nathan Chelgren, Michael G. Wing, Brian Staab, Michael E. Brown
2025, Water Resources Research (61)
Accurate mapping of headwater streams and their flow status has important implications for understanding and managing water resources and land uses. However, accurate information is rare, especially in rugged, forested terrain. We developed a streamflow permanence classification model for forested lands in western Oregon using the latest light detection and...
Hydrogeologic framework and conceptual model of the Red River alluvial aquifer east of Lake Texoma, southeastern Oklahoma, 1980–2022
Chloe Codner, Nicole C. Gammill, Isaac A. Dale, Amy S. Morris, Ethan A. Kirby, Grant M. Graves, Evin J. Fetkovich, Derrick L. Wagner, Jon E. Sanford, Colin A. Baciocco
2025, Scientific Investigations Report 2025-5054
The 1973 Oklahoma Groundwater Law (Oklahoma Statutes §82-1020.5) requires that the Oklahoma Water Resources Board conduct hydrologic investigations of the State’s groundwater basins to support a determination of the maximum annual yield for each groundwater basin. At present (2025), the Oklahoma Water Resources Board has not established a maximum annual...
Long-term dynamics of earthquake swarms in the Yellowstone caldera
Manuel Florez, Bing Q. Li, David R. Shelly, Mia Angulo, Jose Sanabria-Gomez
2025, Science Advances (11)
The factors controlling the spatial distribution and temporal evolution of earthquake swarms in volcanic systems remain unclear. We leverage leading-edge deep learning algorithms and a detailed three-dimensional velocity model to construct a 15-year high-resolution earthquake catalog of the Yellowstone caldera region. More than half of the region’s earthquakes are clustered...
Tailwater residency patterns of Silver Carp at Kentucky Lock and Dam
William R Budnick, Kyle Mosel, Joshua Tompkins, Brent Knights, Jonathan M. Vallazza, Marybeth K. Brey, Andrea K. Fritts
2025, North American Journal of Fisheries Management (45) 603-615
ObjectiveThe management of invasive Silver Carp Hypophthalmichthys molitrix in the Tennessee River basin focuses on removal, and there is interest in extending removal efforts to the tailwater environments of high-head locks and dams along the Tennessee River, such as Kentucky Dam. We used acoustic telemetry data from Silver...
The diel niche of brown bears: Constraints on adaptive capacity in human-modified landscapes
A. Donatelli, D. Ćirović, Mark A. Haroldson, Đuro Huber, J. Kindberg, I. Kojola, J. Kusak, G. Mastrantonio, A. Ordiz, S. Reljić, L. Santini, Frank T. van Manen, P. Ciucci
2025, Ecography (2025)
DDiel activity rhythms, representing the behavioral pattern of the sleep–wake cycle, may be adjusted by wildlife in response to changes in environmental conditions. An increase in nocturnality is typically recognized as an adaptive strategy to segregate from humans and mitigate heat stress. Numerous studies have investigated spatial patterns and habitat...
Multi-sensor proximal remote sensing for cover crop biomass estimation at high and moderate spatial resolutions
Jyoti Jennewein, Brian W. Davis, S. Seehaver-Eagan, J. Nicolette, J. Pittman, W. Dean Hively, Avi Goldsmith, C. Hidalgo, C. Reberg-Horton, S.B. Mirsky
2025, Smart Agricultural Technology (12)
Cover crops play a critical role in providing agroecological services such as improving soil health, reducing erosion and nitrogen loss, and suppressing weeds, which are closely tied to their performance such as accumulated biomass. This study evaluated the Active Canopy Sensor (ACS) -214, an active proximal sensing device equipped with...
New insights into gas-driven phase segregation in andesitic enclaves from Mt. Mazama (Crater Lake), USA
Julie Oppenheimer, Katharine V. Cashman, Alison C. Rust, Charles R. Bacon, Amanda Lindoo, Katherine J. Dobson
2025, Bulletin of Volcanology (87)
A key process in active magmatic systems is the “recharge” of deep-sourced mafic magma into cooler, more evolved, and crystal-rich shallow reservoirs; recharge may be the cause of, or response to, eruptive activity. Although compositional evidence for recharge has been extensively documented, physical models of recharge are limited, particularly processes...
Global terrestrial nitrogen fixation and its modification by agriculture
Carla R. Reis Ely, Steven Perakis, Cory C. Cleveland, Duncan Menge, Sasha Reed, Benton Taylor, Sarah A. Batterman, Christopher M. Clark, Timothy E. Crews, Katherine A Dynarski, Maga G. Gei, Michael J. Gundale, David F. Herridge, Sarah E. Jovan, Sian Kou-Giesbrecht, Mark B. Peoples, Johannes Piipponen, Emilio Rodriguez-Caballero, Verity G. Salmon, Fiona M. Soper, Anika P. Staccone, Bettina Weber, Christopher A. Williams, Nina Wurzburger
2025, Nature (643) 705-711
Biological nitrogen fixation (BNF) is the largest natural source of new nitrogen (N) that supports terrestrial productivity1,2, yet estimates of global terrestrial BNF remain highly uncertain3,4. Here we show that this uncertainty is partly because of sampling bias, as field BNF measurements in natural terrestrial ecosystems occur where N fixers are...
