Wind energy and wildlife research at the Forest and Rangeland Ecosystem Science Center
Susan L. Phillips
2011, Fact Sheet 2011-3134
The United States has embarked on a goal to increase electricity generation from clean, renewable sources by 2012. Towards this end, wind energy is emerging as a widely distributed form of renewable energy throughout the country. The national goal is for energy from wind to supply 20 percent of the...
Cenozoic tectonic reorganizations of the Death Valley region, southeast California and southwest Nevada
Christopher J. Fridrich, Ren A. Thompson
2011, Professional Paper 1783
The Death Valley region, of southeast California and southwest Nevada, is distinct relative to adjacent regions in its structural style and resulting topography, as well as in the timing of basin-range extension. Cenozoic basin-fill strata, ranging in age from greater than or equal to 40 to approximately 2 million years...
Assessment of undiscovered oil and gas resources of the Sud Province, north-central Africa
Michael E. Brownfield, T. R. Klett, Christopher J. Schenk, Ronald R. Charpentier, T. A. Cook, R. M. Pollastro, Marilyn E. Tennyson
2011, Fact Sheet 2011-3029
The Sud Province located in north-central Africa recently was assessed for undiscovered, technically recoverable oil, natural gas, and natural gas liquids resources as part of the U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS) World Oil and Gas Assessment. Using a geology-based assessment methodology, the USGS estimated mean volumes of 7.31 billion barrels of...
Groundwater levels for selected wells in Upper Kittitas County, Washington
E.T. Fasser, R. J. Julich
2011, Data Series 649
Groundwater levels for selected wells in Upper Kittitas County, Washington, are presented on an interactive, web-based map to document the spatial distribution of groundwater levels in the study area measured during spring 2011. Groundwater-level data and well information were collected by the U.S. Geological Survey using standard techniques and are...
Biologically-mediated flux of trace metals from streams to riparian spiders: a large scale survey in mineralized alpine ecosystems
J.M. Kraus, R. B. Wanty, T.S. Schmidt, D.M. Walters, C. A. Stricker
2011, Conference Paper, Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry
No abstract available....
Tools and methods for evaluating and refining alternative futures for coastal ecosystem management—the Puget Sound Ecosystem Portfolio Model
Kristin B. Byrd, Jason R. Kreitler, William B. Labiosa
2011, Open-File Report 2011-1279
The U.S. Geological Survey Puget Sound Ecosystem Portfolio Model (PSEPM) is a decision-support tool that uses scenarios to evaluate where, when, and to what extent future population growth, urban growth, and shoreline development may threaten the Puget Sound nearshore environment. This tool was designed to be used iteratively in a...
Hydrogeology, chemical characteristics, and water sources and pathways in the zone of contribution of a public-supply well in San Antonio, Texas
MaryLynn Musgrove, Lynne Fahlquist, Gregory P. Stanton, Natalie A. Houston, Richard J. Lindgren
2011, Scientific Investigations Report 2011-5146
In 2001, the National Water-Quality Assessment (NAWQA) Program of the U.S. Geological Survey initiated a series of studies on the transport of anthropogenic and natural contaminants (TANC) to public-supply wells (PSWs). The main goal of the TANC project was to better understand the source, transport, and receptor factors that control...
Land-use planning for nearshore ecosystem services—the Puget Sound Ecosystem Portfolio Model
Kristin Byrd
2011, Fact Sheet 2011-3067
The 2,500 miles of shoreline and nearshore areas of Puget Sound, Washington, provide multiple benefits to people—"ecosystem services"—including important fishing, shellfishing, and recreation industries. To help resource managers plan for expected growth in coming decades, the U.S. Geological Survey Western Geographic Science Center has developed the Puget Sound Ecosystem Portfolio...
Rapid wetland expansion during European settlement and its implication for marsh survival under modern sediment delivery rates
Matthew L. Kirwan, A. Brad Murray, Jeffrey P. Donnelly, D. Reide Corbett
2011, Geology (39) 507-510
Fluctuations in sea-level rise rates are thought to dominate the formation and evolution of coastal wetlands. Here we demonstrate a contrasting scenario in which land-use–related changes in sediment delivery rates drive the formation of expansive marshland, and vegetation feedbacks maintain their morphology despite recent sediment supply reduction. Stratigraphic analysis and...
A dryland river transformed—the Little Colorado, 1936–2010
Debra L. Block, Margaret Hiza Redsteer
2011, Fact Sheet 2011-3099
The Little Colorado River, in northeastern Arizona, is a major tributary of the Colorado River. Over a span of 74 years, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has mapped substantial migration of the river channel between the City of Winslow and the Navajo Nation community of Leupp (Tólchíí kooh). In a...
