3-D mapping of the conterminous U.S. within the USGS US GeoFramework Initiative: A status report
Donald S. Sweetkind
2024, Conference Paper, Geologic mapping forum 23/24 abstracts;, Minnesota Geological Survey Open File Report OFR-24-2
No abstract available....
How much trapping effort is needed for early detection of European green crab?
Timothy D. Counihan, Theresa Thom
2024, Management of Biological Invasions (15) 187-200
We present a case study using trapping data and species accumulation theory to assess the sampling effort needed to detect species that are rare in habitats sampled as part of the management of invasive European green crab Carcinus maenas on the coast of Washington State and Salish Sea shorelines, such as is...
Applying local and global sensitivity analysis to inform bigheaded carp management
Richard A. Erickson, Benjamin J. Marcek, Hannah Mann Thompson, Brian Schoenung, John M. Dettmers, Michael N. Fienen
2024, Journal of Fish and Wildlife Managment (15) 112-126
Natural resource managers commonly use population-level models to aid in understanding the status of target populations or the potential implications of management actions. Sensitivity analyses, specifically, local sensitivity analysis (LSA) and global sensitivity analysis (GSA), exist as tools to improve understanding of these models, the importance of specific parameters to...
Lake Ontario August gillnet survey and Lake Trout assessment, 2023
Brian O’Malley, Scott P. Minihkeim, Olivia Margaret Mitchinson, Scott David Stahl, Michael Connerton, Jessica A. Goretzke, Collin Farrell, Dimitry Gorsky
2024, Report
Lake Ontario lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush) rehabilitation has been annually assessed with fishery independent surveys since 1983, to evaluate program benchmarks and compare observations with management objectives. These surveys provide information on the abundance, strain composition, and condition of the adult lake trout stock, as well as information on levels...
Using surficial geologic maps, vegetation, and monitoring to address erosion impacts from grazing in Channel Islands National Park, California
Kevin Schmidt, Scott A. Minor, Kathryn McEachern
2024, Conference Paper, Geologic mapping forum 23/24 abstracts;, Minnesota Geological Survey Open File Report OFR-24-2
Employing a map-unit classification scheme based on geomorphic process and age, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) mapped Quaternary surficial deposits of the five islands comprising Channel Islands National Park (CHIS), California, as no such maps previously existed. Mapping was motivated through an agreement with the National Park Service (NPS) to...
Surficial geology and Quaternary fault map of the Las Vegas Valley, Clark County, Nevada
Seth Dee, Alan R. Ramelli, Craig M dePolo, Shannon A. Mahan
2024, Map 193
The Surficial Geology and Quaternary Fault Map of the Las Vegas Valley, Clark County, Nevada is a 1:50,000-scale compilation of published 1:24,000-scale geologic maps integrated with new field and desktop mapping. This geologic map compilation and GIS database are part of a broader study on the Quaternary faults in the Las Vegas...
Identifying the forage base and critical forage taxa for Chesapeake waterbirds
Matthew Hack, Jeffery D. Sullivan, Cody M. Kent, Diann Prosser
2024, Journal of Fish and Wildlife Management (15) 164-174
To effectively maximize the conservation value of management plans intended to capture ecosystem-wide health, it is essential to obtain an understanding of emergent patterns in dietary dynamics spanning many species. Chesapeake Bay, USA, is a critical ecosystem used annually by a diverse assortment of waterbird species, including several of conservation...
Preparing for today's and tomorrow's water-resources challenges in eastern Long Island, New York
Ronald Busciolano, John P. Masterson, Robert F. Breault
2024, Fact Sheet 2024-3020
Freshwater is a vital natural resource. Although New York is a water-rich State, the wise and economical use of water resources is needed to ensure that there is enough water of adequate quality for both human and ecological needs—both for today and for tomorrow. Nowhere in New York is this...
Realizing the potential of eDNA biodiversity monitoring tools in the marine environment with application to offshore renewable energy
Adam Sepulveda, Cheryl Morrison, Margaret Hunter, Mona Khalil
2024, Fact Sheet 2024-3019
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) researches the biological diversity and distribution of species to support management, conservation, and resource use decisions. USGS scientists advance detection and monitoring technologies to assess changes in fish and wildlife populations, biodiversity, and the health of ecosystems. The United States is planning to install 30...
