Developing tools to eradicate ecologically destructive ants on Rose Atoll: effectiveness and attractiveness of formicidal baits
Robert Peck, Paul Banko, Frank Pendleton
2014, Report, Hawaii Cooperative Studies Unit Technical Report
A key factor contributing to the decline in the population of Pisonia grandis on Rose Atoll is an infestation of the non-native scale, Pulvinaria urbicola (Homoptera: Coccidae). Ants, in facultative relationships with scale insects, may facilitate scale population growth and increase their effect on plant hosts. Three ant species found...
The impact of climate change on coastal ecosystems
Colin D. Woodroffe, Robert J. Nicholls, Virginia Burkett, Donald L. Forbes
2014, Book chapter, Oceans and human health: Implications for society and well-being
In this chapter we stress two important features of coasts and coastal ecosystems. First, these are dynamic systems which continually undergo adjustments, especially through erosion and re-deposition, in response to a range of processes. Many coastal ecosystems adjust naturally at a range of time scales and their potential for response...
The digital global geologic map of Mars: Chronostratigraphic ages, topographic and crater morphologic characteristics, and updated resurfacing history
Kenneth L. Tanaka, S.J. Robbins, Corey M. Fortezzo, J.A. Skinner Jr., Trent M. Hare
2014, Planetary and Space Science (95) 11-24
A new global geologic map of Mars has been completed in a digital, geographic information system (GIS) format using geospatially controlled altimetry and image data sets. The map reconstructs the geologic history of Mars, which includes many new findings collated in the quarter century since the previous, Viking-based global maps...
Identifying stakeholder-relevant climate change impacts: a case study in the Yakima River Basin, Washington, USA
K. Jenni, D. Graves, Jill M. Hardiman, James R. Hatten, Mark C. Mastin, Matthew G. Mesa, J. Montag, Timothy Nieman, Frank D. Voss, Alec G. Maule
2014, Climatic Change (124) 371-384
Designing climate-related research so that study results will be useful to natural resource managers is a unique challenge. While decision makers increasingly recognize the need to consider climate change in their resource management plans, and climate scientists recognize the importance of providing locally-relevant climate data and projections, there often remains...
Wind River subbasin restoration: U.S. Geological Survey annual report November 2012 through December 2013
Ian G. Jezorek, Patrick J. Connolly
2014, Report
Executive Summary The Wind River subbasin in southwest Washington State provides habitat for a population of wild Lower Columbia River steelhead Oncorhynchus mykiss. There have been no hatchery steelhead planted in the Wind River subbasin since 1994, and hatchery adults are estimated to be less than one percent of adults in...
Mercury in the national parks
Colleen Flanagan Pritz, Collin A. Eagles-Smith, David Krabbenhoft
2014, The George Wright Forum (31) 168-180
One thing is certain: Even for trained researchers, predicting mercury’s behavior in the environment is challenging. Fundamentally it is one of 98 naturally occurring elements, with natural sources, such as volcanoes, and concentrated ore deposits, such as cinnabar. Yet there are also human-caused sources, such as emissions from both coal-burning...
Looking for age-related growth decline in natural forests: unexpected biomass patterns from tree rings and simulated mortality
Jane R. Foster, Anthony W. D’Amato, John B. Bradford
2014, Oecologia (175) 363-374
Forest biomass growth is almost universally assumed to peak early in stand development, near canopy closure, after which it will plateau or decline. The chronosequence and plot remeasurement approaches used to establish the decline pattern suffer from limitations and coarse temporal detail. We combined annual tree ring measurements and mortality...
Hydrogeomorphic effects of explosive volcanic eruptions on drainage basins
Thomas C. Pierson, Jon J. Major
2014, Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences (42) 469-507
Explosive eruptions can severely disturb landscapes downwind or downstream of volcanoes by damaging vegetation and depositing large volumes of erodible fragmental material. As a result, fluxes of water and sediment in affected drainage basins can increase dramatically. System-disturbing processes associated with explosive eruptions include tephra fall, pyroclastic density currents, debris...
Eel River margin source-to-sink sediment budgets: revisited
Jonathan A. Warrick
2014, Marine Geology (351) 25-37
The Eel River coastal margin has been used as a representative source-to-sink sediment dispersal system owing to its steep, high-sediment yield river and the formation of sedimentary strata on its continental shelf. One finding of previous studies is that the adjacent continental shelf retains only ~25% of the Eel River...
