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The eastern population trend of Passerina ciris (Painted Bunting) declined 3.5% annually during the first 30 yrs of the Breeding Bird Survey (BBS, 1966–1996). Recently, the US Fish and Wildlife Service listed Painted Buntings as a focal species. Surveys for this focal species for the next 10 yrs (BBS, 1997–2007),...

The emergence of several diseases affecting amphibian populations worldwide has prompted investigations into determinants of the occurrence and abundance of parasites in frogs. To understand the spatial scales and identify specific environmental factors that determine risks of parasitism in frogs, helminth communities in metamorphic frogs of the northern leopard frog...

This document describes the process of digitization of a 1974 report on geophysical work undertaken by Soviet geophysicists in southern and eastern Afghanistan. These data, uncovered in Afghanistan, represent magnetic and electrical ground surveys for which locations are not well defined. Due to lack of location information, these surveys were...

Submarine groundwater discharge (SGD) into Maryland's Corsica River Estuary was investigated as part of a larger study to determine its importance in nutrient delivery to the Chesapeake Bay. The Corsica River Estuary represents a coastal lowland setting typical of much of the eastern bay. An interdisciplinary U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)...

In June 2011, the Track Fire burned 113 square kilometers in Colfax County, northeastern New Mexico, and Las Animas County, southeastern Colorado, including the upper watersheds of Chicorica and Raton Creeks. The burned landscape is now at risk of damage from postwildfire erosion, such as that caused by debris flows...

Analytical results for Pb-concentrations and isotopic ratios from ca. 150 samples of soil A horizon and ca. 145 samples of soil C horizon collected along a 4000-km east–west transect across the USA are presented. Lead concentrations along the transect show: (1) generally higher values in the soil A-horizon than the...

Aim  To demonstrate how the interrelations of individual movements form large-scale population-level movement patterns and how these patterns are associated with the underlying landscape dynamics by comparing ungulate movements across species.Locations  Arctic tundra in Alaska and Canada, temperate forests in Massachusetts, Patagonian Steppes in Argentina, Eastern Steppes in Mongolia.Methods  We used relocation data...

In 2005, the U.S. Geological Survey, Bureau of Land Management, and State of Alaska cooperated on an investigation of the mineral potential of a southern part of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, Howard Pass quadrangle, to provide background information for future land-use decisions. The investigation incorporated an airborne electromagnetic...

Volcanism is a major contributor to the formation of important uranium deposits both close to centers of eruption and more distal as a result of deposition of ash with leachable uranium. Hydrothermal fluids that are driven by magmatic heat proximal to some volcanic centers directly form some deposits. These fluids...

Flood-frequency analyses for the Black Hills area are important because of severe flooding of June 9-10, 1972, that was caused by a large mesoscale convective system and caused at least 238 deaths. Many 1972 peak flows are high outliers (by factors of 10 or more) in observed records that date...

As a result of climate change and variability, sea level is rising throughout the world, but the rate along the east coast of the United States is higher than the global mean rate. The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the City of Newport News, Virginia, conducted a study to...

A combination of above-normal precipitation during the winter and spring of 2007-2008 and extensive rainfall during June 2008 led to severe flooding in many parts of the midwestern United States. This resulted in transport of substantial amounts of nutrients and sediment from Iowa basins into the Mississippi River. Water samples...

Most of the subsidence in the Houston–Galveston region has occurred as a direct result of groundwater withdrawals for municipal supply, industrial use, and irrigation that depressured and dewatered the Chicot and Evangeline aquifers causing compaction of the clay layers of the aquifer sediments. This report, prepared by the U.S. Geological...

A conceptual model of the Great Basin carbonate and alluvial aquifer system (GBCAAS) was developed by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) for a regional assessment of groundwater availability as part of a national water census. The study area is an expansion of a previous USGS Regional Aquifer Systems Analysis (RASA)...

The Arbuckle-Simpson aquifer in south-central Oklahoma provides water for public supply, farms, mining, wildlife conservation, recreation, and the scenic beauty of springs, streams, and waterfalls. Proposed development of water supplies from the aquifer led to concerns that large-scale withdrawals of water would cause decreased flow in rivers and springs, which...

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita made landfall in 2005, subjecting the coastal marsh communities of Louisiana to various degrees of exposure. We collected data after the storms at 30 sites within fresh (12), brackish/intermediate (12), and saline (6) marshes to document the effects of saltwater storm surge and sedimentation on marsh...

No abstract available....

The hydrologic regime is a critical limiting factor in the delicate ecosystem of the greater Everglades freshwater wetlands in south Florida that has been severely altered by management activities in the past several decades. "Getting the water right" is regarded as the key to successful restoration of this unique wetland...

A review of publicly available coal quality data during the coal resource assessment of the southwestern part of the Powder River Basin, Wyoming (SWPRB), revealed significant problems and limitations with those data. Subsequent citations of data from original sources often omitted important information, such as moisture integrity and information needed...

This report presents a preliminary emergency assessment of the debris-flow hazards from drainage basins burned in 2011 by the Wallow wildfire in eastern Arizona. Empirical models derived from statistical evaluation of data collected from recently burned drainage basins throughout the intermountain western United States were used to estimate the probability...

Using a geology-based assessment methodology, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) estimated a mean undiscovered natural gas resource of 84,198 billion cubic feet and a mean undiscovered natural gas liquids resource of 3,379 million barrels in the Devonian Marcellus Shale within the Appalachian Basin Province. All this resource occurs in...

The map (Plate.pdf), pamphlet (Pamphlet.pdf), and the accompanying datasets in this report provide information for 290 sites in California where asbestos occurs in natural settings, using descriptions found in the geologic literature. Data on location, mineralogy, geology, and relevant literature for each asbestos site are provided. Using the map and...

The Pebble deposit in southwest Alaska (Fig. 1) contains one of the largest resources of copper and gold in the world. It includes a measured and indicated resource of 5,942 million tonnes (Mt) at 0.42% Cu, 0.35 g/t Au, and 250 ppm Mo (0.30% copper equivalent, CuEQ, cut off) and...

Land use in sagebrush (Artemisia spp.) landscapes influences all sage-grouse (Centrocer-cus spp.) populations in western North America. Croplands and the network of irrigation canals cover 230,000 km2 and indirectly influence up to 77% of the Sage-Grouse Conservation Area and 73% of sagebrush land cover by subsidizing synanthropic predators on sage-grouse....

We analyzed population change for 420 bird species from the North American Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) using a hierarchical log-linear model and compared the results with those obtained through route-regression analysis. Survey-wide trend estimates based on the hierarchical model were generally more precise than estimates from the earlier analysis. No...