Relative risk of groundwater-quality degradation near California (USA) oil fields estimated from 3H, 14C, and 4He
Peter B. McMahon, Matthew K. Landon, Tracy Davis, Michael Wright, Celia Z. Rosecrans, Robert Anders, Michael Land, Justin T. Kulongoski, Andrew G. Hunt
2021, Applied Geochemistry (131)
Relative risks of groundwater-quality degradation near selected California oil fields are estimated by examining spatial and temporal patterns in chemical and isotopic data in the context of groundwater-age categories defined by tritium and carbon-14. In the Coastal basins, western San Joaquin Valley (SJV),...
Quantifying the demographic vulnerabilities of dry woodlands to climate and competition using rangewide monitoring data
Robert K Shriver, Charles B. Yackulic, David M. Bell, John B. Bradford
2021, Ecology (102)
Climate change is expected to alter the distribution and abundance of tree species, impacting ecosystem structure and function. Yet, anticipating where this will occur is often hampered by a lack of understanding of how demographic rates, most notably recruitment, vary in response to climate and competition...
Deposit classification scheme for the Critical Minerals Mapping Initiative Global Geochemical Database
Albert H. Hofstra, Vladimir Lisitsin, Louise Corriveau, Suzanne Paradis, Jan Peter, Kathleen Lauziere, Christopher Lawley, Michael Gadd, Jean-Luc Pilote, Ian Honsberger, Evgeniy Bastrakov, David C. Champion, Karol Czarnota, Michael P. Doublier, David L. Huston, Oliver Raymond, Simon VanDerWielen, Poul Emsbo, Matthew Granitto, Douglas C. Kreiner
2021, Open-File Report 2021-1049
A challenge for the global economy is to meet the growing demand for commodities used in today’s advanced technologies. Critical minerals are commodities (for example, elements, compounds, minerals) deemed vital to the economic and national security of individual countries that are vulnerable to supply disruption. The national geological agencies of...
Sea star wasting disease pathology in Pisaster ochraceus shows a basal-to-surface process affecting color phenotypes differently
Thierry M. Work, Tina M. Weatherby, Christopher M. DeRito, Ryan M. Besemer, Ian Hewson
2021, Diseases of Aquatic Organisms (145) 21-33
Sea star wasting disease (SSWD) refers to a suite of poorly described non-specific clinical signs including abnormal posture, epidermal ulceration, and limb autotomy (sloughing) causing mortalities of over 20 species of sea stars and subsequent ecological shifts throughout the northeastern Pacific. While SSWD is widely assumed to be infectious, with...
Water resources of St. Landry Parish, Louisiana
Maxwell A. Lindaman, Vincent E. White
2021, Fact Sheet 2021-3026
Information concerning the availability, use, and quality of water in St. Landry Parish, Louisiana, is critical for proper water-supply management. The purpose of this fact sheet is to present information that can be used by water managers, parish residents, and others for stewardship of this vital resource. In 2014, about...
Workflow for using unmanned aircraft systems and traditional geospatial data to delineate agricultural drainage tiles at edge-of-field sites
J. Jeremy Webber, Tanja N. Williamson
2021, Scientific Investigations Report 2021-5013
Managing nutrient and sediment runoff from fields that drain to the Great Lakes is key to mitigating harmful algal blooms. Implementation of best management practices on agricultural land is considered a critical step to improving water quality in these streams, however the effect of these best management practices is difficult...
Raising the West: Mid-Cenozoic Colorado-plano related to subvolcanic batholith assembly in the Southern Rocky Mountains (USA)?
Peter W. Lipman
2021, Geology (49) 1107-1111
The Southern Rocky Mountains of Colorado, United States, have the highest regional elevation in North America, but present-day crustal thickness (∼42–47 km) is no greater than for the adjacent, topographically lower High Plains and Colorado Plateau. The chemistry of continental-arc rocks of the...
Effects of climate and irrigation on GRACE-based estimates of water storage changes in major US aquifers
Bridget R. Scanlon, Ahsraf Rateb, Donald R. Pool, Ward E. Sanford, Himanshu Save, Alexander Y. Sun, Di Long, Brian Fuchs
2021, Environmental Research Letters (16)
Understanding climate and human impacts on water storage is critical for sustainable water-resources management. Here we assessed climate and human drivers of total water storage (TWS) variability from Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites compared with drought severity and irrigation water use in 14 major aquifers...