Plasmodium relictum
C. T. Atkinson
2011, Book chapter, Invasive Species Compendium
Projected evolution of California's San Francisco Bay-Delta-River System in a century of continuing climate change
James E. Cloern, Noah Knowles, Larry R. Brown, Daniel Cayan, Michael D. Dettinger, Tara L. Morgan, David H. Schoellhamer, Mark T. Stacey, Mick van der Wegen, R. Wayne Wagner, Alan D. Jassby
2011, PLoS ONE (6)
Background Accumulating evidence shows that the planet is warming as a response to human emissions of greenhouse gases. Strategies of adaptation to climate change will require quantitative projections of how altered regional patterns of temperature, precipitation and sea level could cascade to provoke local impacts such as modified water supplies,...
Pythons in Burma: Short-tailed python (Reptilia: Squamata)
George R. Zug, Steve W. Gotte, Jeremy F. Jacobs
2011, Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington (124) 112-136
Short-tailed pythons, Python curtus species group, occur predominantly in the Malayan Peninsula, Sumatra, and Borneo. The discovery of an adult female in Mon State, Myanmar, led to a review of the distribution of all group members (spot-mapping of all localities of confirmed occurrence) and an examination of morphological variation in...
Rapid cooling rates at an active mid-ocean ridge from zircon thermochronology
Axel K. Schmitt, Michael R. Perfit, Kenneth H. Rubin, Daniel F. Stockli, Matthew C. Smith, Laurie A. Cotsonika, Georg F. Zellmer, W. Ian Ridley
2011, Earth and Planetary Science Letters (302) 349-358
Oceanic spreading ridges are Earth's most productive crust generating environment, but mechanisms and rates of crustal accretion and heat loss are debated. Existing observations on cooling rates are ambiguous regarding the prevalence of conductive vs. convective cooling of lower oceanic crust. Here, we report the discovery and dating of zircon...
Changes in nutrient dynamics of midcontinent greater white-fronted geese during spring migration
Aaron T. Pearse, Ray T. Alisauskas, Gary L. Krapu, Robert R. Cox Jr.
2011, Journal of Wildlife Management (75) 1716-1723
Waterfowl and other migratory birds commonly store nutrients at traditional staging areas during spring for later use during migration and reproduction. We investigated nutrient‐storage dynamics in the midcontinent population of greater white‐fronted geese (Anser albifrons; hereafter white‐fronted geese) at spring staging sites in the Rainwater Basin of Nebraska during February–April...
Productivity is a poor predictor of plant species richness
Peter B. Adler, Eric W. Seabloom, Elizabeth T. Borer, Helmut Hillebrand, Yann Hautier, Andy Hector, W. Stanley Harpole, Lydia R. O’Halloran, James B. Grace, T. Michael Anderson, Jonathan D. Bakker, Lori A. Biederman, Cynthia S. Brown, Yvonne M. Buckley, Laura B. Calabrese, Cheng-Jin Chu, Elsa E. Cleland, Scott L. Collins, Kathryn L. Cottingham, Michael J. Crawley, Ellen Ingman Damschen, Kendi F. Davies, Nicole M. DeCrappeo, Philip A. Fay, Jennifer Firn, Paul Frater, Eve I. Gasarch, Daneil S. Gruner, Nicole Hagenah, Janneke Hille Ris Lambers, Hope Humphries, Virginia L. Jin, Adam D. Kay, Kevin P. Kirkman, Julia A. Klein, Johannes M.H. Knops, Kimberly J. La Pierre, John G. Lambrinos, Wei Li, Andrew S. MacDougall, Rebecca L. McCulley, Brett A. Melbourne, Charles E. Mitchell, Joslin L. Moore, John W. Morgan, Brent Mortensen, John L. Orrock, Suzanne M. Prober, David A. Pyke, Anita C. Risch, Martin Schuetz, Melinda D. Smith, Carly J. Stevens, Lauren L. Sullivan, Gang Wang, Peter D. Wragg, Justin P. Wright, Louie H. Yang
2011, Science (333) 1750-1753
For more than 30 years, the relationship between net primary productivity and species richness has generated intense debate in ecology about the processes regulating local diversity. The original view, which is still widely accepted, holds that the relationship is hump-shaped, with richness first rising and then declining with increasing productivity....
Quantifying the fire regime distributions for severity in Yosemite National Park, California, USA
Andrea E. Thode, Jan W. van Wagtendonk, D. Jay Miller, James F. Quinn
2011, International Journal of Wildland Fire (20) 223-239
This paper quantifies current fire severity distributions for 19 different fire-regime types in Yosemite National Park, California, USA. Landsat Thematic Mapper remote sensing data are used to map burn severity for 99 fires (cumulatively over 97 000 ha) that burned in Yosemite over a 20-year period. These maps are used to quantify...
