Physics‐based evaluation of the maximum magnitude of potential earthquakes induced by the Hutubi (China) underground gas storage
Guoyan Jiang, Lin Liu, Andrew J. Barbour, Renqi Lu, Hongfeng Yang
2021, JGR Solid Earth (126)
The world’s largest underground gas storage facility in Hutubi (HUGS), China, is a unique case where cyclic gas injection‐extraction induced both seismicity and ground deformation. To assess the potential for future induced seismicity, we develop a framework physically based on a well‐constrained hydro‐geomechanical model and on fully...
Suitability of an upper Mississippi River tributary for invasive carp reproduction
Carlos A. Camacho, Christopher J. Sullivan, Michael J. Weber, Clay Pierce
2021, North American Journal of Fisheries Management (43) 12-24
Invasive carp are expanding throughout the upper Mississippi River basin and are of great concern due to their potential economic and ecological impacts. Identification of spawning locations provides critical information on recruitment sources to evaluate potential management strategies. Our objective was to create and validate a spawning habitat suitability model...
Assessment of water quality and discharge in the Herring River, Wellfleet, Massachusetts, November 2015 to September 2017
Thomas G. Huntington, Alana B. Spaetzel, John A. Colman, Kevin D. Kroeger, Robert T. Bradley
2021, Scientific Investigations Report 2020-5120
The U.S. Geological Survey, Cape Cod National Seashore of the National Park Service, and Friends of Herring River cooperated from 2015 to 2017 to assess nutrient concentrations and fluxes across the ocean-estuary boundary at a dike on the Herring River in Wellfleet, Massachusetts. The purpose of this assessment was to...
Assessment of contaminant trends in plumes and wells and monitoring network optimization at the Badger Army Ammunition Plant, Sauk County, Wisconsin
Matthew Pajerowski, Phillip J. Goodling, Marina J. Metes
2021, Scientific Investigations Report 2020-5106
Soil and groundwater at the Badger Army Ammunition Plant (BAAP), Sauk County, Wisconsin, were affected by several contaminants as a result of production and waste disposal practices common during its operation from 1942 to 1975. Three distinct plumes of contaminated groundwater originate on BAAP property and extend off-site, as identified...
Across borders: External factors and prior behaviour influence North Pacific albatross associations with fishing vessels
Rachael A Orben, Josh Adams, Michelle M. Hester, Scott A. Shaffer, Robert M. Suryan, Tomo Deguchi, Kiyoaki Ozaki, Fumio Sato, Lindsay C. Young, Corey A. Clatterbuck, Melinda G. Conners, David A Kroodsma, Leigh G Torres
2021, Journal of Applied Ecology (58) 1272-1283
Understanding encounters between marine predators and fisheries across national borders and outside national jurisdictions offers new perspectives on unwanted interactions to inform ocean management and predator conservation. Although seabird–fisheries overlap has been documented at many scales, remote identification of vessel encounters has lagged because vessel movement data often are...
Forecasting ecological responses for wetland restoration planning in Florida's Everglades
Stephanie Romanach, Leonard G. Pearlstine
2021, Book chapter, Reference module in earth systems and environmental sciences
The Everglades wetland was once a river of grass, with water flowing slowly through the sawgrass, southward across the landscape. As developers took hold of south Florida, water was sent away from the heart of the Everglades through canals and levees...
Exploring VIIRS continuity with MODIS in an expedited capability for monitoring drought-related vegetation conditions
Trenton D Benedict, Jesslyn F. Brown, Stephen P. Boyte, Daniel Howard, Brian Fuchs, Brian D. Wardlow, Tsegaye Tadesse, Kirk Evenson
2021, Remote Sensing (13)
Vegetation has been effectively monitored using remote sensing time-series vegetation index (VI) data for several decades. Drought monitoring has been a common application with algorithms tuned to capturing anomalous temporal and spatial vegetation patterns. Drought stress models, such as the Vegetation Drought Response Index (VegDRI), often use VIs like the...
Assessment of sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus) diet using DNA metabarcoding of feces
Nicholas S. Johnson, Sean A. Lewandoski, Christopher M. Merkes
2021, Ecological Indicators (125)
Sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus) are invasive in the Laurentian Great Lakes, parasitize large-bodied fishes, and therefore are the focus of an international control program. However, damage caused by sea lamprey to modern day fish stocks remains uncertain because diet analysis of juvenile sea lamprey has been challenging; they feed on...
