Lessons from the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill: A biological perspective
Brenda E. Ballachey, James L. Bodkin, Daniel Esler, Stanley D. Rice
2014, Book chapter, Impacts of Oil Spill Disasters on Marine Habitats and Fisheries in North America
On March 24, 1989, the tanker vessel Exxon Valdez altered its course to avoid floating ice, and ran aground on Bligh Reef in northeastern Prince William Sound (PWS), Alaska (Figure 1). The tanker was carrying about 53 million gallons of Prudhoe Bay crude, a heavy oil, and an estimated 11...
Dual-domain mass-transfer parameters from electrical hysteresis: Theory and analytical approach applied to laboratory, synthetic streambed, and groundwater experiments
Martin A. Briggs, Frederick D. Day-Lewis, John B. Ong, Judson W. Harvey, John W. Lane Jr.
2014, Water Resources Research (50) 8281-8299
Models of dual‐domain mass transfer (DDMT) are used to explain anomalous aquifer transport behavior such as the slow release of contamination and solute tracer tailing. Traditional tracer experiments to characterize DDMT are performed at the flow path scale (meters), which inherently incorporates heterogeneous exchange processes; hence, estimated “effective” parameters are...
The potential for sea-level-rise-induced barrier island loss: Insights from the Chandeleur Islands, Louisiana, USA
Laura J. Moore, Kiki Patsch, Jeffrey H. List, S. Jeffress Williams
2014, Marine Geology (355) 244-259
As sea level rises and hurricanes become more intense, barrier islands around the world become increasingly vulnerable to conversion from self-sustaining migrating landforms to submerging or subaqueous sand bodies. To explore the mechanism by which such state changes occur and to assess the factors leading to island disintegration, we develop...
Water-quality modeling of Klamath Straits Drain recirculation, a Klamath River wetland, and 2011 conditions for the Link River to Keno Dam reach of the Klamath River, Oregon
Annett B. Sullivan, I. Ertugrul Sogutlugil, Michael L. Deas, Stewart A. Rounds
2014, Open-File Report 2014-1185
The upper Klamath River and adjacent Lost River are interconnected basins in south-central Oregon and northern California. Both basins have impaired water quality with Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDLs) in progress or approved. In cooperation with the Bureau of Reclamation, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and Watercourse Engineering, Inc., have...
Water quality of the Ogallala Formation, central High Plains aquifer within the North Plains Groundwater Conservation District, Texas Panhandle, 2012-13
Stanley Baldys, Monti M. Haynie, Amy M. Beussink
2014, Scientific Investigations Report 2014-5188
In cooperation with the North Plains Groundwater Conservation District (NPGCD), the U.S. Geological Survey collected and analyzed water-quality samples at 30 groundwater monitor wells in the NPGCD in the Texas Panhandle. All of the wells were completed in the Ogallala Formation of the central High Plains aquifer. Samples from each...
EAARL-B submerged topography: Barnegat Bay, New Jersey, post-Hurricane Sandy, 2012-2013
C. Wayne Wright, Rodolfo J. Troche, Christine J. Kranenburg, Emily S. Klipp, Xan Fredericks, David B. Nagle
2014, Data Series 887
These remotely sensed, geographically referenced elevation measurements of lidar-derived submerged topography datasets were produced by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center, St. Petersburg, Florida. This project provides highly detailed and accurate datasets for part of Barnegat Bay, New Jersey, acquired post-Hurricane Sandy on November 1,...
Measurements of HFC-134a and HCFC-22 in groundwater and unsaturated-zone air: implications for HFCs and HCFCs as dating tracers
Karl B. Haase, Eurybiades Busenberg, Niel Plummer, Gerolamo Casile, Ward E. Sanford
2014, Chemical Geology (385) 117-128
A new analytical method using gas chromatography with an atomic emission detector (GC–AED) was developed for measurement of ambient concentrations of hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) in soil, air, and groundwater, with the goal of determining their utility as groundwater age tracers. The analytical detection limits of HCFC-22 (difluorochloromethane, CHClF2)...
Adélie penguins coping with environmental change: Results from a natural experiment at the edge of their breeding range
Katie Dugger, Grant Ballard, David G. Ainley, Phil O’B. Lyber, Casey Schine
2014, Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution (2)
We investigated life history responses to extreme variation in physical environmental conditions during a long-term demographic study of Adélie penguins at 3 colonies representing 9% of the world population and the full range of breeding colony sizes. Five years into the 14-year study (1997–2010) two very large icebergs (spanning...
