Metabarcoding analysis of arthropod pollinator diversity: A methodological comparison of eDNA derived from flowers and DNA derived from bulk samples of insects
Kara Suzanne Jones, David S. Pilliod, Aaron W. Aunins
2025, Molecular Ecology (34)
Limitations of traditional insect sampling methods have motivated the development and optimisation of new non-lethal methods capable of quantifying diverse arthropod communities. Environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding using arthropod-specific primers has recently been investigated as a novel way to characterise arthropod communities from the DNA they deposit on the surface of...
Anthropogenic activities have greatly altered mangroves over the last hundred years
Yao Zhang, Guangming Zhao, Ken Krauss, Lianghao Pan, Yuanqin Xu, Xianwei Meng
2025, Global and Planetary Change (253)
Mangroves not only provide ecosystem and cultural services but also contribute to the mitigation of global warming. Mangrove dynamics and their environmental responses as re-constructed from the past can inform current mangrove conservation and restoration. However, our understanding of mangrove dynamics over the past century and the impact of human...
Aquifer storage change and storage properties, Rio Rancho, New Mexico, 2019–23
Jeffrey R. Kennedy, Meghan T. Bell, William G. Seelig
2025, Scientific Investigations Report 2025-5040
To better understand changes in groundwater storage and groundwater elevations, the U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the City of Rio Rancho, New Mexico, carried out a multiyear groundwater monitoring project. Groundwater-level data were collected at 27 locations, including sites having multiple wells screened at different depths and those having...
Select elements of concern in surface water of three hydrologic basins (Delaware River, Illinois River, and Upper Colorado River)—Data screening for the development of spatial and temporal models
Mark C. Marvin-DiPasquale, R. Blaine McCleskey, Samantha L. Sullivan, Jonathan Casey Root, Serena M. Seawolf, Katherine M. Ransom, Susan Wherry, Evangelos Kakouros, Shaun Baesman
2025, Open-File Report 2025-1033
The report focuses on the screening of previously published concentration data associated with 12 elements of concern (aluminum, arsenic, cadmium, chromium, copper, iron, mercury, manganese, lead, selenium, uranium, and zinc) measured in stream surface waters of three hydrologic basins (Delaware River Basin, Illinois River Basin, and the Upper Colorado River...
Widespread thiamine deficiency in California salmon linked to an anchovy-dominated marine prey base
Nate Mantua, Heather M. Bell, Anne E. Todgham, Miles E. Daniels, Jacques Rinchard, Jarrod R. Ludwig, John Field, Steven T Lindley, Freya Elizabeth Rowland, Catherine A. Richter, David Walters, Bruce P. Finney, Anne R. Distajo Haskell, Donald Tillitt, Dale C. Honeyfield, Taylor N. Lipscomb, Kevin Kwak, Jason Kindopp, Dennis E. Cocherell, Abigail Ward, Thomas H. Williams, Jeff Harding, Nann A. Fangue, Carson Jeffres, Rocio Iliana Ruiz-Cooley, Steven Litvin, Scott Foott, Mark Adkison, Brett Kormos, Peggy Harte, Frederick S. Colwell, Christopher P. Suffridge, Kelly Shannon, Amanda Cranford, Charlotte Ambrose, Aimee N. Reed, Rachel C. Johnson
2025, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (122)
Thiamine (vitamin B1) deficiency in marine systems is a globally significant threat to marine life. In 2020, newly hatched Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) fry in California’s Central Valley (CCV) hatcheries swam in corkscrew patterns and died at unusually high rates due to a lack of this essential vitamin. We subsequently...
Automated methods for processing camera trap video data for distance sampling
Trevor Bak, Richard J. Camp, Matthew D. Burt, Scott Vogt
2025, Pacific Conservation Biology (31)
ContextPopulation monitoring is an essential need for tracking biodiversity and judging efficacy of conservation management actions, both globally and in the Pacific. However, population monitoring efforts are often temporally inconsistent and limited to small scales. Motion-activated cameras (‘camera traps’) offer a way to cost-effectively monitor populations, but they also generate large...
Seasonal rotation of California pocket beaches
Jonathan A. Warrick, Daniel D. Buscombe, Kilian Vos, Andrew C. Ritchie, Bob Battalio
2025, Earth Surface Processes and Landforms (50)
Pocket beaches are short, headland-bound coastal landforms that may exhibit shoreline rotation in response to time-varying wave conditions. Here we examine the presence, location and style of pocket beach rotation along the 1700 km coast of California using a comprehensive 22-year satellite-derived shoreline dataset. These analyses identify 23 pocket beaches that...
