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A satellite-derived cropland extent map at high spatial resolution (30-m or better) is a must for food and water security analysis. Precise and accurate global cropland extent maps, indicating cropland and non-cropland areas, are starting points to develop higher-level products such as crop watering methods (irrigated or rainfed), cropping intensities...

Galeras - an andesitic stratovolcano part of the Galeras Volcanic Complex - is one of the most active volcanoes in Colombia. Historic activity is centered on a small-volume cone inside the youngest amphitheater, which breaches the west flank of the volcano. At least 30 confirmed eruption periods have been recorded...

Innovative, open, and rapid methods to map crop types over large areas are needed for long-term cropland monitoring. We developed two novel and automated decision tree classification approaches to map crop types across the conterminous United States (U.S.) using MODIS 250 m resolution data:...

Water and sediment extracts samples were analyzed for extractable hydrocarbons by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) using an Agilent (Agilent Technologies, Palo Alto, CA, USA) 7890 series GC and 5975 electron ionization (EI) mass selective detector (MSD) operated in scan mode. Agilent ChemStation software was used for data acquisition and analysis...

Low-frequency earthquakes (LFEs) are small, rapidly recurring slip events that occur on the deep extensions of some major faults. Their collective activation is often observed as a semi-continuous signal known as tectonic (or non-volcanic) tremor. This manuscript presents a catalog of more than 1 million LFEs detected along...

Most volcanoes worldwide are not monitored in real-time; for those that are, patterns of pre-eruptive earthquakes coupled with conceptual models of magma ascent enable short-term forecasting of eruption onset. Basic event locations, characterization of background seismicity, and recognition of changes in earthquake types and energy release are most important to...

USGS Biodiversity Information Serving Our Nation (BISON) is a unique, Web-based Federal mapping resource for species occurrence data in the United States and its Territories. BISON’s size is unprecedented, including records for most living species found in the United States and encompassing the efforts of more than a million professional...

USGS Biodiversity Information Serving Our Nation (BISON) is a unique, web-based Federal mapping resource for species occurrence data in the United States and its Territories.BISON’s size is unprecedented, including records for most living species found in the United States and encompassing the efforts of more than a million professional and...

Data from 11 000 public supply wells in 87 study areas were used to assess the quality of nearly all of the groundwater used for public supply in California. Two metrics were developed for quantifying groundwater quality: area with high concentrations (km2 or proportion) and equivalent-population relying upon groundwater with high...

National Mapping Agencies (NMAs) are still among the main end users of research into automated generalisation, which is transferred into their produc- tion lines via various means. This chapter includes contributions from seven NMAs, illustrating how automated generalisation is used in practice within their partly or fully automated databases and...

The “National Field Manual for the Collection of Water-Quality Data” (NFM) provides guidelines and procedures for U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) personnel who collect data used to assess the quality of the Nation’s surface-water and groundwater resources. This chapter, NFM A6.3, provides guidance and protocols for the measurement of specific conductance...

We have successfully applied of SH-wave seismic reflection methods to two different near-surface problems targeting unconsolidated sediments. At the former Fort Ord, where the water table is approximately 30m deep, we imaged aeolian and marine aquifer and aquitard stratigraphy to a depth of approximately 80m. We identified reflections from sand/clay...

Chlorinated volatile organic compounds have affected groundwater beneath a former 9-acre landfill at Operable Unit 1 (OU 1) of Naval Base Kitsap (NBK) Keyport, in Keyport, Washington. The landfill was the primary disposal area for domestic and industrial waste generated by NBK Keyport from the 1930s through 1973. Naval Facilities...

Landsat satellites have been operating since 1972, providing the longest continuous observation record of the Earth’s land surface. Over the past half century, the Landsat user community has grown exponentially, encompassing more diverse and evolving scientific research and operational uses. Understanding current and future user needs is crucial to informing...

Steep declines in North American monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) populations have prompted continent-wide conservation efforts. While monarch monitoring efforts have existed for years, we lack a comprehensive approach to monitoring population vital rates integrated with habitat quality to inform adaptive management and effective conservation strategies. Building a geographically and ecologically...

Fish monitoring programs often rely on the collection, species identification, and counting of individual fish over time to inform natural resource management decisions. Thus, the utility of the data used to inform these decisions can be negatively affected by species misidentification. Fish species misidentification bias can be minimized by confirming...

AimPredation on livestock is one of the primary concerns for Mexican wolf (Canis lupus baileyi) recovery because it causes economic losses and negative attitudes toward wolves. Our objectives were to develop a...

ContextProxy species, which represent suites of organisms with similar habitat requirements, are common in conservation. Landscape Capability (LC) models aim to quantify the spatially-explicit capability of landscapes to support proxy species that represent suites of forest birds.ObjectivesWe evaluated the North Atlantic Landscape...

This report provides data collected by the climate monitoring array of the U.S. Department of the Interior on Federal lands in Arctic Alaska over the period August 1998 to July 2019; this array is part of the Global Terrestrial Network for Permafrost (DOI/GTN-P). In addition to presenting data, this report...

Streambank erosion in areas of past glacial deposition has been shown to be a dominant source of sediment to streams. Water resource managers are faced with the challenge of developing long and short term (emergency) stream restoration efforts that rely on the most suitable channel geometry for project design. A...

The USGS California Water Science Center is heavily involved in the measurement of flow and water quality parameters in the San Francisco Estuary, with support from many partner agencies. The California Department of Water Resources (DWR), through the Interagency Ecological Program (IEP) is one of those agencies. This article describes...

The quality of stormwater runoff from bridge decks (hereafter referred to as “bridge-deck runoff”) was characterized in a field study from August 2014 through August 2016 in which concentrations of suspended sediment (SS) and total nutrients were monitored. These new data were collected to supplement existing highway-runoff data collected in...

Sedimentary deposits in midlatitude continental basins often preserve a paleoclimate record complementary to marine-based records. However, deriving that paleoclimate record depends on having well-exposed deposits and establishing a sufficiently robust geochronology. After decades of research, we have been able to correlate 77...

IntroductionThe Challenge—Most geological phenomena are extraordinarily complex in their interrelationships and vast in their geographical extension. Ordinarily, engineers and geoscientists are faced with corporate or scientific requirements to properly prepare geological models with measurements involving a small fraction of the entire area or volume of interest. Exact description of a...

The use of water in the United States is arguably one of the most important factors determining water availability at any specific place and time. Numerous local, State, and Federal entities develop, compile, and report water-use data, which can lead to confusing or conflicting information. This report was authored jointly...