Benzotriazole concentrations in airport runoff are reduced following changes in airport deicer formulations
Hayley T. Olds, Steven R. Corsi, Troy D. Rutter
2021, Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management (18) 245-257
A comparison of the presence of additives in airport deicers commonly used in the United States and in airport runoff was conducted with data collected before and after changes in deicer formulations. Three isomers of benzotriazoles (BTs)—4-methyl-1H-benzotriazole (4-MeBT), 5-methyl-1H-benzotriazole (5-MeBT), and 1H-benzotriazole (1H-BT)—are corrosion inhibitors added to some formulations of...
Use of dissolved oxygen monitoring to evaluate phosphorus loading in Connecticut streams, 2015–18
Brittney Izbicki, Jonathan Morrison
2021, Scientific Investigations Report 2021-5024
The Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (CT DEEP) has developed an interim phosphorus reduction strategy to establish water-quality-based phosphorus limits in nontidal freshwaters for industrial and municipal water pollution control facilities. A recommendation in the strategy included the addition of diurnal dissolved oxygen (DO) sampling to the sampling...
Short‐period surface‐wave tomography in the continental United States— A resource for research
R. B. Herrmann, C. J. Ammon, Harley M. Benz, A. Aziz-Zanjani, J. Boschelli
2021, Seismological Research Letters (92) 3642-3656
The variation of phase and group velocity dispersion of Love and Rayleigh waves was determined for the continental United States and adjacent Canada. By processing ambient noise from the broadband channels of the Transportable Array (TA) of USArray and several Program for the Array Seismic...
Sediment concentrations and loads upstream from and through John Redmond Reservoir, east-central Kansas, 2010–19
Ariele R. Kramer, Cara L. Peterman-Phipps, Matthew D. Mahoney, Bradley S. Lukasz
2021, Scientific Investigations Report 2021-5037
Streambank erosion and reservoir sedimentation are primary concerns of resource managers in Kansas and throughout many regions of the United States and negatively affect flood control, water supply, and recreation. The Cottonwood and upper Neosho Rivers drain into John Redmond Reservoir, and since reservoir completion in 1964, there has been...
Accelerating ecological sciences from above: Spatial contrastive learning for remote sensing
Johan Bjorck, Qinru Shi, Brendan H. Rapazzo, Jennifer Dean, Angela K. Fuller, Carrie Brown-Lima, Carla Gomes
2021, Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (35)
The rise of neural networks has opened the door for automatic analysis of remote sensing data. A challenge to using this machinery for computational sustainability is the necessity of massive labeled data sets, which can be cost-prohibitive for many non-profit organizations. The primary motivation for this work is one such...
Synthetic aperture radar and optical mapping used to monitor change and replacement of Phragmites australis marsh in the Lower Mississippi River Delta, Louisiana
Elijah W. Ramsey III, Amina Rangoonwala
2021, Open-File Report 2021-1046
Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) mapping of density as an enhancement of Phragmites australis optical live fractional cover (LFC) mapping was carried out in the lower Mississippi Delta during 2016 to 2019. Also, as part of the study, the replacement of P. australis with elephant-ear was analyzed. To that end, yearly...
Multivariate classification of the crude oil petroleum systems in southeast Texas, USA, using conventional and compositional data analysis of biomarkers
Ricardo A. Olea, J. A Martin-Fernandez, William H. Craddock
Peter Fitzmoser, Karel Hron, Josep Antoni Martin-Fernandez, Javier Palarea-Albaladejo, editor(s)
2021, Book chapter, Advances in compositional data analysis—Festschrift in honor of Vera-Pawlowsky-Glahn
Chemically, petroleum is an extraordinarily complex mixture of different types of hydrocarbons that are now possible to isolate and identify because of advances in geochemistry. Here, we use biomarkers and carbon isotopes to establish genetic differences and similarities among oil samples. Conventional approaches for evaluating biomarker and carbon isotope relative...
Distribution and demography of coastal cactus wrens (Campylorhynchus brunneicapillus) in southern San Diego County, California—2020 data summary
Suellen Lynn, Barbara E. Kus
2021, Data Series 1138
Executive SummarySurveys for coastal Cactus Wren (Campylorhynchus brunneicapillus) were done in 378 established plots in southern San Diego County in 2020, encompassing three genetic clusters (Otay, Lake Jennings, and Sweetwater/Encanto genetic clusters). Two surveys were completed at each plot between March 1 and July 31. Cactus Wrens were detected in...
