Balancing the need for seed against invasive species risks in prairie habitat restorations
Jennifer L Larson, Diane L. Larson, Robert Venette
2021, PLoS ONE (16)
Adequate diversity and abundance of native seed for large-scale grassland restorations often require commercially produced seed from distant sources. However, as sourcing distance increases, the likelihood of inadvertent introduction of multiple novel, non-native weed species as seed contaminants also increases. We created a model to determine...
Evaluation of connectivity among black bear populations in Georgia
Michael J. Hooker, Joseph D. Clark, Bobby T Bond, Michael J Chamberlain
2021, Journal of Wildlife Management (85) 979-988
Habitat fragmentation and loss contribute to isolation of wildlife populations and increased extinction risks for various species, including many large carnivores. We studied a small and isolated population of American black bears (Ursus americanus) that is of conservation concern in central Georgia, USA (i.e., central Georgia...
Effects of supplemental feeding on the fecal bacterial communities of Rocky Mountain elk in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem
Claire E Couch, Benjamin Wise, Brandon Scurlock, Jared D. Rogerson, Rebecca K. Fuda, Eric K Cole, Kimberly E Szcodronski, Adam Sepulveda, Patrick R. Hutchins, Paul C. Cross
2021, PLoS ONE (16)
Supplemental feeding of wildlife is a common practice often undertaken for recreational or management purposes, but it may have unintended consequences for animal health. Understanding cryptic effects of diet supplementation on the gut microbiomes of wild mammals is important to inform conservation and management strategies. Multiple laboratory studies have demonstrated...
A new addition to the embalmed fauna of ancient Egypt: Güldenstaedt’s White-toothed Shrew, Crocidura gueldenstaedtii (Pallas, 1811) (Mammalia: Eulipotyphla: Soricidae)
Neal Woodman, Salima Ikram, Joanne Rowland
2021, PLoS ONE (16)
The Falcon Necropolis at Quesna in the Nile Delta of Egypt is considered to have been founded by the priest Djedhor, the Saviour, of Athribis (Tell Atrib in modern Benha) at the beginning of the Ptolemaic Period. Recent excavations here have revealed abundant avian remains from...
Unsaturated flow processes and the onset of seasonal deformation in slow-moving landslides
Noah J. Finnegan, Jonathan P. Perkins, Alexander Lewis Nereson, Alexander L. Handwerger
2021, Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface (126)
Predicting rainfall-induced landslide motion is challenging because shallow groundwater flow is extremely sensitive to the preexisting moisture content in the ground. Here, we use groundwater hydrology theory and numerical modeling combined with five years of field monitoring to illustrate how unsaturated groundwater flow processes modulate the seasonal...
A reassessment of Chao2 estimates for population monitoring of grizzly bears in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem
Frank T. van Manen, Michael R. Ebinger, Mark A. Haroldson, Daniel D. Bjornlie, Justin Clapp, Daniel J. Thompson, Kevin L. Frey, Cecily M. Costello, Curtis Hendricks, Jeremy M. Nicholson, Kerry A. Gunther, Katharine R. Wilmot, Hilary Cooley, Jennifer Fortin-Noreus, Pat Hnilicka, Daniel B. Tyers
2021, Report
The Yellowstone Ecosystem Subcommittee (YES) asked the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team (IGBST) to re-assess a technique used in annual population estimation and trend monitoring of grizzly bears in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE). This technique is referred to as the Chao2 approach and estimates the number of females with...
Weather affects post‐fire recovery of sagebrush‐steppe communities and model transferability among sites
Cara Applestein, Trevor Caughlin, Matthew J. Germino
2021, Ecosphere (12)
Altered climate, including weather extremes, can cause major shifts in vegetative recovery after disturbances. Predictive models that can identify the separate and combined temporal effects of disturbance and weather on plant communities and that are transferable among sites are needed to guide vulnerability assessments and management...
Machine-learning predictions of high arsenic and high manganese at drinking water depths of the glacial aquifer system, northern continental United States
Melinda L. Erickson, Sarah M. Elliott, Craig J. Brown, Paul E. Stackelberg, Katherine Marie Ransom, James E. Reddy, Charles A. Cravotta III
2021, Environmental Science & Technology (9) 5791-5805
Globally, over 200 million people are chronically exposed to arsenic (As) and/or manganese (Mn) from drinking water. We used machine-learning (ML) boosted regression tree (BRT) models to predict high As (>10 μg/L) and Mn (>300 μg/L) in groundwater from the glacial...
Identifying resting locations of a small elusive forest carnivore using a two-stage model accounting for GPS measurement error and hidden behavioral states
Dalton Hance, Katie M. Moriarty, Bruce A. Hollen, Russell Perry
2021, Movement Ecology (9)
Studies of animal movement using location data are often faced with two challenges. First, time series of animal locations are likely to arise from multiple behavioral states (e.g., directed movement, resting) that cannot be observed directly. Second, location data can be affected by measurement error, including failed location fixes. Simultaneously...
