Interior Least Tern sandbar nesting habitat measurements from Landsat Thematic Mapper imagery
Edward A. Bulliner, Caroline M. Elliott, Robert B. Jacobson, Casey Lott
2018, Data Series 1098
Sandbars of large sand-bedded rivers of the central United States serve important ecological functions to many species, including the endangered Interior Least Tern (Sternula antillarum, ILT). The ILT is a colonial bird that feeds on fish and nests primarily on riverine sandbars during its annual breeding season of around May...
Digital Shoreline Analysis System (DSAS) version 5.0 user guide
Emily A. Himmelstoss, Rachel E. Henderson, Meredith G. Kratzmann, Amy S. Farris
2018, Open-File Report 2018-1179
OverviewThe Digital Shoreline Analysis System (DSAS) is a freely available software application that works within the Esri Geographic Information System (ArcGIS) software. DSAS computes rate-of-change statistics for a time series of shoreline vector data. DSAS version 5.0 (v5.0) was released in December 2018 and has been tested for compatibility with...
Geologic map and database of the Chocolate Mountain Aerial Gunnery Range, Riverside and Imperial Counties, California
Robert E. Powell, Robert J. Fleck, Pamela M. Cossette
2018, Open-File Report 2018-1191
The northwest-trending Chocolate Mountains are situated along the northeastern margin of the southern Salton Trough. The Chocolate Mountain Aerial Gunnery Range occupies most of the 75-km-long part of the Chocolate Mountains that lies between Salt Creek to the north and California State Highway 78 to the south. Mapping studies in...
Updates to the suspended sediment SPARROW model developed for western Oregon and northwestern California
Daniel R. Wise
2018, Scientific Investigations Report 2018-5156
A SPARROW (SPAtially Related Regressions On Watershed attributes) model that was previously developed for western Oregon and northwestern California was updated using advancements in the SPARROW software and refinements to the input data. As was the case for the original model calibration, the updated models used the NHD Plus...
Ground motions from induced earthquakes in Oklahoma and Kansas
Morgan P. Moschetti, Eric M. Thompson, Peter M. Powers, Susan M. Hoover, Daniel E. McNamara
2018, Seismological Research Letters (90) 160-170
Improved predictions of earthquake ground motions are critical to advancing seismic hazard analyses and earthquake response. The high seismicity rate from 2009 to 2016 in Oklahoma and Kansas provides an extensive data set for examining the ground motions from these events. We evaluate the ability of three suites of ground‐motion...
Upper Mississippi River Restoration Program Long Term Resource Monitoring element—Spatial data query tool
Jason J. Rohweder
2018, Fact Sheet 2018-3077
The Upper Mississippi River Restoration (UMRR) Program Long Term Resource Monitoring (LTRM) element has been monitoring fish, water quality, and vegetation in six study pools in the Upper Mississippi River system for approximately 30 years. Geographic locations were recorded for all sampling points. All of this information has been made...
Episodic master recession evaluation of groundwater and streamflow hydrographs for water-resource estimation
John R. Nimmo, Kimberlie Perkins
2018, Vadose Zone Journal (17) 1-25
Hydrograph analysis tools using a master recession curve (MRC) can produce many types of hydrologically important watershed-response quantifications, including aquifer recharge and stormflow characterization. An MRC is the relation between the value of a measured response R and its rate of change with time, dR/dt, occurring on the falling limb when there...
Analysis of groundwater response to tidal fluctuations, Site 10 Naval Magazine Indian Island, Port Hadlock, Washington
Chad C. Opatz, Richard S. Dinicola
2018, Open-File Report 2018-1192
Site 10 at Naval Magazine Indian Island is an approximately 3.7-acre inactive landfill. The site was used as the primary landfill for the island from about 1945 until the mid-1970s, receiving paints, batteries, trash, and materials. In a memorandum to Washington State Department of Ecology, Naval Facilities Engineering Command...
Non‐linear effect of sea ice: Spectacled Eider survival declines at both extremes of the ice spectrum
Katherine S. Christie, Tuula E. Hollmen, Paul L. Flint, David C. Douglas
2018, Ecology and Evolution (8) 11808-11818
Understanding the relationship between environmental factors and vital rates is an important step in predicting a species’ response to environmental change. Species associated with sea ice are of particular concern because sea ice is projected to decrease rapidly in polar environments with continued levels of greenhouse gas emissions. The relationship...