Fisheries research and monitoring activities of the Lake Erie Biological Station, 2020
Kevin R. Keretz, Patrick Kocovsky, Richard Kraus, James Roberts, Joseph Schmitt
2021, Report
This report presents biomass-based summaries of fish communities in the West Basin of Lake Erie derived from USGS bottom trawl surveys conducted from 2013 to 2020 during June and September. The survey design provided temporal and spatial coverage that did not exist in the interagency trawl database, and thus complemented...
Status and trends of pelagic and benthic prey fish populations in Lake Michigan, 2020
Ralph William Tingley, David B. Bunnell, David Warner, Charles P. Madenjian, Patricia Dieter
2021, Report
Lakewide acoustic (AC) and bottom trawl (BT) surveys are conducted annually to generate indices of pelagic and benthic prey fish densities in Lake Michigan. The BT survey had been conducted each fall from 1973 through 2019 using 12-m trawls at depths ranging from 9 to 110 m and included...
Coffee plantations, hurricanes and avian resiliency: Insights from occupancy, and local colonization and extinction rates in Puerto Rico
Amarilys D. Irizarry, Jaime A. Collazo, J. Vandermeer, I. Perfecto
2021, Global Ecology and Conservation (27)
Insights on impacts and resiliency of avian species with respect to hurricanes in the Caribbean have largely focused on responses measured in protected habitats. We assessed avian responses in non-protected habitat, specifically shade-restored coffee plantations, because their structural complexity retains many attributes of secondary forests, and may contribute to...
A multi-tracer and well-bore flow profile approach to determine occurrence, movement, and sources of perchlorate in groundwater
Michael Wright, John A. Izbicki, Bryant C. Jurgens
Z. Zimeng Wang, editor(s)
2021, Applied Geochemistry (129) 1-18
The purpose of this study is to determine the occurrence, movement and sources of perchlorate in groundwater using a comprehensive set of environmental tracers coupled with discreet borehole data. Potential sources of perchlorate to groundwater at the study site have been attributed to waste disposal and industrial activities as well...
Watersheds and drainage networks
Larry Stanislawski, Ethan J. Shavers
2021, Book chapter, The geographic information science & technology body of knowledge
This topic is an overview of basic concepts about how the distribution of water on the Earth, with specific regard to watersheds, stream and river networks, and waterbodies are represented by geographic data. The flowing and non-flowing bodies of water on the earth’s surface...
Quarterly wildlife mortality report April 2021
Bryan J. Richards, Robin E. Russell, Anne Ballmann
2021, Newsletter
The USGS National Wildlife Health Center (NWHC) Quarterly Mortality Report provides brief summaries of epizootic mortality and morbidity events by quarter. The write-ups, highlighting epizootic events and other wildlife disease topics of interest, are published in the Wildlife Disease Association quarterly newsletter. A link is provided in this WDA newsletter...
3-D Modeling of the Duluth Complex from geophysical data
Dana E. Peterson, Paul A. Bedrosian, Carol A. Finn
2021, Conference Paper, 67th Institute on Lake Superior Geology Proceedings
The Mesoproterozoic Duluth Complex in northeastern Minnesota is one of the major plutonic components of the Midcontinent Rift System and hosts a variety of copper-nickel sulfide and platinum-group element deposits. The Duluth Complex is composed of a series of individual mafic and felsic intrusions emplaced 1110-1098 Ma within Paleoproterozoic sedimentary...
Alaska landbird montoring survey: Alaska regional protocol framework for monitoring landbirds using point counts
Colleen M. Handel, Steven M. Matsuoka, Melissa N. Cady, Diane A. Granfors
2021, Report
Alaska provides habitat for 143 species of landbirds that occur regularly in the state, about half of which breed predominantly north of the border between the contiguous United States and Canada. The road-based North American Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) provides some data on population trends in Alaska, but most northern...
Improving species status assessments under the U.S. Endangered Species Act and implications for multispecies conservation challenges worldwide
Reed Noss, Jennifer M. Cartwright, Dwayne Estes, Theo Witsell, Gregg Elliott, Daniel S. Adams, Matthew A. Albrecht, Ryan Boyles, Patrick Comer, Chris Doffitt, JoVonn G. Hill, William C. Hunter, Wesley M. Knapp, Mike Marshall, Jason R. Singhurst, Christopher Tracey, Jeffrey L. Walck, Alan Weakley
2021, Conservation Biology (35) 1715-1724
Despite its successes, the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA) has proven challenging to implement due to funding limitations, workload backlog, and other problems. As threats to species survival intensify and as more species come under threat, the need for the ESA and similar conservation laws and policies in other countries...
