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In support of the goals of the Coachella Valley Conservation Commission and the Bureau of Land Management, we performed surveys to determine the status, distribution, demographics, and possible genetic linkages of Agassiz’s desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii) populations within the Coachella Valley Multiple Species Habitat Conservation Plan (CVMSHCP) area during a...

Environmental exposure data are a key component of chemical and ecological assessments, supporting and guiding environmental management decisions and regulations. Measures taken to protect the environment based on exposure data can have social and economic implications. Flawed information may lead to measures being taken...

ContextPlant communities vary both abruptly and gradually over time but differentiating between types of change can be difficult with existing classification and ordination methods. Structural topic modeling (STRUTMO), a text mining analysis, offers a flexible methodology for analyzing both types of temporal trends.ObjectivesOur objectives were to...

Measurement of planktonic chlorophyll-a—a proxy for algal biomass—in rivers may represent local production or algae transported from upstream, confounding understanding of algal bloom development in flowing waters. We modeled 3 years of chlorophyll-a transport through a 394-km portion of the Illinois River and found that although algal biomass is...

Predators of Nerodia clarkii are suspected to include larger species of crabs, fish, wading birds, snakes, alligators, and crocodiles. To our knowledge, there have only been two published observations of predation on N. clarkii, including a predation attempt from a Callinectes sapidus (Blue Crab) in Mississippi, USA and a successful...

Snow avalanches are a hazard and ecological disturbance across mountain landscapes worldwide. Understanding how avalanche frequency affects forests and vegetation improves infrastructure planning, risk management, and avalanche forecasting. We implemented a novel approach using lidar, aerial imagery, and a random forest model to classify imagery-observed vegetation within avalanche...

Understanding age and growth are important for fisheries science and management; however, age data are not routinely collected for many populations. We propose and test a method of borrowing age–length data across increasingly broader spatiotemporal levels to create a hierarchical age–length key (HALK). We assessed this method by comparing growth...

As part of the periodic update of the geothermal energy assessments for the USA (e.g., last update by Williams and others, 2008), a new three-dimensional temperature map has been constructed for the Great Basin, USA. Williams and DeAngelo (2011) identified uncertainty in estimates of conductive heat flow near land surface...

Spatially explicit estimates of marine species distribution and abundance are required to quantify potential impacts from human activities such as military training and testing, fisheries interactions, and offshore energy development. There are 4 protected species of sea turtle (loggerhead, green, Kemp’s ridley, and leatherback) commonly found along the east coast...

This Memo to All Banders (MTAB 107) was released in February 2024. Subjects in this this memo are 1. The Chief’s Chirp; 2. Alerts – Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza and reminder that banders cannot submit data through Bandit, only manage data; 3. Staff updates – meeting reports; 4. News –...

Brushlands support a diverse suite of bird species, including species of conservation concern in the western Great Lakes region of central North America. Information on how to effectively manage lowland brushlands for birds and associations between breeding birds and local-scale vegetation structure and composition is lacking. We surveyed lowland brushlands...

Extensional faults are key components of foreland basin systems. They form within the upper crust in response to flexure of the lithosphere and accommodate subsidence within the foredeep and forebulge depozones. Such faults are excellent proxies for orogenic system evolution and control the distribution of natural resources and hazards. However, the spatiotemporal evolution of flexural extension has not been documented...

We update the ground-motion characterization for the 2023 National Seismic Hazard Model (NSHM) for the conterminous United States. The update includes the use of new ground-motion models (GMMs) in the Cascadia subduction zone; an adjustment to the central and eastern United States (CEUS) GMMs to reduce misfits with observed data;...

The Las Cienegas National Conservation Area was established by the Las Cienegas National Conservation Area Establishment Act of 1999 (Public Law 106–538) and is managed by the Bureau of Land Management. Located in southeastern Arizona, the conservation area contains more than 45,000 acres of rolling grassland, wetlands, and woodlands surrounded...

Terrestrial organic matter is believed to play an important role in promoting resilient estuarine food webs, but the inherent interconnectivity of estuarine systems often obscures the origins and importance of these terrestrial inputs. To determine the relative contributions of terrestrial (allochthonous) and aquatic (autochthonous) organic matter...

The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the City of Crystal Lake, Illinois, started a study to increase understanding of groundwater and surface-water interaction between the glacial aquifer and the city’s namesake lake, Crystal Lake, and the effect of higher and lower precipitation conditions on groundwater and lake levels. The...

Earthquake swarms are most commonly composed of small-magnitude earthquakes – those that may in some cases be felt but without causing damage. However, a recent study by Yoshida et al. (2023, https://doi.org/10.1029/2023GL106023) analyzed a swarm beneath the Noto Peninsula in Japan that, after more than two years of moderate-magnitude...

The estimation of depth in optically shallow waters using satellite imagery can be efficient and cost-effective. Active sensors measure the distance traveled by an emitted laser pulse propagating through the water with high precision and accuracy if the bottom peak intensity of the waveform is greater than the noise...

BackgroundWildfire is a major proximate cause of historical and ongoing losses of intact big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata Nutt.) plant communities and declines in sagebrush obligate wildlife species. In recent decades, fire return intervals have shortened and area burned has increased in some areas, and habitat degradation is occurring where...

A peculiar type of stratabound tungsten mineralization in metacarbonate rocks was discovered and explored at Mallnock (Austria) during the late 1980s. It is the only tungsten occurrence in the Eastern Alps in which scheelite is associated with wolframite (96 mol% ferberite). The tungsten prospect is located...

Since the early 1900s, groundwater withdrawn from the primary aquifers that compose the Gulf Coast aquifer system—the Chicot, Evangeline, and Jasper aquifers—has been an important source of water in the greater Houston area, Texas. This report, prepared by the U.S. Geological Survey in cooperation with the Harris-Galveston Subsidence District, City...

Charrs (Salvelinus) reach their southernmost distribution in Japan, and are uniquely adapted to the short, steep streams of this island archipelago. Southern Asian Dolly Varden (Salvelinus curilus) occur only in Hokkaido Island, whereas white-spotted charr (Salvelinus leucomaenis) range to southern Honshu. Both species diverged from an ancestral lineage during the...

Robust estimates of colonial waterbird (CWB) breeding population trends are deficient owing to a lack of range wide, standardized survey efforts. Evaluating conservation priorities and effectiveness of management requires reliable trend estimates across multiple spatial scales. One potential data source for CWB trend estimation is the Colonial Waterbird Database, created...

Glaciers in western North American outside of Alaska are often overlooked in global studies because their potential to contribute to changes in sea level is small. Nonetheless, these glaciers represent important sources of freshwater, especially during times of drought. Differencing recent ICESat-2 data from a digital elevation model derived from...

The diets of the eight species of ursids range from carnivory (e.g., polar bears, Ursus maritimus) to insectivory (e.g., sloth bears, Melursus ursinus), omnivory (e.g., brown bears, U. arctos), and herbivory (e.g., giant pandas, Ailuropoda melanoleuca). Dietary energy availability ranges from the high-fat, highly digestible, calorically dense diet of polar bears (~ 6.4 kcal digestible energy/g...