Flood-inundation maps for Cayuga Inlet, Sixmile Creek, Cascadilla Creek, and Fall Creek at Ithaca, New York
Elizabeth A. Nystrom, Arthur G. Lilienthal III, William F. Coon
2018, Scientific Investigations Report 2018-5167
Digital flood-inundation maps for a 2.9-square-mile area of Ithaca, New York, were created in 2015–18 by the U.S. Geological Survey in cooperation with the City of Ithaca, New York, and the New York State Department of State. The flood-inundation maps depict estimates of the maximum areal extent and depth of...
Updated statewide abundance estimates for the Florida manatee
Jeffrey A. Hostetler, Holly H. Edwards, Julien Martin, Paul Schueller
2018, Technical Report 23
Knowing how many manatees live in Florida is critical for conservation and management of this threatened species. Martin et al. (2015) flew aerial surveys in 2011–2012 and estimated abundance in those years using advanced techniques that incorporated multiple data sources. We flew additional aerial surveys in 2015–2016 to count manatees...
Changes in aquatic prey resources in response to estuary restoration in Willapa Bay, southwestern Washington
Isa Woo, Melanie J. Davis, Susan E.W. De La Cruz
2018, Open-File Report 2018-1194
Executive SummaryThe ongoing restoration of more than 200 hectares of estuarine habitat at Willapa National Wildlife Refuge, southwestern Washington, is expected to benefit a variety of species, including salmonids that use estuarine and tidal marshes as rearing and feeding areas as well as migratory waterbirds. During March–June 2014 and 2015,...
Real-time streambed scour monitoring at two bridges over the Gunnison River in western Colorado, 2016–17
Mark F. Henneberg
2018, Scientific Investigations Report 2018-5123
The Colorado Department of Transportation maintains roadways crossing over large streams and rivers where sediment transport and channel alignment changes can affect the structural stability of bridges. Structural stability during and immediately after peak streamflow can be assessed by measuring streambed scour; however, placing personnel or boats in the water...
Groundwater, surface-water, and water-chemistry data, Black Mesa area, northeastern Arizona—2015–2016
Jon P. Mason, Jamie P. Macy
2018, Open-File Report 2018-1193
The Navajo (N) aquifer is an extensive aquifer and the primary source of groundwater in the 5,400-square-mile Black Mesa area in northeastern Arizona. Availability of water is an important issue in the Black Mesa area because of continued water requirements for industrial and municipal use by a growing population and...
A natural‐origin steelhead population's response to exclusion of hatchery fish
Ian I Courter, Garth J Wyatt, Russell Perry, John Plumb, Forrest M Carpenter, Nicklaus K Ackerman, Robert B Lessard, Peter F Galbreath
2018, Transactions of the American Fisheries Society (148) 339-351
It is asserted that reduction or elimination of hatchery stocking will increase natural‐origin salmon Oncorhynchus spp. and steelhead O. mykiss production. We conducted an analysis of steelhead population census data (1958–2017) to determine whether elimination of summer steelhead stocking in the upper Clackamas River in 1998 increased the productivity of...
Sediment transport monitoring of the Yankee Fork of the Salmon River near Stanley, Idaho, 2012–15
James W. Johnsen
2018, Open-File Report 2018-1189
The Yankee Fork of the Salmon River is one of the larger watersheds in the upper Salmon River subbasin of central Idaho. Mining activities since the late 19th century, specifically placer mining and associated dredging from 1940 to 1953, have left the fluvial system in a highly altered and unnatural...
Sediment data from vibracores collected in 2016 from Fire Island, New York
Noreen A. Buster, Julie Bernier, Owen T. Brenner, Kyle W. Kelso, Thomas M. Tuten, Jennifer L. Miselis
2018, Data Series 1100
Researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) conducted a long-term coastal morphologic-change study at Fire Island, New York, prior to and after Hurricane Sandy impacted the area in October 2012. The Fire Island Coastal Change project objectives include understanding the morphologic evolution of the barrier island system on...
User guide for the Massachusetts Sustainable-Yield Estimator (MA SYE—version 2.0) computer program
Gregory E. Granato, Sara B. Levin
2018, Open-File Report 2018-1169
This report is a user guide for the Massachusetts Sustainable-Yield Estimator (MA SYE) computer program (version 2.0). The MA SYE was developed by the U.S. Geological Survey in cooperation with the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection to provide a planning-level decision-support tool designed to help decision makers estimate daily mean...
