Newly documented behavior of free-ranging Arctic wolf pups
L. David Mech
2022, Arctic (75) 272-276
Whereas much is known about the behavior and development of captive young wolf (Canis lupus) pups, less detail has been published about some aspects of free-ranging wolf pup behavior. This article synthesizes 42 observations of free-ranging Arctic wolf pups from ages 13 through 52 days made during 10 summers from...
Inversion of induced polarization-affected towed-transient electromagnetic data in a lateritic regolith geology: A case study from western Tanzania
Pradip Kumar Maurya, Denys Grombacher, John W. Lane, Johan Lind, Esben Auken
2022, Geophysics (87) B247-B254
For several decades, induced polarization (IP) effects on transient electromagnetic (TEM) responses have been observed. These effects can manifest as late-time negative transients or as rapidly decaying curves and are usually associated with highly polarizable bodies. If neglected, IP effects can lead to erroneous resistivity models. Recent work allows IP...
Rangeland Condition Monitoring Assessment and Projection (RCMAP)
Matthew B. Rigge
2022, Fact Sheet 2022-3036
The Rangeland Condition Monitoring Assessment and Projection (RCMAP) project has partnered with the Bureau of Land Management to provide annual maps of rangeland vegetation condition across the Western United States from 1985 to present. Annual mapping can assist land managers and scientists with monitoring changes to vegetation composition, evaluating past...
2021 Tinian Island forest bird abundance estimates
Richard J. Camp, Trevor Bak, Ayesha Genz
2022, Hawai‘i Cooperative Studies Unit Technical Report 105
The U.S. Navy, through Micronesian Environmental Services, surveyed landbirds in the Military Lease Area on Tinian Island in May and June 2021 using point-transect distance sampling methods. There were 2,074 individuals of 14 species detected during 123 point counts. Six species were detected during >50% of the counts and were...
LANDFIRE data and applications
Inga P. La Puma, Timothy D. Hatten
2022, Fact Sheet 2022-3034
LANDFIRE is a Federal program that provides a suite of spatial datasets indicating areas of disturbance, vegetation and fuels distributions and structure, and historical conditions. The level of detail presented in LANDFIRE’s classifications of disturbance, vegetation, and fuels is unparalleled and can be used in a variety of applications, including...
Lake Barkley BioAcoustic fish fence effectiveness study project status update
Rob Simmonds, Brent C. Knights, Andrea K. Fritts, Jessica C. Stanton, Marybeth K. Brey, Jonathan M. Vallazza
2022, Report
No abstract available. ...
River Metabolism Estimation Tools (RiverMET) with demo in the Illinois River Basin
Jay Choi, Katherine Michelle Bernabe Quion, Ariel Reed, Judson Harvey
2022, ESSOAr
Ecosystem metabolism quantifies the rate of production, maintenance, and decay of organic matter in terrestrial and aquatic systems. It is a fundamental measure of energy flow associated with biomass production by photosynthesizing organisms and biomass oxidation by respiring plants, animals, algae, and bacteria (Bernhardt et al., 2022) . Ecosystem metabolism...
Hydrologic controls on peat permafrost and carbon processes: New insights from past and future modeling
Claire C. Treat, Miriam C. Jones, Jay R. Alder, Steve Frolking
2022, Frontiers in Environmental Science (10)
Soil carbon (C) in permafrost peatlands is vulnerable to decomposition with thaw under a warming climate. The amount and form of C loss likely depends on the site hydrology following permafrost thaw, but antecedent conditions during peat accumulation are also likely important. We test the role of differing...
Variability in marsh migration potential determined by topographic rather than anthropogenic constraints in the Chesapeake Bay region
Grace Molino, Joel A. Carr, Neil K. Ganju, Matthew Kirwan
2022, Limnology and Oceanography Letters (7) 321-331
Sea level rise (SLR) and saltwater intrusion are driving inland shifts in coastal ecosystems. Here, we make high-resolution (1 m) predictions of land conversion under future SLR scenarios in 81 watersheds surrounding Chesapeake Bay, United States, a hotspot for accelerated SLR and saltwater intrusion. We find that...
Geochemical characterization of natural gases in the pre-salt section of the Santos Basin (Brazil) focused on hydrocarbons and volatile organic sulfur compounds
Igor V. A. F. Souza, Geoffrey S. Ellis, Alexandre A. Ferreira, Jarbas V. P. Guzzo, Rut A. Díaz, Ana Luiza S. Albuquerque, Alon Amrani
2022, Marine and Petroleum Geology (144)
The objective of this work is to characterize the geochemistry of a suite of natural gas samples from five fields in order to improve the understanding of the lacustrine petroleum system of the pre-salt section from the Santos Basin (Brazil). Additionally, the distribution of volatile organic sulfur compounds (VOSC) in...
