Formal and informal trail monitoring protocols and baseline conditions: Great Falls Park and Potomac Gorge. Final research report
Jeremy Wimpey, Jeffrey L. Marion
2011, Report
This report presents the results of research on the conditions of formal and informal (visitorcreated) trails conducted within the Great Falls Park (GFP) portion of George Washington Memorial Parkway (GWMP), Virginia, and the adjacent Maryland portions of the C&O Canal National Historical Park (CHOH). This research was prompted primarily by...
Factors associated with extirpation of sage-grouse
Michael J. Wisdom, Cara W. Meinke, Steven T. Knick, Michael A. Schroeder
2011, Book chapter, Greater Sage-Grouse: Ecology and conservation of a landscape species and Its habitats
Geographic ranges of Greater Sage-Grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) and Gunnison Sage-Grouse (C. minimus) have contracted across large areas in response to habitat loss and detrimental land uses. However, quantitative analyses of the environmental factors most closely associated with range contraction have been lacking, results of which could be highly relevant to...
Metagenomic analysis of a permafrost microbial community reveals a rapid response to thaw
R. MacKelprang, M. P. Waldrop, K.M. Deangelis, M.M. David, K.L. Chavarria, S.J. Blazewicz, E.M. Rubin, J.K. Jansson
2011, Nature (480) 368-371
Permafrost contains an estimated 1672 Pg carbon (C), an amount roughly equivalent to the total currently contained within land plants and the atmosphere1,2,3. This reservoir of C is vulnerable to decomposition as rising global temperatures cause the permafrost to thaw2. During thaw, trapped organic matter may become more accessible for microbial...
Distributional changes and range predictions of downy brome (Bromus tectorum) in Rocky Mountain National Park
J.E. Bromberg, S. Kumar, C. S. Brown, T.J. Stohlgren
2011, Invasive Plant Science and Management (4) 173-182
Downy brome (Bromus tectorum L.), an invasive winter annual grass, may be increasing in extent and abundance at high elevations in the western United States. This would pose a great threat to high-elevation plant communities and resources. However, data to track this species in high-elevation environments are limited. To address...
Use of visible geostationary operational meteorological satellite imagery in mapping reference and potential evapotranspiration over Florida
John R. Mecikalski, David Summers, Jennifer M. Jacobs, Chandra S. Pathak, Simon J. Paech, Ellen M. Douglas
Leszek Labedzki, editor(s)
2011, Book chapter, Evapotranspiration
No abstract available....
Landslide inventories: The essential part of seismic landslide hazard analyses
E. L. Harp, D. K. Keefer, H.P. Sato, H. Yagi
2011, Engineering Geology (122) 9-21
A detailed and accurate landslide inventory is an essential part of seismic landslide hazard analysis. An ideal inventory would cover the entire area affected by an earthquake and include all of the landslides that are possible to detect down to sizes of 1–5 m in length. The landslides must also be...
Informal trail monitoring protocols: Denali National Park and Preserve. Final Report, October 2011
Jeffrey L. Marion, Jeremy F. Wimpey
2011, Report
Managers at Alaska?s Denali National Park and Preserve (DENA) sponsored this research to assess and monitor visitor-created informal trails (ITs). DENA is located in south-central Alaska and managed as a six million acre wilderness park. This program of research was guided by the following objectives: (1) Investigate alternative methods for...
Stopover habitats of spring migrating surf scoters in southeast Alaska
Erica K. Lok, Daniel Esler, John Y. Takekawa, S.W. De La Cruz, Boyd W. Sean, D.R. Nysewander, J.R. Evenson, David H. Ward
2011, Journal of Wildlife Management (75) 92-100
Habitat conditions and nutrient reserve levels during spring migration have been suggested as important factors affecting population declines in waterfowl, emphasizing the need to identify key sites used during spring and understand habitat features and resource availability at stopover sites. We used satellite telemetry to identify stopover sites used by...
Species replacement by a nonnative salmonid alters ecosystem function by reducing prey subsidies that support riparian spiders
J.R. Benjamin, K.D. Fausch, C. V. Baxter
2011, Oecologia (167) 503-512
Replacement of a native species by a nonnative can have strong effects on ecosystem function, such as altering nutrient cycling or disturbance frequency. Replacements may cause shifts in ecosystem function because nonnatives establish at different biomass, or because they differ from native species in traits like foraging behavior. However, no...
PP and PS interferometric images of near-seafloor sediments
S.S. Haines
2011, SEG Technical Program Expanded Abstracts (30) 1288-1292
I present interferometric processing examples from an ocean-bottom cable OBC dataset collected at a water depth of 800 m in the Gulf of Mexico. Virtual source and receiver gathers created through cross-correlation of full wavefields show clear PP reflections and PS conversions from near-seafloor layers of interest. Virtual gathers from...
