Use of pharmaceuticals and pesticides to constrain nutrient sources in coastal groundwater of northwestern Long Island, New York, USA
S. Zhao, P. Zhang, John Crusius, K.D. Kroeger, J.F. Bratton
2011, Journal of Environmental Monitoring (13) 1337-1343
In developed, non-agricultural, unsewered areas, septic systems and fertilizer application to lawns and gardens represent two major sources of nitrogen to coastal groundwater, in addition to atmospheric input. This study was designed to distinguish between these two possible nitrogen sources by analyzing groundwater samples for pharmaceutical residuals, because fertilizers do...
8 March 2010 Elazığ-Kovancilar (Turkey) Earthquake: observations on ground motions and building damage
Sinan Akkar, A. Aldemir, A. Askan, S. Bakir, E. Canbay, I.O. Demirel, M.A. Erberik, Z. Gulerce, Polat Gulkan, Erol Kalkan, S. Prakash, M.A. Sandikkaya, V. Sevilgen, B. Ugurhan, E. Yenier
2011, Seismological Research Letters (82) 42-58
An earthquake of MW = 6.1 occurred in the Elazığ region of eastern Turkey on 8 March 2010 at 02:32:34 UTC. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) reported the epicenter of the earthquake as 38.873°N-39.981°E with a focal depth of 12 km. Forty-two people lost their lives and 137 were injured during...
Recent acceleration of biomass burning and carbon losses in Alaskan forests and peatlands
M.R. Turetsky, E.S. Kane, J.W. Harden, R.D. Ottmar, K.L. Manies, E. Hoy, E.S. Kasischke
2011, Nature Geoscience (4) 27-31
Climate change has increased the area affected by forest fires each year in boreal North America. Increases in burned area and fire frequency are expected to stimulate boreal carbon losses. However, the impact of wildfires on carbon emissions is also affected by the severity of burning. How climate change influences...
Modules based on the geochemical model PHREEQC for use in scripting and programming languages
S.R. Charlton, D.L. Parkhurst
2011, Computers & Geosciences (37) 1653-1663
The geochemical model PHREEQC is capable of simulating a wide range of equilibrium reactions between water and minerals, ion exchangers, surface complexes, solid solutions, and gases. It also has a general kinetic formulation that allows modeling of nonequilibrium mineral dissolution and precipitation,...
Developing effective sampling designs for monitoring natural resources in Alaskan national parks: an example using simulations and vegetation data
William L. Thompson, Amy E. Miller, Dorothy C. Mortenson, Andrea Woodward
2011, Biological Conservation (144) 1270-1277
Monitoring natural resources in Alaskan national parks is challenging because of their remoteness, limited accessibility, and high sampling costs. We describe an iterative, three-phased process for developing sampling designs based on our efforts to establish a vegetation monitoring program in southwest Alaska. In the first phase, we defined a sampling...
The ShakeOut scenario: A hypothetical Mw7.8 earthquake on the Southern San Andreas Fault
K. Porter, L. Jones, D. Cox, J. Goltz, K. Hudnut, D. Mileti, S. Perry, D. Ponti, M. Reichle, A.Z. Rose, C.R. Scawthorn, H.A. Seligson, K.I. Shoaf, J. Treiman, A. Wein
2011, Earthquake Spectra (27) 239-261
In 2008, an earthquake-planning scenario document was released by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and California Geological Survey that hypothesizes the occurrence and effects of a Mw7.8 earthquake on the southern San Andreas Fault. It was created by more than 300 scientists and engineers. Fault offsets reach 13 m and...
Spatial and temporal trends of selected trace elements in liver tissue from polar bears (Ursus maritimus) from Alaska, Canada and Greenland
Heli Routti, Robert J. Letcher, Erik W. Born, Marsha Branigan, Rune Dietz, Thomas J. Evans, Aaron T. Fisk, Elizabeth L. Peacock, Christian Sonne
2011, Journal of Environmental Monitoring (13) 2260-2267
Spatial trends and comparative changes in time of selected trace elements were studied in liver tissue from polar bears from ten different subpopulation locations in Alaska, Canadian Arctic and East Greenland. For nine of the trace elements (As, Cd, Cu, Hg, Mn, Pb, Rb, Se and Zn) spatial trends were...
Comparison of Two Parametric Methods to Estimate Pesticide Mass Loads in California's Central Valley
D.K. Saleh, D. L. Lorenz, Joseph L. Domagalski
2011, Journal of the American Water Resources Association (47) 254-264
Mass loadings were calculated for four pesticides in two watersheds with different land uses in the Central Valley, California, by using two parametric models: (1) the Seasonal Wave model (SeaWave), in which a pulse signal is used to describe the annual cycle of pesticide occurrence in a stream, and (2)...
