The timing and magnitude of changes to Hortonian overland flow at the watershed scale during the post-fire recovery process
Taojun Liu, Luke A. McGuire, Haiyan Wei, Francis K. Rengers, Hoshin Gupta, Lin Ji, David C. Goodrich
2021, Water Resources Research (35)
Extreme hydrologic responses following wildfires can lead to floods and debris flows with costly economic and societal impacts. Process-based hydrologic and geomorphic models used to predict the downstream impacts of wildfire must account for temporal changes in hydrologic parameters related to the generation and subsequent routing...
Understanding constraints on submersed vegetation distribution in a large, floodplain river: The role of water level fluctuations, water clarity and river geomorphology
Alicia Carhart, John Kalas, James T. Rogala, Jason J. Rohweder, Deanne C. Drake, Jeffrey N. Houser
2021, Wetlands (41)
Aquatic vegetation is a key component of large floodplain river ecosystems. In the Upper Mississippi River System (UMRS), there is a long-standing interest in restoring aquatic vegetation in areas where it has declined or disappeared. To better understand what constrains vegetation distribution in large river ecosystems and inform ongoing efforts...
Survival and growth of suckers in mesocosms at three locations within Upper Klamath Lake, Oregon, 2018
Summer M. Burdick, Carla M. Conway, Carl O. Ostberg, Ryan J. Bart, Diane G. Elliott
2021, Open-File Report 2021-1036
Executive SummaryDue to high mortality in the first year or two of life, Lost River (Deltistes luxatus sp.) and Shortnose suckers (Chasmistes brevirostris sp.) in Upper Klamath Lake, Oregon rarely reach maturity. In 2015, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service began the Sucker Assisted Rearing Program (SARP) to improve...
Hydraulic characterization of carbonate-rock and basin-fill aquifers near Long Canyon, Goshute Valley, northeastern Nevada
C. Amanda Garcia, Keith J. Halford, Philip M. Gardner, David W. Smith
2021, Scientific Investigations Report 2021-5021
Understanding groundwater flow and pumping effects near pending mining operations requires accurate subsurface hydraulic characterization. To improve conceptual models of groundwater flow and development in the complex hydrogeologic system near Long Canyon Mine, in northwestern Goshute Valley, northeastern Nevada, the U.S. Geological Survey characterized the hydraulic properties of carbonate...
eDNA metabarcoding outperforms traditional fisheries sampling and reveals fine-scale heterogeneity in a temperate freshwater lake
Rebecca R. Gehri, Wesley Larson, Kristen Gruenthal, Nicholas Sard, Yue Shi
2021, Environmental DNA (3) 919-929
Understanding biodiversity in aquatic systems is critical to ecological research and conservation efforts, but accurately measuring species richness using traditional methods can be challenging. Environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding, which uses high-throughput sequencing and universal primers to amplify DNA from multiple species present in an environmental sample, has shown great promise...
Daily patterns of river herring (Alosa spp.) spawning migrations: Environmental drivers and variation among coastal streams in Massachusetts
Henry Legett, Adrian Jordaan, Allison H. Roy, John Sheppard, Marcelo Somos-Valenzuela, Michelle Staudinger
2021, Transactions of the American Fisheries Society (150) 501-513
The timing of life history events in many plants and animals depends on the seasonal fluctuations of specific environmental conditions. Climate change is altering environmental regimes and disrupting natural cycles and patterns across communities. Anadromous fishes that migrate between marine and freshwater habitats to spawn are particularly sensitive to shifting...
Environmental DNA metabarcoding as a tool for biodiversity assessment and monitoring: Reconstructing established fish communities of north-temperate lakes and rivers
Peter T. Euclide, Yer Lor, Michael J. Spear, Tariq Tajjioui, M. Jake Vander Zanden, Wesley Larson, Jon Amberg
2021, Diversity and Distributions (27) 1966-1980
AimTo evaluate the ability of precipitation-based environmental DNA (eDNA) sample collection and mitochondrial 12S metabarcoding sequencing to reconstruct well-studied fish communities in lakes and rivers. Specific objectives were to 1) determine correlations between eDNA species detections and known community composition based on conventional field sampling, 2) compare...
Survival and contaminants in imperiled and common riverine fishes assessed with an in situ bioassay approach
C. A. Grieshaber, W. G. Cope, Thomas J. Kwak, T. N. Penland, R. J. Heise, J. M. Law
2021, Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (40) 2206-2219
An in situ bioassay approach was used to determine whether aquatic contaminant stressors in a large Atlantic river ecosystem affect the survival of 3 fish species: the largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides, juveniles), the fathead minnow (Pimephales promelas, adults), and the robust redhorse (Moxostoma robustum, juveniles). Hatchery-propagated fish were placed into...
