Search Results

Data on the demography and distribution of wildlife populations are important for informing conservation and management decisions; however, determination of life history traits and population trends often are elusive. All four extant species in the order Sirenia are deemed vulnerable to extinction; therefore, determining the demography and distribution for populations...

Rockland habitat in South Florida, USA, is a threatened ecosystem that has been lost, fragmented, or degraded because of urbanization or other anthropogenic disturbance. Furthermore, low-lying islands and coastal areas are experiencing sea level rise (SLR) and an increased frequency and intensity of tidal flooding, putting rockland habitats there at...

Salmonid species demonstrate varied susceptibility to the viral pathogen infectious hematopoietic necrosis virus (IHNV). In California conservation hatcheries, juvenile Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) have experienced disease outbreaks due to L genogroup IHNV since the 1940s, while indigenous steelhead (anadromous O. mykiss) appear relatively resistant. To characterize factors contributing to the losses...

This report describes geodetic and geologic information used to constrain deformation models of the 2023 update to the National Seismic Hazard Model (NSHM), a set of deformation models to interpret these data, and their implications for earthquake rates in the western United States....

Global Positioning System (GPS) velocity solutions of the western United States (WUS) are compiled from several sources of field networks and data processing centers for the 2023 U.S. Geological Survey National Seismic Hazard Model (NSHM). These solutions include both survey and continuous‐mode GPS velocity measurements. I follow the data processing...

Fault geometry and slip rates are key input data for geologic deformation models, which are a fundamental component of probabilistic seismic hazard analyses (PSHAs). However, geologic sources for PSHA have traditionally been limited to faults with field‐based slip rate constraints, which results in...

Mason Spur is a deeply eroded Middle Miocene to Pleistocene (c. 13 to 0.37 Ma) volcanic complex in southern Victoria Land, within the West Antarctic Rift System (WARS). The oldest rocks include a large volume of trachyte ignimbrites that provided abundant volcanic detritus recovered in McMurdo Sound...

This report summarizes data-collection activities associated with the U.S. Geological Survey Humboldt Bay Water-Quality and Salt Marsh Monitoring Project. This work was undertaken to gain a comprehensive understanding of water-quality conditions, salt marsh accretion processes, marsh-edge erosion, and soil-carbon storage in Humboldt Bay, California. Multiparameter sondes recorded water temperature, specific...

Preliminary models for gate operations at the new outlet control structure for Reelfoot Lake were developed by the U.S. Geological Survey, using calibrated ratings of the lift gates, to support the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in managing lake level. In 2018, the old structure at the outlet of Reelfoot...

Sandbars are an important resource in the Colorado River corridor in Marble and Grand Canyons, Arizona, downstream from Glen Canyon Dam. Sandbars provide aquatic and riparian habitat and are used as campsites by river runners and hikers. The study area is the Colorado River between Glen Canyon Dam and Diamond...

Dissolved atmogenic gasses in groundwater provide significant information about recharge conditions, flowpath, and age. Free phase gas in aquifers is largely ignored in these analyses and there is a lack of quantitative analysis for gas flux mechanisms. Many related fields encountering multiphase flow acknowledge that the presence of bubbles...

Remote sensing geodetic observations (Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar [InSAR] and optical correlation [“pixel tracking”]) serve an increasingly diverse and important role in earthquake monitoring and response. This study introduces the Geodetic Centroid (gCent) catalog—an earthquake catalog derived solely from space‐based geodetic observations—and analysis of 74 earthquakes (⁠MW4.3–7.4) imaged...

Anoxic conditions within reservoirs related to thermal stratification and oxygen depletion lead to methylmercury (MeHg) production, a key process governing the uptake of mercury in aquatic food webs. Once formed within a reservoir, the timing and magnitude of the biological uptake of MeHg and the relative importance of MeHg export...

Managers charged with recovering endangered species in regulated river segments often have limited flexibility to alter flow regimes and want estimates of the expected population benefits associated with both flow and nonflow management actions. Disentangling impacts on different life stages from concurrently applied actions is essential for determining the effectiveness...

Following the completion of land cover and change (LCC) products for the conterminous United States (CONUS), the U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS’s) Land Change Monitoring, Assessment, and Projection initiative has broadened the capability of characterizing continuous historical land change across the full Landsat records for Hawaiʻi at 30-meter resolution. One of the challenges of implementing...

The 2023 update to the National Seismic Hazard (NSHM) model is informed by several deformation models that furnish geodetically estimated fault slip rates. Here I describe a fault‐based model that permits estimation of long‐term slip rates on discrete faults and the distribution of...

Two slow-moving developments are threatening reservoir aquatic habitats globally: aging and climate change. These events are projected to transform reservoir aquatic habitats in various and often unpredictable ways. Aging affects in-lake habitats directly, whereas climate change affects both in-lake and off-lake conditions. Climate change is expected to accelerate and, in...

The ecosystems of the Williston Basin provide direct and indirect benefits to society. These benefits include carbon sequestration, flood control, nutrient rich soils for agricultural productivity, and habitat for wildlife. This chapter’s main focus is on the effects of energy development on species that occupy the ecosystems in the Williston...

Around the world, wetland vulnerability to sea-level rise (SLR) depends on different factors including tidal regimes, topography, creeks and estuary geometry, sediment availability, vegetation type, etc. The Plum Island estuary (PIE) is a mesotidal wetland system on the east coast of the United States. This research applied a newly updated...

Disturbances elicit both positive and negative effects on organisms; these effects vary in their strength and their timing. Effects of disturbance interval (i.e., the length of time between disturbances) on population growth will depend on both the timing and strength of positive and negative effects of disturbances. Climate change can...

Sand ripples are geomorphic features on the seafloor that affect bottom boundary layer dynamics including wave attenuation and sediment transport. We present a new equilibrium ripple predictor using a machine learning approach that outputs a probability distribution of wave-generated equilibrium wavelengths and statistics including an estimate of ripple height, the...

Dome-building volcanic eruptions are often associated with frequent Vulcanian explosions, which constitute a substantial threat to proximal communities. One proposed mechanism driving such explosions is the sealing of the shallow volcanic system followed by pressurization due to gas accumulation beneath the seal. We investigate this hypothesis at Sinabung...

Climate matching allows comparisons of climatic conditions between different locations to understand location and species range climatic suitability. The approach may be used as part of horizon scanning exercises such as those conducted for invasive species. We implemented the CLIMATCH algorithm into...

The aftermath of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill highlighted the lack of baseline spatial, behavioral, and abundance data for many species, including imperiled marine turtles, across the Gulf of Mexico. The ecology of marine turtles is closely tied to their vertical movements within the water column...

Segmentation of Earth science imagery is an increasingly common task. Among modern techniques that use Deep Learning, the UNet architecture has been shown to be a reliable for segmenting a range of imagery. We developed software–Segmentation Gym–to implement a data-model pipeline for segmentation of scientific imagery using a family of...