The USGS National crustal model for seismic hazard studies: 2019 update
Oliver S. Boyd
2019, Conference Paper, Geologic Mapping Forum 2019 Abstracts
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) National Crustal Model (NCM) is being developed to assist in the modeling of seismic hazards across the conterminous United States, specifically by improving estimates of site response. The NCM is composed of geophysical profiles, extending from the Earth’s surface into the upper mantle, constructed...
Historical changes in New York State streamflow: Attribution of temporal shifts and spatial patterns from 1961 to 2016
Robin Glas, Douglas A. Burns, Laura K. Lautz
2019, Journal of Hydrology (574) 308-323
To better understand the effects of climate change on streamflow, the hydrologic response to both temperature and precipitation needs to be examined at the mesoscale. New York State provides a hydrologically diverse mesoscale region, where sub-regional clusters of watersheds may respond...
Temporal variability in stream fish assemblage metrics and implications for long-term monitoring
Scott D. George, Barry P. Baldigo, Daniel S. Stich
2019, Ecological Indicators (101) 661-669
High natural variability in the condition of fish communities in headwater streams complicates detection of long-term responses to changes in water quality. As a result, little is known about the impacts and recovery of fishes from acid deposition in streams of New York. Twenty-one fish metrics from annual electrofishing surveys...
A federal-state partnership for mapping Florida's coast and seafloor
Cheryl J. Hapke, Ryan Druyor, Rene D. Baumstark, Philip Kramer, Ekaterina Fitos, Xan Fredericks, Elizabeth H. Fetherston-Resch
2019, Coastal Sediments 2150-2158
The Florida Coastal Mapping Program, a partnership of state and federal agencies, has a goal of having modern, consistent, high- resolution sea-floor data for all of Florida’s coastal zone in the next decade to support a myriad of coastal zone science and management applications. One of the early steps in...
Revisiting Herto: New evidence of Homo sapiens from Ethiopia
Yonatan Sahle, Yonas Beyene, Alban Defleur, Berhane Asfaw, Giday WoldeGabriel, William K Hart, Leah E. Morgan, Paul R. Renne, Joshua Carlson, Tim D White
2019, Book chapter, Modern Human Origins and Dispersal
Localities in the radiometrically dated Upper Herto Member of Ethiopia’s Bouri Formation continue to produce new data that complement and extend initial reports of fossils and artifacts published in 2003. Results of these revisits are reported here and include the in situ recovery of artifacts from the same sediments containing...
Evaluation of ground motion models for USGS seismic hazard forecasts: Induced and tectonic earthquakes in the Central and Eastern U.S.
Daniel E. McNamara, Mark D. Petersen, Eric M. Thompson, Peter M. Powers, Allison Shumway, Susan M. Hoover, Morgan P. Moschetti, Emily Wolin
2019, Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (109) 322-335
Ground motion model (GMM) selection and weighting introduces a significant source of uncertainty in United States Geological Survey (USGS) seismic hazard models. The increase in moderate moment magnitude induced earthquakes (Mw 4 to 5.8) in Oklahoma and Kansas since 2009, due to increased wastewater injection related to oil and...
Kinetic study on clogging of a geothermal pumping well triggered by mixing-induced biogeochemical reactions
Luc Burte, Charles A. Cravotta III, Lorine Bethencourt, Julien Farasin, Mathieu Pedrot, Alexis Dufresne, Marie-Francoise Gerard, Catherine Baranger, Tanguy Le Borgne, Luc Aquilina
2019, Environmental Science & Technology (53) 5848-5857
The sustainability of ground-source geothermal systems can be severely impacted by microbially mediated clogging processes. Biofouling of water wells by hydrous ferric oxide is a widespread problem. Although the mechanisms and critical environmental factors associated with clogging development are widely recognized, effects of mixing processes within the wells and time...
Permafrost collapse is accelerating carbon release
Merritt R. Turetsky, Benjamin W. Abbott, Miriam Jones, Katey Walter Anthony, David Olefeldt, Edward A. Schuur, Charles Koven, A.D. McGuire, Guido Grosse, Peter Kuhry, Gustaf Hugelius, David M. Lawrence, Carolyn Gibson, A. B. K. Sannel
2019, Nature (569) 32-34
This much is clear: the Arctic is warming fast, and frozen soils are starting to thaw, often for the first time in thousands of years. But how this happens is as murky as the mud that oozes from permafrost when ice melts.As the temperature of the ground rises above freezing,...
