Monitoring the status of forests and rangelands in the Western United States using ecosystem performance anomalies
Matthew B. Rigge, Bruce Wylie, Yingxin Gu, Jayne Belnap, Khem P. Phuyal, Larry Tieszen
2013, International Journal of Remote Sensing (34) 4049-4068
The effects of land management and disturbance on ecosystem performance (i.e. biomass production) are often confounded by those of weather and site potential. The current study overcomes this issue by calculating the difference between actual and expected ecosystem performance (EEP) to generate ecosystem performance anomalies (EPA). This study aims to...
Volatile fluxes through the Big Bend section of the San Andreas Fault, California: helium and carbon-dioxide systematics
Justin T. Kulongoski, David R. Hilton, Peter H. Barry, Bradley K. Esser, Darren Hillegonds, Kenneth Belitz
2013, Chemical Geology (339) 92-102
To investigate the source of volatiles and their relationship to the San Andreas Fault System (SAFS), 18 groundwater samples were collected from wells near the Big Bend section of the SAFS in southern California and analyzed for helium and carbon abundance and isotopes. Concentrations of 4He, corrected for air-bubble entrainment,...
Temporal and spatial distribution of alteration, mineralization and fluid inclusions in the transitional high-sulfidation epithermal-porphyry copper system at Red Mountain, Arizona
Pilar Lecumberri-Sanchez, M. Claiborne Newton III, Erik C. Westman, Robert J. Kamilli, Vertrees M. Canby, Robert J. Bodnar
2013, Journal of Geochemical Exploration (125) 80-93
Red Mountain, Arizona, is a Laramide porphyry Cu system (PCD) that has experienced only a modest level of erosion compared to most other similar deposits in the southwestern United States. As a result, the upper portion of the magmatic–hydrothermal system, which represents the transition from shallower high-sulfidation epithermal mineralization to...
Limitation and facilitation of one of the world's most invasive fish: an intercontinental comparison
Phaedra E. Budy, Gary P. Thiede, Javier Lobon-Cervia, Gustavo Gonzolez Fernandez, Peter McHugh, Angus McIntosh, Lief Asbjorn Vollestad, Eloy Becares, Phillip Jellyman
2013, Ecology (94) 356-367
Purposeful species introductions offer opportunities to inform our understanding of both invasion success and conservation hurdles. We evaluated factors determining the energetic limitations of brown trout (Salmo trutta) in both their native and introduced ranges. Our focus was on brown trout because they are nearly globally distributed, considered one of...
You're standing on it! Coal-tar-based pavement sealcoat and environmental and human health
Barbara Mahler, Peter C. Van Metre
2013, APWA Reporter 64-66
Coal-tar-based sealcoat—a product marketed to protect and beautify asphalt pavement—is a potent source of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) to air, soils, streams and lakes, and homes. Does its use present a risk to human health? Results from a new study by researchers from Baylor University and the...
Mapping river bathymetry with a small footprint green LiDAR: Applications and challenges
Paul J. Kinzel, Carl J. Legleiter, Jonathan M. Nelson
2013, Journal of the American Water Resources Association (49) 183-204
Airborne bathymetric Light Detection And Ranging (LiDAR) systems designed for coastal and marine surveys are increasingly sought after for high-resolution mapping of fluvial systems. To evaluate the potential utility of bathymetric LiDAR for applications of this kind, we compared detailed surveys collected using wading and sonar techniques with measurements from...
Mapping grassland productivity with 250-m eMODIS NDVI and SSURGO database over the Greater Platte River Basin, USA
Yingxin Gu, Bruce K. Wylie, Norman B. Bliss
2013, Ecological Indicators (24) 31-36
This study assessed and described a relationship between satellite-derived growing season averaged Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and annual productivity for grasslands within the Greater Platte River Basin (GPRB) of the United States. We compared growing season averaged NDVI (GSN) with Soil Survey Geographic (SSURGO) database rangeland productivity and flux...
