Human-associated species dominate passerine communities across the United States
Helen Sofaer, Curtis H. Flather, Catherine S. Jarnevich, Kristin P. Davis, Liba Pejchar
Catherine Sheard, editor(s)
2020, Global Ecology and Biogeography (29) 885-895
AimHuman development and agriculture can have transformative and homogenizing effects on natural systems, shifting the composition of ecological communities towards non-native and native species that tolerate or thrive under human-dominated conditions. These impacts cannot be fully captured by summarizing species presence, as they include dramatic changes to patterns of species...
The surface trace tool — Modeling complex planar interactions using ArcGIS
Drew B. Adams, Heather L. Parks
2020, Open-File Report 2019-1136
The surface trace tool comprises a Python script written for ArcGIS that will determine the line of intersection between a planar feature and a surface. Specifically, this tool was designed for geologic applications where geologic planar-feature orientations are reported as strike and dip, and the intersecting surface is the ground....
Evaluation of legacy and emerging organic chemicals using passive sampling devices on the North Branch Au Sable River near Lovells, Michigan, June 2018
Angela K. Brennan, David A. Alvarez
2020, Scientific Investigations Report 2020-5002
The North Branch Au Sable River, located in the northern lower peninsula of Michigan near Lovells, Michigan, has historically been known for its brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis) and its status as a blue ribbon trout stream; however, within the past few decades, there has been a decline in fish population....
The 2019 Ridgecrest, California, earthquake sequence ground motions: Processed records and derived intensity metrics
John Rekoske, Eric M. Thompson, Morgan P. Moschetti, Mike Hearne, Brad T. Aagaard, Grace Alexandra Parker
2020, Seismological Research Letters (91) 2010-2023
Following the 2019 Ridgecrest, California, earthquake sequence, we compiled ground‐motion records from multiple data centers and processed these records using newly developed ground‐motion processing software that performs quality assurance checks, performs standard time series processing steps, and computes a wide range of ground‐motion metrics. In addition, we compute station and...
Spatial and temporal trends in Potomac River fish abundance linked to species traits
Nathaniel P. Hitt, Karli Rogers, Zachary A. Kelly, Josh Henesy, John E. Mullican
2020, Ecosphere (11)
Analysis of species abundance trends can inform an understanding of the underlying mechanisms. We evaluated spatial and temporal trends in fish species abundance in the non-tidal Potomac River (USA) from a dataset comprising 2841 seine-hauls with > 250,000 individual fish records across 10 sites and 43 years (1975-2017). The dataset...
Infectious hematopoietic necrosis virus specialization in a multihost salmonid system
David Paez, Shannon L. LaDeau, Rachel Breyta, Gael Kurath, Kerry A. Naish, Paige Ferguson
2020, Evolutionary Applications (13) 1841-1853
Many pathogens interact and evolve in communities where more than one host species is present, yet our understanding of host–pathogen specialization is mostly informed by laboratory studies with single species. Managing diseases in the wild, however, requires understanding how host–pathogen specialization affects hosts in diverse communities....
Semiautomated estimates of directivity and related source properties of small to moderate southern California earthquakes using second seismic moments
Haoran Meng, Jeffrey J. McGuire, Yehuda Ben-Zion
2020, Journal of Geophysical Research (125)
We develop a semiautomated method for estimating with second seismic moments the directivity, rupture area, duration, and centroid velocity of earthquakes. The method is applied to 41 southern California earthquakes with magnitude in the range 3.5–5.2 and provides stable results for 28 events. Apparent source time functions (ASTFs) of P and S phases are...
Linking monitoring and data analysis to predictions and decisions for the range-wide eastern black rail status assessment
Conor P. McGowan, N. Angeli, W. Beisler, C.W. Snyder, N.M. Rankin, J. Woodrow, J. Wilson, E. Rivenbark, A. Schwarzer, C. Hand, R.M. Anthony, R. Griffin, K. Barrett, A. Haverland, N. Roach, T. Schneider, A. J. Smith, F. Smith, J. Tolliver, Bryan D Watts
2020, Endangered Species Research (43) 209-222
The US Fish and Wildlife Service has initiated a re-envisioned approach for providing decision makers with the best available science and synthesis of that information, called the Species Status Assessment (SSA), for endangered species decision making. The SSA report is a descriptive document that provides decision makers with an assessment...
