A distributed temperature sensing investigation of groundwater discharge to Haskell Lake, Lac du Flambeau Reservation, Wisconsin, July 27–August 1, 2016
Andrew T. Leaf
2020, Scientific Investigations Report 2020-5005
Haskell Lake is a shallow, 89-acre drainage lake in the headwaters of the Squirrel River, on the Lac du Flambeau Reservation in northern Wisconsin. Historically, this lake was an important producer of wild rice for the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians (LDF Tribe); but, beginning in...
Assessing year‐round habitat use by migratory sea ducks in a multi‐species context reveals seasonal variation in habitat selection and partitioning
Juliet S. Lamb, Peter WC Paton, Jason E. Osenkowski, Shannon S. Badzinski, Alicia Berlin, Timothy D. Bowman, Chris Dwyer, Luke J. Fara, Scott G. Gilliland, Kevin P. Kenow, Christine Lepage, Mark L. Mallory, Glenn H. Olsen, Matthew Perry, Scott A. Petrie, Jean-Pierre L. Savard, Lucas Savoy, Michael L. Schummer, Caleb S. Spiegel, Scott R. McWilliams
2020, Ecography (43) 1842-1858
Long‐distance migration presents complex conservation challenges, and migratory species often experience shortfalls in conservation due to the difficulty of identifying important locations and resources throughout the annual cycle. In order to prioritize habitats for conservation of migratory wildlife, it is necessary to understand how habitat needs change throughout the annual...
Bioclimatic modeling of potential vegetation types as an alternative to species distribution models for projecting plant species shifts under changing climates
Robert Keane, Lisa M. Holsinger, Rachel A. Loehman
2020, Forest Ecology and Management (477)
Land managers need new tools for planning novel futures due to climate change. Species distribution modeling (SDM) has been used extensively to predict future distributions of species under different climates, but their map products are often too coarse for fine-scale operational...
Reversal of forest soil acidification in the northeastern United States and eastern Canada: Site and soil factors contributing to recovery
P.W. Hazlett, C.E. Emilson, Gregory B. Lawrence, I. J. Fernandez, R. Ouimet, S.W. Bailey
2020, Soil Systems (4)
As acidic deposition has decreased across Eastern North America, forest soils at some sites are beginning to show reversal of soil acidification. However, the degree of recovery appears to vary and is not fully explained by deposition declines alone. To assess if other site and soil factors can help to...
Diets of Longnose Sucker in Yellowstone Lake, Yellowstone National Park, U.S.A.
Kaitlyn M. Furey, Hayley C. Glassic, Christopher S. Guy, Todd M. Koel, Jeffrey L. Arnold, Philip D. Doepke, Patricia E. Bigelow
2020, Journal of Freshwater Ecology (35) 291-303
Invasive species introduction and expansion is the second greatest threat to global biodiversity decline after habitat degradation. Introduced in the 1930s, the benthivorous Longnose Sucker (Catostomus catostomus) became established in Yellowstone Lake, Wyoming, USA, and used tributary streams for spawning. With this introduction, concerns were raised regarding their possible competition...
A multi-state occupancy modelling framework for robust estimation of disease prevalence in multi-tissue disease systems
Vratika Chaudhary, Samantha M Wisely, Felipe A Hernandez, James E. Hines, James D. Nichols, Madan K. Oli
2020, Journal of Applied Ecology (57) 2463-2474
Given the public health, economic and conservation implications of zoonotic diseases, their effective surveillance is of paramount importance. The traditional approach to estimating pathogen prevalence as the proportion of infected individuals in the population is biased because it fails to account for imperfect detection. A statistically robust way to...
Winter survival of female Ring-Necked Ducks in the Southern Atlantic Flyway
Tori D. Mezebish, Glenn H. Olsen, Michele Goodman, Frank C. Rohwer, Mark D. McConnell
2020, Journal of Wildlife Management (84) 1527-1535
North American waterfowl harvest regulations are largely guided by the status of breeding populations. Nonetheless, understanding the demographics of wintering waterfowl populations can elucidate the effects of hunting pressure on population dynamics. The ring‐necked duck (Aythya collaris) breeds and winters in all North American administrative flyways...
Capturing spatiotemporal patterns in presence-absence data to inform monitoring and sampling designs for the threatened Dakota skipper (Lepidoptera: Hesperiidae) in the Great Plains of the United States
Max Post van der Burg, Jane E. Austin, Mark T. Wiltermuth, Wesley E. Newton, Garrett J. MacDonald
2020, Environmental Entomology (49) 1252-1261
Declines among species of insect pollinators, especially butterflies, has garnered attention from scientists and managers. Often these declines have spurred governments to declare some species as threatened or endangered. We used existing presence–absence data from surveys for the threatened Dakota skipper Hesperia dacotae (Skinner) to build statistical maps of species presence that...
