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The longitudinal propagation of water-quality and ecological impairments in rivers during and after wildfires remain poorly understood. In Northern California, the 2022 McKinney Fire burned 243 km2 of the Klamath National Forest, with 83% of the burned area classified as moderate to high severity. During the active wildfire, a high-intensity monsoonal...

Executive SummaryThe purpose of this Wake Atoll Vessel Movement Biosecurity Program Efficacy document is to provide the United States Air Force (USAF) with an unbiased review of the current (2015; hereafter referred to as the 2015 Biosecurity Plan) biosecurity plan for the military base Wake Island Airfield (WIA) on Wake...

BackgroundProteins encoded by the canonical transient receptor potential (Trpc) gene family form transmembrane channels involved in diverse signal-transduction pathways. Trpc4 has been shown necessary for the induction of nonshivering thermogenesis (NST) in mice, a key component of which is thermogenic brown adipose tissue (BAT). In bats, Trpc4 exhibited diversifying selection within exons encoding...

During the past century, the proliferation of invasive species has contributed to loss of biodiversity and ecosystem degradation. In forests, invasive tree species can alter ecosystem function, but the underlying mechanisms of these changes are not fully understood. We use the ongoing invasion of P. cattleianum on the Island of Hawai’i to...

Fish year-class strength (YCS) has been estimated via longitudinal analysis of catch-at-age data and via catch-curve regression, but no study has compared the two approaches. The objective of this study was to compare YCS estimates derived from both approaches applied to catch-at-age data for the lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush)...

The retention of surface water in wetlands and lakes can modify the timing, duration, and magnitude of river discharge. However, efforts to characterize the influence of surface water on discharge regimes have been generally limited to small, wetland-dense watersheds. We developed random forest models to explain spatial variability in six...

BackgroundInformation on reproductive success is crucial to understanding population dynamics but can be difficult to obtain, particularly for species that birth while denning. For grizzly (Ursus arctos) and polar bears (U. maritimus), den visits are impractical because of safety and logistical considerations. Reproduction is typically documented through direct...

Joint estimation of demographic rates and population size has become an essential tool in ecology because it enables evaluating mechanisms for population change and testing hypotheses about drivers of demography in a single modeling framework. This approach provides a comprehensive perspective on population dynamics and how animal populations will respond...

Lidar and structure from motion-derived digital elevation and surface models have widespread application. Consideration of a topographic model's vertical root mean squared error (RMSEz) and systematic directional bias is important for many of these applications, particularly landscape change detection and measurement. Due to logistic, resource, and time constraints, wide area...

Fine-grained sediment in stormwater acts as a vector for persistent organic pollutants, like polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), through mobilization from sources within drainage areas of impacted urban watersheds. This study implemented a novel approach to identify the relative contributions of various landscape and stream sources of sediment from the Back River watershed in...

The U.S. Geologic Survey National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC) monitors global seismicity, producing a catalog of earthquake source parameters in near-real-time to provide information that can help mitigate the societal impact of earthquakes. The NEIC commonly relies on teleseismic observations to constrain earthquake source parameters (e.g., location, depth, magnitude, and...

Alaska's coastal communities face growing landslide hazards owing to glacier retreat and extreme weather intensified by the warming climate, yet hazard monitoring remains challenging. As part of ongoing experimental monitoring in Prince William Sound, we detected three large landslides (0.5–2.3 M m3) at Surprise Inlet on 20 September 2024, within the span...

Objective The Lake Winnebago system in Wisconsin supports a popular winter spear fishery for Lake Sturgeon Acipenser fulvescens. Setting harvest caps for this fishery relies on estimating instantaneous natural mortality rate (M), which can be done using age-based approaches or capture–recapture models that incorporate recoveries of fish with passive integrated transponder...

During the spring and summer of 2020, the U.S. Geological Survey conducted single-well slug tests on selected observation wells within the Mississippi Alluvial Plain in Arkansas and Mississippi to estimate hydraulic conductivity and transmissivity values for the Mississippi River Valley alluvial and middle Claiborne aquifers. Well and aquifer data were...

Following the recovery of Peregrine Falcons (Falco peregrinus), the US Fish and Wildlife Service began a process to allow “take” (capture) of wild peregrines for falconry in the United States. Recently, that effort involved generating updated estimates of the collective abundance of the three North American peregrine subspecies: F. p. anatum, F....

Arctic warming is happening at nearly four times the global average rate. Long-term trends of permafrost dynamics cannot be estimated directly from monitoring of present-day thaw processes, requiring paleoclimate-proxy information. Here we use cave carbonates (speleothems) from a northern Siberian cave to determine when the Northern Hemisphere was mostly permafrost-free....

Study region: Headwaters of the upper Colorado River basin (UCOL), USAStudy focus: Surface-water and groundwater numerical models incorporating water-use information were used to investigate changes in climate, water use, and simulated hydrologic responses of snow processes, evapotranspiration, groundwater, and streamflow during recent wet (1982–1999) and drought (2000–2022) periods in the...

The multi-agency Lake Ontario spring prey fish survey quantifies changes in pelagic prey fish populations, in particular Alewife Alosa pseudoharengus, which are the primary prey supporting the lake’s sport fishes. The 2025 survey included 230 trawls in the main lake and embayments and sampled depths from 5.5 to 245 m...

Seawater intrusion threatens groundwater resources in coastal regions, including southern Baldwin County, Alabama, where the freshwater-saltwater interface dynamics remain poorly understood. To address this gap, this study uses combined physics-based and machine-learning models to quantify seawater intrusion caused by natural (storm surges) and anthropogenic (human activities) perturbations. The long short-term...

Paralytic shellfish toxins (PSTs), including saxitoxin (STX) and its congeners, are neurotoxins that can be produced during harmful algal blooms and cause illness or death in humans, fish, seabirds, and marine mammals. Since 2014, multiple large-scale seabird mortality events have occurred in Alaska waters, with STXs detected in some carcasses....

Global restoration and conservation of freshwater biodiversity are represented in practice by works such as the Klamath River Renewal Project (KRRP), the largest dam removal and river restoration in the United States, which has reconnected 640 river kilometers. With dam removals, many biological outcomes remain understudied due...

On September 19, 2024, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) held a virtual workshop titled “Potential for Evaluation of Fire Models with Remote Sensing Data Workshop” to assess the feasibility of using remotely sensed datasets to evaluate next-generation wildland fire behavior models. Remote sensing and fire modelling experts gathered to: (1)...

Seawater intrusion (SWI) affects coastal landscapes worldwide. Here we describe the hydrologic pathways through which SWI occurs - over land via storm surge or tidal flooding, under land via groundwater transport, and through watersheds via natural and artificial surface water channels—and how human modifications to those pathways alter patterns of...

Geometrically complex, multifault ruptures have been observed in recent, damaging earthquakes in southeastern California, sparking renewed efforts to identify physical conditions that promote or inhibit fault discontinuity-spanning coseismic ruptures. The likelihood of ruptures propagating across fault discontinuities is thought to be partly controlled by fault geometries, rupture direction, and the...

The Nature Futures Framework (NFF), developed under the Intergovernmental Science–Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), serves as a catalyst for advancing new scenarios and models focused on biodiversity and ecosystem services within the broader research community. In particular, the framework facilitates the development of scenarios and models that...