Latitudinal and photic effects on diel foraging and predation risk in freshwater pelagic ecosystems
Adam G. Hansen, David A. Beauchamp
2014, Journal of Animal Ecology (84) 532-544
1. Clark & Levy (American Naturalist, 131, 1988, 271–290) described an antipredation window for smaller planktivorous fish during crepuscular periods when light permits feeding on zooplankton, but limits visual detection by piscivores. Yet, how the window is influenced by the interaction between light regime, turbidity...
Biological soil crusts across disturbance-recovery scenarios: effect of grazing regime on community dynamics
L. Concostrina-Zubiri, E. Huber-Sannwald, I. Martinez, J. L. Flores Flores, J. A. Reyes-Aguero, A. Escudero, Jayne Belnap
2014, Ecological Applications (24) 1863-1877
Grazing represents one of the most common disturbances in drylands worldwide, affecting both ecosystem structure and functioning. Despite the efforts to understand the nature and magnitude of grazing effects on ecosystem components and processes, contrasting results continue to arise. This is particularly remarkable for the biological soil crust (BSC) communities...
Adaptive management and the value of information: learning via intervention in epidemiology
Katriona Shea, Michael J. Tildesley, Michael C. Runge, Christopher J. Fonnesbeck, Matthew J. Ferrari
2014, PLoS Biology (12)
Optimal intervention for disease outbreaks is often impeded by severe scientific uncertainty. Adaptive management (AM), long-used in natural resource management, is a structured decision-making approach to solving dynamic problems that accounts for the value of resolving uncertainty via real-time evaluation of alternative models. We propose an AM approach to design...
A new species of small-eared shrew (Mammalia, Eulipotyphla, Cryptotis) from the Lacandona rain forest, Mexico
Lazaro Guevara, Víctor Sánchez-Cordero, Livia Leon-Paniagua, Neal Woodman
2014, Journal of Mammalogy (95) 739-753
The diversity and distribution of mammals in the American tropics remain incompletely known. We describe a new species of small-eared shrew (Soricidae, Cryptotis) from the Lacandona rain forest, Chiapas, southern Mexico. The new species is distinguished from other species of Cryptotis on the basis of a unique combination of pelage...
Can nitrogen fertilization aid restoration of mature tree productivity in degraded dryland riverine ecosystems?
Douglas C. Andersen, Elizabeth Carol Adair, Sigfrid Mark Nelson, Dan Binkley
2014, Restoration Ecology (22) 582-589
Restoration of riparian forest productivity lost as a consequence of flow regulation is a common management goal in dryland riverine ecosystems. In the northern hemisphere, dryland river floodplain trees often include one or another species of Populus, which are fast-growing, nutrient-demanding trees. Because the trees are phreatophytic in drylands, and...
Landscape consequences of natural gas extraction in Cameron, Clarion, Elk, Forest, Jefferson, McKean, Potter, and Warren Counties, Pennsylvania, 2004-2010
L. E. Milheim, E. T. Slonecker, C. M. Roig-Silva, S. G. Winters, J. R. Ballew
2014, Open-File Report 2014-1152
Increased demands for cleaner burning energy, coupled with the relatively recent technological advances in accessing hydrocarbon-rich geologic formations, have led to an intense effort to find and extract unconventional natural gas from various underground sources around the country. One of these sources, the Marcellus Shale, located in the Allegheny Plateau,...
InSAR imaging of aleutian volcanoes: Monitoring a volcanic arc from space
Zhong Lu, Daniel Dzurisin
2014, Book
Interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) is a relatively new remote sensing tool that is capable of measuring ground-surface deformation with centimeter-to-subcentimeter precision at a spatial resolution of tens of meters over an area of hundreds to thousands of square kilometers. With its global coverage and all-weather imaging capability, InSAR has...
An integrated modeling approach to estimating Gunnison Sage-Grouse population dynamics: Combining index and demographic data
Amy J. Davis, Mevin B. Hooten, Michael L. Phillips, Paul F. Doherty Jr.
2014, Ecology and Evolution (4) 4247-2457
Evaluation of population dynamics for rare and declining species is often limited to data that are sparse and/or of poor quality. Frequently, the best data available for rare bird species are based on large‐scale, population count data. These data are commonly based on sampling methods that lack consistent sampling effort,...