Status of groundwater-level altitudes and long-term groundwater-level changes in the Chicot, Evangeline, and Jasper aquifers, Houston-Galveston region, Texas, 2020
Christopher L. Braun, Jason K. Ramage
2020, Scientific Investigations Report 2020-5089
Since the early 1900s, most of the groundwater withdrawals in the Houston-Galveston region, Texas, have been from the three primary aquifers that compose the Gulf Coast aquifer system—the Chicot, Evangeline, and Jasper aquifers. Withdrawals from these aquifers are used for municipal supply, commercial and industrial use, and irrigation. This report,...
Strategic Plan for the North American Breeding Bird Survey, 2020–30
U.S. Geological Survey, Canadian Wildlife Service
2020, Circular 1466
The North American Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) has been the cornerstone of continental bird conservation and management for hundreds of North American bird species in the United States and Canada for more than 50 years. This strategic plan was developed in collaboration with key partners and stakeholders and charts the...
Flood-inundation maps for Dardenne Creek in St. Charles County, Missouri, 2019
David C. Heimann, Jonathon D. Voss, Paul H. Rydlund Jr.
2020, Scientific Investigations Report 2020-5060
Digital flood-inundation maps for a 9.9-mile reach of Dardenne Creek, St. Charles County, Missouri, were created by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in cooperation with the Missouri Department of Transportation, St. Charles County, and the Cities of O’Fallon and St. Peters, Mo. The flood-inundation maps, which can be accessed through the USGS Flood...
Imagery
Todd M. Folse, Thomas E. McGinnis, Leigh A. Sharp, Jonathan L. West, Melissa K. Hymel, John P. Troutman, Dona Weifenbach, William M. Boshart, Laurie B. Rodrigue, Danielle C. Richardi, W. Bernard Wood, C. Mike Miller, Elizabeth M. Robinson, Angelina M. Freeman, Camille Stagg, Brady Couvillion, Holly Beck
2020, Report, A standard operating procedures manual for the Coastwide Reference Monitoring System-Wetlands and the System-Wide Assessment and Monitoring Program: Methods for site establishment, data collection, and quality assurance/quality control
As part of CRMS, Digital Orthophoto Quarter Quadrangles (DOQQs) for the coastal region of Louisiana are created for years when coastwide land-water classifications are required. A DOQQ is a raster image in which displacement in the image caused by sensor orientation and terrain relief has been corrected. These images combine...
Now trending … Earthquake information
William S. Leith, Jeremy Fee, Eric M. Martinez, Lynda A. Lastowka
2020, Seismological Research Letters (91) 2900-2903
The U.S. Geological Survey Earthquake Hazards Program has overall successfully fulfilled its mission of providing timely earthquake information via web applications and other methods. Imagine a single month of earthquake data delivery, serving 3.6 billion total data requests, including 29 million pageviews by 7.1 million users, 606 million automated data...
Ultraviolet-assisted oiling assessment improves detection of oiled birds experiencing clinical signs of hemolytic anemia after exposure to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill
J. A. Fallon, E. P. Smith, N. Shoch, J. D. Paruk, E. A. Adams, D. C. Evers, Patrick G.R. Jodice, M. Perkins, D. E. Meatty, W. A. Hopkins
2020, Ecotoxicology (29) 1399-1408
While large-scale oil spills can cause acute mortality events in birds, there is increasing evidence that sublethal oil exposure can trigger physiological changes that have implications for individual performance and survival. Therefore, improved methods for identifying small amounts of oil on birds are needed. Because ultraviolet (UV) light can be...
Assessing the potential for spectrally based remote sensing of salmon spawning locations
Lee R. Harrison, Carl J. Legleiter, Brandon T. Overstreet, Tomoko Bell, John Hannon
2020, River Research and Applications (36) 1618-1632
Remote sensing tools are increasingly used for quantitative mapping of fluvial habitats, yet few techniques exist for continuous sampling of aquatic organisms, such as spawning salmonids. This study assessed the potential for spectrally based remote sensing of salmon spawning locations (i.e., redds) using data acquired from...
Hydrology and geomorphology of the Taiya River near the West Creek Tributary, southeast Alaska
Janet H. Curran
2020, Scientific Investigations Report 2020-5059
The Taiya River flows through the Chilkoot Trail Unit of Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park in southeast Alaska, which was founded to preserve cultural and historical resources and further understanding of natural processes active in the surrounding coastal-to-subarctic basin. Riverine processes exert an important influence on ecologically important boreal...