Oil-source rock correlation studies in the unconventional Upper Cretaceous Tuscaloosa marine shale (TMS) petroleum system, Mississippi and Louisiana, USA
Paul C. Hackley, Kristin Opferkuch Dennen, Daniel Garza, Celeste Lohr, Brett Valentine, Javin J. Hatcherian, Catherine B. Enomoto, Frank T. Dulong
2020, Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering (190)
The U.S. Geological Survey assessed undiscovered unconventional hydrocarbon resources reservoired in the Upper Cretaceous Tuscaloosa marine shale (TMS) of southern Mississippi and adjacent Louisiana in 2018. As part of the assessment, oil-source rock correlations were examined in the TMS play area where operators produce light (38–45° API), sweet oil from...
Hydrogeologic characterization, groundwater chemistry, and vulnerability assessment, Ute Mountain Ute Reservation, Colorado and Utah
Nancy J. Bauch, L. Rick Arnold
2020, Scientific Investigations Report 2019-5122
The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe (UMUT), initiated a study in 2016 to increase understanding of the hydrogeology and chemistry of groundwater within select areas of the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation (UMUR) in Colorado and Utah, identify vulnerabilities to the system and other natural...
Modelling pinniped abundance and distribution by combining counts at terrestrial sites and in-water sightings
Steven L. Whitlock, Jamie N. Womble, James T. Peterson
2020, Ecological Modelling (420)
Pinnipeds are commonly monitored using aerial photographic surveys at land- or ice-based sites, where animals come ashore for resting, pupping, molting, and to avoid predators. Although these counts form the basis for monitoring population change over time, they do not provide information...
Blind testing of shoreline evolution models
Jennifer Montaño, Giovanni Coco, Jose Antolinez, Tomas Beuzen, Karin R. Bryan, Laura Cagigal, Bruno Castelle, Mark Davidson, Evan B. Goldstein, Raimundo Ibaceta, Déborah Idier, Bonnie C. Ludka, Sina Masoud-Ansari, Fernando Mendez, A. Brad Murray, Nathaniel G. Plant, Katherine Ratlif, Arthur Robinet, Ana Rueda, Nadia Sénéchal, Joshua Simmons, Kristen Splinter, Scott Stephens, Ian Townend, Sean Vitousek, Kilian Vos
2020, Scientific Reports (10)
Beaches around the world continuously adjust to daily and seasonal changes in wave and tide conditions, which are themselves changing over longer time-scales. Different approaches to predict multi-year shoreline evolution have been implemented; however, robust and reliable predictions of shoreline evolution are still problematic even in short-term scenarios (shorter than...
A random forest approach for bounded outcome variables
Leonie Weinhold, Matthias Schmid, Richard M. Mitchell, Kelly O. Maloney, Marvin N. Wright, Moritz Berger
2020, Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics (29) 639-658
Random forests have become an established tool for classication and regres- sion, in particular in high-dimensional settings and in the presence of non-additive predictor-response relationships. For bounded outcome variables restricted to the unit interval, however, classical modeling approaches based on mean squared error loss may severely suer as they do not account for heteroscedasticity...
A spatially explicit, empirical estimate of tree-based biological nitrogen fixation in forests of the United States
Anika Staccone, Wenying Liao, Steven S. Perakis, Jana Compton, Christopher L. Clark, Duncan Menge
2020, Global Biogeochemical Cycles (34)
Quantifying human impacts on the nitrogen (N) cycle and investigating natural ecosystem N cycling depend on the magnitude of inputs from natural biological nitrogen fixation (BNF). Here, we present two bottom‐up approaches to quantify tree‐based symbiotic BNF based on forest inventory data across the coterminous United States and SE Alaska....
Co-occurrence and occupancy dynamics of mourning doves and Eurasian collared-doves
Adam W. Green, Helen Sofaer, David L Otis, Nicholas J. Van Lanen
2020, Journal of Wildlife Management (84) 775-785
Understanding how land cover and potential competition with invasive species shape patterns of occupancy, extirpation, and colonization of native species across a landscape can help target management for declining native populations. Mourning dove (Zenaida macroura) populations have declined throughout the United States from 1965–2015. The expansion of the Eurasian collared‐dove...
Global physical controls on estuarine habitat distribution during sea levelchange: Consequences for genetic diversification through time
Greer A. Dolby, Arturo M. Bedolla, S. Bennett, David K. Jacobs
2020, Global and Planetary Change (187)
Determining the extrinsic (physical) factors controlling speciation and diversification of species through time is of key interest in paleontology and evolutionary biology. The role of sea-level change in shaping species richness patterns of marginal marine species has received much attention, but with variable conclusions. Recent work combining genetic data and Geographical Information Systems...
