Search Results

To support global drought early warning, the Climate Hazards Center (CHC) at the University of California, Santa Barbara developed the Climate Hazards center InfraRed Precipitation with Stations (CHIRPS) dataset, in collaboration with the US Geological Survey and NASA SERVIR. Specifically designed to support early warning applications, CHIRPS has high a...

Conflicts between humans and wildlife have become increasingly important challenges for resource managers along the urban‐wildland interface. Food conditioning (i.e., reliance by an animal on anthropogenic foods) of American black bears (Ursus americanus ) is related to conflict behavior (i.e., being bold or aggressive toward humans, consuming human food or...

Unoccupied aircraft systems (UAS) are developing into fundamental tools for tackling the grand challenges in volcanology; here, we review the systems used and their diverse applications. UAS can typically provide image and topographic data at two orders of magnitude better spatial resolution than space-based remote sensing, and close-range observations at...

Plant community responses to biocontrol of invasive plants are understudied, despite the strong influence of the composition of replacement vegetation on ecosystem functions and services. We studied the vegetation response to a folivore beetle (Diorhabda genus, Coleoptera) that has been introduced along southwestern US river valleys to control the invasion of...

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) “Did You Feel It?” (DYFI) system is an automatic method for rapidly collecting macroseismic intensity data from Internet users’ shaking and damage reports and for generating intensity maps immediately following felt earthquakes. DYFI has been in operation for nearly two decades (1999-2019) in the United...

The recently released Landsat Analysis Ready Data (ARD) over the United States provides the opportunity to investigate landscape dynamics using dense time series observations at 30-m resolution. However, the dataset often contains data gaps (or missing data) because of cloud contamination or data acquisition strategy. We present a new algorithm...

Power spectral density (PSD) estimates are widely used in seismological studies to characterize background noise conditions, assess instrument performance, and study quasi‐stationary signals that are difficult to observe in the time domain. However, these studies often utilize different processing techniques, each of which can inherently bias the resulting PSD estimates....

The ShakeAlert Earthquake Early Warning System is designed to automatically identify and characterize the initiation and rupture evolution of large earthquakes, estimate the intensity of ground shaking that will result, and deliver alerts to people and systems that may experience shaking, prior to the occurrence of shaking at their location....

The Vermont Department of Health and the U.S. Geological Survey analyzed the concentrations of chloride in groundwater samples collected from 4,319 domestic wells across Vermont between 2011 and 2018. Ninety of these wells were sampled twice and the remaining 4,229 were sampled once. This sample size represents approximately 4 percent...

Groundwater age distributions developed from carbon-14 (14C), tritium (3H), and helium-4 (4He) concentrations, along with aquifer hydrologic position, water type, and redox conditions, were compared to geogenic contaminants of concern (GCOC) from 252 public-supply wells in six Atlantic and Gulf Coastal Plain unconsolidated-sediment aquifers. Concentrations of one or more...

Because groundwater recharge in dry regions is generally low, arid and semiarid environments have been considered well‐suited for long‐term isolation of hazardous materials (e.g., radioactive waste). In these dry regions, water lost (transpired) by plants and evaporated from the soil surface, collectively termed evapotranspiration (ET), is usually the primary discharge...

With the global-scale loss of biodiversity, current restoration programs have been often required as part of conservation plans for species richness and ecosystem integrity. The restoration of pelagic-oriented cisco (Coregonus artedi) has been an interest of Lake Michigan managers because it may increase the diversity and resilience of the fish...

The 3D Elevation Program (3DEP) is an acquisition strategy that uses data from commercial remote sensing technologies to create three-dimensional maps of the United States and U.S. territories. Currently, light detection and ranging and interferometric synthetic aperture radar are the two commercial technologies being used to provide three-dimensional information to...

Groundwater in eastern Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates is an important resource that is widely used for irrigation and domestic supplies in rural areas. The U.S. Geological Survey and the Environment Agency—Abu Dhabi cooperated on an investigation to integrate existing hydrogeologic information and to answer questions about regional...

We systematically evaluate datasets, functional forms, independent parameters of estimation, and resulting ground-motion predictions (as median and aleatory variability) of the Graizer and Kalkan (2015, 2016) (GK15) ground-motion prediction equation (GMPE) with the next generation of attenuation project (NGA-West2) models of Abrahamson and others (2014) (ASK14) and Boore and others...

Soil mixing over long (>102 y) timescales enhances nutrient fluxes that support soil ecology, contributes to dispersion of sediment and contaminated material, and modulates fluxes of carbon through Earth’s largest terrestrial carbon reservoir. Despite its foundational importance, we lack robust understanding of the rates and patterns of soil mixing, largely due...

The U.S. Geological Survey’s (USGS) Modular Ground-Water Flow Model (MODFLOW-2005) is a computer program that simulates groundwater flow by using finite differences. The MODFLOW-2005 framework uses a modular design that allows for the easy development and incorporation of new features called processes and packages that work with or modify inputs...

Despite decades of research into air and stream temperature dynamics, paired air-water annual temperature signals have been underutilized to characterize watershed processes. Annual stream temperature dynamics are useful in classifying fundamental thermal regimes and can enhance process-based interpretation of stream temperature controls, including deep and shallow groundwater discharge, when paired...

Liquefaction is a major cause of coseismic damages, occurring irregularly over hundreds or thousands of square kilometers in large earthquakes. Large variations in the extent and location of liquefaction have been observed in recent earthquakes, motivating the need for prediction methods that consider the spatial heterogeneity of geologic deposits at...

The likelihood that fish will initiate spawning, spawn successfully, or skip spawning in a given year is conditioned in part on availability of energy reserves. We evaluated the consequences of spatial heterogeneity in thermal conditions on the energy accumulation and spawning potential of migratory bull trout (Salvelinus confluentus) in a...

The objective for this study was to measure the auditory and visual physiology of Golden and Bald Eagles in order to use eagle sensory capabilities to inform the design of potential deterrent stimuli that could be used to reduce eagle/turbine collisions with wind turbines. The rationale for this approach is...

Wildfires dramatically alter the hydraulics and root reinforcement of soil on forested hillslopes, which can promote the generation of debris flows. In the Pacific Northwest, post-fire shallow landsliding has been well documented and studied, but the potential role of runoff-initiated debris flows is not well understood and only one previous...

Adaptive management (AM) is widely recommended as an approach for learning to improve resource management, but successful AM projects remain relatively uncommon, with few documented examples applied by natural resource management agencies. We used AM to make recommendations for the management of native tallgrass prairie plant communities in western Minnesota...

Temperature has a fundamental influence on physical, chemical and biological processing in aquatic ecosystems. River temperatures respond to a diverse array of drivers including air temperature, streamflow, and thermal inputs, but the physical template has been shown to play a significant role in structuring spatial and temporal variation in water...

The project team sought to use real-world data to understand adverse effects to wildlife of renewable energy production that is critical to meeting California’s climate and clean energy goals. The project had three main components. First, a systematic literature review studied 20 peer-reviewed publications and 612 reports from other nonreviewed sources from 231 wind...