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Kings Bay in northwest Florida, USA, is an important winter home of the largest aggregation of Florida manatee (Trichechus manatus latirostris), and the only location in the United States where visitors legally swim and interact with manatees. In addition to ambient conditions, visitors to...

Billions of animals migrate to track seasonal pulses in resources. Optimally timing migration is a key strategy, yet the ability of animals to compensate for phenological mismatches en route is largely unknown. Using GPS movement data collected from 72 adult female deer over a 10-year duration, we study a population...

Egg size is an important avian life history parameter, with larger eggs indicating greater investment of resources in the chick. Prey availability can affect such investment. We investigated the effects of oceanographic conditions and laying sequence on Scripps's Murrelet Synthliboramphus scrippsi egg size at Santa Barbara Island, California during 2009-2017. We evaluated...

In arid and semiarid systems, positive effects of nurse shrubs generally occur immediately underneath and around shrub canopies, creating microsites that can be targeted to promote plant establishment in restoration settings. Alternatively, the best microsites may occur in the interspace zone immediately surrounding nurse...

NASA's Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) is designed to provide high-resolution measurements of forest structure and topography between 52° N and S. However, current geolocation accuracy may limit further science applications of footprint-level products as early adopters have found it difficult to align with in-situ forestry inventory data and high-resolution...

A wild Agassiz's desert tortoise, Gopherus agassizii, with bilateral eyelid reduction and plaques of tissue covering the superior surface of both corneas was examined in the field and subsequently submitted to the University of Florida for diagnostics. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR), from a swab of both...

In 2022, we surveyed for Least Bell’s Vireos (Vireo bellii pusillus; vireo), Southwestern Willow Flycatchers (Empidonax traillii extimus; flycatcher), and Coastal California Gnatcatchers (Polioptila californica californica; gnatcatcher) in the Santa Fe Dam detention basin and along the San Gabriel River upstream from the Santa Fe Dam near Irwindale, California. Four...

Global change has altered the nature of disturbance regimes, and megafire events are increasingly common. Megafires result in immediate changes to habitat available to terrestrial wildlife over broad landscapes, yet we know surprisingly little about how such changes shape space use of sensitive species in habitat that remains. Functional responses...

Wastewater treatment plant effluent can increase stream water temperature from near freezing to 5°C–12°C in winter months. Recent research in the South Platte River Basin in Colorado showed that this warming alters the reproductive timing of some fishes. However, the spatial extent and magnitude of this warming are unknown. Thus,...

Coal mine methane is a safety concern in active mines due to explosion risk and an environmental concern due to the greenhouse gas (GHG) properties of methane emissions to the atmosphere. Depending on the mine design and operation, structural and stratigraphic characteristics of the geology, and the properties of...

Inaccurate taxonomy can lead to species in need of conservation being overlooked, which makes revisionary systematics crucially important for imperilled groups. The freshwater mussel genus Alasmidonta is one such group in need of study. Here, we take a multilocus phylogenetic approach to assess species-level taxonomy of Alasmidonta and test monophyly of this genus. Phylogenetic...

The Goochland terrane is a structurally isolated crustal block in the eastern Piedmont of Virginia. It is composed of the previously named State Farm Gneiss, Montpelier Anorthosite, Sabot Amphibolite, and Maidens Gneiss, but also includes the Scotchtown Gneiss, Teman Gneiss, and Old Bandana Gneiss which are formally named and defined...

A multi-agency study of 438 organic and 62 inorganic chemicals measured in urban stormwater during 50 total runoff events at 21 sites across the United States demonstrated that stormwater discharges can generate localized, aquatic exposures to extensive contaminant mixtures, including organics suspected to cause adverse aquatic-health effects. The aggregated risks...

ContextMinimizing negative impacts of wildfire is a major societal objective in fire-prone landscapes. Models of fire connectivity can aid in understanding and managing wildfires by analyzing potential fire spread and conductance patterns. We define ‘fire connectivity’ as the landscape’s capacity to facilitate fire transmission from one point on...

Increasing reliance on the use of triploid oysters to support aquaculture production relies on their generally superior growth rate and meat quality over that of diploid oysters. Reports of elevated triploid mortality have generated questions about potential trade-offs between growth and tolerance to environmental...

Here we show how ultra-high resolution seabed mapping using new technology can help to understand processes that sculpt submarine canyons. Time-lapse seafloor surveys were conducted in the axis of Monterey Canyon, ∼50 km from the canyon head (∼1,840 m water depth) over an 18-month period. These surveys comprised 5-cm resolution multibeam bathymetry,...

Debris flows are a type of mass movement that is more likely after wildfires, and while existing hazard assessments evaluate the rainfall intensities that are likely to trigger debris flows, no operational hazard assessment exists for identifying the areas where they will run out after initiation. Fifteen participants who work...

Planktic foraminifera are single-celled marine organisms that secrete calcium carbonate tests. They live in the ocean's photic zone, and when they die, their tests, each about the size of a grain of sand, collect on the ocean floor. The geographic distribution of planktic foraminifera is mostly governed by the temperature and salinity of...

Scientists, resource managers, and decision-makers increasingly use knowledge co-production to guide the stewardship of future landscapes under climate change. This process was applied in the California Central Valley, USA to solve complex conservation problems, where managed wetlands and croplands are flooded between fall and spring to support some of the...

The Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta (Delta) in California (USA) is an important part of the state’s freshwater system and is also a major source of agricultural and natural resources. However, the Delta is traversed by a series of faults that make up the easternmost...

Groundwater is critical for maintaining stream baseflow and thermal stability; however, the influence of groundwater on streamflow has been difficult to evaluate at broad spatial scales. Techniques such as baseflow separation necessitate streamflow records and do not directly indicate whether groundwater inflow may be sourced from more...

The presence of taliks (perennially unfrozen zones in permafrost areas) adversely affects the thermal stability of infrastructure in cold regions, including roads. The role of heat advection on talik development and feedback on permafrost degradation has not been quantified methodically in this context. We incorporate a surface...

BackgroundAcoustic telemetry is a commonly used technology to monitor animal occupancy and infer movement in aquatic environments. The information that acoustic telemetry provides is vital for spatial planning and management decisions concerning aquatic and coastal environments by characterizing behaviors and habitats such as spawning aggregations, migrations, corridors, and nurseries, among others....

Lake Ontario Lake Trout (Salvelinus namaycush) rehabilitation has been annually assessed with fishery independent surveys since 1983, in an effort to evaluate program benchmarks and compare observations with management objectives. These surveys provide information on the abundance, strain composition, and condition of the adult Lake Trout stock, as well as...

Climate and land-use/land-cover change (‘global change’) are restructuring biodiversity, globally. Broadly, environmental conditions are expected to become warmer, potentially drier (particularly in arid regions), and more anthropogenically developed in the future, with spatiotemporally complex effects on ecological communities. We used functional traits to inform...