Uncertainty and sensitivity issues in process-based models of carbon and nitrogen cycles in terrestrial ecosystems
Guy R. Larocque, Jagtar S. Bhatti, A.M. Gordon, N. Luckai, M. Wattenbach, Jinxun Liu, Peng C., P.A. Arp, S. Liu, C.F. Zhang, A Komarov, P. Grabarnik, J. Sun, T. White
A.J. Jakeman, A.A. Voinov, A.E. Rizzoli, S. H. Chen, editor(s)
2008, Book chapter, Developments in integrated environmental assessment
Many process-based models of carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) cycles have been developed for northern forest ecosystems. These models are widely used to evaluate the long-term decisions in forest management dealing with effects like particulate pollution, productivity and climate change. Regarding climate change, one...
Heat as a tracer to determine streambed water exchanges
Jim Constantz
2008, Water Resources Research (46)
This work reviews the use of heat as a tracer of shallow groundwater movement and describes current temperature-based approaches for estimating streambed water exchanges. Four common hydrologic conditions in stream channels are graphically depicted with the expected underlying streambed thermal responses, and techniques are discussed for installing and monitoring temperature...
Rapid response of a hydrologic system to volcanic activity: Masaya volcano, Nicaragua
S.C.P. Pearson, C.B. Connor, W. E. Sanford
2008, Geology (36) 951-954
Hydrologic systems change in response to volcanic activity, and in turn may be sensitive indicators of volcanic activity. Here we investigate the coupled nature of magmatic and hydrologic systems using continuous multichannel time series of soil temperature collected on the flanks of Masaya volcano, Nicaragua, one of the most active...
Effects of environmental factors on incubation patterns of Greater Sage-Grouse
Peter S. Coates, David J. Delehanty
2008, The Condor (110) 627-638
Birds in which only one sex incubates the eggs are often faced with a direct conflict between foraging to meet metabolic needs and incubation. Knowledge of environmental and ecological factors that shape life-history strategies of incubation is limited. We used continuous videography to make precise measurements of female Greater Sage-Grouse...
Tracking sea turtles in the Everglades
Kristin M. Hart
2008, Endangered Species Bulletin
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has a long history of conducting research on threatened, endangered, and at-risk species inhabiting both terrestrial and marine environments, particularly those found within national parks and protected areas. In the coastal Gulf of Mexico region, for example, USGS scientist Donna Shaver at Padre Island National...
Mormon cricket control in Utah's west desert - Evaluation of impacts of the pesticide Diflubenzuron on nontarget arthropod communities
Tim B. Graham, Anne M.D. Brasher, Rebecca N. Close
2008, Open-File Report 2008-1305
Grasshopper and Mormon cricket (Orthoptera) populations periodically build to extremely high numbers and can cause significant economic damage in rangelands and agricultural fields of the Great Plains and Intermountain West. A variety of insecticides have been applied to control population outbreaks, with recent efforts directed at minimizing impacts to nontarget...
Mapping "old" versus "young" piñon-juniper stands with a predictive topo-climatic model in north-central New Mexico, USA
B. F. Jacobs, W.H. Romme, Craig D. Allen
2008, Ecological Applications (18) 1627-1641
Piñon pine and juniper woodlands in the southwestern United States are often represented as an expanding and even invasive vegetation type, a legacy of historic grazing, and culpable in the degradation of western rangelands. A long-standing emphasis on forage production, in combination with recent hazard fuel concerns, has prompted a...
Geographic Names of Iceland's Glaciers: Historic and Modern
Oddur Sigurdsson, Richard S. Williams Jr.
2008, Professional Paper 1746
Climatic changes and resulting glacier fluctuations alter landscapes. In the past, such changes were noted by local residents who often documented them in historic annals; eventually, glacier variations were recorded on maps and scientific reports. In Iceland, 10 glacier place-names are to be found in Icelandic sagas, and one of...
Savanna tree density, herbivores, and the herbaceous community: Bottom-up vs. top-down effects
Corinna Riginos, James B. Grace
2008, Ecology (89) 2228-2238
Herbivores choose their habitats both to maximize forage intake and to minimize their risk of predation. For African savanna herbivores, the available habitats range in woody cover from open areas with few trees to dense, almost‐closed woodlands. This variation in woody cover or density can have a number of consequences...
