A targeted annual warning system developed for the conservation of a sagebrush indicator species
Brian G. Prochazka, Peter S. Coates, Michael S. O’Donnell, David R. Edmunds, Adrian P. Monroe, Mark A. Ricca, Gregory T. Wann, Steve E. Hanser, Lief A. Wiechman, Kevin E. Doherty, Michael P. Chenaille, Cameron L. Aldridge
2023, Ecological Indicators (148)
A fundamental goal of population ecologists is to identify drivers responsible for temporal variation in abundance. Understanding whether variation is associated with environmental stochasticity or anthropogenic disturbances, which are more amenable to management action, is crucial yet difficult to achieve. Here,...
Stream restoration produces transitory, not permanent, changes to fish assemblages at compensatory mitigation sites
Edward S. Stowe, Kelly N. Petersen, Shishir Rao, Eric J. Walther, Mary Freeman, Seth J. Wenger
2023, Restoration Ecology (31)
There is inconsistent evidence that stream restoration projects lead to recovery of ecosystem attributes, especially stream biota. While some assessments have documented desired changes in fish community metrics in the first years following restoration, longer-term studies have not always corroborated these findings. In this...
Above- and belowground biomass carbon stock and net primary productivity maps for tidal herbaceous marshes of the United States
Victoria Woltz, Camille Stagg, Kristin B. Byrd, Lisamarie Windham-Myers, Andre S. Rovai, Zhiliang Zhu
2023, Remote Sensing (15)
Accurate assessments of greenhouse gas emissions and carbon sequestration in natural ecosystems are necessary to develop climate mitigation strategies. Regional and national-level assessments of carbon sequestration require high-resolution data to be available for large areas, increasing the need for remote sensing products that quantify carbon stocks and fluxes. The...
Advances in transboundary aquifer assessment
Anne-Marie Matherne, Sharon B. Megdal
2023, Water (15)
This Special Issue is intended to highlight both recent work to advance the physical understanding of transboundary aquifers and factors relevant in successful collaboration on transboundary groundwater resource use. The collected papers address: (1) the identification and prioritization of the needs and strategies for sustainable groundwater development and use,...
Assessing potential effects of climate change on highway-runoff flows and loads in southern New England by using planning-level space-for-time analyses
Lillian C. Jeznach, Gregory E. Granato, Daniel Sharar-Salgado, Susan C. Jones, Daniel Imig
2023, Transportation Research Record, Journal of the Transportation Research Board. (2677) 570-581
Transportation agencies need information about the potential effects of climate change on the volume, quality, and treatment of stormwater to mitigate potential effects of runoff on receiving waters. To address these concerns, the U.S. Geological Survey and the Federal Highway Administration used the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project...
Climate change mitigation potential of Louisiana's coastal area: Current estimates and future projections
Melissa Millman Baustian, Bingqing Liu, Leland C. Moss, Alyssa Dausman, James W. Pahl
2023, Ecological Applications (23)
Coastal habitats can play an important role in climate change mitigation. As Louisiana implements its climate action plan and the restoration and risk-reduction projects outlined in its 2017 Louisiana Coastal Master Plan, it is critical to consider potential greenhouse gas (GHG) fluxes in coastal habitats. This study estimated the potential...
Uses of epistemic uncertainties in the USGS National Seismic Hazard Models
N. Simon Kwong, Kishor S. Jaiswal
2023, Earthquake Spectra (39) 1058-1087
The need for US Geological Survey (USGS) National Seismic Hazard Models (NSHMs) to report estimates of epistemic uncertainties in the hazard (e.g. fractile hazard curves) in all forthcoming releases is increasing. With fractile hazard curves as potential new outputs from the USGS 2023 NSHM, a simultaneous need...
Microscale spatial variations in coseismic temperature rise on hematite fault mirrors in the Wasatch fault damage zone
Robert Gregory McDermott, Alexis K. Ault, Kelsey F. Wetzel, James P. Evans, Fen-Ann Shen
2023, JGR Solid Earth (128)
Coseismic temperature rise activates fault dynamic weakening that promotes earthquake rupture propagation. The spatial scales over which peak temperatures vary on slip surfaces are challenging to identify in the rock record. We present microstructural observations and electron backscatter diffraction data from three small-displacement hematite-coated fault mirrors (FMs) in the Wasatch...
Increasing hypoxia on global coral reefs under ocean warming
Ariel K. Pezner, Travis A. Courtney, Hannah Barkley, Wen-Chen Chou, Hui-Chuan Chu, Samanth M. Clements, Tyler Cyronak, Michael D. DeGrandpre, Samuel A.H. Kekuewa, David I Kline, Yi-Bei Liang, Todd R. Martz, Satoshi Mitarai, Heather N. Page, Max S. Rintoul, Jennifer E. Smith, Keryea Soong, Yuichiro Takeshita, Martin Tresguerres, Yi Wei, Kimberly K. Yates, Andreas J Andersson
2023, Nature Climate Change (13) 403-409
Ocean deoxygenation is predicted to threaten marine ecosystems globally. However, current and future oxygen concentrations and the occurrence of hypoxic events on coral reefs remain underexplored. Here, using autonomous sensor data to explore oxygen variability and hypoxia exposure at 32 representative reef sites, we reveal that hypoxia is already pervasive...
