Recognizing the Famine Early Warning Systems Network: Over 30 years of drought early warning science advances and partnerships promoting global food security
Chris Funk, Shraddhanand Shukla, Wassila Mamadou Thiaw, James Rowland, Andrew Hoell, Gregory Husak, Nicholas Novella
2019, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 1011-1027
On a planet with more than 7 billion people, how do we identify the millions of drought-afflicted people who face a real threat of livelihood disruption or death without humanitarian assistance? Typically, these people are poor and heavily dependent on rainfed agriculture and livestock. Most live in Africa, Central America,...
Enhanced landslide mobility by basal liquefaction: the 2014 SR530 (Oso), Washington landslide
Brian D. Collins, Mark E. Reid
2019, Geological Society of America Bulletin (132) 451-476
Landslide mobility can vastly amplify the consequences of slope failure. As a compelling example, the March 22, 2014 landslide near Oso, Washington (USA) was particularly devastating, traveling across a 1-km+ wide river valley, killing 43 people, destroying dozens of homes, and temporarily closing a well-traveled highway. To resolve causes...
Variability in synthetic earthquake ground motions caused by source variability and errors in wave propagation models
Paul A. Spudich, Antonella Cirella, Laura Scognamiglio, Elisa Tinti
2019, Geophysical Journal International (219) 346-372
Numerical simulations of earthquake ground motions are used both to anticipate the effects of hypothetical earthquakes by forward simulation and to infer the behaviour of the real earthquake source ruptures by the inversion of recorded ground motions. In either application it is necessary to assume some Earth structure that...
ModelMuse Version 4: A graphical user interface for MODFLOW 6
Richard B. Winston
2019, Scientific Investigations Report 2019-5036
ModelMuse, a graphical user interface for groundwater-modeling software, was modified to support MODFLOW 6. ModelMuse works with two types of spatial discretization in MODFLOW 6: structured grids (DIS) and discretization by vertices (DISV). Quadtree refinement is used to generate a DISV model from a structured-grid model. The locations and weights...
The evolving threat of rapid Ohia death (ROD) to Hawaii’s native ecosystems and rare plant species
Lucas B. Fortini, Lauren R. Kaiser, Lisa Keith, Jonathan Price, R. Flint Hughes, James D. Jacobi, J. B. Friday
2019, Forest Ecology and Management (448) 376-385
Hawai‘i’s most widespread native tree, ‘ōhi‘a lehua (Metrosideros polymorpha), has been dying across large areas of Hawai‘i Island mainly due to two fungal pathogens (Ceratocystis lukuohia and Ceratocystis huliohia) that cause a disease collectively known as Rapid ‘Ōhi‘a Death (ROD). Here we examine patterns of positive detections of C. lukuohia as it has been...
Review: Endophytic microbes and their potential applications in crop management
James F. White, Kathryn L. Kingsley, Matthew T. Elmore, Satish Kumar Verma, Surendra K Gond, Kurt P. Kowalski
2019, Pest Management Science (75) 2558-2565
Endophytes are microbes (mostly bacteria and fungi) present in plants. Endophytic microbes are often functional in that they may carry nutrients from the soil into plants, modulate plant development, increase stress tolerance of plants, suppress virulence in pathogens, increase disease resistance in plants, and suppress development of competitor plant species....
Estimating density and detection of bobcats in fragmented Midwestern landscapes using spatial capture-recapture data from camera traps
Christopher N. Jacques, Robert W. Klaver, Tim C. Swearingen, Edward D. Davis, Charles R. Anderson, Jonathan A. Jenks, Christopher S. DePerno, Robert D. Bluett
2019, Wildlife Society Bulletin (43) 256-264
Camera-trapping data analyzed with spatially explicit capture–recapture (SCR) models can provide a rigorous method for estimating density of small populations of elusive carnivore species. We sought to develop and evaluate the efficacy of SCR models for estimating density of a presumed low-density bobcat (Lynx rufus) population in fragmented landscapes of...
Facilitating adaptation to climate change while restoring a montane plant community
Christina Leopold, Steve C. Hess
2019, PLoS ONE (14)
Montane plant communities throughout the world have responded to changes in temperature regimes by shifting ranges upward in elevation, and made downslope movements to track shifts in climatic water balance. Organisms that cannot disperse or adapt biologically to projected climate scenarios in situ may decrease in distributional range and abundance...
Digital mapping of ecological land units using a nationally scalable modeling framework
Jonathan J. Maynard, Travis W. Nauman, Shawn W. Salley, Brandon T. Bestelmeyer, Michael C. Duniway, Curtis J. Talbot, Joel R. Brown
2019, Article
Ecological site descriptions (ESDs) and associated state-and-transition models (STMs) provide a nationally consistent classification and information system for defining ecological land units for management applications in the United States. Current spatial representations of ESDs, however, occur via soil mapping and are therefore confined to the spatial resolution used to map...