Riparian forests buffer the negative effects of cropland on macroinvertebrate diversity in lowland Amazonian streams
Nubia C.S. Marques, Kathi Jo Jankowski, Marcia N. Macedo, Leandro Juen, Ana Luiza-Andrade, Linda A. Deegan
2021, Hydrobiologia (848) 3503-3520
Riparian forests regulate stream ecosystems and biodiversity. Therefore, changes to riparian structure may threaten stream ecosystem function by triggering taxonomic and functional changes to aquatic communities. Because macroinvertebrate assemblages are sensitive to environmental changes, they can be effective indicators of stream integrity in disturbed landscapes. To...
Runoff response to directional land cover change across reference basins in the conterminous United States
Kul Bikram Khand, Gabriel B. Senay
2021, Advances in Water Resources (153)
Land cover change plays a critical role in influencing hydrological responses. Change in land cover has impacted runoff across basins with substantial human interference; however, the impacts in basins with minimal human interference have been studied less. In this study, we investigated the impacts of directional land cover changes (forest...
Associations between private well water and community water supply arsenic concentrations in the conterminous United States
Maya Spaur, Melissa A. Lombard, Joseph D. Ayotte, David Harvey, Benjamin Bostick, Steven Chillrud, Ana Navas-Acien, Anne E Nigra
2021, Science of the Total Environment (787)
Geogenic arsenic contamination typically occurs in groundwater as opposed to surface water supplies. Groundwater is a major source for many community water systems (CWSs) in the United States (US). Although the US Environmental Protection Agency sets the maximum contaminant level (MCL enforceable since 2006:...
Activity patterns of anadromous fish below a tide gate: Observations from high‐resolution imaging sonar
Christopher B. Rillahan, Derrick Alcott, Theodore R. Castro-Santos, Pingguo He
2021, Marine and Coastal Fisheries: Dynamics, Management, and Ecosystem Science (13) 200-212
The construction of dams and tide gates on waterways has altered the physical structure of many coastal, estuarine, and freshwater systems. These changes have come at a cost to fish populations, most notably diadromous species, which rely on connectivity between marine and freshwater systems. These anthropogenic...
Incorporating biogeochemistry into dryland restoration
Kristina E. Young, Sasha C. Reed, Scott Ferrenberg, Akasha M. Faist, Daniel E. Winkler, Catherine E. Cort, Anthony Darrouzet-Nardi
2021, BioScience (71) 907-917
Dryland degradation is a persistent and accelerating global problem. Although the mechanisms initiating and maintaining dryland degradation are largely understood, returning productivity and function through ecological restoration remains difficult. Water limitation commonly drives slow recovery rates within drylands; however, the altered biogeochemical cycles that accompany degradation also play key...
Trends in agricultural triazole fungicide sse in the United States, 1992–2016 and possible implications for antifungal-resistant fungi in human disease
Mitsuru Toda, Karlyn D. Beer, Kathryn Kuivila, Tom M. Chiller, Brendan R. Jackson
2021, Environmental Health Perspectives (129)
Background:The fungus Aspergillus fumigatus (A. fumigatus) is the leading cause of invasive mold infections, which cause severe disease and death in immunocompromised people. Use of triazole antifungal medications in recent decades has improved patient survival; however, triazole-resistant infections have become common in parts of Europe and are emerging in...
Water quality associations and spatiotemporal distribution of the harmful alga Prymnesium parvum in an impounded urban stream system
J. B. Clayton, Reynaldo Patino, R. H. Rashel, S. Tábora-Sarmiento
2021, Journal of Urban Ecology (7)
The Jim Bertram Lake System consists of several stream impoundments within the City of Lubbock, Texas (USA). Baseflow in the upstream reach is dominated by nitrogen-rich-treated wastewater. While toxic blooms of Prymnesium parvum have occurred in this system for ∼2 decades during fall or winter-spring, little is known about water quality variables...
Long-term monitoring reveals convergent patterns of recovery from mining contamination across 4 western US watersheds
William H. Clements, David B. Herbst, Michelle I. Hornberger, Christopher A. Mebane, Terry M. Short
2021, Freshwater Science (40) 407-426
Long-term studies of stream ecosystems are essential for assessing restoration success because they allow researchers to quantify recovery trajectories, gauge the relative influence of episodic events, and determine the time required to achieve clean-up objectives. To quantify responses of benthic macroinvertebrate assemblages to stream remediation, we integrated...
Wetland conservation: Challenges related to water law and farm policy
Sammy L. King, M. Laubbhan, P. Tashjian, J. Vradenburg, L. Fredrickson
2021, Wetlands (41) 1-17
Water is essential for wetland function and sustaining migratory networks for wetland wildlife across broad landscapes. Groundwater declines and surface flow reductions that impact aquatic and wetland organisms are common in the western U.S. and increasingly in the eastern U.S. Agriculture is the largest consumptive water user in the U.S....