Why do some, but not all, tropical birds migrate? A comparative study of diet breadth and fruit preference
W.A. Boyle, Courtney J. Conway, Judith L. Bronstein
2011, Evolutionary Ecology (25) 219-236
Annual migrations of birds profoundly influence terrestrial communities. However, few empirical studies examine why birds migrate, in part due to the difficulty of testing causal hypotheses in long-distance migration systems. Short-distance altitudinal migrations provide relatively tractable systems in which to test explanations for migration. Many past studies explain tropical altitudinal...
Study on a pattern classification method of soil quality based on simplified learning sample dataset
Jiahua Zhang, S. Liu, Y. Hu, Y. Tian
2011, Conference Paper, Proceedings - 4th International Conference on Intelligent Computation Technology and Automation, ICICTA 2011
Based on the massive soil information in current soil quality grade evaluation, this paper constructed an intelligent classification approach of soil quality grade depending on classical sampling techniques and disordered multiclassification Logistic regression model. As a case study to determine the learning sample capacity under certain confidence level and estimation...
Patterns of space and habitat use by northern bobwhites in south Florida, USA
A. Singh, T.C. Hines, J.A. Hostetler, H. Franklin Percival, M.K. Oli
2011, European Journal of Wildlife Research (57) 15-26
The manner by which animals use space and select resources can have important management consequences. We studied patterns of habitat selection by northern bobwhites (Colinus virginianus) on Babcock-Webb Wildlife Management Area, Charlotte County, Florida and evaluated factors influencing the sizes of their home ranges. A total of 1,245 radio-tagged bobwhites...
Magnetic susceptibility as a proxy for investigating microbially mediated iron reduction
F.M. Mewafy, E.A. Atekwana, D.D. Werkema, L.D. Slater, D. Ntarlagiannis, A. Revil, M. Skold, Geoffrey N. Delin
2011, Geophysical Research Letters (38)
We investigated magnetic susceptibility (MS) variations in hydrocarbon contaminated sediments. Our objective was to determine if MS can be used as an intrinsic bioremediation indicator due to the activity of iron-reducing bacteria. A contaminated and an uncontaminated core were retrieved from a site contaminated with crude oil near Bemidji, Minnesota...
Modifications to existing ground-motion prediction equations in light of new data
G. M. Atkinson, D.M. Boore
2011, Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (101) 1121-1135
We compare our recent ground-motion prediction equations (GMPEs) for western North America (WNA; Boore and Atkinson, 2008 [BA08]) and eastern North America (ENA; Atkinson and Boore, 2006 [AB06]; Atkinson, 2008 [A08]) to newly available ground-motion data. Based on these comparisons, we suggest revisions to our GMPEs for both WNA and...
Pre- and post-drill comparison of the Mount Elbert gas hydrate prospect, Alaska North Slope
Myung W. Lee, Warren F. Agena, Timothy S. Collett, T.L. Inks
2011, Marine and Petroleum Geology (28) 578-588
In 2006, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) completed a detailed analysis and interpretation of available 2-D and 3-D seismic data, along with seismic modeling and correlation with specially processed downhole well log data for identifying potential gas hydrate accumulations on the North Slope of Alaska. A methodology was...
Recovery and reprocessing of legacy geophysical data from the archives of the State Company of Geology and Mining (GEOSURV) of Iraq and Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC)
David V. Smith, Benjamin J. Drenth, J.D. Fairhead, K. Lei, J.A. Dark, K. Al-Bassam
2011, SEG Technical Program Expanded Abstracts (30) 856-860
Aeromagnetic data belonging to the State Company of Geology and Mining of Iraq (GEOSURV) have been recovered from magnetic tapes and early paper maps. In 1974 a national airborne survey was flown by the French firm Compagnie General de Geophysique (CGG). Following the survey the magnetic data were stored on...
Spring-fall asymmetry of substorm strength, geomagnetic activity and solar wind: Implications for semiannual variation and solar hemispheric asymmetry
K. Mursula, E. Tanskanen, J.J. Love
2011, Geophysical Research Letters (38)
We study the seasonal variation of substorms, geomagnetic activity and their solar wind drivers in 1993–2008. The number of substorms and substorm mean duration depict an annual variation with maxima in Winter and Summer, respectively, reflecting the annual change of the local ionosphere. In contradiction, substorm mean amplitude, substorm total...
Cumulative effects of restoration efforts on ecological characteristics of an open water area within the Upper Mississippi River
B. R. Gray, W. Shi, J.N. Houser, J. T. Rogala, Z. Guan, J. L. Cochran-Biederman
2011, River Research and Applications (27) 537-549
Ecological restoration efforts in large rivers generally aim to ameliorate ecological effects associated with large-scale modification of those rivers. This study examined whether the effects of restoration efforts-specifically those of island construction-within a largely open water restoration area of the Upper Mississippi River (UMR) might be seen at the spatial...
Particle-size dependence on metal(loid) distributions in mine wastes: Implications for water contamination and human exposure
C.S. Kim, K.M. Wilson, J. J. Rytuba
2011, Applied Geochemistry (26) 484-495
The mining and processing of metal-bearing ores has resulted in contamination issues where waste materials from abandoned mines remain in piles of untreated and unconsolidated material, posing the potential for waterborne and airborne transport of toxic elements. This study presents a systematic method of particle size separation, mass distribution, and...
