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This report provides an overview of model-based climate science in a risk management context. In addition, it summarizes how the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) will continue to follow best scientific practices and when and how the results of this research will be delivered to the U.S. Department of the Interior...

Agricultural land use is typically associated with high stream nutrient concentrations and increased nutrient loading to lakes. For lakes, evidence for these associations mostly comes from studies on individual lakes or watersheds that relate concentrations of nitrogen (N) or phosphorus (P) to aggregate measures of agricultural land use, such as...

The novel β-coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, may pose a threat to North American bat populations if bats are exposed to the virus through interaction with humans, if the virus can subsequently infect bats and be transmitted among them, and if the virus causes morbidity or mortality in bats. Further, if SARS-CoV-2 became...

Efforts to conserve biodiversity increasingly focus on identifying climate‐change refugia – areas relatively buffered from contemporary climate change over time that enable species persistence. Identification of refugia typically includes modeling the distribution of a species’ current habitat and then extrapolating that distribution given projected changes in temperature and precipitation, or...

This paper outlines the development and demonstration of a new tool, TOUGH2–ChemPlugin (T2CPI) for predicting rock–water–CO2 interaction following injection of supercritical CO2 into a heterogeneous carbonate system. Specifically, modeling capabilities of TOUGH2, which examines multiphase flow and supercritical CO2 behavior, were combined with the geochemical modeling capabilities of The Geochemist’s Workbench® (GWB), using ChemPluginTM....

BackgroundUse of genomic tools to characterize wildlife populations has increased in recent years. In the past, genetic characterization has been accomplished with more traditional genetic tools (e.g., microsatellites). The explosion of genomic methods and the subsequent creation of large SNP datasets has led to the promise of increased...

The U.S. Geological Survey’s Precipitation-Runoff Modeling System (PRMS) is widely used to simulate the effects of climate, topography, land cover, and soils on landscape-level hydrologic response and streamflow. This study developed, calibrated, and assessed a PRMS model that simulates near-native or naturalized streamflow conditions in the Upper Rio Grande Basin....

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) is responsible for reviewing the biological status of hundreds of species to determine federal status designations under the Endangered Species Act. The longleaf pine Pinus palustris ecological system supports many priority at-risk species designated for review, including five species of herpetofauna: gopher tortoise Gopherus polyphemus, southern...

The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission established the National Uranium Resources Evaluation (NURE) program in 1973 to identify uranium resources throughout the United States. Part of this program focused on the collection of stream-sediment samples and subsequent geochemical analyses of these samples for uranium, in addition to 47 other elements. As...

This project was funded by the Louisiana Trustee Implementation Group (LA TIG) to support decisions related to investments in long-term monitoring. The LA TIG seeks to ensure long-term monitoring informs coastal restoration activities with the goal of sustaining and improving fisheries impacted by the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) Oil Spill. The...

We evaluate the timeliness and accuracy of ground‐motion‐based earthquake early warning (EEW) during the July 2019 M6.4 and 7.1 Ridgecrest earthquakes. In 2018, we began retrospective and internal real‐time testing of the propagation of local undamped motion (PLUM) method for earthquake warning in California, Oregon, and Washington, with the potential...

Retroarc foreland basins are important archives of continental arc magmatism and upper plate deformational processes that control the evolution of continental lithosphere. However, resolving source areas in foreland basin infill dominated from mixed mafic and recycled sediment using conventional methods such as detrital zircon geochronology poses a challenge to thorough...

Climate-change-driven shifts in distribution and abundance have been documented in many species. However, in order to better predict species responses, managers are seeking to understand the mechanisms that are driving these changes, including any thresholds that might soon be crossed. Leveraging the research that has already been supported by...

Within the Big Bend region of the northeastern Gulf of Mexico, one of the least developed coastlines in the continental USA, intertidal and subtidal populations of eastern oyster Crassostrea virginica (hereafter referred to as “oyster”) are a critical ecosystem and important economic constituent. We assessed trends in intertidal oyster populations,...

Most methods for the assessment of sinkhole hazard susceptibility are predicated upon knowledge of pre-existing closed depressions in karst areas. In the United States (U.S.), inventories of existing karst depressions are piecemeal, and are often obtained through inconsistent methodologies applied at the state or county level and at...

Predicting the success of future investments in coastal and estuarine ecosystem restorations is limited by scarce data quantifying sediment budgets and transport processes of prior restorations. This study provides detailed analyses of the hydrodynamics and sediment fluxes of a recently restored U.S. Pacific Northwest estuary, a 61 ha former agricultural...

Detailed information about landslide occurrence is the foundation for advancing process understanding, susceptibility mapping, and risk reduction. Despite the recent revolution in digital elevation data and remote sensing technologies, landslide mapping remains resource intensive. Consequently, a modern, comprehensive map of landslide occurrence across the United States (USA) has not been...

Forest dynamics arise from the interplay of environmental drivers and disturbances with the demographic processes of recruitment, growth, and mortality, subsequently driving biomass and species composition. However, forest disturbances and subsequent recovery are shifting with global changes in climate and land use, altering these dynamics. Changes...

Nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) are environmental bacteria that may cause chronic lung disease. Environmental factors that favor NTM growth likely increase the risk of NTM exposure within specific environments. We aimed to identify water-quality constituents (Al, As, Cd, Ca, Cu, Fe, Pb, Mg, Mn, Mo, Ni, K, Se,...

The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, assessed the chemical characteristics and the occurrence, distribution, and oxidation state of inorganic arsenic in drinking water from selected domestic well-water supplies in Maine in 2001–2...

Mesoproterozoic and Neoproterozoic basins in western North America record the evolving position of the Laurentian craton within two supercontinents during their growth and dismemberment: Columbia (Nuna) and Rodinia. The western-most exposures of the Columbia rift-related Belt–Purcell Supergroup are preserved in northeastern Washington, structurally overlain by the Deer Trail Group and...

Suicide Basin is a partly glacierized marginal basin of Mendenhall Glacier, Alaska, that has released glacier lake outburst floods (GLOFs) annually since 2011. The floods cause inundation and erosion in the Mendenhall Valley, impacting homes and other infrastructure. Here, we utilize in-situ and remote sensing data to assess the recent evolution and...

An eruption of the Soufrière Hills Volcano (SHV) on the eastern Caribbean island of Montserrat began on 18 July 1995 and continued until February 2010. Within nine days of the eruption onset, an existing four‐station analog seismic network (ASN) was expanded to 10 sites. Telemetered data from this network were...

Estuaries play an uncertain but potentially important role in the global carbon cycle via CO2 outgassing. The uncertainty mainly stems from the paucity of studies that document the full spatial and temporal variability of estuarine surface water partial pressure of carbon dioxide ( pCO2). Here, we explore the potential of utilizing the...

The U.S. Geological Survey’s geodetic response to the 4–5 July 2019 (Pacific time) Ridgecrest earthquake sequence comprised primarily the installation and/or reoccupation of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) monumentation. Our response focused primarily on the United States’ Navy’s China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station base (NAWSCL). This focus was because...