A genomic hotspot of diversifying selection and structural change in the hoary bat (Lasiurus cinereus)
Robert S. Cornman
2024, PeerJ (12)
BackgroundPrevious work found that numerous genes positively selected within the hoary bat (Lasiurus cinereus) lineage are physically clustered in regions of conserved synteny. Here I further validate and expand on those finding utilizing an updated L. cinereus genome assembly and additional bat species as well as other tetrapod outgroups.MethodsA chromosome-level...
Broad-scale changes in lesser prairie-chicken habitat
Megan P. Vhay, David A. Haukos, Daniel S. Sullins, Mindy B. Rice
2024, PLoS ONE (19)
Lesser prairie-chicken (Tympanuchus pallidicinctus) populations of in the Sand Sagebrush Prairie Ecoregion of southwest Kansas and southeast Colorado, USA, have declined sharply since the mid-1980s. Decreased quality and availability of habitat are believed to be the main drivers of declines. Our objective was to reconstruct broad-scale...
Towards entity-aware conditional variational inference for heterogeneous time-series prediction: An application to hydrology
Rahul Ghosh, Wallace Mcaliley, Arvind Renganathan, Michael Steinbach, Christopher Duffy, Vipin Kumar
2024, Conference Paper, Proceedings of the 2024 SIAM International Conference on Data Mining (SDM)
Many environmental systems (e.g., hydrology basins) can be modeled as entity whose response (e.g., streamflow) depends on drivers (e.g., weather) conditioned on their characteristics (e.g., soil properties). We introduce Entity-aware Conditional Variational Inference (EA-CVI), a novel probabilistic inverse modeling approach, to deduce entity characteristics from observed driver-response...
Simulated effects of projected 2014–40 withdrawals on groundwater flow and water levels in the New Jersey Coastal Plain
Leon J. Kauffman
2024, Scientific Investigations Report 2024-5028
AbstractGroundwater flow between 2014 through 2040 was simulated in the New Jersey Coastal Plain based on three withdrawal scenarios. Two of the scenarios were based on projected population trends and the assumption of water conservation; the nominal water-loss scenario projected a status quo in the efficiency of water loss in...
Stratigraphy, paleoflora, and tectonic setting of the Paleogene Sheep Creek volcanic field, central Alaska
Timothy White, David Sunderlin, Dwight Bradley
2024, Professional Paper 1814-G
In this paper, we provide new information on the stratigraphy and paleoflora of the Sheep Creek volcanic field in the Alaska Range that bolsters our understanding of a key interval in the tectonic, paleoclimate, and paleoenvironmental history of the northern Cordillera. Although the distribution and basic stratigraphy of these rocks...
Deep vs shallow: GPS tags reveal a dichotomy in movement patterns of loggerhead turtles foraging in a coastal bay
Margaret Lamont, Daniel Slone, James P. Reid, Susan M. Butler, Joseph A. Alday
2024, Movement Ecology (12)
BackgroundIndividual variation in movement strategies of foraging loggerhead turtles have been documented on the scale of tens to hundreds of kilometers within single ocean basins. Use of different strategies among individuals may reflect variations in resources, predation pressure or competition. It is less common for individual turtles to...
Fire effects on geomorphic processes
Luke McGuire, Brian A. Ebel, Francis K. Rengers, Diana Vieira, Petter Nyman
2024, Nature Reviews Earth and Environment (5) 486-503
Fire-induced geomorphic changes, such as enhanced erosion and debris-flow activity, are expected to increase with climate change owing to increases in fire activity and rainfall intensification. In this Review, we summarize how landscape attributes, rainfall and burn severity influence post-fire geomorphic responses over a range of temporal and spatial scales....
Characterizing sulfur redox state and geochemical implications in deep-time using mineral chemistry network analysis
Elisha Kelly Moore, Joseph Diedolf IV, Shaunna M. Morrison, Daniel Hummer
2024, Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta (376) 25-36
Sulfur (S) is a central element in global biogeochemical cycling and Earth’s redox evolution. Minerals that contain S are an important record of local environmental conditions at the time of their formation based on chemical speciation and redox. However, the oxidation state of S for hundreds of different S-containing minerals...