Aquaculture and Irrigation Water-Use Model (AIWUM) version 1.0—An agricultural water-use model developed for the Mississippi Alluvial Plain, 1999–2017
Jordan L. Wilson
2021, Scientific Investigations Report 2021-5011
Water use is a critical and often uncertain component of quantifying any water budget and securing reliable and sustainable water supplies. Recent water-level declines in the Mississippi Alluvial Plain (MAP), especially in the central part of the Mississippi Delta, pose a threat to water sustainability. Aquaculture and Irrigation Water-Use Model...
Linear regression model documentation and updates for computing water-quality constituent concentrations or densities using continuous real-time water-quality data for the Kansas River, Kansas, July 2012 through September 2019
Thomas J. Williams
2021, Open-File Report 2021-1018
The Kansas River provides drinking water to about 800,000 people in northeastern Kansas. Water-treatment facilities that use the Kansas River as a water-supply source use chemical and physical processes during water treatment to remove contaminants before public distribution. Advanced notification of changing water-quality conditions near water-supply intakes allows water-treatment facilities...
Dynamic Energy Budget modelling to predict eastern oyster growth, reproduction, and mortality under river management and climate change scenarios
Romain Lavaud, Megan La Peyre, Justic Dubravko, Jerome F. La Peyre
2021, Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science (251)
Eastern oysters growing in deltaic Louisiana estuaries in the northern Gulf of Mexico must tolerate considerable salinity variation from natural climate variability (e.g., rainfall and stream run-off pushing isohalines offshore; tropical storms pushing isohalines inshore) and man-made diversions and siphons releasing freshwater from the Mississippi River. These salinity variations are...
Synthesis of geochronologic research on Late Pliocene to Holocene emergent shorelines in the lower Savannah River area of southeastern Georgia, USA
Helaine W. Markewich, Milan J. Pavich, Shannon A. Mahan, Paul R. Bierman, Wilma B. Aleman-Gonzalez, Arthur P. Schultz
2021, Open-File Report 2021-1015
Emergent late Pliocene and Pleistocene shoreline deposits, morphologically identifiable Pleistocene shoreline units, and seaward-facing scarps characterize the easternmost Atlantic Coastal Plain (ACP) of the United States of America. In some areas of the ACP, these deposits, units, and scarps have been studied in detail. Within these areas, temporal and spatial...
Implementation plan for the southern Pacific Border and Sierra-Cascade Mountains provinces
Victoria E. Langenheim, Russell W. Graymer, Robert E. Powell, Kevin M. Schmidt, Donald S. Sweetkind
2021, Open-File Report 2021-1012
IntroductionThe National Cooperative Geologic Mapping Program (NCGMP) is publishing a strategic plan titled Renewing the National Cooperative Geologic Mapping Program as the Nation’s Authoritative Source for Modern Geologic Knowledge (Brock and others, in press). The plan provides a vision, mission, and goals for the program during the years 2020–2030, which...
Climate change may cause shifts in growth and instantaneous natural mortality of American Shad throughout their native range
Erin K. Gilligan, Daniel S. Stich, Katherine E. Mills, Michael M. Bailey, Joseph D. Zydlewski
2021, Transactions of the American Fisheries Society (150) 407-421
American Shad Alosa sapidissima is an anadromous species with populations ranging along the U.S. Atlantic coast. Past American Shad stock assessments have been data limited and estimating system-specific growth parameters or instantaneous natural mortality (M) was not possible. This precluded system-specific stock assessment and management due to reliance...
Abiotic stress and biotic factors mediate range dynamics on opposing edges
Alexej P. K. Siren, Christopher Sutherland, Chris Bernier, Kimberly Royar, Jillian R. Kilborn, Catherine Callahan, Rachel Cliche, Leighlan S. Prout, Toni Lyn Morelli
2021, Journal of Biogeography (48) 1758-1772
AimIn the face of global change, understanding causes of range limits are one of the most pressing needs in biogeography and ecology. A prevailing hypothesis is that abiotic stress forms cold (upper latitude/altitude) limits, whereas biotic interactions create warm (lower) limits. A new framework – Interactive Range-Limit...
Postcaldera intrusive magmatism at the Platoro caldera complex, Southern Rocky Mountain volcanic field, Colorado, USA
Amy K. Gilmer, Ren A. Thompson, Peter W. Lipman, Jorge A. Vazquez, Amanda Souders
2021, Geosphere (17) 898-931
The Oligocene Platoro caldera complex of the San Juan volcanic locus in Colorado (USA) features numerous exposed plutons both within the caldera and outside its margins, enabling investigation of the timing and evolution of postcaldera magmatism. Intrusion whole-rock geochemistry and phenocryst and/or mineral trace element compositions coupled with new zircon...