Overview of future USGS Gulf of Mexico buoyant storage assessment project
Sean T. Brennan
2019, Conference Paper
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) is a member of a U.S. Department of Energy-funded partnership headed by the University of Texas Bureau of Economic Geology that is working to assess the feasibility of offshore geologic carbon dioxide (CO2) storage in the Gulf of Mexico. The role of the...
Denitrification in the river network of a mixed land use watershed: Unpacking the complexities
Rebecca Kreiling, William B. Richardson, Lynn A. Bartsch, Martin C. Thoms, Victoria G. Christensen
2019, Biogeochemistry (143) 327-346
River networks have the potential to permanently remove nitrogen through denitrification. Few studies have measured denitrification rates within an entire river network or assessed how land use affect rates at larger spatial scales. We sampled 108 sites throughout the network of the Fox River watershed, Wisconsin, to determine if land...
Pleistocene hydrothermal activity on Brokeoff volcano and in the Maidu volcanic center, Lassen Peak area, northeast California: Evolution of magmatic-hydrothermal systems on stratovolcanoes
David A. John, Robert G. Lee, George N. Breit, John H. Dilles, Andrew T. Calvert, L.J. Patrick Muffler, Michael A. Clynne
2019, Geopshere (15) 946-982
Partially eroded stratovolcanoes worldwide, notably Mounts Rainier and Adams in the Cascades and several volcanoes in Japan, record episodic periods of eruption and geothermal activity that produce zones of hydrothermal alteration. The partly eroded core of late Pleistocene Brokeoff volcano on the south side of Lassen Peak exposes the upper...
Formation of pedestalled, relict lakes on the McMurdo Ice Shelf, Antarctica
Grant J MacDonald, Alison F Banwell, Ian C Willis, David Mayer, Becky Goodsell, Douglas R MacAyeal
2019, Journal of Glaciology 1-7
Surface debris covers much of the western portion of the McMurdo Ice Shelf and has a strong influence on the local surface albedo and energy balance. Differential ablation between debris-covered and debris-free areas creates an unusual heterogeneous surface of topographically low, high-ablation,...
Streamflow Gain and Loss, Hydrograph Separation, and Water Quality of Abandoned Mine Lands in the Daniel Boone National Forest, Eastern Kentucky, 2015–17
Mac A. Cherry
2019, Scientific Investigations Report 2019-5006
During 2015–17, the U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service (Forest Service), carried out a study to characterize the hydrology and water chemistry in two study areas within the Daniel Boone National Forest. One study area was within the Rock Creek drainage and the...
Latitude and daily-weather effects on gobbling activity of wild turkeys in Mississippi
Matthew D. Palumbo, Francisco Vilella, Guiming Wang, Bronson K. Strickland, Dave Godwin, P. Grady Dixon, Benjamin D. Rubin, Marcus A. Lashley
2019, International Journal of Biometeorology (63) 1059-1067
Weather has been recognized as a density independent factor influencing the abundance, distribution, and behavior of vertebrates. Male wild turkeys’ (Meleagris gallopavo) breeding behavior includes vocalizations and courtship displays to attract females, the phenology of which can vary with latitude. State biologists design spring turkey-hunting season frameworks centered...
The dependence of hydroclimate projections in snow‐dominated regions of the western United States on the choice of statistically downscaled climate data
Jay R. Alder, Steven W. Hostetler
2019, Water Resources Research (55) 2279-2300
We assess monthly temperature and precipitation data produced by four statistically based techniques that were used to downscale general circulation models (GCMs) in the Climate Model Intercomparison Program Phase 5 (CMIP5) (Taylor et al., 2012). We drive a simple water-balance model with the downscaled data to demonstrate the effect of...
Geochemical and mineralogical maps, with interpretation, for soils of the conterminous United States
David B. Smith, Federico Solano, Laurel G. Woodruff, William F. Cannon, Karl J. Ellefsen
2019, Scientific Investigations Report 2017-5118
Between 2007 and 2013, the U.S. Geological Survey conducted a low-density (1 site per 1,600 square kilometers, 4,857 sites) geochemical and mineralogical survey of soils in the conterminous United States. The sampling protocol for the national-scale survey included, at each site, a sample from a depth of 0 to 5...
Arsenic concentrations after drinking water well installation: Time-varying effects on arsenic mobilization
Melinda L. Erickson, Helen F. Malenda, Emily C. Berquist, Joseph D. Ayotte
2019, Science of the Total Environment (678) 681-691
Chronic exposure to geogenic arsenic via drinking water is a worldwide health concern. However, effects of well installation and operation on arsenic concentrations and mobilization are not well understood. This knowledge gap impacts both reliable detection of arsenic in drinking water and effective public health recommendations to reduce exposure to...