LANDFIRE remap prototype mapping effort: Developing a new framework for mapping vegetation classification, change, and structure
Joshua J. Picotte, Daryn Dockter, Jordan Long, Brian L. Tolk, Anne Davidson, Birgit Peterson
2019, Fire (2) 1-26
LANDFIRE (LF) National (2001) was the original product suite of the LANDFIRE program, which included Existing Vegetation Cover (EVC), Height (EVH), and Type (EVT). Subsequent refinements after feedback from data users resulted in updated products, referred to as LF 2001, that now served as LANDFIRE’s baseline datasets and are the...
Simulation of water availability in the Southeastern United States for historical and potential future climate and land-cover conditions
Jacob H. LaFontaine, Rheannon M. Hart, Lauren E. Hay, William H. Farmer, Andy R. Bock, Roland J. Viger, Steven L. Markstrom, R. Steve Regan, Jessica M. Driscoll
2019, Scientific Investigations Report 2019-5039
A study was conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in cooperation with the Gulf Coastal Plains and Ozarks Landscape Conservation Cooperative (GCPO LCC) and the Department of the Interior Southeast Climate Adaptation Science Center, to evaluate the hydrologic response of a daily time step hydrologic model to historical observations...
Development of a flood-inundation map library and precipitation-runoff modeling for the Clear Fork Mohican River in and near Bellville, Ohio
Chad J. Ostheimer, Carrie A. Huitger
2019, Scientific Investigations Report 2019-5017
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in cooperation with the Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District, led hydrologic and hydraulic analyses within the Clear Fork Mohican River Basin in and near Bellville, Ohio. The analyses included the development of digital flood-inundation maps for an approximately 2.5-mile reach of the Clear Fork Mohican River...
Modulation of seismic activity in Kīlauea’s Upper East Rift Zone by summit pressurization
Christelle Wauthier, Diana C. Roman, Michael P. Poland
2019, Geology
Kīlauea Volcano is underlain by a complex, laterally-extensive magmatic plumbing system. Although in recent decades it has mainly erupted through vents along the middle East Rift Zone and summit caldera, eruptions can occur anywhere along its two laterally extensive rift zones, as demonstrated by the dramatic eruptive activity of 2018....
Widespread initiation, reactivation, and acceleration of landslides in the northern California Coast Ranges due to extreme rainfall
Alexander L. Handwerger, Eric J. Fielding, Mong-Han Huang, Georgina L. Bennett, Cunren Liang, William H. Schulz
2019, Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface (24) 1782-1797
Episodically to continuously active slow-moving landslides are driven by precipitation. Climate change, which is altering both the frequency and magnitude of precipitation world21 wide, is therefore predicted to have a major impact on landslides. Here we examine the behavior of hundreds of slow-moving landslides in northern California in response to large...
iCoast – Did the Coast Change?: Storm-impact model verification using citizen scientists
Karen L. M. Morgan, Nathaniel G. Plant, Hilary F. Stockdon, Richard J. Snell
2019, Conference Paper, Proceedings of the 9th International Conference Coastal Sediments 2019
The USGS provides model predictions of severe storm impacts prior to landfall based on pre-storm morphology and predicted total water levels, including waves and surge. Presented in near real time on the USGS Coastal Change Hazard Portal, they provide coastal residents, scientists, and emergency managers valuable coastal response information. iCoast...
Event detection performance of the PLUM earthquake early warning algorithm in southern California
Elizabeth S. Cochran, Julian Bunn, Sarah E. Minson, Annemarie S. Baltay Sundstrom, Deborah L. Kilb, Y. Kodera, Mitsuyuki Hoshiba
2019, Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (109) 1524-1541
We test the Japanese ground‐motion‐based earthquake early warning (EEW) algorithm, propagation of local undamped motion (PLUM), in southern California with application to the U.S. ShakeAlert system. In late 2018, ShakeAlert began limited public alerting in Los Angeles to areas of expected modified Mercalli intensity (IMMI) 4.0+ for magnitude 5.0+ earthquakes....
Seasonal occurrence and abundance of dabbling ducks across the continental United States: Joint spatio-temporal modelling for the Genus Anas
John M. Humphreys, Jennifer L. Murrow, Jeffery D. Sullivan, Diann Prosser
2019, Diversity and Distributions (25) 1497-1508
Estimating the distribution and abundance of wildlife is an essential task in species conservation, wildlife management and habitat prioritization. Although a host of methods and tools have been proposed to accomplish this undertaking, several challenges remain in accurately forecasting occurrence and abundance for highly mobile species. Exhibiting extensive geographic ranges...
