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This chapter presents a “bird's eye” view of tamarisk and examines some issues surrounding the management of tamarisk in riparian woodlands. The focus on birds is based on the fact that they are a relatively well-studied group that can provide important insights into the role of tamarisk in riparian ecosystems....

As the old saying goes, there is nothing more precious than water in the desert. The Ancestral Puebloans, Hohokam, and other pre-Columbian cultures knew this and built their civilizations near guaranteed water supplies. When the Spaniards arrived in present-day Arizona, they found that the Tohono O’odham and Piman cultures had...

Food-value theory states that territorial animals space themselves such that each territory contains adequate food for rearing young. The ovenbird (Seiurus aurocapilla) is often cited as a species for which this hypothesis is supported because ovenbird territory size is inversely related to ground-invertebrate abundance within territories. However, little is known...

On 29 May 2010, at approximately 11:48 UTC, an undersea volcano south of Sarigan in the Northern Mariana Islands (Figs. 1 and 2) erupted sending a cloud of volcanic ash and water vapor to 40,000 feet (12 km; Washington Volcanic Ash Advisory Center). Bathymetric data (Stern and Smoot, 1998; Embley et al., 2007)...

The type section of the Barstow Formation in the Mud Hills, north of Barstow, is a reference section for early to middle Miocene paleontology, magnetostratigraphy, and dated volcanic episodes. Thanks to this robust chronologic framework, much of the interpretation of the paleogeography of the region from about 18 Ma to...

Wisconsin is world-renowned for its diversity of ecological landscapes and wildlife populations.  The northern forests, southern prairies, and interior and coastal wetlands of the state are home to more than 500 terrestrial animal species.  These animals supply the Wisconsin public with aesthetic, cultural, and economic benefits; our identity and economy...

Rapid antemortem tests to detect individuals with transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSE) would contribute to public health. We investigated a technique known as protein misfolding cyclic amplification (PMCA) to amplify abnormal prion protein (PrPTSE) from highly diluted variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD)-infected human and macaque brain homogenates, seeking to improve the rapid...

The USGS Great Lakes Science Center (GLSC) conducted acoustic/midwater trawl surveys of Lake Huron during 1997 and annually during 2004-2012. The 2012 survey was conducted during September and October, and included transects in Lake Huron’s Main Basin, Georgian Bay, and North Channel. Pelagic fish density (638 fish/ha) was lower in...

The Idaho cobalt belt (ICB) is a northwest-trending belt of cobalt (Co) +/- copper (Cu)-bearing deposits and prospects in the Salmon River Mountains of east-central Idaho, U.S.A. The ICB is about 55 km long and 10 km long in its central part, which contains multiple strata-bound ore zones in the...

Coal beds are one of the most promising reservoirs for geologic carbon dioxide (CO₂) sequestration, as CO₂ can strongly adsorb onto organic matter and displace methane; however, little is known about the long-term fate of CO₂ sequestered in coal beds. The "2800' sand" of the Olla oil field is a...

Despite significant research demonstrating effects of estrogens such as 17α - ethinylestradiol (EE2) on fish, the underlying mechanisms regulating population failure are unknown. Projected water shortages could leave waterways increasingly dominated by wastewater effluent and understanding mechanisms is necessary for conservation and management. Here we identify mechanisms of...

During the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, oil in the surf zone mixed with sediment in the surf zone to form heavier-than-water sediment oil agglomerates of various size, ranging from small (cm-scale) pieces (surface residual balls, SRBs) to large mats (100-m scale, surface residue mats, SR mats). Once SR mats formed...

Mercury is a worldwide contaminant derived from natural and anthropogenic sources. River systems play a key role in the transport and fate of Hg because they drain widespread areas affected by aerial Hg deposition, transport Hg away from point sources, and are sites of Hg biogeochemical cycling and bioaccumulation. The...

Relationships between sediment toxicity and sediment chemistry were evaluated for 98 samples collected from seven metropolitan study areas across the United States. Sediment-toxicity tests were conducted with the amphipod Hyalella azteca (28 day exposures) and with the midge Chironomus dilutus (10 day exposures). Overall, 33 % of the samples were...

We present a new set of contour maps of the seismic structure of South America and the surrounding ocean basins. These maps include new data, helping to constrain crustal thickness, whole-crustal average P-wave and S-wave velocity, and the seismic velocity of the uppermost mantle (Pn and Sn). We find that:...

Sediment toxicity tests were conducted to assess potential effects of contaminants associated with coal mining or natural gas extraction activities in the upper Tennessee River basin and eastern Cumberland River basin in the United States. Test species included two unionid mussels (rainbow mussel, Villosa iris, and wavy-rayed lampmussel, Lampsilis fasciola,...

We analyzed net CO2 exchange data from 13 flux tower sites with 27 site-years of measurements over maize and wheat fields across midcontinent North America. A numerically robust “light-soil temperature-VPD”-based method was used to partition the data into photosynthetic assimilation and ecosystem respiration components. Year-round ecosystem-scale ecophysiological parameters of apparent...

Birds are often the most numerous vertebrates damaged and rehabilitated in marine oil spills; however, the efficacy of avian rehabilitation is frequently debated and rarely examined experimentally. We compared survival of three radio-marked treatment groups, oiled, rehabilitated (ORHB), un-oiled, rehabilitated (RHB), and un-oiled, non-rehabilitated (CON), in an experimental approach to...

It has been hypothesized that the degree to which a hyperbolic relationship exists between concentrations of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and dissolved oxygen (DO) in groundwater may indicate the relative bioavailability of DOC. This hypothesis was examined for 73 different regional aquifers of the United States using 7745 analyses of...

Satellite-derived contemporary land-cover land-use (LCLU) and albedo data and modeled future LCLU are used to study the impact of LCLU change from 2000 to 2050 on surface albedo and radiative forcing for 19 ecoregions in the eastern United States. The modeled 2000–2050 LCLU changes indicate a future decrease in both...

1. Impermeable barriers to migration can greatly constrain the set of possible routes and ranges used by migrating animals. For ungulates, however, many forms of development are semi-permeable, and making informed management decisions about their potential impacts to the persistence of migration routes is difficult because our knowledge of how...

High-latitude ecosystems are among the most vulnerable to long-term climate change, yet continuous, multidecadal indicators by which to gauge effects on biology are scarce, especially in freshwater environments. To address this issue, dendrochronology (tree-ring analysis) techniques were applied to growth-increment widths in otoliths from lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush) from the...

Quaternary climate cycles played an important role in promoting diversification across the Northern Hemisphere, although details of the mechanisms driving evolutionary change are still poorly resolved. In a comparative phylogeographical framework, we investigate temporal, spatial and ecological components of evolution within a suite of Holarctic small mammals. We test a...

A great deal has been published in the scientific literature regarding the effects of wind energy development and operation on volant (flying) wildlife including birds and bats, although knowledge of how to mitigate negative impacts is still imperfect. We reviewed the peer-reviewed scientific literature for information on the known and...

Various anthropogenic pressures, including habitat loss, threaten reptile populations worldwide. Riparian zones are critical habitat for many reptile species, but these habitats are also frequently modified by anthropogenic activities. Our study investigated the effects of two riparian habitat modifications-damming and urbanization-on overall and species-specific reptile occupancy patterns. We used time-constrained...