Comparative mineral chemistry and textures of SAFOD fault gouge and damage-zone rocks
Diane E. Moore
2014, Journal of Structural Geology (68) 82-96
Creep in the San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth (SAFOD) drillhole is localized to two foliated gouges, the central deforming zone (CDZ) and southwest deforming zone (SDZ). The gouges consist of porphyroclasts of serpentinite and sedimentary rock dispersed in a foliated matrix of Mg-smectite clays that formed as a result...
Loess as a Quaternary paleoenvironmental indicator
Daniel R. Muhs, M.A. Prins, B. Machalett
2014, Past Global Changes (22) 84-85
Loess is aeolian sediment that is dominated by silt-sized particles. Unlike either coarser dune sand or finer-grained, long-range-transported dust, loess is relatively poorly sorted, reflecting a combination of transport processes, including saltation, low suspension, and high suspension. Loess can be readily identified in the field; deposits range in thickness from...
Examining change detection approaches for tropical mangrove monitoring
Soe W. Myint, Janet Franklin, Michaela Buenemann, Won Kim, Chandra Giri
2014, Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing (10) 983-993
This study evaluated the effectiveness of different band combinations and classifiers (unsupervised, supervised, object-oriented nearest neighbor, and object-oriented decision rule) for quantifying mangrove forest change using multitemporal Landsat data. A discriminant analysis using spectra of different vegetation types determined that bands 2 (0.52 to 0.6 μm), 5 (1.55 to 1.75...
Stitching the western Piedmont of Virginia: Early Paleozoic tectonic history of the Ellisville Pluton and the Potomac and Chopawamsic Terranes
K. S. Hughes, J. P. Hibbard, R.T. Sauer, William C. Burton
2014, Book
The theme of the 2014 Virginia Geological Field Conference is the tectonic development, economic geology, and seismicity of the western Piedmont of Louisa County, Virginia. It is timely for the conference to turn its attention here, for during the past decade these aspects of western Piedmont geology have garnered the...
A multi-scale assessment of animal aggregation patterns to understand increasing pathogen seroprevalence
Angela K. Brennan, Paul C. Cross, Megan D. Higgs, W. Henry Edwards, Brandon M. Scurlock, Scott Creel
2014, Ecosphere (5)
Understanding how animal density is related to pathogen transmission is important to develop effective disease control strategies, but requires measuring density at a scale relevant to transmission. However, this is not straightforward or well-studied among large mammals with group sizes that range several orders of magnitude or aggregation patterns that...
210Pb dating
Peter W. Swarzenski
2014, Book chapter, Encyclopedia of Scientific Dating Methods
Roughly fifty years ago, a small group of scientists from Belgium and the United States, trying to better constrain ice sheet accumulation rates, attempted to apply what was then know about environmental lead as a potential geochronometer. Thus Goldberg (1963) developed the first principles of the 210Pb dating method, which...
Temporal changes in lithology and radiochemistry from the back-barrier environments along the Chandeleur Islands, Louisiana: March 2012-July 2013
Marci E. Marot, C. Scott Adams, Kathryn A. Richwine, Christopher G. Smith, Lisa E. Osterman, Julie Bernier
2014, Open-File Report 2014-1079
Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey, St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center conducted a time-series collection of shallow sediment cores from the back-barrier environments along the Chandeleur Islands, Louisiana from March 2012 through July 2013. The sampling efforts were part of a larger USGS study to evaluate effects on...
Pharmaceutical compounds in shallow groundwater in non-agricultural areas of Minnesota: study design, methods, and data, 2013
Sarah M. Elliott, Melinda L. Erickson
2014, Data Series 878
The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, completed a study on the occurrence of pharmaceutical compounds and other contaminants of emerging concern in shallow groundwater in non-agricultural areas of Minnesota during 2013. This report describes the study design and methods for the study on the...
Changing Arctic ecosystems: resilience of caribou to climatic shifts in the Arctic
David D. Gustine, Layne G. Adams, Mary E. Whalen, John M. Pearce
2014, Fact Sheet 2014-3103
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Changing Arctic Ecosystems (CAE) initiative strives to inform key resource management decisions for Arctic Alaska by providing scientific information and forecasts for current and future ecosystem response to a warming climate. Over the past 5 years, a focal area for the USGS CAE initiative has...