Negative impacts of summer heat on Sierra Nevada tree seedlings
Emily V. Moran, Adrian J. Das, Jon Keeley, Nathan L. Stephenson
2019, Ecosphere (10)
Understanding the response of forests to climate change is important for predicting changes in biodiversity and ecosystem services, including carbon storage. Seedlings represent a key demographic stage in these responses, because seedling establishment is necessary for population persistence and spread, and because the conditions allowing seedlings to survive and grow...
Land-use change and the ecological consequences of personality in small mammals
Allison M. Brehm, Alessio Mortelliti, George A. Maynard, Joseph D. Zydlewski
2019, Ecology Letters (22) 1387-1395
Many plants rely on animals for seed dispersal, but are all individuals equally effective at dispersing seeds? If not, then the loss of certain individual dispersers from populations could have cascade effects on ecosystems. Despite the importance of seed dispersal for forest ecosystems, variation among individual...
Reserve design to optimize functional connectivity and animal density
Amrita Gupta, Bistra Dilkina, Dana Morin, Angela K. Fuller, J. Andrew Royle, Chris Sutherland, Carla Gomes
2019, Conservation Biology (35) 1023-1034
Ecological distance-based spatial capture–recapture models (SCR) are a promising approach for simultaneously estimating animal density and connectivity, both of which affect spatial population processes and ultimately species persistence. We explored how SCR models can be integrated into reserve-design frameworks that explicitly acknowledge both the spatial distribution of individuals and their...
Spatial patterns of meadow sensitivities to interannual climate variability in the Sierra Nevada
Christine M. Albano, Meredith L. McClure, Shana E. Gross, Wesley Kitlasten, Christopher Soulard, Charles Morton, Justin Huntington
2019, Ecohydrology (12)
Conservation of montane meadows is a high priority for land and water managers given their critical role in buffering the effects of climate variability and their vulnerability to increasing temperatures and evaporative demands. Recent advances in cloud computing have provided new opportunities to examine ecological responses to climate variability over...
Transient population dynamics impede restoration and may promote ecosystem transformation after disturbance
Robert K. Shriver, Caitlin M. Andrews, Robert Arkle, David Barnard, Michael C. Duniway, Matthew J. Germino, David S. Pilliod, David A. Pyke, Justin L. Welty, John B. Bradford
2019, Ecology Letters (22) 1357-1366
The apparent failure of ecosystems to recover from increasingly widespread disturbance is a global concern. Despite growing focus on factors inhibiting resilience and restoration, we still know very little about how demographic and population processes influence recovery. Using inverse and forward demographic modelling of 531 post‐fire...
Concurrent assessment of epidemiological and operational uncertainties for optimal outbreak control: Ebola as a case study
Shou-Li Li, Matthew J. Ferrari, Ottar N. Bjornstad, Michael C. Runge, Christopher J Fonnesbeck, Michael J. Tildesley, David Pannell, Katriona Shea
2019, Proceedings of the Royal Society B (286)
Determining how to best manage an epidemiological outbreak may be hindered by both epidemiological uncertainty (i.e. about epidemiological processes) and operational uncertainty (i.e. about the effectiveness of candidate interventions). These two uncertainties are rarely addressed concurrently in epidemic studies, impeding decision-making. We present an approach to simultaneously address both...
Exploring controls on debris-flow surge velocity and peak discharge at Chalk Cliffs, Colorado, USA
Joel B. Smith, Jason W. Kean, Jeffrey A. Coe
2019, Conference Paper, Debris-flow hazards mitigation : mechanics, monitoring, modeling, and assessment ; proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Debris-Flow Hazards Mitigation, Golden, Colorado, USA, June 10-13, 2019
We present a series of debris-flow events and use combined sensor and video data to explore how sediment concentration and triggering rainfall intensity affect the velocity and discharge of debris-flow surges generated by surface-water runoff. We analyze an initial data set of 49 surges from four debris-flow events recorded by...
An evaluation of debris-flow runout model accuracy and complexity in Montecito, CA: Towards a framework for regional inundation-hazard forecasting
Erin Bessette-Kirton, Jason W. Kean, Jeffrey A. Coe, Francis K. Rengers, Dennis M. Staley
2019, Conference Paper, Debris-flow hazards mitigation : mechanics, monitoring, modeling, and assessment ; proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Debris-Flow Hazards Mitigation, Golden, Colorado, USA, June 10-13, 2019
Numerous debris-flow inundation models have been applied retroactively to noteworthy events around the world. While such studies can be useful in identifying controlling factors, calibrating model parameters, and assessing future hazards in specific study areas, model parameters tailored to individual events can be difficult to apply regionally. The advancement of...