Formation and evolution of the Pacific-North American (San Andreas) plate boundary: Constraints from the crustal architecture of northern California
Kevin P. Furlong, Antonio Villasenor, Harley M. Benz, Kirsty A. McKenzie
2024, Tectonics (43)
The northward migration of the Mendocino triple junction (MTJ) drives a fundamental plate boundary transformation from convergence to translation; producing a series of strike-slip faults, that become the San Andreas plate boundary. We find that the 3-D structure of the Pacific plate lithosphere in the vicinity of the MTJ controls...
Effects of telemetry collars on two free-roaming feral equid species
Kathryn A. Schoenecker, Sarah King, Jacob D. Hennig, Mary C. Cole, J. Derek Scasta, Jeffrey L. Beck
2024, PLoS ONE (19)
There are two species of free-roaming feral equids in North America: horses (Equus caballus) and donkeys or “burros” (E. asinus). Both species were introduced as domestic animals to North America in the early 1500s and currently inhabit rangelands across the western United States, Canada, and all continents except Antarctica. Despite their...
Human activities shape global patterns of decomposition rates in rivers
Scott Tiegs, Krista A. Capps, David M. Costello, John Paul Schmidt, Christopher J. Patrick, Jennifer Follstad Shah, Carri J. LeRoy, Vicenc Acuna, Ricardo Albarino, Daniel Allen, Cecilia Alonso, Patricio Andino, Clay Arango, Jukka Aroviita, Marcus Barbosa, Leon A. Barmuta, Colden V. Baxter, Brent Bellinger, Luz Boyero, Lyubov Bragina, Lee E. Brown, Andreas Bruder, Denise Bruesewitz, Francis Burdon, Marcos Callisto, Antonio G. Camacho, Cristina Canhoto, Maria Castillo, Eric Chauvet, Joanne Clapcott, Fanny Colas, Checo Colon-Gaud, Julien Cornut, Veronica Crespo-Perez, Wyatt F. Cross, Joseph M. Culp, Michael Danger, Olivier Dangles, Elvira de Eyto, Alison Derry, Veronica Diaz-Villanueva, Michael Douglas, Arturo Elosegi, Andrea Encalada, Sally Entrekin, Rodrigo Espinosa, Veronica Ferreira, Carmen Ferriol, Kyla Flanagan, Alexander Flecker, Tadeusz Fleituch, André Frainer, Nikolai Friberg, Paul C. Frost, Erica A. Garcia, Liliana Garcia-Lago, Pavel Garcia Soto, Mark Gessner, Sudeep Ghate, Darren Giling, Alan Gilmer, Jose Goncalves Jr., Rosario Gonzales, Manuel Graca, Mike Grace, Natalie A. Griffiths, Hans-Peter Grossart, Francois Guerold, Vlad Gulis, Pablo E. Gutiérrez-Fonseca, Luiz Hepp, Scott Higgins, Takuo Hishi, Joseph Huddart, John P. Hudson, Moss Imberger, Carlos Iniguez-Armijos, Mark Isken, Tomoya Iwata, Dave Janetski, Andrea Kirkwood, Aaron A. Koning, Sarian Kosten, Kevin Kuehn, Hjalmar Laudon, Peter Leavitt, Aurea Lemes da Silva, Shawn Leroux, Peter Lisi, Richard Mackenzie, Amy M Marcarelli, Frank Masese, Peter B. McIntyre, Brendan G. McKie, Adriana Medeiros, Kristian Meissner, Marko Milisa, Shailendra Mishra, Yo Miyake, Ashley Moerke, Shorok Mombrikotb, Robert J Mooney, Tim Moulton, Timo Muotka, Junjiro N. Negishi, Vinicius Neres-Lima, Mika Nieminen, Jorge Nimptsch, Jakub Ondruch, Riku Paavola, Isabel Pardo, Edwin Peeters, Jesus Pozo, Aaron Prussian, Estefania Quenta, Brian Reid, John S. Richardson, Anna Rigosi, Jose Rincon, Geta Risnoveanu, Chris Robinson, Lorena Rodriguez-Gallego, Todd V Royer, James A. Rusak, Anna Santamans, Geza Selmeczy, Gelas Simiyu, Agnija Skuja, Jerzy Smykla, Ryan A. Sponseller, Kandikere Sridhar, Aaron Stoler, Christopher M. Swan, Franco Teixeira-de Mello, Jonathan Tonkin, Sari Uusheimo, Allison Veach, Sirje Vilbaste, Lena Vought, Chiao-Ping Wang, Jackson Webster, Paul B. Wilson, Stefan Woelfl, Guy Woodward, Marguerite A. Xenopoulos, Adam Yates, Chihiro Yoshimura, Catherine Yule, Yixin Zhang, Jacob Aaron Zwart
2024, Science (384) 1191-1195
Rivers and streams contribute to global carbon cycling by decomposing immense quantities of terrestrial plant matter. However, decomposition rates are highly variable and large-scale patterns and drivers of this process remain poorly understood. Using a cellulose-based assay to reflect the primary constituent of plant detritus, we generated a predictive model...