An equation of state for hypersaline water in Great Salt Lake, Utah, USA
D. L. Naftz, F.J. Millero, B.F. Jones, W. R. Green
2011, Aquatic Geochemistry (17) 809-820
Great Salt Lake (GSL) is one of the largest and most saline lakes in the world. In order to accurately model limnological processes in GSL, hydrodynamic calculations require the precise estimation of water density (ρ) under a variety of environmental conditions. An equation of state was developed with water samples...
Managing and learning with multiple models: Objectives and optimization algorithms
William J. M. Probert, C.E. Hauser, E. McDonald-Madden, M.C. Runge, P.W.J. Baxter, H.P. Possingham
2011, Biological Conservation (144) 1237-1245
The quality of environmental decisions should be gauged according to managers' objectives. Management objectives generally seek to maximize quantifiable measures of system benefit, for instance population growth rate. Reaching these goals often requires a certain degree of learning about the system. Learning can occur by using management action in combination...
Will an "island" population of voles be recolonized if eradicated? Insights from molecular genetic analyses
Mark P. Miller, Susan M. Haig, David B. Ledig, Madeleine F. Vander Heyden, Gregory Bennett
2011, Journal of Wildlife Management (75) 1812-1818
We performed genetic analyses of Microtus longicaudus populations within the Crook Point Unit of the Oregon Islands National Wildlife Refuge. A M. longicaudus population at Saddle Rock (located approx. 65 m off‐shore from the Crook Point mainland) is suspected to be partially responsible for declines of a Leach's storm‐petrel colony at this important nesting site....
Oxygen-isotope trends and seawater temperature changes across the Late Cambrian Steptoean positive carbon-isotope excursion (SPICE event)
M. Elrick, S. Rieboldt, M. Saltzman, R.M. McKay
2011, Geology (39) 987-990
The globally recognized Late Cambrian Steptoean positive C-isotope excursion (SPICE) is characterized by a 3‰–5‰ positive δ13C shift spanning <4 m.y. Existing hypotheses suggest that the SPICE represents a widespread ocean anoxic event leading to enhanced burial/preservation of organic matter (Corg) and pyrite. We analyzed...
Beach characteristics mitigate effects of onshore wind on horseshoe crab spawning: Implications for matching with shorebird migration in Delaware Bay
D. R. Smith, N.L. Jackson, K.F. Nordstrom, R.G. Weber
2011, Animal Conservation (14) 575-584
Disruption of food availability by unfavorable physical processes at energetically demanding times can limit recruitment of migratory species as predicted by the match–mismatch hypothesis. Identification and protection of disruption‐resistant habitat could contribute to system resilience. For example, horseshoe crab Limulus polyphemus spawning and shorebird stopover must match temporally in Delaware Bay for...
Lagrangian mass-flow investigations of inorganic contaminants in wastewater-impacted streams
L. B. Barber, Ronald C. Antweiler, J.L. Flynn, S.H. Keefe, D.W. Kolpin, D.A. Roth, D.J. Schnoebelen, Howard E. Taylor, P. L. Verplanck
2011, Environmental Science & Technology (45) 2575-2583
Understanding the potential effects of increased reliance on wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) effluents to meet municipal, agricultural, and environmental flow requires an understanding of the complex chemical loading characteristics of the WWTPs and the assimilative capacity of receiving waters. Stream ecosystem effects are linked to proportions of WWTP effluent under...
The dynamical core, physical parameterizations, and basic simulation characteristics of the atmospheric component AM3 of the GFDL global coupled model CM3
L.J. Donner, B.L. Wyman, R.S. Hemler, L.W. Horowitz, Y. Ming, M. Zhao, J.-C. Golaz, P. Ginoux, S.-J. Lin, M.D. Schwarzkopf, J. Austin, G. Alaka, W.F. Cooke, T.L. Delworth, S.M. Freidenreich, C.T. Gordon, S.M. Griffies, I.M. Held, W.J. Hurlin, S.A. Klein, T.R. Knutson, A.R. Langenhorst, H.-C. Lee, Y. Lin, B.I. Magi, S.L. Malyshev, Paul Milly, V. Naik, M.J. Nath, R. Pincus, J.J. Ploshay, V. Ramaswamy, C.J. Seman, E. Shevliakova, J.J. Sirutis, W.F. Stern, R.J. Stouffer, R.J. Wilson, M. Winton, A.T. Wittenberg, F. Zeng
2011, Journal of Climate (24) 3484-3519
The Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) has developed a coupled general circulation model (CM3) for the atmosphere, oceans, land, and sea ice. The goal of CM3 is to address emerging issues in climate change, including aerosol–cloud interactions, chemistry–climate interactions, and coupling between the troposphere and stratosphere. The model is also...