Conservation genetics and species recovery
Ed Pendleton, Amy G. Vandergast, T.L. King
2008, Endangered Species Bulletin (33) 59
Recent advances in molecular genetics have proven to be extremely useful in efforts to conserve imperiled species. Genetics data are used to identify appropriate units of management (e.g., populations, metapopulations), effective sizes of breeding populations, population mixing rates, and other variables. These data help managers make decisions about which populations...
A Landscape Indicator Approach to the Identification and Articulation of the Ecological Consequences of Land Cover Change in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, 1970-2000
Terrence Slonecker
2008, Fact Sheet 2008-3056
The advancement of geographic science in the area of land surface status and trends and land cover change is at the core of the current geographic scientific research of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) (McMahon and others, 2005). Perhaps the least developed or articulated aspects of USGS land change science...
Mapping of Florida's coastal and marine resources: Setting priorities workshop
Lisa Robbins, Steven Wolfe, Ellen Raabe
2008, Open-File Report 2008-1157
The importance of mapping habitats and bioregions as a means to improve resource management has become increasingly clear. Large areas of the waters surrounding Florida are unmapped or incompletely mapped, possibly hindering proper management and good decisionmaking. Mapping of these ecosystems is among the top priorities identified by...
Thiamine deficiency effects on the vision and foraging ability of lake trout fry
Donald E. Tillitt, James L. Zajicek, Rachel Claunch, Dale C. Honeyfield, John D. Fitzsimons, Scott B. Brown
2008, Journal of Aquatic Animal Health (21) 315-325
The exact causes of the historical recruitment failures of Great Lakes lake trout Salvelinus namaycush are unknown. Thiamine deficiency has been associated with neurological abnormalities in lake trout that lead to early mortality syndrome (EMS) in salmonine swim-up fry, and EMS-related mortality at the swim-up stage is a factor that contributes to...
Multi-Disciplinary Approach to Trace Contamination of Streams and Beaches
James Nickles
2008, Fact Sheet 2008-3040
Concentrations of fecal-indicator bacteria in urban streams and ocean beaches in and around Santa Barbara occasionally can exceed public-health standards for recreation. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), working with the City of Santa Barbara, has used multi-disciplinary science to trace the sources of the bacteria. This research is helping local...
Calculation of the rate of M≥6.5 earthquakes for California and adjacent portions of Nevada and Mexico
Arthur Frankel, Charles Mueller
2008, Open-File Report 2008-1112
One of the key issues in the development of an earthquake recurrence model for California and adjacent portions of Nevada and Mexico is the comparison of the predicted rates of earthquakes with the observed rates. Therefore, it is important to make an accurate determination of the observed rate of M>6.5...
Understanding and predicting ecological dynamics: Are major surprises inevitable
Daniel F. Doak, James A. Estes, Benjamin S. Halpern, Ute Jacob, D. R. Lindberg, James R. Lovvorn, Daniel H. Monson, M. Tim Tinker, Terrie M. Williams, J. Timothy Wootton, Ian Carroll, Mark Emmerson, Fiorenza Micheli, Mark Novak
2008, Ecology (89) 952-961
Ecological surprises, substantial and unanticipated changes in the abundance of one or more species that result from previously unsuspected processes, are a common outcome of both experiments and observations in community and population ecology. Here, we give examples of such surprises along with the results of a survey of well-established...
Advancing process‐based watershed hydrological research using near‐surface geophysics: A vision for, and review of, electrical and magnetic geophysical methods
D.A. Robinson, A. Binley, N. Crook, F. D. Day-Lewis, T. P. A Ferre, V. J. S. Grauch, R. Knight, M. Knoll, V. Lakshmi, R. Miller, J. Nyquist, L. Pellerin, K. Singha, L. Slater
2008, Hydrological Processes (22) 3604-3635
We want to develop a dialogue between geophysicists and hydrologists interested in synergistically advancing process based watershed research. We identify recent advances in geophysical instrumentation, and provide a vision for the use of electrical and magnetic geophysical instrumentation in watershed scale hydrology. The focus of the paper is to identify...