Evaluating satellite-transmitter backpack-harness effects on greater sage-grouse survival and device retention in the Great Basin
Carl G. Lundblad, Christopher R. Anthony, Tyler Dungannon, Kimberly A. Haab, Elizabeth M. Schuyler, Chelsea E. Sink, Katie Dugger, Christian A. Hagen
2024, The Wildlife Society Bulletin (48)
Wildlife tracking studies have become ubiquitous in ecology and now provide previously unobtainable data regarding individual movement, vital rates, and population demographics. However, tracking devices can potentially reduce survival of study subjects, generating biases in the vital rates they seek to measure. Previous studies have found that greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus...
Assessment of undiscovered oil and gas resources of the North Chukchi Basin, outer continental shelf of the Chukchi and East Siberian Seas, Arctic Ocean, 2023
David W. Houseknecht, Craig P. Markey, Tracey J. Mercier, Christopher J. Schenk, Christopher D. Connors, Jared T. Gooley, Palma J. Botterell, Rebecca A. Smith, William A. Rouse, Christopher P. Garrity
2024, Fact Sheet 2024-3015
Using a geology-based assessment methodology, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated mean volumes of 1.8 billion barrels of oil and 119.9 trillion cubic feet of gas technically recoverable from undiscovered, conventional accumulations in Cretaceous and Cenozoic strata of the North Chukchi Basin....
Carbon isotope trends across a century of herbarium specimens suggest CO2 fertilization of C4 grasses.
Isa del Toro, Madelon Florence Case, Allison Karp, Jasper Slingsby, A. Carla Staver
2024, New Phytologist (243) 560-566
Increasing atmospheric CO2 is changing the dynamics of tropical savanna vegetation. C3 trees and grasses are known to experience CO2 fertilization, whereas responses to CO2 by C4 grasses are more ambiguous.Here, we sample stable carbon isotope trends in herbarium collections of South African C4 and C3 grasses to reconstruct 13C discrimination.We found that C3 grasses showed no trends...
Why snow is crucial for water supply — And what will happen when it becomes scarce
Karen R. Ryberg
2024, Nature (629) 1013-1014
Analysis of 70 years of snowfall in the Northern Hemisphere reveals that snow buffers the effect of varying precipitation levels on streamflow. The link highlights the need to rethink water-resource management as snow levels decline....
Two risk assessments: Evaluating the use of indicator HF183 Bacteroides versus pathogen measurements for modelling recreational illness risks in an urban watershed
K Skiendzielewski, Tucker R. Burch, Joel P. Stokdyk, Shannon McGinnis, S McLoughlin, Aaron D. Firnstahl, Sandy Spencer, Mark A. Borchardt, Heather Murphy
2024, Water Research (259)
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the performance of HF183 Bacteroides for estimating pathogen exposures during recreational water activities. We compared the use of Bacteroides-based exposure assessment to exposure assessment that relied on pathogen measurements. We considered two types of recreational water sites: those impacted by combined sewer overflows (CSOs) and...
