Methane emissions from groundwater pumping in the USA
Justin T. Kulongoski, Peter B. McMahon
2019, Climate and Atmospheric Science (2) 1-8
Atmospheric methane accumulation contributes to climate change, hence quantifying methane emissions is essential to assess and model the impacts. Here we estimate methane emissions from groundwater pumping in the Los Angeles Basin (LAB), north-eastern Pennsylvania, and the Principal aquifers of the USA using the average concentrations of methane in groundwater...
Prediction of unprecedented biological shifts in the global ocean
G. Beaugrand, A. Conversi, A. Atkinson, James Cloern, S. Chiba, S. Fonda-Umani, R.R. Kirby, C.H. Greene, E. Goberville, S.A. Otto, P.C. Reid, L. Stemmann, M. Edwards
2019, Nature Climate Change (9) 237-243
Impermanence is an ecological principle1 but there are times when changes occur nonlinearly as abrupt community shifts (ACSs) that transform the ecosystem state and the goods and services it provides2. Here, we present a model based on niche theory<a id="ref-link-section-d63913e663" title="Hutchinson, G. E. An Introduction to Population Ecology (Yale Univ. Press,...
Invasive buffelgrass detection using high-resolution satellite and UAV imagery on Google Earth Engine
Kaitlyn Elkind, Temuulen T. Sankey, Seth M. Munson, Clare E. Aslan
2019, Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation (5) 318-331
Methods to detect and monitor the spread of invasive grasses are critical to avoid ecosystem transformations and large economic costs. The rapid spread of non‐native buffelgrass(Pennisetum ciliare) has intensified fire risk and is replacing fire intolerant native vegetation in the Sonoran Desert of the southwestern US. Coarse‐resolution satellite imagery has had...
Plague management of prairie dog colonies: Degree and duration of deltamethrin flea control
David Austin Eads, Dean E. Biggins
2019, Journal of Vector Ecology (44) 40-47
Plague is a flea-borne disease of mammalian hosts. On the grasslands of western North America, plague stifles populations of Cynomys spp. prairie dogs (PDs). To manage plague, PD burrows are treated with 0.05% deltamethrin dust that can suppress flea numbers and plague transmission. Here, we evaluate the degree and duration of deltamethrin...
Regeneration of Metrosideros polymorpha forests in Hawaii after landscape‐level canopy dieback
Linda Mertelmeyer, James D. Jacobi, Dieter Mueller-Dombois, Kevin W. Brinck, Hans Juergen Boehmer
2019, Journal of Vegetation Science (30) 146-155
Questions(a) Have Metrosideros polymorpha trees become re‐established in Hawaiian forests previously impacted by canopy dieback in the 1970s? (b) Has canopy dieback expanded since the 1970s? (c) Can spatial patterns from this dieback be correlated with habitat factors to model future dieback in this area?<p class="article-section__sub-title...
Confronting uncertainty: Contributions of the wildlife profession to the broader scientific community
James D. Nichols
2019, Journal of Wildlife Management (83) 519-533
Most wildlife professionals are engaged in 1 or both of 2 basic endeavors: science and management. These endeavors are a focus of many other disciplines, leading to widespread sharing of general methodologies. Wildlife professionals have appropriately borrowed and assimilated many methods developed primarily in other disciplines but have also led...
North-south dipole in winter hydroclimate in the western United States during the last deglaciation
Adam M. Hudson, Benjamin J. Hatchett, Jay Quade, Douglas P. Boyle, Scott D. Bassett, Guleed Ali, Marie G. De los Santos
2019, Scientific Reports (9) 1-12
During the termination of the last glacial period the western U.S. experienced exceptionally wet conditions, driven by changes in location and strength of the mid-latitude winter storm track. The distribution of modern winter precipitation is frequently characterized by a north-south wet/dry dipole pattern, controlled by interaction of the storm track...
Aquatic macroinvertebrate community responses to wetland mitigation in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem
LEAH K. SWARTZ, Blake R. Hossack, Erin L. Muths, Robert L. Newell, Winsor H. Lowe
2019, Freshwater Biology (64) 942-953
1. Wetlands are critical components of freshwater biodiversity and provide ecosystem services, but human activities have resulted in large-scale loss of these habitats across the globe. To offset this loss, mitigation wetlands are frequently constructed, but their ability to replicate the functions of natural wetlands remains uncertain. Further, monitoring of...
UAV-based measurements of spatio-temporal concentration distributions of fluorescent tracers in open channel flows
Donghae Baek, Il Won Seo, Jun Song Kim, Jonathan M. Nelson
2019, Advances in Water Resources (127) 76-88
A new method of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-based tracer tests using RGB (red, green, blue) images was developed in order to acquire the spatio-temporal concentration distribution of tracer clouds in open channel flows. Tracer tests using Rhodamine WT were conducted to collect the RGB images using a commercial digital camera...
Scale‐dependent effects of isolation on seasonal patch colonisation by two Neotropical freshwater fishes
Jerry Penha, Karlo Y. P. Hakamada, James E. Hines, James D. Nichols
2019, Ecology of Freshwater Fish (28) 274-284
The metapopulation paradigm has been central to improve the conservation and management of natural populations. However, despite the large number of studies on metapopulation dynamics, the overall support for the relationships on which the paradigm is based has not been strong. Here, we studied the occupancy dynamics of two Neotropical...