A 600-kyr reconstruction of deep Arctic seawater δ18O from benthic foraminiferal oxygen isotopes and ostracode Mg/Ca paleothermometry
Jesse Farmer, Katherine Keller, Robert Poirier, Gary S. Dwyer, Morgan Schaller, Helen K Coxall, Matt O’Regan, Thomas M. Cronin
2023, Climate of the Past (19) 555-578
The oxygen isotopic composition of benthic foraminiferal tests (δ18Ob) is one of the pre-eminent tools for correlating marine sediments and interpreting past terrestrial ice volume and deep-ocean temperatures. Despite the prevalence of δ18Ob applications to marine sediment cores over the Quaternary, its use is limited in the Arctic Ocean...
Dynamics of the December 2020 ash-poor plume formed by lava-water interaction at the summit of Kilauea Volcano, Hawaii
Ryan Cain Cahalan, Larry G. Mastin, Alexa R. Van Eaton, Shaul Hurwitz, Adam B. Smith, Josef Dufek, Stephen A. Solovitz, Matthew R. Patrick, Jo Schmith, Carolyn Parcheta, Weston Thelen, Drew T. Downs
2023, Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems (24)
On 20 December 2020, after more than 2 years of quiescence at Kīlauea Volcano, Hawaiʻi, renewed volcanic activity in the summit crater caused boiling of the water lake over a period of ∼90 min. The resulting water-rich, electrified plume rose to 11–13 km above sea level, which is among the highest plumes on...
Crossing the threshold: Invasive grasses inhibit forest restoration on Hawaiian islands
Evan M Rehm, Carla M. D'Antonio, Stephanie G. Yelenik
2023, Ecological Applications (33)
Forest removal for livestock grazing is a striking example of human-caused state change leading to a stable, undesirable invasive grass system that is resistant to restoration efforts. Understanding which factors lead to resilience to the alternative grass state can greatly benefit managers when planning forest restoration. We address how thresholds...
Ecological harm and economic damages of chemical contamination to linked aquatic-terrestrial food webs: A study-design tool for practitioners
Johanna M. Kraus, Kristin Skrabis, Serena Ciparis, John Isanhart, Aleshia Kenney, Jo Ellen Hinck
2023, Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (42) 2029-2039
Contamination of aquatic ecosystems can have cascading effects on terrestrial consumers by altering the availability and quality of aquatic insect prey. Comprehensive assessment of these indirect food-web effects of contaminants on natural resources and their associated services necessitates using both ecological and economic tools. In the present study we present...
Development of a benchmark eddy flux evapotranspiration dataset for evaluation of satellite-driven evapotranspiration models over the CONUS
J. M. Volk, Justin Huntington, Forrest M. Melton, Richard Allen, Martha C. Anderson, Joshua B. Fisher, Ayse Kilic, Gabriel B. Senay, Gregory Halverson, Kyle Knipper, Blake Minor, Christopher Pearson, Tianxin Wang, Yun Yang, Steven R. Evett, Andrew N. French, Richard L. Jasoni, William P. Kustas
2023, Agricultural and Forest Meteorology (331)
A large sample of ground-based evapotranspiration (ET) measurements made in the United States, primarily from eddy covariance systems, were post-processed to produce a benchmark ET dataset. The dataset was produced primarily to support the intercomparison and evaluation of the OpenET satellite-based remote sensing ET (RSET) models and could also be...
Simulation of genetic change under four removal strategies for a wild horse population
Shawna J Zimmerman, Jennifer A. Fike, Sara J. Oyler-McCance
2023, Report
Small and/or artificially reduced populations can suffer genetic erosion with long-term consequences to population fitness and persistence. However, managers must periodically remove free-roaming horses from the landscape to reduce the risk of habitat degradation. We developed an individual-based population simulation model to evaluate the expected change in genetic diversity after...
Application of geophysical methods to enhance aquifer characterization and groundwater-flow model development, Des Moines River alluvial aquifer, Des Moines, Iowa, 2022
Judith C. Thomas, Morgan A. Spring, Lance R. Gruhn, Emilia L. Bristow
2023, Fact Sheet 2023-3006
Des Moines Water Works (DMWW) is one of the largest water providers in Iowa and as population growth continues, demand for drinking water is increasing. DMWW uses groundwater and surface water as raw water sources to supply the City of Des Moines and surrounding communities. In response to current and...
Exploratory analysis of machine learning techniques in the Nevada geothermal play fairway analysis
Connor M. Smith, James E. Faulds, Stephen C. Brown, Mark Coolbaugh, Jacob DeAngelo, Jonathan M.G. Glen, Erick R. Burns, Drew Lorenz Siler, Sven Treitel, Eli Mlawsky, Michael Fehler, Chen Gu, Bridget F. Ayling
2023, Geothermics (111)
Play fairway analysis (PFA) is commonly used to generate geothermal potential maps and guide exploration studies, with a particular focus on locating and characterizing blind geothermal systems. This study evaluates the application of machine learning techniques to PFA in the Great...
