Application of tail transmitters for tracking feral horses as an alternative to radio collars
Sarah R. B. King, Kathryn A. Schoenecker
2022, Wildlife Society Bulletin (46)
Radio collars have been used to examine the spatial ecology of all North American ungulates, but are rarely used on feral horses due to concerns that they may cause injury. Due to public concerns for animal welfare, an alternative to radio collars for tracking feral horses, particularly stallions, over the...
Simplifying complex fault data for systems-level analysis: Earthquake geology inputs for U.S. NSHM 2023
Alexandra Elise Hatem, Camille Marie Collett, Richard W. Briggs, Ryan D. Gold, Stephen J. Angster, Edward H. Field, Peter M. Powers, Earthquake Geology Working Group
2022, Scientific Data (9)
As part of the U.S. National Seismic Hazard Model (NSHM) update planned for 2023, two databases were prepared to more completely represent Quaternary-active faulting across the western United States: the NSHM23 fault sections database (FSD) and earthquake geology database (EQGeoDB). In prior iterations of NSHM, fault...
Open-source intelligence for conservation biology
Todd E. Katzner, Eve C. Thomason, Karrin Huhmann, Tara Conkling, Camille B. Concepcion, Vincent Slabe, Sharon A. Poessel
2022, Conservation Biology (36)
Open-source intelligence (OSINT) evolved in spy agencies but now is rapidly changing many fields of study, from anthropology to zoology. Despite the fact that OSINT occasionally is used in conservation biology, there is little recognition that some tools and frameworks used by conservation professionals are drawn from this well-established field....
Water-quality conditions and constituent loads, water years 2013–19, and water-quality trends, water years 1983–2019, in the Scituate Reservoir drainage area, Rhode Island
Alana B. Spaetzel, Kirk Smith
2022, Scientific Investigations Report 2022-5043
The Scituate Reservoir is the primary source of drinking water for more than 60 percent of the population of Rhode Island. From October 1, 1982, to September 30, 2019, water years (WYs) 1983–2019 (a water year is the period between October 1 and September 30 and is designated by the...
Comparison of the results of enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) to mass-spectrometry based analytical methods for six unregulated contaminants in source water and finished drinking-water samples
Aliesha L. Krall, Sarah M. Elliott, Jane R. de Lambert, Stephen W. Robertson
2022, Scientific Investigations Report 2022-5066
Regulatory entities, such as the Minnesota Department of Health, monitor public water systems for conformance with Federal and State monitoring requirements and water-quality standards. Although some contaminants have Federal and (or) State regulations and guidance values, many contaminants, such as pesticides and pharmaceuticals, are unregulated in that only non-enforceable health-based...
Genomics-informed delineation of conservation units in a desert amphibian
Brenna R. Forester, Melanie Murphy, Chad Mellison, Jeffrey Petersen, David S. Pilliod, Rachel Van Horne, Jim Harvey, W. Chris Funk
2022, Molecular Ecology (31) 5249-5269
Delineating conservation units (CUs, e.g., evolutionarily significant units, ESUs, and management units, MUs) is critical to the recovery of declining species because CUs inform both listing status and management actions. Genomic data have strengths and limitations in informing CU delineation and related management questions in natural systems. We illustrate the...
Long-term impacts of impervious surface cover change and roadway deicing agent application on chloride concentrations in exurban and suburban watersheds
Marissa L. Rossi, Peleg Kremer, Charles A. Cravotta III, Krista E. Scheirer, Steven T. Goldsmith
2022, Science of the Total Environment (851)
Roadway deicing agents, including rock salt and brine containing NaCl, have had a profound impact on the water quality and aquatic health of rivers and streams in urbanized areas with temperate climates. Yet, few studies evaluate impacts to watersheds characterized by relatively low impervious surface cover (ISC; < 15 %). Here, we use long-term (1997-2019),...
Colored shaded-relief bathymetric map and surrounding aerial imagery of Whiskeytown Lake, California
Peter Dartnell, Joshua B. Logan, Amy E. East
2022, Scientific Investigations Map 3493
The Carr wildfire began on July 23, 2018, and burned almost 300,000 acres (approximately half on Federal lands) in northern California during the subsequent 6-week period. Over 97 percent of the area within Whiskeytown National Recreation Area, California, burned during the 2018 Carr wildfire, including the entire landscape that surrounds...
The abundance and persistence of Caprinae populations
Grant M. Harris, Matthew J. Butler, David R. Stewart, James W. Cain III
2022, Scientific Reports (12)
Stable or growing populations may go extinct when their sizes cannot withstand large swings in temporal variation and stochastic forces. Hence, the minimum abundance threshold defining when populations can persist without human intervention forms a key conservation parameter. We identify this threshold for many populations of Caprinae,...