Geological constraints on the mechanisms of slow earthquakes
James D. Kirkpatrick, Ake Fagereng, David R. Shelly
2021, Nature Reviews Earth and Environment (2) 285-301
The recognition of slow earthquakes in geodetic and seismological data has transformed the understanding of how plate motions are accommodated at major plate boundaries. Slow earthquakes, which slip more slowly than regular earthquakes but faster than plate motion velocities, occur in a range of tectonic and metamorphic settings. They exhibit...
The effects of management practices on grassland birds—Lark Sparrow (Chondestes grammacus)
Jill A. Shaffer, Lawrence D. Igl, Douglas H. Johnson, Marriah L. Sondreal, Christopher M. Goldade, Barry D. Parkin, Betty R. Euliss
2021, Professional Paper 1842-DD
Keys to Lark Sparrow (Chondestes grammacus) management include providing open grasslands with sparse-to-moderate herbaceous and litter cover and a woody component and allowing occasional burning or moderate grazing. Lark Sparrows have been reported to use habitats with 10–63 centimeters (cm) average vegetation height, 10–54 percent grass cover, 9–25 percent forb...
Evaluating low flow patterns, drivers and trends in the Delaware River Basin
John C. Hammond, Brandon J. Fleming
2021, Journal of Hydrology (598)
In the humid, temperate Delaware River Basin (DRB) where water availability is generally reliable, summer low flows can cause competition between various human and ecological water uses. As temperatures continue to rise, population increases and development expands, it is critical to...
Natural and anthropogenic geochemical tracers to investigate residence times and groundwater–surface-water interactions in an urban alluvial aquifer
Connor P. Newman, Suzanne S. Paschke, Gabrielle L. Keith
2021, Water (13)
A multi-component geochemical dataset was collected from groundwater and surface-water bodies associated with the urban Fountain Creek alluvial aquifer, Colorado, USA, to facilitate analysis of recharge sources, geochemical interactions, and groundwater-residence times. Results indicate that groundwater can be separated into three distinct geochemical zones based on location within the flow...
Assessment of a claimed ultra-low frequency electromagnetic (ULFEM) earthquake precursor
Can Wang, Lilianna Christman, Simon Klemperer, Jonathan M.G. Glen, Darcy McPhee, Chen Bin
2021, Geophysical Journal International (229) 2081-2095
The rate of occurrence of anomalous ultra-low frequency electromagnetic (ULFEM) pulses has been claimed to have increased days to weeks prior to the M5.4 2007 and M4.0 2010 Alum Rock earthquakes. We re-examine the previously reported ultra-low frequency (ULF: 0.01–10 Hz) magnetic data recorded at a QuakeFinder site located 9 km...
The basin characterization model—A regional water balance software package
Lorraine E. Flint, Alan L. Flint, Michelle A. Stern
2021, Techniques and Methods 6-H1
This report documents the computer software package, Basin Characterization Model, version 8 (BCMv8)—a monthly, gridded, regional water-balance model—and provides detailed operational instructions and example applications. After several years of many applications and uses of a previous version, CA-BCM, published in 2014, the BCMv8 was refined to improve the accuracy of...
Mapping climate change vulnerability of aquatic-riparian ecosystems using decision-relevant indicators
John T. Delaney, Kristen L. Bouska, Josh D. Eash, Patricia J. Heglund, Andrew A Allstadt
2021, Ecological Indicators (125)
Climate change has and is projected to continue to alter historical regimes of temperature, precipitation, and hydrology. To assess the vulnerability of climate change from a land management perspective and spatially identify where the most extreme changes are anticipated to occur,...
Scalability and performance tradeoffs in quantifying relationships between elevation and tidal wetland plant communities
James R. Holmquist, Lisa Schile-Beers, Kevin J. Buffington, Meng Lu, Thomas J Mozdzer, Jefferson Riera, Donald E. Weller, Meghan Williams, J Patrick Megonigal
2021, Marine Progress Series (666) 57-72
Elevation is a major driver of plant ecology and sediment dynamics in tidal wetlands, so accurate and precise spatial data are essential for assessing wetland vulnerability to sea-level rise and making forecasts. We performed survey-grade elevation and vegetation surveys of the Global Change Research Wetland, a brackish microtidal wetland...
A roadmap for sampling and scaling biological nitrogen fixation in terrestrial ecosystems
Fiona M. Soper, Benton Taylor, Joy Winbourne, Michelle Wong, Katherine A Dynarski, Carla R. G. Reis, Mark Peoples, Cory Cleveland, Sasha C. Reed, Duncan Menge, Steven S. Perakis
2021, Methods in Ecology and Evolution (12) 1122-1137
Accurately quantifying rates and patterns of biological nitrogen fixation (BNF) in terrestrial ecosystems is essential to characterize ecological and biogeochemical interactions, identify mechanistic controls, improve BNF representation in conceptual and numerical modelling, and forecast nitrogen limitation constraints on future carbon (C) cycling.While many resources address the technical advantages and...