Stream temperature prediction in a shifting environment: The influence of deep learning architecture
Simon Nemer Topp, Janet R. Barclay, Jeremy Alejandro Diaz, Alexander Y. Sun, Xiaowei Jia, Daniel Lubin, Jeffrey M Sadler, Alison P. Appling
2023, Water Resources Research (59)
Stream temperature is a fundamental control on ecosystem health. Recent efforts incorporating process guidance into deep learning models for predicting stream temperature have been shown to outperform existing statistical and physical models. This performance is in part because deep learning architectures can actively learn spatiotemporal relationships that...
Forecasting natural regeneration of sagebrush after wildfires using population models and spatial matching
Andrii Zaiats, Megan E Cattau, David S. Pilliod, Liu Rongsong, Juan M. Requena-Mullor, Trevor Caughlin
2023, Landscape Ecology (38) 1306
ContextAddressing ecosystem degradation in the Anthropocene will require ecological restoration across large spatial extents. Identifying areas where natural regeneration will occur without direct resource investment will improve scalability of restoration actions.ObjectivesAn ecoregion in need of large scale restoration is the Great Basin of the Western US,...
Climate-driven tradeoffs between landscape connectivity and the maintenance of the coastal carbon sink
Kendall Valentine, Ellen R. Herbert, David Walters, Yaping Chen, Alexander J. Smith, Matthew L. Kirwan
2023, Nature Communications (1137)
Ecosystem connectivity tends to increase the resilience and function of ecosystems responding to stressors. Coastal ecosystems sequester disproportionately large amounts of carbon, but rapid exchange of water, nutrients, and sediment makes them vulnerable to sea level rise and coastal erosion. Individual components of the coastal landscape...
A call for strategic water-quality monitoring to advance assessment and prediction of wildfire impacts on water supplies
Sheila F. Murphy, Charles N. Alpers, Chauncey W. Anderson, John R. Banta, Johanna Blake, Kurt D. Carpenter, Gregory D. Clark, David W. Clow, Laura A. Hempel, Deborah A. Martin, Michael R. Meador, Gregory Mendez, Anke Mueller-Solger, Marc A. Stewart, Sean E. Payne, Cara L. Peterman-Phipps, Brian A. Ebel
2023, Frontiers in Water (5)
Wildfires pose a risk to water supplies in the western U.S. and many other parts of the world, due to the potential for degradation of water quality. However, a lack of adequate data hinders prediction and assessment of post-wildfire impacts and recovery. The dearth of such data is related...
Nest traits and major flooding events influence nest survival of Emperor Geese while regional environmental variation linked to climate does not
Jordan M. Thompson, Brian D. Uher-Koch, Bryan L. Daniels, Joel A. Schmutz, Benjamin S. Sedinger
2023, Ornithological Applications (125)
The reproductive ecology of geese that breed in the Arctic and subarctic is likely susceptible to the effects of climate change, which is projected to alter the environmental conditions of northern latitudes. Nest survival is an important component of productivity in geese; however, the effects of regional environmental conditions...
Wastewater reuse and predicted ecological risk posed by contaminant mixtures in Potomac River watershed streams
Kaycee E. Faunce, Larry B. Barber, Steffanie H. Keefe, Jeramy Roland Jasmann, Jennifer L. Krstolic
2023, Journal of the American Water Resources Association (59) 779-802
A wastewater model was applied to the Potomac River watershed to provide (i) a means to identify streams with a high likelihood of carrying elevated effluent-derived contaminants and (ii) risk assessments to aquatic life and drinking water. The model linked effluent discharges along stream networks, accumulated...
Three-dimensional geologic map the southeastern Gabbs Valley geothermal area, Nevada
Drew L. Siler, Jeffrey B. Witter, Jason W Craig, Tait E. Earney, William D. Schermerhorn, Dominique Fournier, James E. Faulds, Jonathan M.G. Glen, Jared R. Peacock
2023, Scientific Investigations Map 3498
This three-dimensional (3D) geologic map displays the subsurface geology in the upper ~4 kilometers of the Earth’s crust in the southeastern Gabbs Valley geothermal area of west-central Nevada. The 3D map was constructed by integrating the results from detailed geologic mapping, 3D gravity inversion modeling, and potential-field-geophysical studies. This effort...
Food caching by a solitary large carnivore reveals importance of intermediate-sized prey
Maximilian L. Allen, L. Mark Elbroch, Javan Mathias Bauder, Heiko U. Wittmer
2023, Journal of Mammalogy (104) 457-165
Pumas (Puma concolor) are solitary large carnivores that exhibit high energetic investments while hunting prey that often take multiple days to consume. Therefore, pumas should behave in a way to maximize their energetic gains, including using caching, which is a behavior used by many mammal species to preserve and store...
