2021–2022 Statewide Abundance Estimates for the Florida Manatee
Timothy A. Gowan, Holly H. Edwards, Andrea M. Krzystan, Julien Martin, J. A. Hostetler
2023, Technical Report TR-27
Knowing the population size of Florida manatees (Trichechus manatus latirostris) is critical for conservation and management of this threatened species. Martin et al. (2015) and Hostetler et al. (2018) applied statistical models that incorporated multiple data sources to estimate the statewide abundance of manatees from aerial surveys f lown in...
Comprehensive inventory of habitat assessment and evaluation datasets to support Deepwater Horizon mesophotic and deep benthic communities
Rachel Bassett, Jennifer Herting, Janessy Frometa, Stephanie M. Sharuga, Jacob Howell, Laughlin Siceloff, Jill R. Bourque, Megan Cromwell, Kirstie Francis, Randy Clark, Amanda Demopoulos, Andy David, Kristopher Benson, Stacey L. Harter
2023, DWH MDBC Data Report DR-23-01
This report is part of the NOAA Mesophotic and Deep Benthic Communities (MDBC) Series of publications that share the results of work conducted by the Deepwater Horizon MDBC restoration projects. The 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill was an unprecedented event. Approximately 3.2 million barrels of oil were released into the...
Skeletal indicators of locomotor adaptations in shrews
Neal Woodman
2023, Therya (14) 15-37
The Soricidae (Mammalia: Eulypotyphla) comprises more than 450 species inhabiting a variety of habitats on five continents. As a family, shrews employ a variety of locomotor modes that incorporate ambulatory, fossorial, aquatic, and scansorial behaviors, illustrating an ability to exploit a variety of natural substrates and their associated resources. In...
Improving the operational simplified surface energy balance evapotranspiration model using the forcing and normalizing operation
Gabriel B. Senay, Gabriel Edwin Lee Parrish, Matthew Schauer, MacKenzie Friedrichs, Kul Bikram Khand, Olena Boiko, Stefanie Kagone, Ray Dittmeier, Saeed Arab, Lei Ji
2023, Remote Sensing (15)
Actual evapotranspiration modeling is providing useful information for researchers and resource managers in agriculture and water resources around the world. The performance of models depends on the accuracy of forcing inputs and model parameters. We developed an improved approach to the parameterization of the Operational Simplified Surface Energy Balance...
Vulnerable waters are essential to watershed resilience
Charles R. Lane, Irena F. Creed, Heather E. Golden, Scott G. Leibowitz, David M. Mushet, Mark C. Rains, Qiusheng Wu, Ellen D’Amico, Laurie C. Alexander, Genevieve A. Ali, Nandita B. Basu, Micah G. Bennett, Jay R. Christensen, Matthew J. Cohen, Tim P. Covino, Ben DeVries, Ryan A. Hill, Kelsey G. Jencso, Megan W. Lang, Daniel L. McLaughlin, Donald O. Rosenberry, Jennifer Rover, Melanie K. Vanderhoof
2023, Ecosystems (26) 1-28
Watershed resilience is the ability of a watershed to maintain its characteristic system state while concurrently resisting, adapting to, and reorganizing after hydrological (for example, drought, flooding) or biogeochemical (for example, excessive nutrient) disturbances. Vulnerable waters include non-floodplain wetlands and headwater streams, abundant watershed components representing...
Causality-informed Bayesian inference for rapid seismic ground failure and building damage estimation
David J. Wald, Susu Xu, J. Dimasaka, H. Noh
2023, Conference Paper
Rapid and accurate estimates of seismic ground failure and building damage are beneficial to efficient emergency response and post-earthquake recovery. Traditional approaches, such as physical and geospatial models, have poor accuracy and resolution due to large uncertainties and the limited availability of informing geospatial layers. The introduction of remote sensing...
Relative-condition parameters for fishes of Montana, USA
Robert W. Eckelbecker, Nathaniel M. Heili, Christopher S. Guy, David A. Schmetterling
2023, Fishes (8)
Body condition indices are commonly used in the management of fish populations and are a surrogate to physiological attributes such as tissue-energy reserves. Relative condition factor (Kn) describes the condition of species relative to populations in a geographic area. We developed models to allow for the calculation of Kn in...
Assessment of cropland inundation due to the operation of the Reelfoot Lake spillway in West Tennessee
N.M. Bhuyian, Chayan Lahiri, Timothy H. Diehl, Elizabeth Heal
2023, Journal of the American Water Resources Association (59) 855-873
Running Reelfoot Bayou (RRB) is the outlet canal of Reelfoot Lake, the largest natural lake in Tennessee. RRB is not able to contain discharge from Reelfoot Lake greater than the bankfull discharge of 28 m3/s (1000 ft3/s), which typically occurs at the beginning of the growing season...