Postwildfire soil‐hydraulic recovery and the persistence of debris flow hazards
Matthew A. Thomas, Francis K. Rengers, Jason W. Kean, Luke A. McGuire, Dennis M. Staley, Katherine R. Barnhart, Brian A. Ebel
2021, Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface (126)
Deadly and destructive debris flows often follow wildfire, but understanding of changes in the hazard potential with time since fire is poor. We develop a simulation‐based framework to quantify changes in the hydrologic triggering conditions for debris flows as postwildfire infiltration properties evolve through time. Our approach produces time‐varying rainfall...
Intact landscape promotes gene flow and low genetic structuring in the threatened Eastern Massasauga Rattlesnake
Nathan Kudla, Eric M. McCluskey, Vijay Lulla, Ralph Grundel, Jennifer A. Moore
2021, Ecology and Evolution (11) 6276-6288
Genetic structuring of wild populations is dependent on environmental, ecological, and life-history factors. The specific role environmental context plays in genetic structuring is important to conservation practitioners working with rare species across areas with varying degrees of fragmentation. We investigated fine-scale genetic patterns of the federally threatened Eastern Massasauga Rattlesnake...
Polar bear foraging behavior
Anthony M. Pagano
2021, Book chapter, Ethology and behavioral ecology of sea otters and polar bears
Polar bears forage in the marine environment, primarily on the sea ice over the shallow waters of the continental shelf. They are solitary, ambush hunters that catch ringed and bearded seals when they surface to breathe in ice holes or haul out on the ice to rest and molt. In...
Sea otter predator avoidance behavior
Daniel Monson
2021, Book chapter, Ethology and behavioral ecology of sea otters and polar bears
Predators directly affect their prey as a source of mortality, and prey respond by employing antipredator strategies. Sea otters are a keystone predator within the nearshore community, but higher trophic level avian, terrestrial, and pelagic predators (e.g., bald eagles, brown bears, wolves, white sharks, and killer whales) prey on them....
Planetary defense preparedness: Identifying the potential for post-asteroid impact time delayed and geographically displaced hazards
Timothy N. Titus, D. G. Robertson, Joel B. Sankey
Adam Oliphant, Itiya P. Aneece, editor(s)
2021, Report, Planetary science and astrobiology decadal survey 2023-2032
A considerable amount of effort has been done to quantify impact effects from the impact of an asteroid. The effects usually considered are: blast, overpressure shock, thermal radiation, cratering, seismic shaking, ejecta, and tsunami (e.g. Hills & Goda, 1993; Collins et al., 2005, Rumpf et al., 2017). These first-order...
Yellowstone Volcano Observatory 2020 annual report
Yellowstone Volcano Observatory
2021, Circular 1482
The Yellowstone Volcano Observatory (YVO) monitors volcanic and hydrothermal activity associated with the Yellowstone magmatic system, conducts research into magmatic processes occurring beneath Yellowstone Caldera, and issues timely warnings and guidance related to potential future geologic hazards. This report summarizes the activities and findings of YVO during the year 2020,...
Asteroid impacts - downwind and downstream effects
Timothy N. Titus, D. G. Robertson, Joel B. Sankey, Larry G. Mastin
2021, Conference Paper, 7th IAA Planetary Defense Conference – PDC 2021
For this abstract, we have selected an impact location, consistent with the PDC2021 initial scenario [1], in the San Juan Mountains, in southwestern Colorado. This is a low-density population area but is part of the watershed system within the Colorado River basin, a major source for water and power for...
A Next Generation Lunar Orbiter mission
Timothy Glotch, Lynne Carter, Pamela Clark, Brett W. Denevi, Benjamin T Greenhagen, G. Wes Patterson, Noah E. Petro, Kurt Retherford, Sarah Valencia, Joshua T. Cahill, Ryan Watkins, Kerri Donaldson Hanna, Catherine Elder, Harald Hiesinger, Georgiana Kramer, Timothy Livengood, Heather Meyer, Lillian R. Ostrach, Michael Poston, Morgan Schusterman, Matthew Siegler, Emerson Speyerer, Angela Stickle, Carolyn H. Van der Bogert, Daniel Moriarty, Lisa R. Gaddis
2021, Report, Planetary science and astrobiology decadal survey 2023-2032
The Moon is the scientific foundation for our knowledge of the early evolution and impact history of the terrestrial planets. Over the last decades the lunar science community has made significant progress in addressing key lunar science and exploration goals, while defining many new high-priority scientific questions regarding the formation...
