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1. Current and accurate information on wildlife populations is integral to successful biodiversity management and conservation globally. Nevertheless, many monitoring programs fail in their attempts to accurately monitor populations of interest due to interlinked issues including insufficient sample sizes, inappropriate duration, lack of reproducibility, and lack of clearly stated objectives....

Global conservation targets include protecting genetic diversity within species. Yet few studies have assessed whether protected areas (PAs) include genetically diverse populations across species globally. A first step is understanding the availability of population genetic data that could be used in these assessments. We surveyed georeferenced population-level nuclear (as opposed...

The pervasive presence of pentachlorophenol (PCP) in aquatic-benthic ecosystems poses a threat to organisms. However, the toxicological mechanisms of PCP in benthic organisms are limited. In this study, Tegillarca granosa, a representative bivalve species, was treated with environmentally relevant concentrations of PCP (1, 10, and 100 μg/kg) and positive control for 28 days via sediment...

Introduction In 2021, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) published Circular 1490 titled, “Integrated Science for the Study of Perfluoroalkyl and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) in the Environment: A Strategic Science Vision for the U.S. Geological Survey” (Tokranov and others, 2021). Circular 1490 was created to be a resource for USGS scientists prioritizing...

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Water Quality Network for surface water (NWQN-SW) was established in 2013 to develop long-term, comparable assessments of surface-water quality in support of national, regional, State, and local needs related to water-quality management and policy. Water-quality samples are collected at each site and measured for...

Diadromous fishes world-wide experienced precipitous declines during the 19th and 20th centuries due to a combination of overfishing, pollution, and freshwater habitat loss through construction of dams (Limburg & Waldman, 2009). Following wide-spread fishing closures and large-scale remediation of many historical pollution sources, dams in coastal rivers remain as the...

Conservation entails cultural practices shaped by our worldviews, values, beliefs, and priorities for our interactions with nature. These inform how we categorize which species we want to occur in which landscapes. In Western conservation organizations, conceptualizations of species ‘belonging’...

Freshwater salinization is a major concern in temperate climates where road salt is used as a deicer to manage snow and ice on roadways. In urban and suburban areas, wastewater, weathering of infrastructure, and salting on parking lots and sidewalks can also contribute to salt contamination, but little is known...

Five years after the deadly and destructive 9 January 2018 Montecito debris flows (Santa Barbara County, California, USA), an atmospheric river storm on 9 January 2023 triggered widespread landsliding that affected many of the same drainages in the Santa Ynez Mountains. Using high-resolution aerial imagery, we identified >10,000 landslides over...

We present methods to reconstruct historical chlorophyll a and surface water temperatures from satellite-based remote sensing products for Blue Mesa Reservoir, Colorado, to support algal bloom monitoring. A machine learning model was trained to construct chlorophyll a concentrations from Sentinel-2 satellite imagery and in situ measurements of chlorophyll a concentrations (out of bag RMSE = 1.9 μg/L, R2 = 0.63) and reconstruct summertime...

Understanding how water moves through a watershed is one of the most fundamental yet often complicated aspects of hydrology, especially in urban areas. Urban infrastructure and water management alter natural hydrological pathways in developed watersheds, which can violate assumptions of a watershed approach to ecosystem science. We focus on two...

Amphibians have suffered widespread declines caused by many interacting factors whose effects are often difficult to isolate. We used complementary analyses to decouple effects of methylmercury (MeHg) and amphibian chytrid fungus (Bd) on survival of Columbia Spotted Frogs (Rana luteiventris) during a 5-year capture-mark-recapture study. We also evaluated whether effects...

This study presents estimates of future years (2024–2051) United States Federal lease coal production and the resulting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the combustion, transport, and mining of that fuel. Results from the coal production estimate indicate a decline in production from Federal leases; with known production of 240 million...

Landsliding in river valleys poses unique risks for cascading hazards and can damage infrastructure and cause fatalities. In postglacial valleys, many landslides are posited to occur in relation to lateral river erosion, but the dynamics of fluvial-hillslope interactions are not well understood. Here, we investigate a section of the Nooksack...

Evapotranspiration (ET) accounts for the majority of water available from precipitation in the terrestrial water cycle, and improvements to the accuracy, resolution, and coverage of ET data can enhance hydrologic models and assessments. The OpenET collaboration of six remotely sensed ET modeling teams has demonstrated that an ensemble approach to...

River ecosystems are threatened by interactions among river regulation, non-native species, and climate change. Water use has exceeded supply in USA’s Colorado River basin draining its two largest storage reservoirs (Lake Powell and Lake Mead). In 2022, Lake Powell began releasing water from its lower epilimnion into the Grand Canyon...

The Mississippi River Valley alluvial aquifer (MRVA) is vital to U.S. food security and global agricultural supply. However, quantitative understanding of its Quaternary origin, architecture, and hydrologic function remains incomplete. Here we develop a three-dimensional hydrostratigraphic model to characterize the deposition of clay and silt, fine-medium sands, and graveliferous sands...

Bottled water facilities exist across the United States (U.S.) in all 50 states and have the potential to affect localities in which they are located. This study aims to understand how water bottling facilities are portrayed in news media in the U.S., focusing on economic and environmental tradeoffs, by using...

The Cape Cod aquifer is the sole source of drinking water for communities on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, including the Town of Falmouth, where the aquifer is currently threatened by contamination from septic-system-derived nitrogen. To address this problem, the Town is proposing to sewer areas of Falmouth, treat the wastewater at...

No abstract available....

Water level drawdowns are common in reservoirs and can affect dissolved oxygen (DO) dynamics via several pathways. In large storage reservoirs, inflow deltas are often important sites for sediment deposition, with some sediment laden rivers forming highly dynamic delta regions as they enter the reservoir. As water levels change, deposited...

Fish diseases in freshwater ecosystems pose significant ecological and socioeconomic challenges, yet monitoring them in wild populations is complex due to interactions between pathogens, hosts, and environmental conditions. We examine the prevalence and watershed-scale landscape drivers of external deformity, erosion, lesion, tumor, and parasite (DELT) anomalies in 57 riverine fish...

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency (DARPA), NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and MITRE ran a 12-week machine learning competition aimed at accelerating development of AI tools for critical mineral assessments. The Artificial Intelligence for Critical Mineral Assessment Competition solicited innovative solutions for two challenges: 1)...

Smallmouth bass (Micropterus dolomieu) is an important recreational sportfish and destructive non-native species when introduced into freshwater habitats. There is therefore a need to understand the drivers of, and uncertainties in, smallmouth bass population dynamics for various management objectives. We combined long-term smallmouth bass catch-effort and early life history data...

Freshwater mussels are among the most sensitive species to a variety of chemicals in water exposures. However, few studies have been conducted to evaluate the effect of toxicants in sediments on mussels. Industrial discharges containing polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and metals entered the Kanawha River surrounding Blaine...