Working with strainmeter data
Kathleen M. Hodgkinson, Duncan Agnew, Evelyn A. Roeloffs
2013, Eos, Earth and Space Science News (94) 91-91
The Plate Boundary Observatory (PBO), the geodetic component of the U.S. National Science Foundation–funded Earthscope program, includes 75 borehole and 6 laser strainmeters (http://pbo.unavco.org). The strainmeters are installed at several locations: on the Cascadia forearc in Washington state and on Vancouver Island,...
Effects of drought on birds and riparian vegetation in the Colorado River Delta, Mexico
Osvel Hinojosa-Huerta, Pamela L. Nagler, Yamilett K. Carrillo-Guererro, Edward P. Glenn
2013, Ecological Engineering (51) 275-281
The riparian corridor in the delta of the Colorado River in Mexico supports internationally important bird habitat. The vegetation is maintained by surface flows from the U.S. and Mexico and by a high, non-saline aquifer into which the dominant phreatophytic shrubs and trees are rooted. We studied the effects of...
Identification of contamination in a lake sediment core using Hg and Pb isotopic compositions, Lake Ballinger, Washington, USA
John E. Gray, Michael J. Pribil, Peter C. Van Metre, David M. Borrok, Anita Thapalia
2013, Applied Geochemistry (29) 1-12
Concentrations and isotopic compositions of Hg and Pb were measured in a sediment core collected from Lake Ballinger, near Seattle, Washington, USA. Lake Ballinger has been affected by input of metal contaminants emitted from the Tacoma smelter, which operated from 1887 to 1986 and was located about 53 km south...
Rapid increases and time-lagged declines in amphibian occupancy after wildfire
Blake R. Hossack, Winsor H. Lowe, Paul Stephen Corn
2013, Conservation Biology (27) 219-228
Climate change is expected to increase the frequency and severity of drought and wildfire. Aquatic and moisture-sensitive species, such as amphibians, may be particularly vulnerable to these modified disturbance regimes because large wildfires often occur during extended droughts and thus may compound environmental threats. However, understanding of the effects of...
Frequency and Severity of Trauma in Fishes Subjected to Multiple-pass Depletion Electrofishing
Frank Panek, Christine L. Densmore
2013, North American Journal of Fisheries Management (33) 178-185
The incidence and severity of trauma associated with multiple-pass electrofishing and the effects on short-term (30-d) survival and growth of Rainbow Trout Oncorhynchus mykiss, Brook Trout Salvelinus fontinalis, and five representative co-inhabiting nontarget or bycatch species were examined. Fish were held in four rectangular fiberglass tanks (190 × 66 cm)...
Using isotopes of dissolved inorganic carbon species and water to separate sources of recharge in a cave spring, northwestern Arkansas, USA Blowing Spring Cave
Katherine J. Knierim, Erik Pollock, Phillip D. Hays
2013, Acta Carsologica (42) 261-276
Blowing Spring Cave in northwestern Arkansas is representative of cave systems in the karst of the Ozark Plateaus, and stable isotopes of water (δ18O and δ2H) and inorganic carbon (δ13C) were used to quantify soil-water, bedrock-matrix water, and precipitation contributions to cave-spring flow during storm events to understand controls on...
Fishery population and habitat assessment in Puerto Rico streams: phase 2 final report
Thomas J. Kwak, William E. Smith, Elissa N. Buttermore, Patrick B. Cooney, W. Gregory Cope
2013, Report
This document serves as the Final Report for research on Puerto Rico stream fishes and their habitat funded by the Puerto Rico Department of Natural and Environmental Resources, in the form of a grant to the North Carolina Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit. This research was also conducted to...
Present weather and climate: evolving conditions
Martin P Hoerling, Michael Dettinger, Klaus Wolter, Jeff Lukas, Jon K. Eischeid, Rama Nemani, Brant Liebmann, Kenneth E. Kunkel
2013, Book chapter, Assessment of climate change in southwest United States: a report prepared for the National Climate Assessment
This chapter assesses weather and climate variability and trends in the Southwest, using observed climate and paleoclimate records. It analyzes the last 100 years of climate variability in comparison to the last 1,000 years, and links the important features of evolving climate conditions to river flow variability in four of...
Site Response and Basin Waves in the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta, California
Jon Peter B. Fletcher, John Boatwright
2013, Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (103) 196-210
The Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta is an inland delta at the western extent of the Central Valley. Levees were built around swampy islands starting after the Civil War to reclaim these lands for farming. Various studies show that these levees could fail in concert from shaking from a major local or...
