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Improved methods for identifying species at risk are needed to strengthen climate change vulnerability assessments, as current estimates indicate that up to one million species face extinction due to environmental changes. Integrating multiple sources of uncertainty enhances the robustness of Red List of Threatened Species assessments, providing a more comprehensive...

Coastal resilience has become a pressing global issue due to the growing vulnerability of coastlines to the effects of climate change. Nature-based solutions have emerged as a promising approach to coastal protection to not only enhance coastal resilience, but also restore critical ecosystems. Coral reef restoration has the potential to...

Produced water is a chemically complex waste stream generated during oil and gas development. Roughly four trillion liters were generated onshore in the United States in 2021 (ALL Consulting, 2022, https://www.gwpc.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/2021_Produced_Water_Volumes.pdf). Efforts are underway to expand historic uses of produced water to offset freshwater needs in water-stressed regions,...

ContextAnimals may adjust their behavior in predictable ways to balance tradeoffs between resource acquisition and survival or fecundity. Microhabitat selection based on individual traits or environmental conditions is one measure of risk–reward tradeoffs by individuals.AimsWe used data from observational and manipulative studies to investigate whether an...

Hydrologic research and operations make extensive use of streamflow time series. In most applications, these time series are estimated from rating curves, which relate flow to some easy-to-measure surrogate, typically stage. The conventional stage-discharge rating takes the form of a segmented power law, with one segment for each hydrologic control...

Basaltic lava flows can be highly destructive. Forecasting the future path and/or behavior of an active lava flow is challenging because topography is often poorly constrained and lava has a complex rheology and emplacement history. Preserved lavas are an important source of information which, combined with observations of active flows,...

Anthropogenic infrastructure has contributed to increasing common raven (Corvus corax) abundance across the Great Basin region of the United States, particularly in sagebrush ecosystems, where high raven densities are correlated with reduced sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) nest survival. Our understanding of how raven reproductive behavior affects sage-grouse nest predation is limited,...

In 2017, Hurricane Maria triggered more than 70 000 landslides in Puerto Rico. After initiation, these predominantly shallow landslides were mobilized to varying extents – some landslides only traveled partway downslope, whereas others reached drainage channels and were mobilized into long-traveled debris flows that could severely impact roads and infrastructure....

The southernmost portion of the Cascadia Subduction zone in Northern California produces high rates of moderate and large earthquakes owing to subduction of the Gorda slab and deformation associated with the Mendocino Triple Junction. Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) is rapidly advancing as a method for detecting earthquakes and imaging crustal...

In the steep and mountainous environment of western Oregon, debris flows pose a considerable threat to property, infrastructure and life. Wildfire is commonly known to increase the susceptibility of steep slopes to debris flows, but the extent of this process in the western Cascades is not well understood. The US...

The pallid sturgeon Scaphirhynchus albus is a long-lived, endangered fish in the Missouri River. Individuals become piscivorous as adults, so recruitment from stocking or reproduction could reduce populations of prey, including Macrhybopsis chubs. We constructed an individual- and age-based, multi-species, predator-prey-competitor model (IAMP) to represent the benthic community (sturgeons, chubs, and chironomids) of the...

Anthropogenic influences like land use and climate variability interact with natural heterogeneity to influence the persistence of stream salamanders. Using occupancy modeling in the southern Appalachian Mountains, we investigated the influence of land use, climate, and physical context (e.g., drainage area, elevation) on stream salamander occupancy, noting species, and life...

The thermal structure of the continental crust plays a critical role in understanding its elastic and rheologic properties as well as its dynamic processes. Thermal parameter data sets on continental scales have been used to constrain the crustal thermal structure, including both the direct (e.g. temperature, heat flux and heat...

Robust and reliable models are needed to understand how coastlines will evolve over the coming decades, driven by both natural variability and climate change. This study evaluated how accurately five popular ‘reduced-complexity’ models replicate multi-decadal shoreline change at Narrabeen-Collaroy Beach,...

Climate change is affecting coastal ecosystems worldwide as water temperatures increase, hydrologic regimes change, and sea levels rise. Consequently, estuaries risk declines in ecosystem functioning due to increasing temperatures and other hydrologic factors. Characterizing and predicting estuarine water temperature are challenging because these systems are highly dynamic. Statistical models have...

Coastal erosion, intensified by sea level rise, poses significant threats to coastal communities in Hawaiʻi and similar island communities. This study projects long-term shoreline change on the Hawaiian Island of O‘ahu using the data-assimilated CoSMoS-COAST shoreline change model. CoSMoS-COAST models four key shoreline processes: (1) Alongshore transport, (2) Recession due...

Despite their ubiquity and importance as freshwater habitat, small headwater streams are under monitored by existing stream gage networks. To address this gap, we describe a low-cost, non-contact, and low-effort method that enables organizations to monitor streamflow dynamics in small headwater streams. The method uses a camera to capture repeat...

Microplastics, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs), pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs), and pesticides may lead to unintended environmental contamination through many pathways in multiple matrices. This statewide, multi-matrix study of contaminants of global concern (CGCs) in agricultural streams across Iowa (United States) is the first...

Project Overview: The Klamath Tribes (TKT) are the Klamath, Modoc, and Yahooskin Paiute peoples, and are the first peoples of the land, having lived in ancestral lands of Oregon and California since time immemorial. Members of TKT have rights to hunt, fish, trap, and gather, including the harvest of mule...

Total phosphorus (TP) concentrations and loads in the Boise River near Parma, Idaho, were examined to identify changes by month over a 19-year period from water year 2003 through water year 2021 and to evaluate the performance of three common water-quality models. Mean annual TP concentrations and loads were estimated...

Executive Summary This report documents the system characterization of the Indian Space Research Organisation Resourcesat-2A Linear Imaging Self Scanning-4 (LISS–4) sensor. It is part of a series of system characterization reports produced by the U.S. Geological Survey Earth Resources Observation and Science Cal/Val Center of Excellence. These reports describe the methodology...

ObjectiveThe Atlantic Sturgeon Acipenser oxyrinchus is a wide-ranging, long-lived diadromous fish that is endangered in most of its range. Our objective was to develop and apply long-term, detection-corrected indices of relative abundance for juvenile and adult Atlantic Sturgeon in the Hudson River, New York, United States, to support...

Critical minerals are commodities essential to modern industrial and strategic technologies and are highly vulnerable to supply chain disruption. The Critical Minerals Mapping Initiative (CMMI) is a collaboration among the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the Geological Survey of Canada, and Geoscience Australia that aims to deepen global understanding of where...

ObjectiveA previous study evaluating restoration success of Paddlefish Polyodon spathula suggested that excessive turbidity in lakes and rivers may inhibit foraging by juveniles prior to the development of the rostrum. Although a Paddlefish's rostrum, which contains electroreceptors, helps the fish to locate zooplankton prey, the prerostrum stage lacks...

Habitat features needed by wildlife can change in composition throughout the year, particularly in temperate ecosystems, leading to distinct seasonal spatial-use patterns. Studies of species-habitat associations therefore often focus on understanding relationships within discrete seasonal periods with common goals of prediction (e.g., habitat mapping) and inference (e.g., interpreting model coefficients)....