Understanding the water resources of a mountain-block aquifer: Tucson Mountains, Arizona
Christopher J. Eastoe, Kimberly R. Beisner
2022, Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education (175) 1-14
Water resources are limited in arid locations such as Tucson Basin. Residential development in the Tucson Mountains to the west of Tucson, Arizona, is limited by groundwater resources. Groundwater samples were collected from fractured bedrock and alluvial aquifers surrounding the Tucson Mountains to assess water quality and recharge history through...
Impoundment increases methane emissions in Phragmites-invaded coastal wetlands
Rebecca Sanders-DeMott, Meagan J. Eagle, Kevin D. Kroeger, Faming Wang, Thomas W. Brooks, Jennifer A. O'Keefe Suttles, Sydney K. Nick, Adrian G. Mann, Jianwu Tang
2022, Global Change Biology (28) 4539-4557
Saline tidal wetlands are important sites of carbon sequestration and produce negligible methane (CH4) emissions due to regular inundation with sulfate-rich seawater. Yet, widespread management of coastal hydrology has restricted tidal exchange in vast areas of coastal wetlands. These ecosystems often undergo impoundment and freshening, which...
Spatially explicit management of genetic diversity using ancestry probability surfaces
Robert Massatti, Daniel E. Winkler
2022, Methods in Ecology and Evolution (13) 2668-2681
1. Ecological restoration and conservation efforts are increasing worldwide and the management of intraspecific genetic variation in plants and animals, an important component of biodiversity, is increasingly valued. As a result, tailorable, spatially explicit approaches to map genetic variation are needed to support decision-making and management frameworks related to the...
P- and S-wave velocity estimation by ensemble Kalman inversion of dispersion data for strong motion stations in California
Elif Ecem Bas, Elnaz Seylabi, Alan K. Yong, Hesam Tehrani, Domniki Asimaki
2022, Geophysical Journal International (231) 536-551
This study uses an ensemble Kalman method for near-surface seismic site characterization of 154 network earthquake monitoring stations in California to improve the resolution of S-wave velocity (VS) and P-wave velocity (VP) profiles—up to the resolution depth—coupled with better quantification of uncertainties compared to previous site characterization studies at this network. These...
Stream size, temperature, and density explain body sizes of freshwater salmonids across a range of climate conditions
Robert K. Al-Chokhachy, Benjamin Letcher, Clint C. Muhlfeld, Jason B. Dunham, Timothy Joseph Cline, Nathaniel P. Hitt, James Roberts, David Schmetterling
2022, Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences (79) 1729-1744
Climate change and anthropogenic activities are altering the body sizes of fishes, yet our understanding of factors influencing body size for many taxa remains incomplete. We evaluated the relationships between climate, environmental, and landscape attributes and the body size of different taxa of freshwater trout (Salmonidae) in the USA. Hierarchical...
Plant pathogens provide clues to the potential origin of bat white-nose syndrome Pseudogymnoascus destructans
Carol Meteyer, Julien Yann Dutheil, M. Kevin Keel, Justin G. Boyles, Eva Holtgrewe Stukenbrock
2022, Virulence (13) 1020-1031
White-nose syndrome has killed millions of bats, yet both the origins and infection strategy of the causative fungus, Pseudogymnoascus destructans, remain elusive. We provide evidence for a novel hypothesis that P. destructans emerged from plant-associated fungi and retained invasion strategies affiliated with fungal pathogens of plants. We demonstrate that P. destructans invades bat skin in...
Comparison of Digital Terrain Models from two photoclinometry methods
Randolph L. Kirk, David Mayer, Colin M. Dundas, Benjamin H Wheeler, Ross A. Beyer, Oleg Alexandrov
2022, International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences (XLIII-B3) 1059-1067
We evaluate the horizontal resolution and vertical precision for digital topographic models (DTMs) of the Moon derived from image radiance information, a process known as photoclinometry (PC) or shape-from-shading (SfS). We use the implementations in two available planetary image processing software systems, single image PC in the U.S. Geological...
Geologic controls on groundwater salinity reversal in North Coles Levee Oil Field, southern San Joaquin Valley, California, USA
Michael D Flowers, David H. Shimabukuro, Michael J. Stephens, John G. Warden, Janice M. Gillespie, Will Chang
2022, Environmental Earth Sciences (81)
This paper documents a reversal in the groundwater salinity depth gradient in the North Coles Levee Oil Field in the San Joaquin Valley, California. Salinity, measured in mg/L, was mapped with water quality data from groundwater and oil and gas wells and salinity estimated from oil...