An integral projection model for gizzard shad (Dorosoma cepedianum) utilizing density-dependent age-0 survival
James P Peirce, Gregory Sandland, Barb Bennie, Richard A. Erickson
2023, Ecological Modelling (477)
Gizzard shad (Dorosoma cepedianum) is a common freshwater fish species found throughout the central and eastern portions of North America. Within these regions, gizzard shad play several critical roles in the freshwater community such as serving as prey for other fish species and translocating nutrients from substrates into the water...
Long-term monitoring in transition: Resolving spatial mismatch and integrating multistate occupancy data
Matthew J Weldy, Damon B. Lesmeister, Charles B. Yackulic, Cara L. Appel, Chris E. McCafferty, David Wiens
2023, Ecological Indicators (146)
The success of long-term wildlife monitoring programs can be influenced by many factors and study designs often represent compromises between spatial scales and costs. Adaptive monitoring programs can iteratively manage this tension by adopting new cost-efficient technologies, which can provide projects the...
The Sukari gold deposit, Egypt: Geochemical and geochronological constraints on the ore genesis and implications for regional exploration
Basem Zoheir, Astrid Holzheid, Armin Zeh, Ryan J. McAleer, Mohamed El-Behairy, Ulrich Schwarz-Schampera, Torsten Graupner, David Lentz, Fahui Xiong
2023, Economic Geology (118) 719-744
The Sukari gold deposit (>15 Moz Au) in the Eastern Desert of Egypt is hosted by a deformed granitoid stock (Sukari tonalite-trondhjemite intrusion) and mainly occurs as a network of crosscutting sulfide-bearing quartz (± carbonate) veins and intensely sulfidized-silicified-sericitized wall rock. Emplacement of the Sukari intrusion into a tectonized Neoproterozoic...
The over-prediction of seismically induced soil liquefaction during the 2016 Kumamoto, Japan earthquake sequence
Donald J. Anderson, Kevin W. Franke, Robert Kayen, Shideh Dashti, M Badanagki
2023, Geosciences (13)
Following the M7.0 strike-slip earthquake near Kumamoto, Japan, in April of 2016, most geotechnical engineering experts believed that there would be significant soil liquefaction and liquefaction-induced infrastructure damage observed in the densely populated city of Kumamoto during the post-event engineering reconnaissance. This belief was driven by several factors including...
Multiple dimensions of functional diversity affect stream fish β-diversity
Luke Max Bower, Lauren Stoczynski, Brandon K. Peoples, Christopher J. Patrick, Bryan L. Brown
2023, Freshwater Biology (68) 437-451
When investigating metacommunity dynamics, functional differences among species are often assumed to be as important as environmental differences between sites in determining β-diversity. However, few studies have examined the influence of functional diversity on β-diversity. We examine the relative importance of regional functional diversity partitioned by niche dimensions and...
Divergent climate impacts on C3 versus C4 grasses imply widespread 21st century shifts in grassland functional composition
Caroline A. Havrilla, John B. Bradford, Charles B. Yackulic, Seth M. Munson
2023, Diversity and Distributions (29) 379-394
AimGrasslands cover a third of Earth's landmass and provide critical ecosystem services. Anticipating how perennial C3 (cool-season) and C4 (warm-season) grasses respond to climate change will be key to predicting future composition and functioning of grasslands. Here, we evaluate environmental drivers of C3 and C4 perennial distributions and assess how C3 and...
Borealization of nearshore fishes on an interior Arctic shelf over multiple decades
Vanessa R. von Biela, Sarah M. Laske, Ashley E. Stanek, Randy J Brown, Kenneth H. Dunton
2023, Global Change Biology (29) 1822-1838
Borealization is a type of community reorganization where Arctic specialists are replaced by species with more boreal distributions in response to climatic warming. The process of borealization is often exemplified by the northward range expansions and subsequent proliferation of boreal species on the Pacific and Atlantic...
Pesticide prioritization by potential biological effects in tributaries of the Laurentian Great Lakes
Samantha K. Oliver, Steven R. Corsi, Austin K. Baldwin, Michelle A. Nott, Gerald T. Ankley, Brett R. Blackwell, Daniel L. Villeneuve, Michelle L. Hladik, Dana W. Kolpin, Luke C. Loken, Laura A. DeCicco, Michael T. Meyer, Keith A. Loftin
2023, Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (42) 367-384
Watersheds of the Great Lakes Basin (USA/Canada) are highly modified and impacted by human activities including pesticide use. Despite labeling restrictions intended to minimize risks to nontarget organisms, concerns remain that environmental exposures to pesticides may be occurring at levels negatively impacting nontarget organisms. We used...