Methods used to estimate daily streamflow and water availability in the Massachusetts Sustainable-Yield Estimator version 2.0
Sara B. Levin, Gregory E. Granato
2018, Scientific Investigations Report 2018-5146
The Massachusetts Sustainable-Yield Estimator is a decision support tool that provides estimates of daily unaltered streamflow, water-use-adjusted streamflow, and water availability for ungaged, user-defined basins in Massachusetts. Daily streamflow at the ungaged site is estimated for unaltered (no water use) and water-use scenarios. The procedure for estimating streamflow was developed...
Time-to-detection occupancy modeling: An efficient method for analyzing the occurrence of amphibians and reptiles
Brian J. Halstead, Patrick M. Kleeman, Jonathan P. Rose
2018, Journal of Herpetology (52) 415-424
Occupancy models provide a reliable method of estimating species distributions while accounting for imperfect detectability. The cost of accounting for false absences is that detection and nondetection surveys typically require repeated visits to a site or multiple-observer techniques. More efficient methods of collecting data to estimate detection probabilities would allow...
Development of new information to inform fish passage decisions at the Yale and Merwin hydro projects on the Lewis River, Washington—Final report, 2018
Robert K. Al-Chokhachy, Christopher L. Clark, Mark H. Sorel, David A. Beauchamp
2018, Open-File Report 2018-1190
The reintroduction of extirpated salmonids to historically occupied areas is becoming increasingly common as a conservation and recovery strategy. Often, reintroductions are implemented after the factors that originally led to species extirpation have been reduced, eliminated, or mitigated. For anadromous Oncorhynchus spp. (Pacific salmon) and O. mykiss (steelhead), addressing barriers...
Ecosystem responses to elevated CO2 using airborne remote sensing at Mammoth Mountain, California
Kerry Cawse-Nicholson, Joshua B. Fisher, Caroline A. Famiglietti, Amy Braverman, Florian M. Schwandner, Jennifer L. Lewicki, Philip A. Townsend, David S. Schimel, Ryan Pavlick, Kathryn J. Bormann, Antonio Ferraz, Emily L. Kang, Pulong Ma, Robert R. Bogue, Thomas Youmans, David C. Pieri
2018, Biogeosciences (15) 7403-7418
We present an exploratory study examining the use of airborne remote-sensing observations to detect ecological responses to elevated CO2emissions from active volcanic systems. To evaluate these ecosystem responses, existing spectroscopic, thermal, and lidar data acquired over forest ecosystems on Mammoth Mountain volcano, California, were exploited, along with in situ measurements...
Southern Great Plains Rapid Ecoregional Assessment—Volume II. Species and assemblages
Gordon C. Reese, Natasha B. Carr, Lucy E. Burris
2018, Open-File Report 2018-1109
The Southern Great Plains Rapid Ecoregional Assessment was conducted in partnership with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the Great Plains Landscape Conservation Cooperative. The overall goal of the Rapid Ecoregional Assessments (REAs) is to compile and synthesize regional datasets to facilitate evaluation of the cumulative effects of change...
Hydrogeologic framework for characterization and occurrence of confined and unconfined aquifers in quaternary sediments in the glaciated conterminous United States—A digital map compilation and database
Adel E. Haj, David R. Soller, James E. Reddy, Leon J. Kauffman, Richard M. Yager, Cheryl A. Buchwald
2018, Data Series 1090
The U.S. Geological Survey has created a hydrogeologic framework for Quaternary sediments in glaciated areas of the conterminous United States that categorizes, maps, and characterizes the glacial sediments at and beneath the land surface. The hydrogeologic framework divides the glaciated United States into 17 distinct hydrogeologic terranes using a geologic...
User guide for the Connecticut Streamflow and Sustainable Water Use Estimator (CT SSWUE—version 1.0) computer program
Gregory E. Granato, Sara B. Levin
2018, Open-File Report 2018-1163
This report is a user guide for the Connecticut Streamflow and Sustainable Water Use Estimator (CT SSWUE) computer program (version 1.0). The CT SSWUE was developed by the U.S. Geological Survey in cooperation with the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection to provide a planning-level decision-support tool designed to...
