Stratigraphy, structure and regional correlation of eastern Blue Ridge sequences in southern Virginia and northwestern North Carolina: an interim report from new USGS mapping
Mark W. Carter, Arthur J. Merschat
2014, GSA Field Guides (35) 215-241
Examination of key outcrops in the eastern Blue Ridge in southern Virginia and northwestern North Carolina is used to evaluate existing stratigraphic and structural models. Recent detailed mapping along the Blue Ridge Parkway and the eastern flank of the Mount Rogers massif provides the opportunity to (1) evaluate legacy...
Forest ecosystem reorganization underway in the Southwestern US: A preview of widespread forest changes in the Anthropocene
Craig D. Allen
V. Alaric Sample, R. Patrick Bixler, editor(s)
2014, Proceedings RMRS-P-71
No abstract available....
Management and monitoring of the endangered Shenandoah salamander under climate change: Workshop report 10-12 April 2012
Evan H. Campbell Grant, John E. B. Wofford, D. R. Smith, J. Dennis, C. Hawkins-Hoffman, J. Schaberl, M. Foley, M. Bogle
2014, Natural Resource Report NPS/SHEN/NRR—2014/867
Here we report on a structured decision making (SDM) process to identify management strategies to ensure persistence of the federally endangered Shenandoah salamander (Plethodon shenandoah), given that it may be at increased extinction risk under projected climate change. The focus of this report is the second of two SDM workshops;...
Petrology and chemistry of the Green Acres gabbro complex near Winchester, Riverside County, California
Byron R. Berger
Douglas M. Morton, Fred K. Miller, editor(s)
2014, Book chapter, Peninsular Ranges Batholith, Baja California and Southern California
The Cretaceous Green Acres layered igneous complex, northeast of Winchester, California, is composed of a suite of olivine- and hornblende-bearing gabbros in the Peninsular Ranges batholith within the Perris tectonic block. A consistent mineral assemblage is observed throughout the complex, but there is considerable textural and modal heterogeneity. Both preclude...
Estuarine removal of glacial iron and implications for iron fluxes to the ocean
Andrew W. Schroth, John Crusius, Ian Hoyer, Robert Campbell
2014, Geophysical Research Letters (41) 3951-3958
While recent work demonstrates that glacial meltwater provides a substantial and relatively labile flux of the micronutrient iron to oceans, the role of high-latitude estuary environments as a potential sink of glacial iron is unknown. Here we present the first quantitative description of iron removal in a meltwater-dominated estuary. We...
Frictional properties of exhumed fault gouges in DFDP-1 cores, Alpine Fault, New Zealand
Carolyn Boulton, Diane E. Moore, David A. Lockner, Virginia G. Toy, John Townend, Rupert Southerland
2014, Geophysical Research Letters (41) 356-362
Principal slip zone gouges recovered during the Deep Fault Drilling Project (DFDP-1), Alpine Fault, New Zealand, were deformed in triaxial friction experiments at temperatures, T, of up to 350°C, effective normal stresses, σn′, of up to 156 MPa, and velocities between 0.01 and 3 µm/s. Chlorite/white mica-bearing DFDP-1A blue gouge, 90.62 m sample depth, is...
Continuous water-quality and suspended-sediment transport monitoring in the San Francisco Bay, California, water years 2011–13
Paul A. Buchanan, Maureen A. Downing-Kunz, David H. Schoellhamer, Gregory Shellenbarger, Kurt Weidich
2014, Fact Sheet 2014-3090
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) monitors water quality and suspended-sediment transport in the San Francisco Bay. The San Francisco Bay area is home to millions of people, and the bay teems with both resident and migratory wildlife, plants, and fish. Fresh water mixes with salt water in the bay, which...
Backcasting the decline of a vulnerable Great Plains reproductive ecotype: identifying threats and conservation priorities
Thomas A. Worthington, Shannon K. Brewer, Timothy B. Grabowski, Julia Mueller
2014, Global Change Biology (20) 89-102
Conservation efforts for threatened or endangered species are challenging because the multi-scale factors that relate to their decline or inhibit their recovery are often unknown. To further exacerbate matters, the perceptions associated with the mechanisms of species decline are often viewed myopically rather than across the entire species range. We...
Characterization of deep coral and sponge communities in the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary: Rittenburg Bank, Cochrane Bank and the Farallon Escarpment.
P. Etnoyer, Guy R. Cochrane, E. Salgado, K. Graiff, J. Roletto, G.J. Williams, K. Reyna, J. Hyland
2014, Report
Benthic surveys were conducted in the Gulf of Farallones National Marine Sanctuary (GFNMS) aboard R/V Fulmar, October 3-11, 2012 using the large observation-class remotely operated vehicle (ROV) Beagle. The purpose of the surveys was to groundtruth mapping data collected in 2011, and to characterize the seafloor biota, particularly corals and...