Spatiotemporal risk avoidance varies seasonally, relative to risk intensity, in a reestablishing predator–prey system
Cara J. Thompson, Nicole M. Tatman, Zachary J. Farley, Scott T. Boyle, Allison R. Greenleaf, James W. Cain III
2025, Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution (13)
Predation establishes risk, which can indirectly influence prey behavior and ecology. We evaluated the influence of Mexican gray wolves (Canis lupus baileyi) on habitat selection and spatiotemporal predator avoidance strategies of elk (Cervus canadensis). We fit 866 adult female elk with GPS collars across areas of varying wolf densities within...
Using community-reported data to understand how boat speed affects marine wildlife: An example with the Florida manatee
Bea Combs-Hintze, Jeffrey A. Hostetler, C.S. Calleson, B. Basset, C. Ainsworth, Julien Martin
2025, Ecological Solutions and Evidence (6)
Boat collisions are a known and increasing threat to many marine wildlife populations. The Florida manatee Trichechus manatus latirostris is a key example of a species with high boat-related mortality, whose long-term viability and population are limited by human activities in shared habitats. The goal of this work was to quantify...
Tracking persistent declines in suspended sediment in the Lower Mississippi and Atchafalaya Rivers, 1992–2021: Harnessing WRTDSplus to characterize longitudinally varying trends and explore connections to streamflow
Jennifer C. Murphy, Lindsey Ayn Schafer, Scott Mize
2025, Journal of Hydrology (Volume 662)
Suspended sediment (SS) continues a century-long decline in the Lower Mississippi and Atchafalaya Rivers, United States. In this study, we use the WRTDSplus model to estimate concentrations and loads for total, fine (<0.0625 millimeter (mm)), and coarse (≥0.0625 mm) SS for 11 sites....
Modeling current and future distribution of invasive tegu lizards along geopolitical boundaries in the contiguous United States: Implications for invasion threat
Amanda Marie Kissel, Catherine S. Jarnevich, Andrea F. Currylow, Amy A. Yackel Adams
2025, Climate Change Ecology (10)
Historically, constrained temperature ranges limited the spread of invasive herpetofauna into temperate climates, but climate change is predicted to facilitate broader distributions. There are three species of tegu lizards native to South America and available in the pet trade that have a high risk of invasion and deleterious impacts to...
Climate change impacts on plant communities in the sagebrush region—A science synthesis to inform Bureau of Land Management resource management:
Scott M. Carpenter, Martin C. Holdrege, Daniel Rodolphe Schlaepfer, Jessica Phillips, Paul Griffin, William K. Lauenroth, John B. Bradford
2025, Scientific Investigations Report 2025-5045
This report synthesizes current (2024) science-based knowledge related to the impacts of climate change on big sagebrush vegetation in Western North America. This effort was conducted through the U.S. Geological Survey working with the Bureau of Land Management as part of multiple science syntheses to aid management agencies developing environmental...
An analytical approach to explore prospects and limits of nutrition-sensitive fisheries governance under climate change
Abigail Bennett, Julia G. Mason, Willow Battista, Christopher M. Free, Jessica A. Gephart, Kristin M. Kleisner, Emma D. Rice, Kelly Filer Robinson, John Virdin
2025, Environmental Research: Food Systems (2)
Researchers and policymakers increasingly recognize the contribution of aquatic food systems, such as fisheries, to food security and nutrition. Yet governing fisheries for nutrition objectives is complicated by the multiple overlapping processes that shape availability and access to nutrients over time, including fishing sustainability, climate change, trade dynamics, and consumer...
Blueprints for riverine cod nest boxes draw from multiple design considerations
Brendan C. Ebner, Shaun S. Morris, John St Vincent Welch, Paul C. Ryan, Mitch Turner, Leo M. Cameron, Natalie Poitras, Brooke Coonrod, Stuart A. Welsh, Matthew McLellan, Lachie Jess, Stephen Vidler, Brett A. Ingram, S. Thurstan, S. J. Rowland, S. Blake, G. L. Butler
2025, Aquaculture, Fish and Fisheries (5)
Designing aquatic nest boxes is rarely afforded detailed scientific account. Here we provide some historical context for nest boxes used in production of large-bodied fishes of the Australian freshwater cod genus Maccullochella. Our experience with eastern freshwater cod is used as a case study to: (a) convey aspects of the complexity...
Grand Canyon landslide-dam and paleolake triggered by the Meteor Crater impact at 56 ka
Karl Karlstrom, Christopher H. Baisan, David A. Kring Kring, Richard Hereford, Christian Turney, A. Hogg, Laura M. Norman, P. O’Brien, Jonathon Palmer, T.M. Rittenour, J. Ballensky, L.J. Crossey
2025, Geology (53) 821-826
This paper hypothesizes that the Meteor Crater impact in Arizona, USA, 56,000 years ago triggered landslides in Grand Canyon that dammed the Colorado River and formed Nankoweap paleolake. This is compatible with shock and earthquake physics for the impact that infer a M5.4...
The 3D Elevation Program—Supporting Vermont's economy
Dan Walters
2025, Fact Sheet 2025-3033
IntroductionThe geographic information system (GIS) community in Vermont has a long history of interdisciplinary and cooperative projects that have facilitated the leveraging of geospatial technology on myriad data acquisitions across the State. High-resolution elevation data are proving to be a resource of great economic value in dealing with many important...