Quantifying differences in the impact of variable chemistry on equilibrium uranium(VI) adsorption properties of aquifer sediments
Deborah L. Stoliker, Douglas B. Kent, John M. Zachara
2011, Environmental Science & Technology (45) 8733-8740
Uranium adsorption-desorption on sediment samples collected from the Hanford 300-Area, Richland, WA varied extensively over a range of field-relevant chemical conditions, complicating assessment of possible differences in equilibrium adsorption properties. Adsorption equilibrium was achieved in 500-1000 h although dissolved uranium concentrations increased over thousands of hours owing to changes in...
Seasonal seepage investigation on an urbanized reach of the lower Boise River, southwestern Idaho, water year 2010
Marshall L. Williams
2011, Scientific Investigations Report 2011-5181
The U.S. Geological Survey in cooperation with the Idaho Department of Water Resources Treasure Valley Comprehensive Aquifer Management Planning effort investigated seasonal groundwater gains and losses on the Boise River, Idaho, starting in November 2009 through August 2010. The investigation was conducted using seepage runs in 11 subreaches over a...
Constraints on the long‐period moment‐dip tradeoff for the Tohoku earthquake
Victor C. Tsai, Gavin P. Hayes, Zacharie Duputel
2011, Geophysical Research Letters (38)
Since the work of Kanamori and Given (1981), it has been recognized that shallow, pure dip‐slip earthquakes excite long‐period surface waves such that it is difficult to independently constrain the moment (M0) and the dip (δ) of the source mechanism, with only the product M0 sin(2δ) being well constrained. Because of this,...
Provenance and tectonic significance of the Palaeoproterozoic metasedimentary successions of central and nothern Madagascar
B. De Waele, Ronald J. Thomas, P. H. Macey, M. S. A. Horstwood, R. D. Tucker, P. E. J. Pitfield, D. I. Schofield, K. M. Goodenough, W. Bauer, R. M. Key, C. J. Potter, R. A. Armstrong, J. A. Miller, T. Randriamananjara, V. Ralison, J. M. Rafahatelo, M. Rabarimanana, M. Bejoma
2011, Precambrian Research (189) 18-42
New detrital zircon U–Pb age data obtained from various quartzite units of three spatially separated supracrustal packages in central and northern Madagascar, show that these units were deposited between 1.8 and 0.8 Ga and have similar aged provenances. The distribution of detrital zircon ages indicates an overwhelming contribution of sources with...
New U.S. Geological Survey method for the assessment of reserve growth
Timothy R. Klett, Emil D. Attanasi, Ronald R. Charpentier, Troy A. Cook, Philip A. Freeman, Donald L. Gautier, Phuong A. Le, Robert T. Ryder, Christopher J. Schenk, Marilyn E. Tennyson, Mahendra K. Verma
2011, Scientific Investigations Report 2011-5163
Reserve growth is defined as the estimated increases in quantities of crude oil, natural gas, and natural gas liquids that have the potential to be added to remaining reserves in discovered accumulations through extension, revision, improved recovery efficiency, and additions of new pools or reservoirs. A new U.S. Geological Survey...
Simulating the impacts of disturbances on forest carbon cycling in North America: Processes, data, models, and challenges
Shuguang Liu, Ben Bond-Lamberty, Jeffrey A. Hicke, Rodrigo Vargas, Shuqing Zhao, Jing Chen, Steven L. Edburg, Yueming Hu, Jinxun Liu, A. David McGuire, Jingfeng Xiao, Robert Keane, Wenping Yuan, Jianwu Tang, Yiqi Luo, Christopher Potter, Jennifer Oeding
2011, Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences (116) 1-22
Forest disturbances greatly alter the carbon cycle at various spatial and temporal scales. It is critical to understand disturbance regimes and their impacts to better quantify regional and global carbon dynamics. This review of the status and major challenges in representing the impacts of disturbances in modeling the carbon dynamics...
Deposit model for closed-basin potash-bearing brines
Greta J. Orris
2011, Open-File Report 2011-1283
Closed-basin potash-bearing brines are one of the types of potash deposits that are a source of potash production within the United States, as well as other countries. Though these deposits are of highly variable size, they are important sources of potash on a regional basis. In addition, these deposits have...
Restoration of the fire-grazing interaction in Artemisia filifolia shrubland of the Southern Great Plains, North America
Stephen L. Winter, Samuel D. Fuhlendorf, Carla L. Goad, Craig A. Davis, Karen R. Hickman, David M. Leslie Jr.
2011, Journal of Applied Ecology (49) 242-250
1. Patterns of landscape heterogeneity are crucial to the maintenance of biodiversity in shrublands and grasslands, yet management practices in these ecosystems typically seek to homogenize landscapes. Furthermore, there is limited understanding of how the interaction of ecological processes, such as fire and grazing, affects patterns of heterogeneity at different spatial...