Introduction to limnogeology: Progress, challenges, and opportunities: A tribute to Elizabeth Gierlowski-Kordesch
Michael R. Rosen, Lisa Park Boush, David Finkelstein, Sila Pla-Pueyo
2021, Book chapter, Limnogeology: Progress, challenges and opportunities: A tribute to Elizabeth Gierlowski-Kordesch
Elizabeth Gierlowski-Kordesch (1956–2016) was a leader and innovator in the specialty field of limnogeology since its beginnings in the late 1980s. Her excitement for field work and examining sediments was contagious, and she was always testing new research ideas. Beth would have been thrilled with the diversity of papers presented...
Graph-based reinforcement learning for active learning in real time: An application in modeling river networks
Xiaowei Jia, Beiyu Lin, Jacob Aaron Zwart, Jeffrey Michael Sadler, Alison P. Appling, Samantha K. Oliver, Jordan Read
2021, Conference Paper, Proceedings of the 2021 SIAM International Conference on Data Mining
Effective training of advanced ML models requires large amounts of labeled data, which is often scarce in scientific problems given the substantial human labor and material cost to collect labeled data. This poses a challenge on determining when and where we should deploy measuring instruments (e.g., in-situ sensors) to collect...
Embracing ensemble species distribution models to inform at-risk species status assessments
C. Ramirez-Reyes, M. Nazeri, Garrett Street, D. T. Jones-Ferrand, Francisco Vilella, K. O. Evans
2021, Journal of Fish and Wildlife Management (12) 98-111
Conservation planning depends on reliable information regarding the geographic distribution of species. However, our knowledge of species' distributions is often incomplete, especially when species are cryptic, difficult to survey, or rare. The use of species distribution models has increased in recent years and proven a valuable tool to evaluate habitat...
An integrated population model for harvest management of Atlantic brant
A.J. Roberts, J.L. Dooly, Beth Ross, T.C. Nichols, J.O. Leafloor, K.W. Dufour
2021, Journal of Wildlife Management (85) 897-908
Atlantic brant (Branta bernicla hrota) are important game birds in the Atlantic Flyway and several long-term monitoring data sets could assist with harvest management, including a count-based survey and demographic data. Considering their relative strengths and weaknesses, integrated analysis to these data would likely improve harvest management, but tools for...
Investigating the morphological and genetic divergence of arctic char (Salvelinus alpinus) populations in lakes of arctic Alaska
Stephen L. Klobucar, Jessica A. Rick, Elizabeth G. Mandeville, Catherine E. Wagner, Phaedra E. Budy
2021, Ecology and Evolution (11) 3040-3057
Polymorphism facilitates coexistence of divergent morphs (e.g., phenotypes) of the same species by minimizing intraspecific competition, especially when resources are limiting. Arctic char (Salvelinus sp.) are a Holarctic fish often forming morphologically, and sometimes genetically, divergent morphs. In this study, we assessed the morphological and genetic diversity and divergence of 263...
Heterotrophic respiration and the divergence of productivity and carbon sequestration
Asko Noormets, Rosvel Bracho, Eric Ward, John Seiler, Brian Strahm, Wen Lin, Kristin McElligott, Jean-Christophe Domec, Carlos Gonzalez-Benecke, Eric J. Jokela, Daniel M. Markewitz, Cassandra Meek, Guofang Miao, Steve G. McNulty, John S. King, Lisa Samuelson, Ge Sun, Robert Teskey, Jason R. Vogel, Rodney E. Will, Jinyan Yang, Timothy A. Martin
2021, Geophysical Research Letters (48)
Net primary productivity (NPP) and net ecosystem production (NEP) are often used interchangeably, as their difference, heterotrophic respiration (soil heterotrophic CO2 efflux, RSH = NPP−NEP), is assumed a near-fixed fraction of NPP. Here, we show, using a range-wide replicated experimental study in loblolly pine (Pinus taeda) plantations that RSH responds differently than NPP to...
The formation, transport, and breakup of submerged oil-particle aggregates in Great Lakes riverine environments
John Berens, Michel C. Boufadel, Faith A. Fitzpatrick, Marcelo H. Garcia, Jacob S. Hassan, Earl Hayter, Lori Jones, Susan Mravik, David Waterman
2021, Research Brief EPA/600/S-21/061
The formation, transport, and resuspension of oil-particle aggregates (OPA) in freshwater environments are of much interest to oil spill responders and scientists, especially as transportation of light and heavy crude oils has substantially increased across river corridors and coasts in the Great Lakes Basin. The persistent sheening from accumulated OPA...
Predicting the spatiotemporal exposure of aquatic species to intrusions of fire retardant in streams with limited data
Chris R. Rehmann, P. Ryan Jackson, Holly J. Puglis
2021, Science of the Total Environment (782)
Because fire retardant can enter streams and harm aquatic species including endangered fish, agencies such as the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) must estimate the downstream extent of toxic effects every time fire retardant enters streams (denoted as an “intrusion”). A challenge in estimating the length of stream...