Cloud cover and delayed herbivory relative to timing of spring onset interact to dampen climate change impacts on net ecosystem exchange in a coastal Alaskan wetland
Josh Leffler, Karen H. Beard, Katharine C. Kelsey, Ryan T. Choi, Joel A. Schmutz, Jeffrey Welker
2019, Environmental Research Letters (14)
Rapid warming in northern ecosystems over the past four decades has resulted in earlier spring, increased precipitation, and altered timing of plant–animal interactions, such as herbivory. Advanced spring phenology can lead to longer growing seasons and increased carbon (C) uptake. Greater precipitation coincides with greater cloud cover possibly suppressing photosynthesis....
Calcrete uranium deposits in the Southern High Plains, USA
Susan Hall, Bradley S. Van Gosen, James B. Paces, Robert A. Zielinski
2019, Ore Geology Reviews (109) 50-78
The Southern High Plains (SHP) is a new and emerging U.S. uranium province. Here, uranyl vanadates form deposits in Pliocene to Pleistocene sandstone, dolomite, and limestone. Fifteen calcrete uranium occurrences are identified; two of these, the Buzzard Draw and Sulfur Springs Draw deposits, have...
Estimation bias in water-quality constituent concentrations and fluxes: A synthesis for Chesapeake Bay rivers and streams
Qian Zhang, Joel D. Blomquist, Douglas L. Moyer, Jeffrey G. Chanat
2019, Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution (7)
Flux quantification for riverine water-quality constituents has been an active area of research. Statistical approaches are often employed to make estimation for days without observations. One such approach is the Weighted Regressions on Time, Discharge, and Season (WRTDS) method. While WRTDS has been used in many investigations, there is...
Modeling barrier island habitats using landscape position information
Nicholas Enwright, Lei Wang, Hongqing Wang, Michael Osland, Laura Feher, Sinéad M. Borchert, Richard Day
2019, Remote Sensing (11)
Barrier islands are dynamic environments because of their position along the marine–estuarine interface. Geomorphology influences habitat distribution on barrier islands by regulating exposure to harsh abiotic conditions. Researchers have identified linkages between habitat and landscape position, such as elevation and distance from shore, yet these linkages have not been fully...
Calibration of Precipitation-Runoff Modeling System (PRMS) to simulate prefire and postfire hydrologic response in the upper Rio Hondo Basin, New Mexico
Kyle R. Douglas-Mankin, C. David Moeser
2019, Scientific Investigations Report 2019-5022
The Precipitation-Runoff Modeling System (PRMS) is widely used to simulate the effects of climate, topography, land cover, and soils on landscape-level hydrologic responses and streamflow. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in cooperation with the New Mexico Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, developed procedures to apply the PRMS model...
Efficacy of eDNA as an early detection indicator for Burmese pythons in the ARM Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge in the Greater Everglades Ecosystem
Margaret Hunter, Gaia Meigs-Friend, Jason Ferrante, Brian Smith, Kristen Hart
2019, Ecological Indicators (102) 617-622
Environmental DNA (eDNA) detection of invasive species can be used to delimited occupied ranges and estimate probabilities to inform management decisions. Environmental DNA is shed into the environment through skin cells and bodily fluids and can be detected in water samples collected from lakes, rivers, and swamps. In south Florida,...
A review of machine learning applications to coastal sediment transport and morphodynamics
Evan Goldstein, Giovanni Coco, Nathaniel G. Plant
2019, Earth-Science Reviews (194) 97-108
A range of computer science methods under the heading of machine learning (ML) enables the extraction of insight and quantitative relationships from multidimensional datasets. Here, we review some common ML methods and their application to studies of coastal morphodynamics and sediment transport. We examine aspects of ‘what’ and ‘why’ ML...
Fault slip associated with the 2 September 2017 M 5.3 Sulphur Peak, Idaho, earthquake and aftershock sequence
Frederick Pollitz, Charles Wicks, William L. Yeck, James E. Evans
2019, Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (109) 875-887
The 2 September 2017 M 5.3 Sulphur Peak, Idaho, earthquake is one of the largest earthquakes in southern Idaho since the 1983 M 6.9 Borah Peak earthquake. It was followed by a vigorous aftershock sequence for nearly two weeks that included five events above M 4.5. The coseismic and early postseismic deformation was...