A new species of freshwater eel-tailed catfish of the genus Tandanus (Teleostei: Plotosidae) from the Wet Tropics Region of Eastern Australia
Stuart A. Welsh, Dean R. Jerry, Damien Burrows
2014, Copeia (2014) 136-142
Tandanus tropicanus, new species, is described based on specimens from streams in the wet tropics region of northeast Queensland. Previously, two species were recognized in the genus Tandanus: T. tandanus of eastern Australia and T. bostocki of Western Australia. A combination of meristic and morphometric characters distinguishes the new species from all congeners. Further, taxonomic...
Exchange of nitrogen and phosphorus between a shallow lagoon and coastal waters
Melanie Hayn, Robert W. Howarth, Neil K. Ganju, Peter Berg, Kenneth H. Foreman, Anne E. Giblin, Karen McGlathery
2014, Estuaries and Coasts (37) 63-73
West Falmouth Harbor, a shallow lagoon on Cape Cod, has experienced a threefold increase in nitrogen load since the mid- to late 1990s due to input from a groundwater plume contaminated by a municipal wastewater treatment plant. We measured the exchange of nitrogen and phosphorus between the harbor and the...
Preface
Robert J. Bowell, Charles N. Alpers, Heather E. Jamieson, D. Kirk Nordstrom, Juraj Majzlan
2014, Reviews in Mineralogy and Geochemistry (79) iii-v
Arsenic is perhaps history’s favorite poison, often termed the “King of Poisons” and the “Poison of Kings” and thought to be the demise of fiction’s most famous ill-fated lovers. The toxic nature of arsenic has been known for millennia with the mineral realgar (AsS), originally named “arsenikon” by Theophrastus in...
CyberShake-derived ground-motion prediction models for the Los Angeles region with application to earthquake early warning
Maren Bose, Robert Graves, David Gill, Scott Callaghan, Phillip J. Maechling
2014, Geophysical Journal International (198) 1438-1457
Real-time applications such as earthquake early warning (EEW) typically use empirical ground-motion prediction equations (GMPEs) along with event magnitude and source-to-site distances to estimate expected shaking levels. In this simplified approach, effects due to finite-fault geometry, directivity and site and basin response are often generalized, which may lead to a...
Estimating structural collapse fragility of generic building typologies using expert judgment
Kishor S. Jaiswal, D.J. Wald, D. Perkins, W. P. Aspinall, Anne S. Kiremidjian
George Deodatis, Bruce R. Ellingwood, Dan M. Frangopol, editor(s)
2014, Conference Paper, Safety, reliability, risk, and life-cycle performance of structures and infrastructures
The structured expert elicitation process proposed by Cooke (1991), hereafter referred to as Cooke’s approach, is applied for the first time in the realm of structural collapse-fragility assessment for selected generic construction types. Cooke’s approach works on the principle of objective calibration scoring of judgments coupled with hypothesis testing used...
The environmental geochemistry of Arsenic – An overview
Robert J. Bowell, Charles N. Alpers, Heather E. Jamieson, D. Kirk Nordstrom, Juraj Majzlan
2014, Reviews in Mineralogy and Geochemistry (79) 1-16
Arsenic is one of the most prevalent toxic elements in the environment. The toxicity, mobility, and fate of arsenic in the environment are determined by a complex series of controls dependent on mineralogy, chemical speciation, and biological processes. The element was first described by Theophrastus in 300 B.C. and named...
Bathymetric Terrain Model of the Puerto Rico Trench and the Northeastern Caribbean Region for Marine Geological Investigations
Brian D. Andrews, Uri S. ten Brink, William W. Danforth, Jason D. Chaytor, J Granja-Bruna, A Carbo-Gorosabel
2014, Open-File Report 2013-1125
Multibeam bathymetry data collected in the Puerto Rico Trench and Northeast Caribbean region are compiled into a seamless bathymetric terrain model for broad-scale geological investigations of the trench system. These data, collected during eight separate surveys between 2002 and 2013, covering almost 180,000 square kilometers are published here in large...
Seismometer Self-Noise and Measuring Methods
Adam T. Ringler, R. Sleeman, Charles R. Hutt, Lind S. Gee
2014, Book chapter, Encyclopedia of Earthquake Engineering
Seismometer self-noise is usually not considered when selecting and using seismic waveform data in scientific research as it is typically assumed that the self-noise is negligibly small compared to seismic signals. However, instrumental noise is part of the noise in any seismic record, and in particular, at frequencies below a...