A method to obtain remotely sensed grain size distributions from nonplanar granular deposits
Hayden L. Jacobson, Gabriel Walton, Katherine R. Barnhart, Francis K. Rengers
2025, Earth and Space Science (12)
Constraining the grain size distribution of granular deposits with complex surfaces is difficult with existing approaches. Field and laboratory techniques are time consuming and limited by the maximum grain size that laboratories can accommodate. In this study, we present a new method to identify the coarse fraction of the grain...
Multiscale framework for assessing land cover change on barrier islands from extreme storms and restoration
Nicholas Enwright, P. Soupy Dalyander, Casey M. Stuht, Minoo Han, Margaret L. Palmsten, Theresa M. Davenport, Christopher J. Kingwill, Gregory Steyer, Megan La Peyre
2025, Journal of Coastal Research (41) 1029-1042
Often found along the estuarine-marine interface, barrier islands and mainland coastal zones are shaped by tides, currents, extreme storms, and relative sea-level rise. These systems provide ecosystem services such as storm surge and wave attenuation, erosion protection to inland areas, habitat for fish and wildlife, recreation, and tourism. Given the...
Near-surface geophysics: Environmental applications
Stephanie R. James, Dan R. Glaser, Alejandro Garcia
2025, Book chapter, Oxford Bibliographies
The field of geophysics encompasses a broad and diverse compilation of methodologies that employs principles of physics to characterize properties of earth materials within the subsurface. While geophysical methods have a long history in resource exploration and studies of Earth’s interior, the subdiscipline of “near-surface geophysics” has evolved in recent...
Streamflow regime characterization in the changing boreal ecosystem: Wildfire impacts from stream-to-regional scales
Deanna D. Strohm, Christopher J. Sergeant, Josh D. Paul, Jeffrey A. Falke
2025, Science of the Total Environment (991)
The boreal ecosystem has experienced significant changes over recent decades as wildfires become more frequent, intense, and severe. As streams are highly prevalent and ecologically relevant, understanding interactions among wildfire and hydrologic patterns is important for effective aquatic ecosystem management. This study used a Bayesian mixture model to classify streamflow regimes...
Public supply water delivery analysis and estimation for the conterminous United States
Joshua Larsen, Ayman H. Alzraiee, Richard G. Niswonger, Donald Martin, Cheryl A. Buchwald, Cheryl A. Dieter, Carol L. Luukkonen, Jana S. Stewart, Scott Paulinski, Lisa D. Miller, Natalie Houston
2025, Water Resources Research (61)
Public supply water withdrawals represent 14% of all withdrawals in the conterminous United States (CONUS), supplying approximately 87% of the population with fresh water. Deliveries for public water supply are crucial for associating water use amounts with populations because they often differ from total withdrawals due to wholesales, transfers, losses,...
Biological implications for contaminants of emerging concern in the Great Lakes–Upper St Lawrence River drainage: An effect-based ecological hazard assessment in fish
Daniel J. Gefell, Amber R Bellamy, Richard L. Kiesling, Sarah M. Elliott, Stephanie L. Hummel
2025, Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (44) 3004-3023
Contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) are released widely and continuously into the Great Lakes Basin–Upper St Lawrence River study area, with many detected in surface water at concentrations known to adversely affect fish. We applied a recent ecological hazard assessment methodology to identify the biological significance of a database of...
Mixed natal origins present management challenges for a non-native fish established throughout a modified river network
Michael K. Akland, Karin E. Limburg, Brian D. Healy, William E. Pine III
2025, Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences (82) 1-13
Expansion of non-native brown trout (Salmo trutta) in the Colorado River below Glen Canyon Dam motivated reevaluation of suppression strategies to minimize potential impacts to native fishes in the Grand Canyon, Arizona, USA. Brown trout are one of several non-native fish species of management concern in this river reach, and...
Fine-scale spatial risk models to predict avian collisions with power lines
James M. Pay, Elissa Z. Cameron, Clare E. Hawkins, Christopher Johnson, Amelia J. Koch, Jason M. Wiersma, Todd E. Katzner
2025, Journal of Applied Ecology (62) 1820-1830
1. Avian fatalities caused by collisions with overhead power lines are an important conservation issue worldwide. Although mitigation strategies can help reduce mortalities, given their considerable cost and the vast scale of power line infrastructure, cost-effective action requires that these efforts be prioritised to areas with the highest potential risk...
Borehole geophysical time-series logging to monitor passive ISCO treatment of residual chlorinated-ethenes in a confining bed, NAS Pensacola, Florida
Philip Harte, Michael A. Singletary, James E. Landmeyer
2025, Hydrology Journal (12)
In-situ chemical oxidation (ISCO) is a common method to remediate chlorinated ethene contaminants in groundwater. Monitoring the effectiveness of ISCO can be hindered because of insufficient observations to assess oxidant delivery. Advantageously, potassium permanganate, one type of oxidant, provides the opportunity to use its strong electrical signal as a surrogate...
