Disentangling the potential effects of land-use and climate change on stream conditions
Kelly O. Maloney, Kevin P. Krause, Claire Buchanan, Lauren Hay, Gregory J. McCabe, Zachary M. Smith, Terry L. Sohl, John A. Young
2020, Global Change Biology (26) 2251-2269
Land‐use and climate change are significantly affecting stream ecosystems, yet understanding of their long‐term impacts is hindered by the few studies that have simultaneously investigated their interaction and high variability among future projections. We modeled possible effects of a suite of 2030, 2060, and 2090 land‐use and climate scenarios on...
Effect of environmental factors on the movement of Rainbow Trout in the Deerfield Reservoir System
Jeremy Kientz, Jacob L. Davis, Steven R. Chipps, Gregory Simpson
2020, Journal of FisheriesSciences.com (14) 1-6
Spawning movements and the factors affecting those movements are often of interest to fisheries managers and biologists. The objective of this study was to examine the influence of environmental factors on the movements of an adfluvial Rainbow Trout Oncorhynchus mykiss population in the Black Hills, South Dakota. Three unique strains...
High-resolution airborne geophysical survey of the Shellmound, Mississippi area
Bethany L. Burton, Burke J. Minsley, Benjamin R. Bloss, Wade H. Kress, James R. Rigby, Bruce D. Smith
2020, Scientific Investigations Map 3449
In late February to early March 2018, the U.S. Geological Survey acquired 2,364 line-kilometers (km) of airborne electromagnetic, magnetic, and radiometric data in the Shellmound, Mississippi study area. The purpose of this survey is to contribute high-resolution information about subsurface geologic structure to inform groundwater models, water resource infrastructure studies,...
Alpine plant community diversity in species-area relations at fine scale
George P. Malanson, Emma L Nelson, Dale L. Zimmerman, Daniel B. Fagre
2020, Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research (52) 41-46
Observations of diversity in alpine vegetation appear to be scale dependent. The relations of plant species richness with surface processes and geomorphology have been studied, but patterns of beta diversity are less known. In Glacier National Park, Montana, diversity has been examined within 1 m2 plots and for 16...
Precipitation, temperature, groundwater-level elevation, streamflow, and potential flood storage trends within the Brazos, Colorado, Big Cypress, Guadalupe, Neches, Sulphur, and Trinity River basins in Texas through 2017
Glenn R. Harwell, Jeremy McDowell, Cathina Gunn-Rosas, Brett Garrett
2020, Scientific Investigations Report 2019-5137
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in cooperation with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), analyzed streamflow trends and streamflow-related variables through 2017 in seven important water-supply basins to provide information that can help water managers with the USACE and river authorities make future water management decisions. The primary purpose...
Use of underwater videography to quantify conditions utilized by endangered Moapa Dace While spawning
Jack E. Ruggirello, Scott A. Bonar, Olin G. Feuerbacher, Lee H. Simons
2020, North American Journal of Fisheries Management (40) 17-28
Advances in underwater camera technology provide an affordable means to quantify the environmental conditions under which fish spawn. This information is important for investigating spawning ecology, managing habitat, or providing information for captive breeding programs. We deployed 12 modified security cameras underwater to identify environmental conditions related to the spawning...
Kelp forest monitoring at Naval Base Ventura County, San Nicolas Island, California: Fall 2017 and Spring 2018, Fourth Annual Report
Michael C. Kenner, Joseph A. Tomoleoni
2020, Open-File Report 2019-1147
To assess and track changes to the rocky subtidal communities surrounding San Nicolas Island, the U.S. Navy entered into an agreement with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in 2014 to conduct an ecological monitoring program at several sites around the island. Four permanent sites—Nav Fac 100, West End, Dutch Harbor,...
Amphibian chytrid prevalence on boreal toads in SE Alaska and NW British Columbia: Tests of habitat, life stages, and temporal trends
Blake R. Hossack, Michael J. Adams, R Ken Honeycutt, Jami J Belt, S Pyare
2020, Diseases of Aquatic Organisms (137) 159-165
Tracking and understanding variation in pathogens such as Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis ([Bd]), which causes amphibian chytridiomycosis and has caused population declines globally, is a priority for many land managers. However, there has been relatively little sampling of amphibian communities at high latitudes. We used skin swabs collected during 2005–2017 from boreal...
Is your ad hoc model selection strategy affecting your multimodel inference?