Machine learning and data augmentation approach for identification of rare earth element potential in Indiana Coals, USA
Snahamoy Chatterjee, Maria Mastalerz, Agnieszka Drobniak, C. Özgen Karacan
2022, International Journal of Coal Geology (259)
Rare earth elements and yttrium (REYs) are critical elements and valuable commodities due to their limited availability and high demand in a wide range of applications and especially in high-technology products. The increased demand and geopolitical pressures motivate the search for alternative sources of REYs, and coal, coal waste, and...
Toxicological responses to sublethal anticoagulant rodenticide exposure in free-flying hawks
Nimish B. Vyas, Barnett A. Rattner, J. Michael Lockhart, Craig S. Hulse, Clifford P. Rice, Frank Kuncir, Kevin Kritz
2022, Environmental Science and Pollution Research (29) 74024-74037
An important component of assessing the hazards of anticoagulant rodenticides to non-target wildlife is observations in exposed free-ranging individuals. The objective of this study was to determine whether environmentally realistic, sublethal first-generation anticoagulant rodenticide (FGAR) exposures via prey can result in direct or indirect adverse effects to free-flying raptors. We...
Watching the Cryosphere thaw: Seismic monitoring of permafrost degradation using distributed acoustic sensing during a controlled heating experiment
Feng Cheng, Nathaniel J. Lindsey, Valeriia Sobolevskaia, Shan Dou, Barry Freifeld, Todd Wood, Stephanie R. James, Anna M. Wagner, Jonathan B. Ajo-Franklin
2022, Geophysical Research Letters (49)
Permafrost degradation is rapidly increasing in response to a warming Arctic climate, altering landscapes and damaging critical infrastructure. Solutions for monitoring permafrost thaw dynamics are essential to understand biogeochemical feedbacks as well as to issue warnings for hazardous geotechnical conditions. We investigate the feasibility of permafrost monitoring...
N and P constrain C in ecosystems under climate change: Role of nutrient redistribution, accumulation, and stoichiometry
Ed Rastetter, Bonnie Kwiatkowski, David Kicklighter, Audrey Barker Plotkin, Helene Genet, Jesse Nippert, Kimberly O’Keefe, Steven Perakis, Stephen Porder, Sarah Roley, Roger W. Ruess, Jonathan R. Thompson, William Wieder, Kevin WIlcox, Ruth Yanai
2022, Ecological Applications (32)
We use the Multiple Element Limitation (MEL) model to examine responses of twelve ecosystems to elevated carbon dioxide (CO2), warming, and 20% decreases or increases in precipitation. Ecosystems respond synergistically to elevated CO2, warming, and decreased precipitation combined because higher water-use efficiency with elevated CO2 and higher...
Hydrogeology and groundwater quality in the San Agustin Basin, New Mexico, 1975–2019
Jeff D. Pepin, Rebecca E. Travis, Johanna M. Blake, Alex Rinehart, Daniel Koning
2022, Scientific Investigations Report 2022-5029
This report describes the findings of a U.S. Geological Survey study, completed in cooperation with the Bureau of Land Management, focused on better understanding the present-day (1975–2019) hydrogeology and groundwater quality of the San Agustin Basin in west-central New Mexico to support sustainable groundwater resource management. The basin hosts a...
Fundamental science and engineering questions in planetary cave exploration
J. Judson Wynne, Timothy N. Titus, Ali-akbar Agha-Mohammadi, Armando Azua-Bustos, Penelope J. Boston, Pablo de León, Cansu Demirel-Floyd, Jo de Waele, Heather Jones, Michael J. Malaska, Ana Z. Miller, Haley M. Sapers, Francesco Sauro, Derek L. Sonderegger, Kyle Uckert, Uland Y. Wong, E. Calvin Alexander Jr., Leroy Chiao, Glen E. Cushing, John DeDecker, Alberto G. Fairén, Amos Frumkin, Gary L. Harris, Michelle L. Kearney, Laura A. Kerber, Richard J. Léveillé, Kavya Manyapu, Matteo Massironi, John E. Mylroie, Bogdan P. Onac, Scott E. Parazynski, Charity M. Phillips-Lander, T. H. Prettyman, Dirk Schulze-Makuch, Robert V. Wagner, William L. Whittaker, Kaj E. Williams
2022, JGR Planets (127)
Nearly half a century ago, two papers postulated the likelihood of lunar lava tube caves using mathematical models. Today, armed with an array of orbiting and fly-by satellites and survey instrumentation, we have now acquired cave data across our solar system—including the identification of potential cave entrances on the Moon,...
Advances in the study and understanding of groundwater discharge to surface water
Carlos Duque, Donald O. Rosenberry
2022, Water (14)
Groundwater discharge is vitally important for maintaining or restoring valuable ecosystems in surface water and at the underlying groundwater-surface-water ecotone. Detecting and quantifying groundwater discharge is challenging because rates of flow can be very small and difficult to measure, exchange is commonly highly heterogeneous both in space and time, and...