Deep and machine learning image classification of coastal wetlands using unpiloted aircraft system multispectral images and lidar datasets
Ali Gonzalez Perez, Amr Abd-Elrahman, Benjamin Wilkinson, Daniel J. Johnson, Raymond Carthy
2022, Remote Sensing (14)
The recent developments of new deep learning architectures create opportunities to accurately classify high-resolution unoccupied aerial system (UAS) images of natural coastal systems and mandate continuous evaluation of algorithm performance. We evaluated the performance of the U-Net and DeepLabv3 deep convolutional network architectures and two traditional machine learning techniques (support...
Natural and anthropogenic landscape factors shape functional connectivity of an ecological specialist in urban Southern California
Sarah M Wenner, Melanie A. Murphy, Kathleen Semple Delaney, Gregory B. Pauly, Jonathan Q. Richmond, Robert N. Fisher, Jeanne M. Robertson
2022, Molecular Ecology (31) 5214-5230
Identifying how natural (i.e., unaltered by human activity) and anthropogenic landscape variables influence contemporary functional connectivity in terrestrial organisms can elucidate the genetic consequences of environmental change. We examine population genetic structure and functional connectivity among populations of a declining species, the Blainville's horned lizard (Phrynosoma...
Foraging habitat selection of shrubland bird community in tropical dry forest
A. Deshwall, S.L. Stephenson, P. Panwar, Brett Alexander DeGregorio, R. Kannan, J.D. Willson
2022, Ecology and Evolution (12)
Habitat loss due to increasing anthropogenic disturbance is the major driver for bird population declines across the globe. Within the Eastern Ghats of India, shrubland bird communities are threatened by shrinking of suitable habitats due to increased anthropogenic disturbance and climate change. The development of an effective habitat management strategy...
Quantifying large-scale surface change using SAR amplitude images: Crater morphology changes during the 2019-2020 Shishaldin Volcano eruption
Mario Angarita, Ronni Grapenthin, Simon Plank, Franz Meyer, Hannah R. Dietterich
2022, Journal of Geophysical Research - Solid Earth (127)
Morphological processes often induce meter-scale elevation changes. When a volcano erupts, tracking such processes provides insights into the style and evolution of eruptive activity and related hazards. Compared to optical remote-sensing products, synthetic aperture radar (SAR) observes surface change during inclement weather and at night. Differential SAR...
Using paleoecological data to inform decision making: A deep-time perspective
Harry J. Dowsett, Peter Jacobs, Kim de Mutsert
2022, Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution (10)
Latest climate models project conditions for the end of this century that are generally outside of the human experience. These future conditions affect the resilience and sustainability of ecosystems, alter biogeographic zones, and impact biodiversity. Deep-time records of paleoclimate provide insight into the climate system over millions of years and...
Effects of an early mass-flowering crop on wild bee communities and traits in power line corridors vary with blooming plants and landscape context
Brianne Du Clos, Francis A. Drummond, Cyndy Loftin
2022, Landscape Ecology (37) 2619-2634
ContextPower line corridors have been repeatedly assessed as habitat for wild bees; however, few studies have examined them as bee habitat relative to nearby crop fields and surrounding landscape context.ObjectivesWe surveyed bee communities in power line corridors near to and isolated from lowbush blueberry fields in...
Lacunarity as a tool for assessing landscape configuration over time and informing long-term monitoring: An example using seagrass
Nicholas Enwright, Kelly M. Darnell, Greg A. Carter
2022, Landscape Ecology (37) 2689-2705
ContextSeagrasses are submerged marine plants that have been declining globally at increasing rates. Natural resource managers rely on monitoring programs to detect and understand changes in these ecosystems. Technological advancements are allowing for the development of patch-level seagrass maps, which can be used to explore seagrass meadow spatial...
Navigating the space between policy and practice: Toward a typology of collaborators in a federal land management agency
Nina Burkardt, Rebecca Thomas
2022, Society and Natural Resources (35) 1333-1351
Navigating the space between policy and on-the-ground natural resource management presents unique challenges. We interviewed 22 U.S. Bureau of Land Management Field Office Managers to understand their perceptions toward, and applications of, collaboration with public and private stakeholders. Interviews were transcribed and open-coded using qualitative data analysis software....
Bathymetry retrieval from CubeSat image sequences with short time lags
Milad Niroumand-Jadidi, Carl J. Legleiter, Francesca Bovolo
2022, International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation (112)
The rapid expansion of CubeSat constellations could revolutionize the way inland and nearshore coastal waters are monitored from space. This potential stems from the ability of CubeSats to provide daily imagery with global coverage at meter-scale spatial resolution. In this study, we...