Understanding and documenting the scientific basis of selenium ecological protection in support of site-specific guidelines development for Lake Koocanusa, Montana, U.S.A., and British Columbia, Canada
Theresa S. Presser, David L. Naftz
2020, Open-File Report 2020-1098
Modeling of ecosystems is a part of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s protocol for developing site-specific selenium guidelines for protection of aquatic life. Selenium as an environmental contaminant is known to bioaccumulate and cause reproductive effects in fish and wildlife. Here we apply a modeling methodology—ecosystem-scale selenium modeling—to understand and document...
Novel molecular resources to facilitate future genetics research on freshwater mussels (Bivalvia: Unionidae)
Nathan A. Johnson, Chase H. Smith
2020, Data (5)
Molecular data have been an integral tool in the resolution of the evolutionary relationships and systematics of freshwater mussels, despite the limited number of nuclear markers available for Sanger sequencing. To facilitate future studies, we evaluated the phylogenetic informativeness of loci from the recently published anchored hybrid enrichment (AHE) probe...
Using density surface models to estimate spatio-temporal changes in population densities and trend
Richard J. Camp, David L Miller, Len Thomas, Steve T. Buckland, Steve J. Kendall
2020, Ecography (43) 1079-1089
Precise measures of population abundance and trend are needed for species conservation; these are most difficult to obtain for rare and rapidly changing populations. We compare uncertainty in densities estimated from spatio–temporal models with that from standard design‐based methods. Spatio–temporal models allow us to target priority areas where, and at...
Management of remnant tallgrass prairie by grazing or fire: Effects on plant communities and soil properties
Diane L. Larson, Daniel L. Hernández, Jennifer L. Larson, Julia B. Leone, Nora P. Pennarola
2020, Ecosphere (11)
Tallgrass prairie is a disturbance‐dependent ecosystem that has suffered steep declines in the midwestern United States. The necessity of disturbance, typically fire or grazing, presents challenges to managers who must apply them on increasingly small and fragmented parcels. The goal of this study was to compare...
Kelp forest monitoring at Naval Base Ventura County, San Nicolas Island, California: Fall 2018 and Spring 2019, fifth annual report
Michael C. Kenner, Joseph A. Tomoleoni
2020, Open-File Report 2020-1091
IntroductionKelp forests and rocky reefs are among the most recognized marine ecosystems and provide the primary habitat for several species of fishes, invertebrates, and algal assemblages (Stephens and others, 2006). In addition, kelp forests have been shown to be important carbon dioxide sinks (Wilmers and others, 2012) and are...
Characterization of peak streamflow and stages at selected streamgages in eastern and northeastern Oklahoma from the May to June 2019 flood event—With an emphasis on flood peaks downstream from dams and on tributaries to the Arkansas River
Jason M. Lewis, David J. Williams, Sarah J. Harris, A.R. Trevisan
2020, Open-File Report 2020-1090
As much as 22 inches of rain fell in Oklahoma in May 2019, resulting in historic flooding along the Arkansas River and its tributaries in eastern and northeastern Oklahoma. The flooding along the Arkansas River and its tributaries that began in May continued into June 2019. Peaks of record were...
Repurposing a hindcast simulation of the 1926 Great Miami Hurricane, south Florida
M. Dennis Krohn, Eric D. Swain, Catherine A. Langtimm, Jayantha Obeysekera
2020, Open-File Report 2020-1010
Hydrodynamic model hindcasts of the surface water and groundwater of the Everglades and the greater Miami, Florida, area were used to simulate hydrology using estimated storm surge height, wind field, and rainfall for the Great Miami Hurricane (GMH), which struck on September 18, 1926. Ranked estimates of losses from hurricanes...
Water-quality trends for selected sites and constituents in the international Red River of the North Basin, Minnesota and North Dakota, United States, and Manitoba, Canada, 1970–2017
Rochelle A. Nustad, Aldo V. Vecchia
2020, Scientific Investigations Report 2020-5079
A comprehensive study to evaluate water-quality trends, while considering natural hydroclimatic variability, in the Red River of the North Basin and assess water-quality conditions for the Red River of the North crossing the international boundary near Emerson, Manitoba, Canada (the binational site), was completed by the U.S. Geological Survey in...
Risk of predation on offspring reduces parental provisioning, but not flight performance or survival across early life stages
James C. Mouton, Bret W. Tobalske, Natalie A. Wright, Thomas E. Martin
2020, Functional Ecology (34) 2147-2157
Developmental responses can help young animals reduce predation risk but can also yield costs to performance and survival in subsequent life stages with major implications for lifetime fitness. Compensatory mechanisms may evolve to offset such costs, but evidence from natural systems is largely lacking.In songbirds, increased nest predation risk...