Assessment of parametric uncertainty for groundwater reactive transport modeling,
Xiaoqing Shi, Ming Ye, Gary P. Curtis, Geoffery L. Miller, Philip D. Meyer, Matthias Kohler, Steve Yabusaki, Jichun Wu
2014, Water Resources Research (50) 4416-4439
The validity of using Gaussian assumptions for model residuals in uncertainty quantification of a groundwater reactive transport model was evaluated in this study. Least squares regression methods explicitly assume Gaussian residuals, and the assumption leads to Gaussian likelihood functions, model parameters, and model predictions. While the Bayesian methods do not...
Alaska
F. Stuart Chapin III, Sarah F. Trainor, Patricia Cochran, Henry Huntington, Carl J. Markon, Molly McCammon, A. David McGuire, Mark Serreze
J. M. Melillo, Terese Richmond, G.W. Yohe, editor(s)
2014, Report, Climate Change Impacts in the United States: The Third National Climate Assessment
Key Messages Arctic summer sea ice is receding faster than previously projected and is expected to virtually disappear before mid-century. This is altering marine ecosystems and leading to greater ship access, offshore development opportunity, and increased community vulnerability to coastal erosion. Most glaciers in Alaska and British Columbia are shrinking substantially. This...
Woody vegetation communities of tidal freshwater swamps in South Carolina, Georgia and Florida (US) with comparisons to similar systems in the US and South America
Jamie A. Duberstein, William H. Conner, Ken W. Krauss
2014, Journal of Vegetation Science (25) 848-862
Questions What are the general tree communities found in tidal freshwater swamps along four large coastal rivers in the southeastern United States (US)? How do these communities compare to other tidal freshwater swamps in the US and South America? Locations Tidal floodplains of major rivers along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the...
Cycles of explosive and effusive eruptions at Kīlauea Volcano, Hawai‘i
Don Swanson, Timothy R. Rose, Adonara E Mucek, Michael O. Garcia, Richard S. Fiske, Larry G. Mastin
2014, Geology (42) 631-634
The subaerial eruptive activity at Kīlauea Volcano (Hawai‘i) for the past 2500 yr can be divided into 3 dominantly effusive and 2 dominantly explosive periods, each lasting several centuries. The prevailing style of eruption for 60% of this time was explosive, manifested by repeated phreatic and phreatomagmatic activity in a...
Preliminary analysis of the role of lake basin morphology on the modern diatom flora in the Ruby Mountains and East Humboldt Range, Nevada, USA
Scott W. Starratt
2014, Mountain Views (8) 8-13
As paleolimnologists, we often look at the world through a 5-cm-diameter hole in the bottom of a lake, and although a number of studies have shown that a single core in the deepest part of a lake does not necessarily reflect the entire diatom flora, time and money often limit...
Estimating migratory connectivity of birds when re-encounter probabilities are heterogeneous
Emily B. Cohen, Jeffrey A. Hostelter, J. Andrew Royle, Peter P. Marra
2014, Ecology and Evolution (4) 1659-1670
Understanding the biology and conducting effective conservation of migratory species requires an understanding of migratory connectivity – the geographic linkages of populations between stages of the annual cycle. Unfortunately, for most species, we are lacking such information. The North American Bird Banding Laboratory (BBL) houses an extensive database of marking,...
Brittle deformation and slope failure at the North Menan Butte tuff cone, Eastern Snake River Plain, Idaho
Chris H. Okubo
2014, Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research (278–279) 86-95
The manifestation of brittle deformation within inactive slumps along the North Menan Butte, a basaltic tuff cone in the Eastern Snake River Plain, is investigated through field and laboratory studies. Microstructural observations indicate that brittle strain is localized along deformation bands, a class of structural discontinuity that is predominant within...
Historic impact of watershed change and sedimentation to reefs along west-central Guam
Nancy G. Prouty, Curt D. Storlazzi, Amanda L. McCutcheon, John W. Jenson
2014, Coral Reefs (33) 733-749
Using coral growth parameters (extension, density, calcification rates, and luminescence) and geochemical measurements (barium to calcium rations; Ba/Ca) from coral cores collected in west-central Guam, we provide a historic perspective on sediment input to coral reefs adjacent to the Piti-Asan watershed. The months of August through December are dominated by...