A model to assess industry vulnerability to disruptions in mineral commodity supplies
Ross Manley, Elisa Alonso, Nedal T. Nassar
2022, Resources Policy (78)
Mineral commodity supply disruptions have the potential to ripple through and impact the economy in many ways. Industrial vulnerability is a crucial component of mineral commodity criticality tools as it provides guidance on the economic importance of these commodities to regional criticality indices. Using an economic model that links mineral commodity end-use data to...
Assembling a safe and effective toolbox for integrated flea control and plague mitigation: Fipronil experiments with prairie dogs
David A. Eads, Travis Livieri, Tyler Tretten, John Hughes, Nick Kaczor, Emily Halsell, Shaun M. Grassel, Phillip Dobesh, Eddie Childers, David Lucas, Lauren Noble, Michele Vasquez, Anna Catherine Grady, Dean E. Biggins
Heike Lutermann, editor(s)
2022, PLoS ONE (17)
BackgroundPlague, a widely distributed zoonotic disease of mammalian hosts and flea vectors, poses a significant risk to ecosystems throughout much of Earth. Conservation biologists use insecticides for flea control and plague mitigation. Here, we evaluate the use of an insecticide grain bait, laced with 0.005% fipronil (FIP) by weight, with...
Global dataset of species-specific inland recreational fisheries harvest for consumption
Holly Susan Embke, Elizabeth A. Nyboer, Ashley M. Robertson, Robert Arlinghaus, L. Akintola, Tuncay Atessahin, Laamiri Mohamed Badr, Claudio Baigun, Zeenatul Basher, T. Douglas Beard Jr., Gergely Boros, Shannon D. Bower, Steven J. Cooke, Ian G. Cowx, Adolfo Franco, Ma. Teresa Gaspar-Dillanes, Vladimir Puentes Granada, Robert John Hart, Carlos Heinsohn, Vincent Jalabert, Andrzej Kapusta, Tibor Krajc, John D. Koehn, Goncalo Lopes, Roman Lyach, Terence Magqina, Marco Milardi, Juliet Nattabi, Hilda Nyaboke, Sui C. Phang, Warren M. Potts, Filipe Ribeiro, Norman Mercado-Silva, Naren Sreenivasan, Andy Thorpe, Tomislav Treer, Didzis Ustups, Olaf L.F. Weyl, Louisa E. Wood, Mustafa Zengin, Abigail J. Lynch
2022, Scientific Data (9)
Inland recreational fisheries, found in lakes, rivers, and other landlocked waters, are important to livelihoods, nutrition, leisure, and other societal ecosystem services worldwide. Although recreationally-caught fish are frequently harvested and consumed by fishers, their contribution to food and nutrition has not been adequately quantified due to...
Winter severity affects occupancy of spring- and summer-breeding anurans across the eastern United States
Sarah R. Weiskopf, Alexey N. Shiklomanov, Laura Thompson, Sarah Wheedleton, Evan H. Campbell Grant
2022, Diversity and Distributions (28) 2187-2199
AimClimate change is an increasingly important driver of biodiversity loss. The ectothermic nature of amphibians may make them particularly sensitive to changes in temperature and precipitation regimes, adding to declines from other threats. While active season environmental conditions can influence growth and survival, effects of variation in...
U.S. Geological Survey Benchmark Glacier Project
Caitlyn Florentine, Lisa McKeon
2022, Fact Sheet 2022-3050
The U.S. Geological Survey Benchmark Glacier Project combines decades of direct glaciological data with remote sensing data to advance the quantitative understanding of glacier-climate interactions. The global loss of glaciers, and consequent implications for water resources, sea level rise, and ecosystem function underscores the importance of U.S. Geological Survey glaciology...
An initial assessment of plankton tow detection probabilities for dreissenid mussels in the western United States
Meaghan Winder, Adam Sepulveda, Andrew Hoegh
2022, Management of Biological Invasions (13) 659-678
Early detection of dreissenid mussels (Dreissena polymorpha and D. rostriformis bugensis) is crucial to mitigating the economic and environmental impacts of an infestation. Plankton tow sampling is a common method used for early detection of dreissenid mussels, but little is known about the sampling intensity required for a high probability of early...
New projections of 21st century climate and hydrology for Alaska and Hawaiʻi
Naoki Mizukami, Andrew J. Newman, Jeremy S. Littell, Thomas W. Giambelluca, Andrew W. Wood, Ethan D. Gutmann, Joseph J. Hamman, Diana R. Gergel, Bart Nijssen, Martyn . Clark, Jeffrey R. Arnold
2022, Climate Services (27)
In the United States, high-resolution, century-long, hydroclimate projection datasets have been developed for water resources planning, focusing on the contiguous United States (CONUS) domain. However, there are few statewide hydroclimate projection datasets available for Alaska and Hawaiʻi. The limited information on...