Considerations for using tag-returns to monitor targeted removal of invasive fishes
Jessica C. Stanton, Benjamin J. Marcek, Marybeth K. Brey
2025, North American Journal of Fisheries Management (45) 669-683
ObjectiveTargeted removals are used for management of some invasive fish populations. Tag–return studies are one approach that can be used to assess the efficacy of targeted removals. However, there are many decisions to make when designing a tag–return study. We used simulation modeling to outline general guidelines for consideration when...
Estimated hydrogeologic, spatial, and temporal distribution of self-supplied domestic groundwater withdrawals for aquifers of the Virginia Coastal Plain
Matthew R. Kearns, Jason P. Pope
2025, Scientific Investigations Report 2025-5051
Water use from private-domestic wells accounts for nearly 40 percent of total groundwater withdrawals in the Virginia Coastal Plain Physiographic Province (henceforth called the Virginia Coastal Plain). However, because self-supplied domestic water use generally falls below the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (VDEQ) reporting and management threshold of 300,000 gallons...
Are equilibrium shoreline models just convolutions?
Sean Vitousek, Daniel D. Buscombe, Eduardo Gomez-de la Peña, Kit Calcraft, Mark A. Lundine, Kristen D. Splinter, Giovanni Coco, Patrick L. Barnard
2025, JGR Earth Surface (130)
Yes. Equilibrium shoreline models, which simulate wave-driven cross-shore erosion and accretion, are mathematically equivalent to a discrete convolution (i.e., a weighted, moving average) of a time series of wave-forcing conditions with a parameterized memory-decay kernel function. The direct equivalence between equilibrium shoreline models and convolutions reveals key theoretical aspects of...
Evaluating mark–resight survey design performance using simulation: A case study of endangered Steller sea lions
Amanda J. Warlick, Brian S. Fadely, Peter Mahoney, Sharon R. Melin, Tom Gelatt, Kim Raum-Suryan, Sarah J. Converse
2025, Ecosphere (16)
Effective monitoring is fundamental to estimating wildlife population parameters with a level of accuracy and precision that is adequate to inform management decisions. However, managers must balance trade-offs between the costs of monitoring and the resulting data quality to identify cost-effective monitoring survey designs. As such, evaluating the expected performance...
Estimating daily public supply water use by drinking water service area in New Jersey
Jennifer L. Shourds, Malia H. Scott
2025, Scientific Investigations Report 2024-5061
This report, prepared in cooperation with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, presents a method for estimating daily public supply water use by drinking water service area systems for New Jersey. The ability to accurately estimate daily public supply water use could help water supply planners in New Jersey...
The stratigraphic record of the mid-Piacenzian warm period on the Atlantic Coastal Plain
Harry J. Dowsett, Whittney Spivey
2025, Stratigraphy (22) 81-97
Anthropogenic climate change is an existential threat to our planet, impacting everything from the delicate balance of ecosystems to the availability of vital resources. Coastal regions, particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change due to rising sea levels and changing weather patterns, are experiencing increased erosion, flooding, and habitat...
Scoping decision-maker needs and science availability to support regional natural capital accounting in the U.S. Colorado River Basin
Aaron Joey Enriquez, Kenneth J. Bagstad, Katharine G. Dahm, Alicia A. Torregrosa, Rudy Schuster
2025, One Ecosystem (10)
Natural capital accounting has the potential to yield important policy insights at multiple scales, but there remains a disconnect between regional-scale natural capital accounts and their use for informing policy. In this paper, we propose a roadmap that could lead to the creation of policy-relevant regional accounts, with steps split...
Characterizing water-quality response after the 2020 Cameron Peak Fire using a novel application of the Weighted Regressions on Time, Discharge, and Season method
Manya Helene Ruckhaus, David W. Clow, Robert M. Hirsch, Tanner William Chapin
2025, Hydrological Processes (39)
The frequency and severity of wildfire activity in the western United States emphasises the utility of hydrologic models to predict water-quality response. This study presents a novel application of the Weighted Regressions on Time, Discharge and Season (WRTDS) method to assess potential changes in water quality in two watersheds draining...
Evaluating slash piles as habitat for a threatened salamander
Rachel A. Loehman, Nancy E Karraker
2025, Fire Ecology (21)
BackgroundAmplified wildfire activity in forests of the western United States threatens biodiversity. Fuel treatments can reduce fire severity, modify fire behavior, and restore forest structure and composition, yet impacts of some treatments, including slash piling and burning, on wildlife have received little attention. Piling of residual woody material...