Dana J. Morin, Charles B. Yackulic, James E. Diffendorfer, Damon B. Lesmeister, Clayton Nielsen, Janice Reid, Eric M. Schauber
2020, Ecosphere (11)
(Yackulic) 1. Ecologists routinely fit complex models with multiple parameters of interest, where hundreds or more competing models are plausible. To limit the number of fitted models, ecologists often define a model selection strategy composed of a series of stages in which certain features of a model are compared while...
A flexible survey design for monitoring spatiotemporal fish richness in nonwadeable rivers: optimizing efficiency by integrating gears
Corey G. Dunn, Craig P. Paukert
2020, Canadian Journal Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences (77) 978-990
We designed a flexible protocol for monitoring fish species richness in nonwadeable rivers. Nine sites were sampled seasonally with six gears in two physiographic regions in Missouri (USA). Using resampling procedures and mixed-effects modeling, we quantified richness and compositional overlap among gears, identified efficient gear combinations, and evaluated protocol performance...
An agricultural water use package for MODFLOW and GSFLOW
Richard G. Niswonger
2020, Environmental Modeling and Software (125)
The Agricultural Water Use (AG) Package was developed for simulating demand-driven and supply-constrained agricultural water use in MODFLOW and GSFLOW models. The AG Package uses pre-existing hydrologic simulation provided by MODFLOW and GSFLOW. Three options are available for simulating water use...
Peak ground motions and site response at Anza and Imperial Valley, California
Jon Peter B. Fletcher, John Boatwright
2020, Pure and Applied Geophysics (177) 2753-2769
Power spectra of shear-waves for eighteen earthquakes from the Anza-Imperial Valley region were inverted for source, mid-path Q, site attenuation and site response. The motivation was whether differences in site attenuation (parameterized as t*, r/cQ, where r is distance along ray path near the site, c is shear velocity and Q is the quality factor that parameterizes attenuation)...
Storage capacity and sedimentation characteristics of the San Antonio Reservoir, California, 2018
Mathieu D. Marineau, Scott Wright, Joan V. Lopez
2020, Scientific Investigations Report 2019-5151
The San Antonio Reservoir is a large water storage facility in Alameda County, California, and is a major component of the Hetch Hetchy Regional Water System (RWS). The RWS is a water-supply system owned and operated by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) and provides water for about 2.7...
Estimation of nonlinear water-quality trends in high-frequency monitoring data
Guoxiang Yang, Douglas L. Moyer
2020, Science of the Total Environment (715)
Recent advances in high-frequency water-quality sensors have enabled direct measurements of physical and chemical attributes in rivers and streams nearly continuously. Water-quality trends can be used to identify important watershed-scale changes driven by natural and anthropogenic influences. Statistical methods to estimate trends using high-frequency...
The use of support vectors from support vector machines for hydrometeorologic monitoring network analyses
William H. Asquith
2020, Journal of Hydrology (583)
Hydrometeorologic monitoring networks are ubiquitous in contemporary earth-system science. Network stakeholders often inquire about the importance of sites and their locations when discussing funding and monitoring design. Support vector machines (SVMs) can be useful by their assigning each monitoring site as either a support or nonsupport vector. A potentiometric surface...
Using the Lomb-Scargle method for wave statistics from gappy time series
Marinna A. Martini, Alfredo Aretxabaleta, Christopher R. Sherwood
2020, Conference Paper, 2019 IEEE/OES twelfth current, waves and turbulence measurement (CWTM)
Sandwich Town Neck Beach in Sandwich, MA, has experienced substantial erosion and has been the subject of efforts by the town and private landowners to limit the sand loss. Erosion has been particularly dramatic in the past five years with the loss of dwellings. Sandwich's nourishment efforts presented a unique...
Effects of montane watershed development on vulnerability of domestic groundwater supply during drought
Zeno F. Levy, Miranda S. Fram, Kirsten Faulkner, Charles N. Alpers, Evelyn M Soltero, Kimberly A. Taylor
2020, Journal of Hydrology (583)
Climate change is expected to reduce recharge to montane aquifers in the western United States, but it is unclear how this will impact groundwater resources in watersheds where intensive surface-water development has disrupted the natural hydrologic regime. To better understand sources of recharge and associated vulnerabilities of groundwater supply in...