Zircon-scale insights into the history of a Supervolcano, Bishop Tuff, Long Valley, California, with implications for the Ti-in-zircon geothermometer
M. R. Reid, J.A. Vazquez, A.K. Schmitt
2011, Contributions to Mineralogy and Petrology (161) 293-311
Zircon has the outstanding capacity to record chronological, thermal, and chemical information, including the storage history of zoned silicic magma reservoirs like the one responsible for the Bishop Tuff of eastern California, USA. Our novel ion microprobe approach reveals that Bishop zircon rims with diverse chemical characteristics surround intermediate domains...
Search behavior of arboreal insectivorous migrants at gulf coast stopover sites in spring
Chao-Chieh Chen, W.C. Barrow Jr., K. Ouchley, R.B. Hamilton
2011, Wilson Journal of Ornithology (123) 347-359
Search behavior of arboreal insectivorous migrants was studied at three stopover sites along the northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico during spring migrations, 1993–1995. We examined if search behavior was affected by phylogeny, or by environmental factors. A sequence of search movements (hop, flutter, or flight) in a foraging...
An enhanced TIMESAT algorithm for estimating vegetation phenology metrics from MODIS data
B. Tan, J.T. Morisette, R.E. Wolfe, F. Gao, G.A. Ederer, J. Nightingale, J.A. Pedelty
2011, Conference Paper, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing
An enhanced TIMESAT algorithm was developed for retrieving vegetation phenology metrics from 250 m and 500 m spatial resolution Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) vegetation indexes (VI) over North America. MODIS VI data were pre-processed using snow-cover and land surface temperature data, and temporally smoothed with the enhanced TIMESAT algorithm....
Hydrogeology, Chemical and Microbial Activity Measurement Through Deep Permafrost
R.L. Stotler, S.K. Frape, B.M. Freifeld, B. Holden, T.C. Onstott, T. Ruskeeniemi, E. Chan
2011, Ground Water (49) 348-364
Little is known about hydrogeochemical conditions beneath thick permafrost, particularly in fractured crystalline rock, due to difficulty in accessing this environment. The purpose of this investigation was to develop methods to obtain physical, chemical, and microbial information about the subpermafrost environment from a surface-drilled borehole. Using a U-tube, gas and...
Improving our legacy: Incorporation of adaptive management into state wildlife action plans
J.J. Fontaine
2011, Journal of Environmental Management (92) 1403-1408
The loss of biodiversity is a mounting concern, but despite numerous attempts there are few large scale conservation efforts that have proven successful in reversing current declines. Given the challenge of biodiversity conservation, there is a need to develop strategic conservation plans that address species declines even with the inherent...
Vegetation trends following the 2005 Southern Nevada Complex Fire: Chapter 6
Robert C. Klinger, Matthew L. Brooks, Neil Frakes, John R. Matchett, Randy McKinley
2011, Report, Southern Nevada Complex emergency stabilization and rehabilitation final report
No abstract available....
Lake carbonate-δ18 records from the Yukon Territory, Canada: Little Ice Age moisture variability and patterns
Lesleigh Anderson, Bruce P. Finney, Mark D. Shapley
2011, Quaternary Science Reviews (30) 887-898
A 1000-yr history of climate change in the central Yukon Territory, Canada, is inferred from sediment composition and isotope geochemistry from small, groundwater fed, Seven Mile Lake. Recent observations of lake-water δ18O, lake level, river discharge, and climate variations, suggest that changes in regional effective moisture (precipitation minus evaporation) are...
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...
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...
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...
Landscape evolution in south-central Minnesota and the role of geomorphic history on modern erosional processes
K.B. Gran, P. Belmont, S.S. Day, N. Finnegan, C. Jennings, J.W. Lauer, P.R. Wilcock
2011, Conference Paper, GSA Today
The Minnesota River Valley was carved during catastrophic drainage of glacial Lake Agassiz at the end of the late Pleistocene. The ensuing base-level drop on tributaries created knickpoints that excavated deep valleys as they migrated upstream. A sediment budget compiled in one of these tributaries, the Le Sueur River, shows...
Behavioral and physiological responses to male handicap in chick-rearing black-legged kittiwakes
S. Leclaire, V. Bourret, R.H. Wagner, Scott A. Hatch, F. Helfenstein, O. Chastel, E. Danchin
2011, Behavioral Ecology (22) 1156-1165
Parental investment entails a trade-off between the benefits of effort in current offspring and the costs to future reproduction. Long-lived species are predicted to be reluctant to increase parental effort to avoid affecting their survival. We tested this hypothesis in black-legged kittiwakes Rissa tridactyla by clipping flight feathers of experimental males at...
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...
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...
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...