Near-term forecasts of stream temperature using deep learning and data assimilation in support of management decisions
Jacob Aaron Zwart, Samantha K. Oliver, William Watkins, Jeffrey Michael Sadler, Alison P. Appling, Hayley R. Corson-Dosch, Xiaowei Jia, Vipin Kumar, Jordan Read
2023, Journal of the American Water Resources Association (59) 317-337
Deep learning (DL) models are increasingly used to make accurate hindcasts of management-relevant variables, but they are less commonly used in forecasting applications. Data assimilation (DA) can be used for forecasts to leverage real-time observations, where the difference between model predictions and observations today is used to adjust the model...
Investigating effects of climate-induced changes in water temperature and diet on mercury concentrations in an Arctic freshwater forage fish
Sarah M. Laske, Samantha M. Burke, Michael P. Carey, Heidi K. Swanson, Christian E. Zimmerman
2023, Environmental Research (218)
The amount of mercury (Hg) in Arctic lake food webs is, and will continue to be, affected by rapid, ongoing climate change. At warmer temperatures, fish require more energy to sustain growth; changes in their metabolic rates and consuming prey with potentially higher Hg concentrations could result in increased Hg...
Revised age and regional correlations of Cenozoic strata on Bat Mountain, Death Valley region, California, USA, from zircon U-Pb geochronology of sandstones and ash-fall tuffs
Theresa Maude Schwartz, Amanda Kate Souders, Jens-Erik Lundstern, Amy K. Gilmer, Ren A. Thompson
2023, Geosphere (19) 235-257
Basin analysis and tectonic reconstructions of the Cenozoic history of the Death Valley region, California, USA, are hindered by a lack of volcanic (tuff) age control in many stratigraphic successions exposed in the Grapevine and Funeral Mountains of California, USA. Although maximum depositional ages (MDAs) interpreted from detrital zircon U-Pb...
Sharing land via keystone structure: Retaining naturally regenerated trees may efficiently benefit birds in plantations
Yuichi Yamaura, Akira Unno, J. Andrew Royle
2023, Ecological Applications (33)
Meeting food/wood demands with increasing human population and per-capita consumption is a pressing conservation issue, and is often framed as a choice between land sparing and land sharing. Although most empirical studies comparing the efficacy of land sparing and sharing supported land sparing, land sharing may be more efficient if...
A genetic warning system for a hierarchically structured wildlife monitoring framework
Shawna J Zimmerman, Cameron L. Aldridge, Michael S. O’Donnell, David R. Edmunds, Peter S. Coates, Brian G. Prochazka, Jennifer A. Fike, Todd B. Cross, Bradley C. Fedy, Sara J. Oyler-McCance
2023, Ecological Applications (33)
Genetic variation is a well-known indicator of population fitness yet is not typically included in monitoring programs for sensitive species. Additionally, most programs monitor populations at one scale, which can lead to potential mismatches with ecological processes critical to species' conservation. Recently developed methods...
Estimating phosphorus retention capacity of flow-through wetlands
Song S. Qian, Kristi K. Arend, Stephen J Jacquemin, S. Mazeika Patricio Sullivan, Kurt P. Kowalski
2023, Ecological Engineering (187)
A Bayesian hierarchical modeling approach is introduced to pool data properly from multiple flow-through wetlands to estimate wetland-specific long-term phosphorus retention capacity. By pooling data from multiple wetlands, we overcome the difficulties in estimating the effectiveness of using constructed and...
Validation of earthquake ground-motion models in southern California, USA, using precariously balanced rocks
Anna H. Rood, Dylan Rood, Greg Balco, Peter J. Stafford, Lisa Grant Ludwig, Katherine J. Kendrick, Klaus Wilcken
2023, GSA Bulletin (135) 2179-2199
Accurate estimates of earthquake ground shaking rely on uncertain ground-motion models derived from limited instrumental recordings of historical earthquakes. A critical issue is that there is currently no method to empirically validate the resultant ground-motion estimates of these models at the timescale of rare, large earthquakes; this lack of validation...
Five year analyses of vegetation response to restoration using rock detention structures in southeastern Arizona, United States
Natalie R. Wilson, Laura M. Norman
2023, Environmental Management (71) 921-939
Rock detention structures (RDS) are used in restoration of riparian areas around the world. The purpose of this study was to analyze the effect of RDS installation on vegetation in terms of species abundance and composition. We present the results from 5 years of annual vegetation...
Wetland occupancy by duck broods in cropland-dominated landscapes of the United States Prairie Pothole Region
Blake J Mitchell, Catrina V Terry, Kevin M Ringelman, Kaylan M Kemink, Michael J. Anteau, Adam K. Janke
2023, Journal of Wildlife Management (87)
The Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) is globally important for breeding waterfowl but has been altered via wetland drainage and grassland conversion to accommodate agricultural land use. Thus, understanding the ecology of waterfowl in these highly modified landscapes is essential for their conservation. Brood occurrence is the...
