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Characterizing traffic-related air pollutants (TRAPs), which significantly impact health, and greenhouse gases (GHGs) can be challenging in urban environments. Mobile monitoring has the potential to capture the spatial distribution of these pollutants. We present results from a campaign using the Denver Mobile Monitoring Laboratory (DMML) in the summer of 2023...

To support ecosystem mapping and accounting applications, we aligned the 2015 U.S. Geological Survey/Esri/The Nature Conservancy-World Terrestrial Ecosystems (WTEs) with the International Union for Conservation of Nature Global Ecosystem Typology (GET) framework. This process, known as “crosswalking,” enabled the development of a global map of GET level 3 Ecosystem Functional...

Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is a fatal neurological disease caused by a misfolded protein, or prion, and is found in cervids (e.g., deer, elk, moose). It represents a serious threat to cervid populations and is one of the most important ungulate management issues facing state wildlife management agencies. Issues associated...

Cyanobacterial harmful algal blooms (cyanoHABs) and associated cyanotoxins are a concern for inland waters. Due to the extensive spatial coverage and frequent availability of satellite images, multispectral remote sensing tools demonstrate utility for monitoring these blooms. The next frontier for remote sensing of cyanoHABs in inland waters is hyperspectral data....

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is updating the 2008 assessment of conventional hydrothermal resources for the Great Basin in the western United States. As part of this work, the workflow for hydrothermal resource favorability maps is being modified to integrate modern data-driven machine learning (ML) methods. Improvements include: [1] using...

Sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus) control in the Laurentian Great Lakes of North America is among the largest and most successful control programs of an invasive species anywhere on the planet. The effort began more than 75 years ago; it unites multiple nations, states, and provinces with the common goal of...

The Secretary of the Interior, acting through the Director of the U.S. Geological Survey, is tasked by section 7002 (“Mineral Security”) of title VII (“Critical Minerals”) of the Energy Act of 2020 (Public Law 116–260, December 27, 2020, 116th Congress) with reviewing and revising the methodology used to evaluate mineral...

Since its discovery in 2006, the fungal disease known as white-nose syndrome (WNS) has killed millions of bats. Of the 47 bat species native to the conterminous United States, Alaska, Hawaii, and Canada, 12 have been affected by WNS, including 3 endangered species and 1 proposed endangered species. WNS has also been detected in...

No abstract available. ...

Fire is a defining feature of our biosphere, having appeared when the first plants colonized the land, and it continues to occur across the planet at different frequencies and intensities. Fire has been and remains as an evolutionary force in many plant and animal lineages and contributes to explaining the...

Drought and reservoir management in the Colorado River Watershed have decreased peak flows and sediment loads reducing the ability of rivers to change their channels. Multiple studies have documented the resulting decrease in channel width, but less attention has been paid to long-term trends in shoreline complexity, including the number...

This report is a user guide for the 0.1.2 release of the Python Hyperspectral Analysis Tool (PyHAT) and its graphical user interface (GUI). The GUI is intended to provide an intuitive front end to allow users to apply sophisticated preprocessing and analysis methods to spectroscopic data. Though the PyHAT package...

During 2023–24, the U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the Edwards Aquifer Authority, revised a previous publication of the geologic framework and hydrostratigraphy of the Edwards and Trinity aquifers that was completed during 2018 within Hays County, Texas. The purpose of this report is to present the updated geologic framework...

Conservation translocations and reintroductions are widely used to improve conservation outcomes for declining species. Reintroductions are unlikely to be successful if the threats that led to the extirpation of the focal species, such as non-native predators, have not been ameliorated. The non-native brown treesnake (Boiga irregularis) was introduced to Guam...

Bats are a taxa of high conservation concern and are facing numerous threats including widespread mortality due to White-Nose Syndrome (WNS) in North America. With this decline comes increasing difficulty in monitoring imperiled bat species due to lower detection probabilities of both mist-netting and acoustic surveys. Lure...

Release of methane, as gas bubbles or in the dissolved phase, from the seafloor has been observed in coastal waters (< 200 m) and deep ocean basins (> 1000 m). Methane dissolution within the water column affects the geochemistry of the surrounding water, leading to localized oxygen loss and potential escape to the atmosphere,...

Texas Tortoises (Gopherus berlandieri) are understudied compared to federally protected congeners. Despite important early studies on the basic ecology of G. berlandieri, quantitative identification of habitat associations with specific environmental conditions has been limited. Gopherus berlandieri inhabits Tamaulipan thornscrub across its range, and coastal populations are historically associated with low-relief clay ridges with...

The installation of offshore wind energy infrastructure (OWEI) at sea may affect marine birds by increasing the risk of mortality from collision with OWEI (Collision Vulnerability) and causing disturbance and displacement from important habitats (Displacement Vulnerability). In 2017, we published the first comprehensive database quantifying marine bird Collision Vulnerability and...

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is using collaborative, interdisciplinary planning to develop data and tools needed to optimize the management of water resources and land use by resource management agencies during an ongoing, multidecadal drought in the Colorado River Basin. The USGS Actionable and Strategic Integrated Science and Technology team...

Aeromagnetic and gravity surveys of the Skaergaard intrusion in East Greenland were carried out in July–August 1971 as part of a grant to the University of Oregon Center for Volcanology to refine the models of crystallization and differentiation of the intrusion, specifically to test whether the intrusion is underlain by...

Rivers are home to a wide variety of biota, including fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, freshwater mussels, aquatic insects, and microscopic organisms that fill unique niches to support broader ecosystem functions. While the general public may be aware of recreationally relevant biological life (e.g., fishes and insects to model flyfishing flies...

Conventional dietary assessments are challenging in hematophagous species, particularly in sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus). However, recent technological developments and molecular approaches have provided an attractive alternative through the use of DNA metabarcoding. While DNA metabarcoding has been used for dietary analyses in numerous species, including lampreys, applications of universal primers...

Improvements in logging practices since the mid-20th century are widely presumed to have reduced suspended sediment loads in streams across the Pacific Northwest. However, there have been few opportunities to directly assess this, particularly in larger rivers. We compare modern (2019–22) and historical (1960s) suspended sediment monitoring in three large,...

Using a geology-based assessment methodology, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated undiscovered, technically recoverable mean conventional resources of 14.6 billion barrels of oil and 83.7 trillion cubic feet of gas in Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala. ...

Wildlife conservation planning increasingly requires collaboration and integration of research from discrete studies spanning large geographic areas. Tracking datasets are essential for analyzing animal movements and species distributions in relation to environmental conditions and combining them can enable powerful analyses to further aid planning efforts. However, combining datasets necessitates addressing variation in study...