The utility of atmospheric analyses for the mitigation of artifacts in InSAR
James Foster, John Kealy, Tiziana Cherubini, S. Businger, Zhong Lu, Michael Murphy
2013, Journal of Geophysical Research B: Solid Earth (118) 748-758
The numerical weather models (NWMs) developed by the meteorological community are able to provide accurate analyses of the current state of the atmosphere in addition to the predictions of the future state. To date, most attempts to apply the NWMs to estimate the refractivity of the atmosphere at the time...
Use of classification trees to apportion single echo detections to species: Application to the pelagic fish community of Lake Superior
Daniel L. Yule, Jean V. Adams, Thomas R. Hrabik, Mark R. Vinson, Zebadiah Woiak, Tyler D. Ahrenstroff
2013, Fisheries Research (140) 123-132
Acoustic methods are used to estimate the density of pelagic fish in large lakes with results of midwater trawling used to assign species composition. Apportionment in lakes having mixed species can be challenging because only a small fraction of the water sampled acoustically is sampled with trawl gear. Here we...
Shifts in stable-isotope signatures confirm parasitic relationship of freshwater mussel glochidia attached to host fish
Mark W. Fritts, Andrea K. Fritts, Scott A. Carleton, Robert B. Bringolf
2013, Journal of Molluscan Studies (79) 163-167
The parasitic nature of the association between glochidia of unionoidean bivalves and their host fish (i.e. the role of fish hosts in providing nutritional resources to the developing glochidia) is still uncertain. While previous work has provided descriptions of development of glochidia on fish hosts, earlier studies have not explicitly...
Towards integration of GLAS data into a national fuels mapping program
Birgit E. Peterson, Kurtis Nelson, Bruce Wylie
2013, Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing (79) 175-183
Comprehensive canopy structure and fuel data are critical for understanding and modeling wildland fire. The LANDFIRE project produces such data nationwide based on a collection of field observations, Landsat imagery, and other geospatial data. Where field data are not available, alternate strategies are being investigated. In this study, vegetation structure...
Evaluating ion exchange resin efficiency and oxidative capacity for the separation of uranium(IV) and uranium(VI)
Deborah L. Stoliker, Douglas B. Kent, Nazila Kaviani, James A. Davis
2013, Geochemical Transactions (14)
Are we moving past the pixel? The growth of the third dimension in national landscape mapping
Jason M. Stoker
2013, Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing (79) 133-134
Rapid runoff via shallow throughflow and deeper preferential flow in a boreal catchment underlain by frozen silt (Alaska, USA)
Joshua C. Koch, Stephanie A. Ewing, Robert G. Striegl, Diane M. McKnight
2013, Hydrogeology Journal (21) 93-106
In high-latitude catchments where permafrost is present, runoff dynamics are complicated by seasonal active-layer thaw, which may cause a change in the dominant flowpaths as water increasingly contacts mineral soils of low hydraulic conductivity. A 2-year study, conducted in an upland catchment in Alaska (USA) underlain by frozen, well-sorted eolian...
Plausible combinations: An improved method to evaluate the covariate structure of Cormack-Jolly-Seber mark-recapture models
Jeffrey F. Bromaghin, Trent L. McDonald, Steven C. Amstrup
2013, Open Journal Of Ecology (3) 11-22
Mark-recapture models are extensively used in quantitative population ecology, providing estimates of population vital rates, such as survival, that are difficult to obtain using other methods. Vital rates are commonly modeled as functions of explanatory covariates, adding considerable flexibility to mark-recapture models, but also increasing the subjectivity and complexity of...
A preliminary deposit model for lithium brines
Dwight Bradley, LeeAnn Munk, Hillary Jochens, Scott Hynek, Keith A. Labay
2013, Open-File Report 2013-1006
This report is part of an effort by the U.S. Geological Survey to update existing mineral deposit models and to develop new ones. The global transition away from hydrocarbons toward energy alternatives increases demand for many scarce metals. Among these is lithium, a key component of lithium-ion batteries for electric...