Mineral commodity summaries 2020
U.S. Geological Survey
2020, Report
Each chapter of the 2020 edition of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Mineral Commodity Summaries (MCS) includes information on events, trends, and issues for each mineral commodity as well as discussions and tabular presentations on domestic industry structure, Government programs, tariffs, 5-year salient statistics, and world production and resources. The...
Groundwater withdrawals and regional flow paths at and near Willow Grove and Warminster, Pennsylvania—Data compilation and preliminary simulations for conditions in 1999, 2010, 2013, 2016, and 2017
Daniel J. Goode, Lisa A. Senior
2020, Open-File Report 2019-1137
In 2014, groundwater samples from residential and public supply wells in the vicinity of two former U.S. Navy bases at Willow Grove and Warminster, and an active Air National Guard Station at Horsham, Bucks and Montgomery Counties, Pennsylvania, were found to have concentrations of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate...
Phylogeographic analysis of Mudpuppies (Necturus maculosus)
Katherine Greenwald, Amber Stedman, David Mifsud, Maegan Stapleton, Krista Larson, Donna L. Parrish, Isaac Chellman, C. William Kilpatrick
2020, Journal of Herpetology (54) 78-86
The geology of the Pleistocene, and particularly the Last Glacial Maximum approximately 26.5 ka, is a critical driver of species’ present-day distributions and levels of genetic diversity in northern regions. Using mitochondrial DNA sequence data, we tested several predictions relating to the postglacial recolonization of the northern United States and...
Did ice-charging generate volcanic lightning during the 2016–2017 eruption of Bogoslof volcano, Alaska?
Alexa R. Van Eaton, David J. Schneider, Cassandra Marie Smith, Matthew M. Haney, John J. Lyons, Ryan Said, David Fee, Robert H. Holzworth, Larry G. Mastin
2020, Bulletin of Volcanology (82)
The 2016–2017 shallow submarine eruption of Bogoslof volcano in Alaska injected plumes of ash and seawater to maximum heights of ~ 12 km. More than 4550 volcanic lightning strokes were detected by the World Wide Lightning Location Network (WWLLN) and Vaisala’s Global Lightning Dataset (GLD360) over 9 months. Lightning...
Discrimination of biological scatterers in polarimetric weather radar data: Opportunities and challenges
Sidney Gauthreaux, Robert H. Diehl
2020, Remote Sensing (12)
For radar aeroecology studies, the identification of the type of scatterer is critically important. Here, we used a random forest (RF) algorithm to develop a variety of scatterer classification models based on the backscatter values in radar resolution volumes of six radar variables (reflectivity, radial velocity, spectrum width, differential...
Evidence of wildfires and elevated atmospheric oxygen at the Frasnian–Famennian boundary in New York (USA): Implications for the Late Devonian mass extinction
Zeyang Liu, David Selby, Paul C. Hackley, Jeffrey Over
2020, Geological Society of America Bulletin (132) 2043-2054
The Devonian Period experienced significant fluctuations of atmospheric oxygen (O2) levels (∼25–13%), for which the extent and timing are debated. Also characteristic of the Devonian Period, at the Frasnian–Famennian (F–F) boundary, is one of the “big five” mass extinction events of the Phanerozoic. Fossilized charcoal...
Diatom enumeration method influences biological assessments of southeastern USA streams
Meredith Tyree, Daren M. Carlisle, Sarah A. Spaulding
2020, Freshwater Science (39) 183-195
Current fixed-count enumeration methods for benthic diatoms are likely inadequate for most research and monitoring objectives. These methods underestimate taxa richness and may fail to detect losses of species caused by human impacts. Consequently, the full potential of diatoms is not realized in current assessments of biological integrity or species...
Mapping hotspots of potential ecosystem fragility using commonly available spatial data
Alexandre Genin, Steven R. Lee, Eric L. Berlow, Steven M. Ostoja, Sonia Kefi
2020, Biological Conservation (241)
Effective conservation requires prioritizing areas that are vulnerable to large, irreversible changes. Unfortunately, rigorously documenting these changes with experiments and long-term monitoring is not only costly, but may provide evidence that is too late to facilitate proactive decisions.We use a simple model to illustrate that commonly available short-term...
Continuous nitrate monitoring in groundwater and potential contribution to surface-water nitrogen loads in Mason County, Illinois
Lance R. Gruhn, Greg M. Nalley
2020, Fact Sheet 2019-3064
Illinois has some of the most productive farmland in the country. The use of fertilizers to improve crop production has increased, which has resulted in an increase in the concentration of nitrogen in many streams and aquifers. The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, is...
