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The social structure of translocated animal populations can have important effects on the survival and reproduction of translocated individuals for both solitary and social species. The gopher tortoise (Gopherus polyphemus) is a reptile of conservation concern that is currently experiencing high levels of mitigation translocation in Florida, USA. Individuals live...

1. Decomposition controls the release of carbon and nutrients from decaying plant litter into soils or the atmosphere. In most biomes decomposition rates can be accurately predicted with simple mathematical models, but these models have long under-predicted decomposition in globally- extensive drylands. 2. We posit that the exposed surface conditions...

The Sangre de Cristo Range in southern Colorado exposes some of the deepest Cenozoic structural levels in the Rocky Mountain region, including mylonitic shear zones associated with both the Laramide orogeny and Rio Grande rift. We investigated the relation between Laramide contraction and Rio Grande rift extension with detailed geologic...

It has been 60 years since the discovery of C4 photosynthesis, an event that rewrote our understanding of plant adaptation, ecosystem responses to global change, and global food security. Despite six decades of research, one aspect of C4 photosynthesis that remains poorly understood is how the pathway fits into the broader context of...

The internal ocean of Jupiter’s moon Europa is thought to be a prime candidate for hosting extraterrestrial life. Europa’s silicate interior may contribute to habitability via the generation of reactants through hydrothermal activity, serpentinization, or other geological processes occurring on or just below Europa’s seafloor. However, silicate melting is thought...

The security and economic stability of the United States rely heavily on robust lifeline infrastructure systems and yet the risks to such systems are seldom quantified at the national scale. For example, while earthquake risks to buildings in the United States have been investigated at the national scale regularly, such...

Survival is a key life history parameter that can inform management decisions and basic life history research. Because true survival is often confounded with emigration from the study area, many studies are forced to estimate apparent survival (i.e., probability of surviving and remaining inside the study area), which can be...

The K/Ar and 40Ar/39Ar geochronometers are based on the naturally occurring radionuclide 40K. Their precision and accuracy are limited by uncertainties on the 40K decay constants and, in the case of the 40Ar/39Ar geochronometer, the isotopic composition of neutron fluence monitors. To address these limitations, we introduce a Bayesian calibration of the 40K decay scheme....

Moderate-resolution (30-m) national map products have limited capacity to represent fine-scale, heterogeneous urban forms and processes, yet improvements from incorporating higher resolution predictor data remain rare. In this study, we applied random forest models to high-resolution land cover data for 71 U.S. urban areas, moderate-resolution National Land Cover Database (NLCD)...

Natural resources management is often concerned with conserving rare-native or controlling rare-invasive fishes. Informing and assessing conservation and control efforts frequently requires information from captures. When little is understood about spatial and temporal fish distributions, captures can be infrequent and costly. If successful management depends on effective management response, optimizing...

Biological invasions driven by international trade heighten the urgency for development of invasion risk models, as the traits and parameters that consistently predict successful invasion remain unresolved. For four regions of North America that include parts of the United States and Canada (Sacramento-San Joaquin River Basins, Lower Colorado River Basin,...

Human-built structures can provide important habitat for wildlife, but predicting which structures are most likely to be used remains challenging. To evaluate the predictive capabilities of data-driven ensemble modeling approaches, we conducted surveys for bats and signs of bat use, such as urine and guano staining, at bridges across the...

Understanding how species populations change with environmental conditions is important for implementing effective habitat management and conservation strategies. Challenges to evaluating population-level responses to environmental conditions arise when data are sparse or not spatiotemporally aligned, especially for at-risk species with small, declining numbers.We synthesized 30 years (1992–2021) of three partially...

Droughts are frequent events in the western United States, and can disrupt water supply and degrade water quality, challenging water management in the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta (Delta). This chapter for the State of Bay–Delta Science report describes what drought means for the Delta, how drought is managed in the Delta,...

The Southeastern United States has many lakes, streams, and reservoirs that serve as important drinking water sources with recreational, agricultural, and ecological uses. However, harmful algal blooms (HABs) are becoming more common in these waters, causing health issues for humans and animals. HABs have been listed as a contaminant of...

The 1973 Oklahoma Groundwater Law (Oklahoma Statute §82–1020.5) requires that the Oklahoma Water Resources Board conduct hydrologic investigations of the State’s groundwater basins to support a determination of the maximum annual yield for each groundwater basin. Every 20 years, the Oklahoma Water Resources Board is required to update the hydrologic...

In this commentary, we aim to (1) describe ways that hydrological intensification and hydrological whiplash (sub-seasonal transitions between hydrological extremes) may impact water management decision-making, (2) introduce the complexities of identifying and quantifying hydrological extreme transitions, (3) discuss the processes controlling hydrological transitions and trends in hydrological extremes through time,...

The use of quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR) to monitor pathogens is common; however, quantitative frameworks that consider the observation process, dynamics in pathogen presence, and pathogen load are lacking. This can be problematic in the early stages of disease progression, where low level detections may be treated as ‘inconclusive’ and...

We have developed a comprehensive database for freshwater mussels for the Duck River drainage in Tennessee, including its largest tributary, the Buffalo River.  This database is intended to serve as an expandable template that could be applied statewide.  The Duck River is one of the most biologically diverse rivers in...

Salinity levels in streams and tributaries of the Colorado River Basin have been a major concern for the United States and Mexico for over 50 years as the water is used by millions of people for domestic and industrial purposes. Recently, the United States Geological Survey expanded stream monitoring networks...

We use the deterministic earthquake simulator RSQSim to generate complex sequences of ruptures on fault systems used for hazard assessment. We show that the source motions combined with a wave propagation code create surface ground motions that fall within the range of epistemic uncertainties for the Next Generation Attenuation‐West2 set...

The pervasive and insidious threat of invasive species costs the United States more than $120 billion, annually. An invasive species is an organism that is not native to a locality and causes (or is likely to cause) harm. An introduced species is one that is nonnative to a locality and...

Objective Although conserving fish biodiversity in lotic systems is challenging, protected areas can provide refuge from certain environmental stressors. In the Appalachian region, USA, the National Park Service manages Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area (DEWA) and New River Gorge National Park & Preserve (NERI), which contain abundant and diverse...

The history-matching approach to parameter estimation with models enables a powerful offshoot analysis of data worth—using the uncertainty of a model forecast as a metric for the worth of data. Adding observation data will either have no impact on forecast uncertainty or will reduce it. Removing existing data will either...

Population monitoring is essential to document recovery efforts for threatened and endangered species. Mexican wolves (Canis lupus baileyi) are an endangered subspecies of gray wolves that historically occupied large portions of the American Southwest and Mexico. Recently, the Mexican wolf population in the United States has been growing rapidly and...