SFRmaker and Linesink-Maker: Rapid construction of streamflow routing networks from hydrography data
Andrew T. Leaf, Michael N. Fienen, Howard W. Reeves
2021, Groundwater (59) 761-771
Groundwater models have evolved to encompass more aspects of the water cycle, but the incorporation of realistic boundary conditions representing surface water remains time-consuming and error-prone. We present two Python packages that robustly automate this process using readily available hydrography data as the primary input. SFRmaker...
Simulation of groundwater flow in the aquifer system of the Anacostia River and surrounding watersheds, Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia
Jeff P. Raffensperger, Lois M. Voronin, Cheryl A. Dieter
2021, Scientific Investigations Report 2013-5225
The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the District Department of Energy & Environment, Water Quality Division, is investigating the hydrogeology of the tidal Anacostia River watershed within Washington, D.C., with the goal of improving understanding of the groundwater-flow system and the interaction of groundwater and surface water in the...
Black abalone surveys at Naval Base Ventura County, San Nicolas Island, California—2020, annual report
Michael C. Kenner
2021, Open-File Report 2021-1023
The U.S. Geological Survey monitors a suite of intertidal black abalone sites at San Nicolas Island, California, in cooperation with the U.S. Navy, which owns the island. The nine rocky intertidal sites were established in 1980 to study the potential impact of translocated sea otters on the intertidal black abalone...
The 2018 update of the US National Seismic Hazard Model: Ground motion models in the central and eastern US
Sanaz Rezaeian, Peter M. Powers, Allison M. Shumway, Mark D. Petersen, Nico Luco, Arthur D. Frankel, Morgan P. Moschetti, Eric M. Thompson, Daniel McNamara
2021, Earthquake Spectra (37) 1354-1390
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) National Seismic Hazard Model (NSHM) is the scientific foundation of seismic design regulations in the United States and is regularly updated to consider the best available science and data. The 2018 update of the conterminous US NSHM includes major changes to the underlying ground...
Dating fault damage along the eastern Denali fault zone with hematite (U-Th)/He thermochronometry
Robert G. McDermott, Alexis K. Ault, Jonathan Saul Caine
2021, Earth and Planetary Science Letters (563)
Unraveling complex slip histories in fault damage zones to understand relations among deformation, hydrothermal alteration, and surface uplift remains a challenge. The dextral eastern Denali fault zone (EDFZ; southwest Yukon, Canada) bounds the Kluane Ranges and hosts a variety of fault-related rocks, including hematite fault surfaces, which have been exhumed...
A numerical study of wave-driven mean flows and setup dynamics at a coral reef-lagoon system
Dirk P. Rijnsdorp, Mark L. Buckley, Renan da Silva, Mike Cuttler, Jeff Hansen, Ryan Lowe, Rebecca H. Green, Curt D. Storlazzi
2021, Journal of Geophysical Research-Oceans (126)
Two-dimensional mean wave-driven flow and setup dynamics were investigated at a reef-lagoon system at Ningaloo Reef, Western Australia, using the numerical wave-flow model, SWASH. Phase-resolved numerical simulations of the wave and flow fields, validated with highly detailed field observations (including >10 sensors through the energetic surf zone),...
A comparison between generalized least squares regression and top-kriging for homogeneous cross-correlated flood regions
Persiano Simone, Jose Luis Salinas, Jery Russell Stedinger, William H. Farmer, David Lun, Alberto Viglione, Gunter Bloschl, Attilio Castellarin
2021, Hydrological Sciences Journal (66) 565-579
Spatial cross-correlation among flood sequences impacts the accuracy of regional predictors. Our study investigates this impact for two regionalization procedures, generalized least squares (GLS) regression and top-kriging (TK), which deal with cross-correlation in two fundamentally different ways and therefore might be associated with different accuracy and uncertainty...
Lava effusion rate evolution and erupted volume during the 2018 Kīlauea lower East Rift Zone eruption
Hannah R. Dietterich, Angela K. Diefenbach, S. Adam Soule, Michael H. Zoeller, Matthew R. Patrick, J. J. Major, Paul R. Lundgren
2021, Bulletin of Volcanology (83)
The 2018 eruption on the lower East Rift Zone of Kīlauea Volcano produced one of the largest and most destructive lava flows in Hawai’i during the past 200 years. Over the course of more than 3 months, twenty-four fissures erupted, and the rate of lava effusion varied by two orders...