Modeling structured population dynamics using data from unmarked individuals
Evan H. Campbell Grant, Elise Zipkin, James T. Thorson, Kevin See, Heather J. Lynch, Yoichiro Kanno, Richard Chandler, Benjamin H. Letcher, J. Andrew Royle
2014, Ecology (95) 22-29
The study of population dynamics requires unbiased, precise estimates of abundance and vital rates that account for the demographic structure inherent in all wildlife and plant populations. Traditionally, these estimates have only been available through approaches that rely on intensive mark–recapture data. We extended recently developed N-mixture models to demonstrate how...
Stream water temperature limits occupancy of salamanders in mid-Atlantic protected areas
Evan H. Campbell Grant, Amber N. M. Wiewel, Karen C. Rice
2014, Journal of Herpetology (48) 45-50
Stream ecosystems are particularly sensitive to urbanization, and tolerance of water-quality parameters is likely important to population persistence of stream salamanders. Forecasted climate and landscape changes may lead to significant changes in stream flow, chemical composition, and temperatures in coming decades. Protected areas where landscape alterations are minimized will therefore...
Applying threshold concepts to conservation management of dryland ecosystems: Case studies on the Colorado Plateau
Matthew A. Bowker, Mark E. Miller, Steven L. Garman, Travis Belote
Glenn R. Guntenspergen, editor(s)
2014, Book chapter, Application of threshold concepts in natural resource decision making
Ecosystems may occupy functionally distinct alternative states, some of which are more or less desirable from a management standpoint. Transitions from state to state are usually associated with a particular trigger or sequence of triggers, such as the addition or subtraction of a disturbance. Transitions are often not linear, rather...
Population demographics and life history of the round hickorynut (Obovaria subrotunda) in the Duck River, Tennessee
Chase Ehlo, James B. Layzer
2014, American Midland Naturalist (171) 1-15
Population characteristics and life history aspects of healthy mussel populations are poorly understood. The reproductive cycle, age and growth, and population structure of Obovaria subrotunda were examined at four sites in the middle Duck River, Tennessee. Obovaria subrotunda was confirmed to be a bradytictic species, spawning in the late summer and holding glochidia in...
Resolving terrestrial ecosystem processes along a subgrid topographic gradient for an earth-system model
Z M Subin, Paul C.D. Milly, B N Sulman, Sergey Malyshev, E Shevliakova
2014, Hydrology and Earth System Sciences (11) 8443-8492
Soil moisture is a crucial control on surface water and energy fluxes, vegetation, and soil carbon cycling. Earth-system models (ESMs) generally represent an areal-average soil-moisture state in gridcells at scales of 50–200 km and as a result are not able to capture the nonlinear effects of topographically-controlled subgrid heterogeneity in...
Spatial distribution of mercury in southeastern Alaskan streams influenced by glaciers, wetlands, and salmon
Sonia A. Nagorski, Daniel R. Engstrom, John P. Hudson, David P. Krabbenhoft, Eran Hood, John F. DeWild, George R. Aiken
2014, Environmental Pollution (184) 62-72
Southeastern Alaska is a remote coastal-maritime ecosystem that is experiencing increased deposition of mercury (Hg) as well as rapid glacier loss. Here we present the results of the first reported survey of total and methyl Hg (MeHg) concentrations in regional streams and biota. Overall, streams draining large wetland areas had...
Monitoring conterminous United States (CONUS) land cover change with Web-Enabled Landsat Data (WELD)
M.C. Hansen, Alexey Egorov, P.V. Potapov, S.V. Stehman, A. Tyukavina, S.A. Turubanova, David P. Roy, S.J. Goetz, Thomas R. Loveland, J. Ju, A. Kommareddy, Valeriy Kovalskyy, C. Forsyth, T. Bents
2014, Remote Sensing of Environment (140) 466-484
Forest cover loss and bare ground gain from 2006 to 2010 for the conterminous United States (CONUS) were quantified at a 30 m spatial resolution using Web-Enabled Landsat Data available from the USGS Center for Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) (http://landsat.usgs.gov/WELD.php). The approach related multi-temporal WELD metrics and expert-derived...
Major and trace element geochemistry and background concentrations for soils in Connecticut
Craig J. Brown, Margaret A. Thomas
2014, Northeastern Geoscience (32) 1-37
Soil samples were collected throughout Connecticut (CT) to determine the relationship of soil chemistry with the underlying geology and to better understand background concentrations of major and trace elements in soils. Soil samples were collected (1) from the upper 5 cm of surficial soil at 100 sites, (2) from the...