Arthropod community structure on bark of koa (Acacia koa) and ʻōhiʻā (Metrosideros polymorpha) at Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge, Hawaiʻi Island, Hawaiʻi
Robert W. Peck, Paul C. Banko, Matt Stelmach
2014, Report, Hawai�i Cooperative Studies Unit Technical Report
The arthropod community associated with tree bark contains a wide variety of taxa but is poorly described, particularly in Hawaiʽi. Our overall goals were to evaluate the abundance of arthropods available to foraging birds and how variation in bark substrates may contribute to arthropod distributions in native forests. Our study...
Platinum-group elements in southern Africa: mineral inventory and an assessment of undiscovered mineral resources
Michael L. Zientek, J. Douglas Causey, Heather L. Parks, Robert J. Miller
2014, Scientific Investigations Report 2010-5090-Q
The platinum-group elements, platinum, palladium, rhodium, ruthenium, iridium, and osmium, possess unique physical and chemical characteristics that make them indispensable to modern technology and industry. However, mineral deposits that are the main sources of these elements occur only in three countries in the world, raising concerns about potential disruption in...
Impact of stressors on transmission potential of Renibacterium salmoninarum in Chinook salmon
Maureen K. Purcell, James R. Winton
2014, Report
Renibacterium salmoninarum is the causative agent of bacterial kidney disease (BKD) affecting several species of Pacific salmon. The severity of BKD can range from a chronic infection to overt disease with high mortality as in the case of large losses of adult Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) in the Great Lakes...
The behavioural response of adult Petromyzon marinus to damage-released alarm and predator cues
István Imre, Richard Di Rocco, Cowan Belanger, Grant Brown, Nicholas S. Johnson
2014, Journal of Fish Biology (84) 1490-1502
Using semi‐natural enclosures, this study investigated (1) whether adult sea lamprey Petromyzon marinus show avoidance of damage‐released conspecific cues, damage‐released heterospecific cues and predator cues and (2) whether this is a general response to injured heterospecific fishes or a specific response to injured P. marinus. Ten replicate groups of 10 adult P. marinus, separated...
Cross-ecosystem impacts of stream pollution reduce resource and contaminant flux to riparian food webs
Johanna M. Kraus, Travis S. Schmidt, David Walters, Richard B. Wanty, Robert E. Zuellig, Ruth E. Wolf
2014, Ecological Applications (24) 235-243
The effects of aquatic contaminants are propagated across ecosystem boundaries by aquatic insects that export resources and contaminants to terrestrial food webs; however, the mechanisms driving these effects are poorly understood. We examined how emergence, contaminant concentration, and total contaminant flux by adult aquatic insects changed over a gradient of...
Interacting effects of discharge and channel morphology on transport of semibuoyant fish eggs in large, altered river systems
Thomas A. Worthington, Shannon K. Brewer, Nicole Farless, Timothy B. Grabowski, Mark S. Gregory
2014, PLoS ONE (9)
Habitat fragmentation and flow regulation are significant factors related to the decline and extinction of freshwater biota. Pelagic-broadcast spawning cyprinids require moving water and some length of unfragmented stream to complete their life cycle. However, it is unknown how discharge and habitat features interact at multiple spatial scales to alter...
Modeling the effects of source and path heterogeneity on ground motions of great earthquakes on the Cascadia Subduction Zone Using 3D simulations
Andrew Delorey, Arthur D. Frankel, Pengcheng Liu, William J. Stephenson
2014, Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (104) 1430-1446
We ran finite‐difference earthquake simulations for great subduction zone earthquakes in Cascadia to model the effects of source and path heterogeneity for the purpose of improving strong‐motion predictions. We developed a rupture model for large subduction zone earthquakes based on a k−2 slip spectrum and scale‐dependent rise times by representing the...
Suitability of coastal marshes as Whooping Crane (Grus americana) foraging habitat in southwest Louisiana, USA
Sung-Ryong Kang, Sammy L. King
2014, Waterbirds (37) 254-263
Foraging habitat conditions (i.e., water depth, prey biomass, digestible energy density) can be a significant predictor of foraging habitat selection by wading birds. Potential foraging habitats of Whooping Cranes (Grus americana) using marshes include ponds and emergent marsh, but the potential prey and energy availability in these habitat types have...