Implications of rate-limited mass transfer for aquifer storage and recovery
Sean L. Culkin, Kamini Singha, Frederick D. Day-Lewis
2008, Groundwater (46) 591-605
Pressure to decrease reliance on surface water storage has led to increased interest in aquifer storage and recovery (ASR) systems. Recovery efficiency, which is the ratio of the volume of recovered water that meets a predefined standard to total volume of injected fluid, is a common criterion of ASR viability....
Magmatic and tectonic evolution of the Caetano caldera, north-central Nevada: A tilted, mid-Tertiary eruptive center and source of the Caetano Tuff
David A. John, Christopher D. Henry, Joseph P. Colgan
2008, Geosphere (4) 75-106
The Caetano Tuff is a late Eocene, rhyolite ash-flow tuff that crops out within an ∼90-km-long, east-west–trending belt in north-central Nevada, previously interpreted as an elongate graben or “volcano-tectonic trough.” New field, petrographic, geochemical, and geochronologic data show that: (1) the east half of the “trough” is actually the Caetano...
Environmental presence and persistence of pharmaceuticals: An overview
Susan T. Glassmeyer, Dana W. Koplin, Edward T. Furlong, M. Focazio
2008, Book chapter, Fate of pharmaceuticals in the environment and in water treatment systems
Emerging contaminants (ECs) in the environment – that is, chemicals with domestic, municipal, industrial, or agricultural sources that are not commonly monitored but may have the potential for adverse environmental effects – is a rapidly growing field of research. The use of “emerging” is not intended to infer that the...
Detecting changes in riparian habitat conditions based on patterns of greenness change: A case study from the Upper San Pedro River Basin, USA
K. Bruce Jones, Curtis M. Edmonds, E. Terrence Slonecker, James Wickham, Anne Neale, Timothy G. Wade, Kurt H. Riitters, William Kepner
2008, Ecological Indicators (8) 89-99
Healthy riparian ecosystems in arid and semi-arid regions exhibit shifting patterns of vegetation in response to periodic flooding. Their conditions also depend upon the amount of grazing and other human uses. Taking advantage of these system properties, we developed and tested an approach that utilizes historical Landsat data to track changes in the patterns of greenness (Normalized Difference...
Hazard information management during the autumn 2004 reawakening of Mount St. Helens volcano, Washington
Carolyn L. Driedger, Christina A. Neal, Tom H. Knappenberger, Deborah H. Needham, Robert B. Harper, William P. Steele
David R. Sherrod, William E. Scott, Peter H. Stauffer, editor(s)
2008, Professional Paper 1750-24
The 2004 reawakening of Mount St. Helens quickly caught the attention of government agencies as well as the international news media and the public. Immediate concerns focused on a repeat of the catastrophic landslide and blast event of May 18, 1980, which remains a vivid memory for many individuals. Within...
Ecology in the information age: Patterns of use and attrition rates of internet-based citations in ESA journals, 1997–2005
Jeffrey J. Duda, Richard J. Camp
2008, Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment (6) 145-151
As the amount of information available on the internet has increased, so too has the number of citations to network-accessible information in scholarly research. We searched all papers in four Ecological Society of America journals from 1997 to 2005 for articles containing a citation to material on the internet. We...
Microhabitat use by brook trout inhabiting small tributaries and a large river main stem: Implications for stream habitat restoration in the central Appalachians
Jeff L. Hansbarger, J. Todd Petty, Patricia M. Mazik
2008, Proceedings of the Southeastern Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (62) 142-148
Brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis) habitat restoration is needed across a range of stream sizes; however, studies quantifying brook trout habitat preferences in streams of differing sizes are rare. We used radio-telemetry to quantify adult brook trout microhabitat use in a central Appalachian watershed, the upper Shavers Fork of the Cheat...
Probabilistic seismic hazard in the San Francisco Bay area based on a simplified viscoelastic cycle model of fault interactions
F. F. Pollitz, David P. Schwartz
2008, Journal of Geophysical Research B: Solid Earth (113)
We construct a viscoelastic cycle model of plate boundary deformation that includes the effect of time-dependent interseismic strain accumulation, coseismic strain release, and viscoelastic relaxation of the substrate beneath the seismogenic crust. For a given fault system, time-averaged stress changes at any point (not on a fault) are constrained to...
