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Large magnitude snow avalanches pose a hazard to humans and infrastructure worldwide. Analyzing the spatiotemporal behavior of avalanches and the contributory climate factors is important for understanding historical variability in climate-avalanche relationships as well as improving avalanche forecasting. We used established dendrochronological methods to develop a long-term (1867–2019) regional avalanche...

The Rio Grande/Río Bravo del Norte (hereinafter referred to as the “Rio Grande”) is the primary source of recharge to the Mesilla Basin/Conejos-Médanos aquifer system in the Mesilla Valley of New Mexico and Texas. The Mesilla Basin aquifer system is the U.S. part of the Mesilla Basin/Conejos-Médanos...

Accurate population estimates provide the foundation for managing feral horses (Equus caballus ferus) across the western United States. Certain feral horse populations are protected by the Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971 and managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) or the United States Forest Service...

Trichuris spp. are common helminths in NHP, and benzimidazoles and avermectins have both been used to treat these intestinal parasites. The current study compared the efficacy of fenbendazole and ivermectin against natural infection of Trichuris spp. in African green monkeys (Chlorocebus sabaeus). Anthelmintic-naive animals (n = 65) were randomly assigned...

Tradeoff theory, which postulates that virulence provides both transmission costs and benefits for pathogens, has become widely adopted by the scientific community. Although theoretical literature exploring virulence-tradeoffs is vast, empirical studies validating various assumptions still remain sparse. In particular, truncation of transmission duration as a cost...

The need of citizens in any nation to access geospatial data in readily usable form is critical to societal well-being, and in the United States (US), demands for information by scientists, students, professionals and citizens continue to grow. Areas such as public health, urbanization, resource management, economic development and environmental...

Energy acquisition and storage are important for survival and fecundity of birds during resource-limited periods such as spring migration. Plasma-lipid metabolites (i.e. triglyceride [TRIG], β-hydroxybutyrate [BOHB]) have been used to index changes in lipid stores and, thus, have utility for assessing foraging habitat quality during migration. However, such an index...

Extreme hydrologic responses following wildfires can lead to floods and debris flows with costly economic and societal impacts. Process-based hydrologic and geomorphic models used to predict the downstream impacts of wildfire must account for temporal changes in hydrologic parameters related to the generation and subsequent routing...

Any large, multifaceted data collection that is challenging to handle with traditional management practices can be branded ‘Big Data.’ Any big data containing geo-referenced attributes can be considered big geospatial data. The increased proliferation of big geospatial data is currently reforming the geospatial industry into a data-driven enterprise....

Development of comprehensive spatially explicit fire occurrence data remains one of the most critical needs for fire managers globally, and especially for conservation across the southeastern United States. Not only are many endangered species and ecosystems in that region reliant on frequent fire, but fire risk analysis, prescribed fire planning,...

Financial risk due to geological uncertainty is a major barrier for geothermal development. Production from a geothermal well depends on the unknown location of subsurface geological structures, such as faults that contain hydrothermal fluids. Traditionally, geoscientists collect many different datasets, interpret the...

Distilling my experience in having field mapped in detail the volcanic fields at Laguna del Maule and Long Valley and having worked out their time-volume-composition magmatic histories, I compare and contrast the postglacial rhyolites of the former with six multi-vent eruptive sequences of rhyolite in California....

The unknown onshore extent of megathrust earthquake rupture in the Cascadia subduction zone represents a key uncertainty in earthquake hazard for the Pacific Northwest that is governed by the physical state and mechanical properties of the plate interface. The Cascadia plate interface is segmented into an interseismically locked zone located...

Understanding groundwater flow and pumping effects near pending mining operations requires accurate subsurface hydraulic characterization. To improve conceptual models of groundwater flow and development in the complex hydrogeologic system near Long Canyon Mine, in northwestern Goshute Valley, northeastern Nevada, the U.S. Geological Survey characterized the hydraulic properties of carbonate...

Many shorebirds rely on small numbers of staging sites during long annual migrations. Numerous shorebird species are declining and understanding the importance of these staging sites is important for successful conservation. We surveyed endangered rufa red knots (Calidris canutus rufa) staging in James Bay, Ontario, Canada, during southbound migration in...

Geogenic arsenic contamination typically occurs in groundwater as opposed to surface water supplies. Groundwater is a major source for many community water systems (CWSs) in the United States (US). Although the US Environmental Protection Agency sets the maximum contaminant level (MCL enforceable since 2006:...

AimEvolutionary radiations are central to the origin and maintenance of biodiversity, yet we rarely understand how they are jointly shaped by demography and ecological opportunity. Astragalus is the largest plant genus in the world and is disproportionately comprised of rare species restricted to narrow geographic and ecological regions. Here,...

Active traces of the southern Fairweather fault were revealed by light detection and ranging (lidar) and show evidence for transpressional deformation between North America and the Yakutat block in southeast Alaska. We map the Holocene geomorphic expression of tectonic deformation along the southern 30...

The management of biological invasions is a worldwide conservation priority. Unfortunately, decision-making on optimal invasion management can be impeded by lack of information about the biological processes that determine invader success (i.e. biological uncertainty) or by uncertainty about the effectiveness of candidate interventions (i.e. operational uncertainty). Concurrent assessment of...

North America's protected lands harbor biodiversity and provide habitats where species threatened by a variety of stressors in other environments can thrive. Yet disease, climate change, and other threats are not limited by land management boundaries and can interact with conditions within protected landscapes to affect...

On sea turtle nesting beaches, artificial lighting associated with human development interferes with hatchling orientation from nest to sea. Although hatchling disorientation has been documented for many beaches, data that managers can use in understanding, predicting, and managing the issue are of limited detail. The present study provides baseline hatchling...

Long-term studies of stream ecosystems are essential for assessing restoration success because they allow researchers to quantify recovery trajectories, gauge the relative influence of episodic events, and determine the time required to achieve clean-up objectives. To quantify responses of benthic macroinvertebrate assemblages to stream remediation, we integrated...

Understanding trophic interactions is critical for successful resource management. However, studying diet patterns (e.g., spatial and seasonal changes) can require extensive effort. Using individual analyses to interpret patterns may be further complicated by assumptions and limitations of the analytical approach. We investigated and compared predicted adult lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush)...

Volcanoes represent one of the largest natural sources of metals to the Earth’s surface. Emissions of these metals can have important impacts on the biosphere as pollutants or nutrients. Here we use ground- and drone-based direct measurements to compare the gas and particulate chemistry of the...

Interactions between plants can be beneficial, detrimental or neutral. In agricultural systems, competition between crop and spontaneous vegetation is a major concern. We evaluated the relative support for three non-exclusive ecological hypotheses about interactions between crop and spontaneous plants based on competition, complementarity or facilitation.The study was conducted in...