Mechanisms for ballistic block ejection during the 2016–2017 shallow submarine eruption of Bogoslof volcano, Alaska
Christopher F. Waythomas, Larry G. Mastin
2020, Bulletin of Volcanology (82)
Ejection of ballistic blocks was a characteristic feature of the 2016–2017 Bogoslof eruption. High-resolution satellite images acquired throughout the duration of the 9-month long eruptive period permitted the recognition and mapping of ballistic blocks on the surface of Bogoslof Island. Many of the satellite images recorded the accumulation of ballistic...
Conjoint use of hydraulic head and groundwater age data to detect hydrogeologic barriers
Sarah K. Marshall, Peter G. Cook, Leonard F. Konikow, Craig T. Simmons, Shawan Dogramaci
2020, Hydrogeology Journal (28) 1003-1019
Hydraulic head and groundwater age data are effective in building understanding of groundwater systems. Yet their joint role in detecting and characterising low-permeability geological structures, i.e. hydrogeologic barriers such as faults and dykes, has not been widely studied. Here, numerical flow and transport models, using MODFLOW-NWT and MT3D-USGS, were developed...
Phosphorus, nitrogen and dissolved organic carbon fluxes from sediments in freshwater rivermouths entering Green Bay (Lake Michigan; USA)
James H. Larson, William F. James, Faith A. Fitzpatrick, Paul C. Frost, Mary Anne Evans, Paul C. Reneau, Marguerite A. Xenopoulos
2020, Biogeochemistry (147) 179-197
Transitional areas between ecosystem types are often active biogeochemically due to resource limitation changes. Lotic-to-lentic transitions in freshwaters appear active biogeochemically, but few studies have directly measured nutrient processing rates to assess whether processing within the rivermouth is important for load estimates or the local communities. We measured oxic fluxes...
Potential underestimation of satellite fire radiative power retrievals over gas flares and wildland fires
Sanath S. Kumar, John Edward Hult, Joshua J. Picotte, Birgit Peterson
2020, Remote Sensing (12)
Fire Radiative Power (FRP) is related to fire combustion rates and is used to quantify the atmospheric emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols. FRP over gas flares and wildfires can be retrieved remotely using satellites that observe in shortwave infrared (SWIR) to middle infrared (MIR) wavelengths. Heritage techniques to retrieve...
Calcite precipitation in Lake Powell reduces alkalinity and total salt loading to the Lower Colorado River Basin
Bridget R. Deemer, Edward G. Stets, Charles B. Yackulic
2020, Limnology and Oceanography (65) 1439-1455
Reservoirs can retain and transform carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, and silica, but less is known about their effects on other biogeochemically relevant solutes. The salinization of freshwater ecosystems is a growing concern in many regions, and the role of reservoirs in salinity transport is an important research frontier. Here, we examine...
How often can Earthquake Early Warning systems alert sites with high intensity ground motion?
M.-A. Meier, Y. Kodera, M. Bose, A. I. Chung, M. Hoshiba, Elizabeth S. Cochran, Sarah E. Minson, E. Hauksson, T. Heaton
2020, Journal of Geophysical Research (125)
Although numerous Earthquake Early Warning (EEW) algorithms have been developed we still lack a detailed understanding of how often and under what circumstances useful ground motion alerts can be provided to end-users. Here we analyze the alerting performance of the PLUM, EPIC and FinDer algorithms by running them retrospectively on...
Combined influence of intrinsic and environmental factors in shaping productivity in a small pelagic gull, the black-legged kittiwake Rissa tridactyla
Aly McKnight, David B. Irons, Cyndy Loftin, Shawn T. McKinney, Brian J. Olsen
2020, Marine Ecology Progress Series (633) 207-223
While we have a good understanding in many systems of the effects of single variable changes on organisms, we understand far less about how variables act in concert to affect living systems, where interactions among variables can lead to unanticipated results. We used mixed-effect models to evaluate the effects of...
Challenges for leveraging citizen science to support statistically robust monitoring programs
Emily L. Weiser, James E. Diffendorfer, Laura Lopez-Hoffman, Darius J. Semmens, Wayne E. Thogmartin
2020, Biological Conservation (242)
Large samples and long time series are often needed for effective broad-scale monitoring of status and trends in wild populations. Obtaining those sample sizes can be more feasible when volunteers contribute to the dataset, but volunteer-selected sites are not always representative of a population. Previous work to account for biased...