A re-examination of the three most prominent Holocene tephra deposits in western Canada: Bridge River, Mount St. Helens Yn and Mazama
Britta J.L. Jensen, Alwynne B. Beaudoin, Michael A. Clynne, Jordan Harvey, James W. Vallance
2019, Quaternary International (500) 83-95
Volcanic ash deposits (tephra) in western Canada are instrumental in providing independent chronologic control for many archaeological and paleoenvironmental sites. In Alberta, tephra are a key chronologic tool in a region where radiocarbon dates are often unreliable because of the prevalence of carbonate-rich bedrock and...
Snowmelt-triggered earthquake swarms at the margin of Long Valley Caldera, California
Emily K. Montgomery-Brown, David R. Shelly, Paul A. Hsieh
2019, Geophysical Research Letters (46) 3698-3705
Fluids are well known to influence earthquakes, yet rarely are earthquakes convincingly linked to precipitation. Weak modulation or limited data often leads to ambiguous interpretations. In contrast, here we find that shallow seismicity in the Sierra Nevada range near Long Valley Caldera is strongly modulated by snowmelt....
Stream metabolism increases with drainage area and peaks asynchronously across a stream network
Francine H. Mejia, Alexander K. Fremier, Joseph R. Benjamin, J. Ryan Bellmore, Adrianne Z. Grimm, Grace A. Watson, Michael Newsom
2019, Aquatic Sciences (81) 1-17
Quantifying the spatial and temporal dynamics of stream metabolism across stream networks is key to understanding carbon cycling and stream food web ecology. To better understand intra-annual temporal patterns of gross primary production (GPP) and ecosystem respiration (ER) and their variability across space, we continuously measured dissolved oxygen and modeled...
Evidence for non-steady-state carbon emissions from snow-scoured alpine tundra
John F. Knowles, Peter D. Blanken, Corey Lawrence, Mark W. Williams
2019, Nature Communications (10)
High-latitude warming is capable of accelerating permafrost degradation and the decomposition of previously frozen carbon. The existence of an analogous high-altitude feedback, however, has yet to be directly evaluated. We address this knowledge gap by coupling a radiocarbon-based model to 7 years (2008–2014) of continuous eddy covariance data from a...
A cautionary tale of topography and tilt from Kilauea Caldera
Jessica A. Johnson, Michael P. Poland, Kyle R. Anderson, Juliet Biggs
2019, Geophysical Research Letters (46) 4221-4229
We conduct finite element analysis to investigate the effect of sharp topography on surface ground deformation caused by pressure changes in a magma reservoir. Tilt data express the horizontal gradient of vertical displacement and therefore can emphasize small variations in deformation that go unnoticed using other methods. We find that...
Relative abundance and molecular evolution of Lake Sinai Virus (Sinaivirus) clades
Robert S. Cornman
2019, PeerJ (7)
Lake Sinai Viruses (Sinaivirus) are commonly detected in honey bees (Apis mellifera) but no disease phenotypes or fitness consequences have yet been demonstrated. This viral group is genetically diverse, lacks obvious geographic structure, and multiple lineages can co-infect individual bees. While phylogenetic analyses have been performed, the molecular evolution...
Validating the performance of occupancy models for estimating habitat use and predicting the distribution of highly-mobile species: A case study using the American black bear
Matthew J. Gould, William R. Gould, James W. Cain III, Gary W. Roemer
2019, Biological Conservation (234) 28-36
Occupancy models have become a valuable tool for estimating wildlife-habitat relationships and for predicting species distributions. Highly-mobile species often violate the assumption that sampling units are geographically closed shifting the probability of occupancy to be interpreted as the probability of use. We used occupancy models, in conjunction with noninvasive sampling,...
Quantitative coseismic and precipitation-induced landslide risk mapping for the country of Lebanon
William Pollock, Joseph Wartman, Grace Abou-Jaoude, Alex R. Grant
2019, Conference Paper, Geo-Congress 2019
Quantitative landslide risk assessment is a key step in creating appropriate land use policies. The forced migration of those displaced by recent events in Syria has highlighted the need for studies to guide humanitarian aid and resettlement policies. In 2011, armed...
Relatedness within and among Myotis septentrionalis colonies at a local scale
W. Mark Ford, Miluska Olivera-Hyde, Alexander Silvis, Eric M. Hallerman, Eric R. Britzke
2019, Canadian Journal of Zoology
Abstract: We assessed parentage within and among maternity colonies of the northern long-eared bat (Myotis septentrionalis Troessart 1897) in north-central Kentucky from 2011–2013 to better understand colony social structure, formation, and membership dynamics. We intensively sampled colonies in close and remote (> 10 km) spatial proximity both before and...
Defining the limits of spectrally based bathymetric mapping on a large river
Carl J. Legleiter, Ryan L. Fosness
2019, Remote Sensing (11) 1-29
Remote sensing has emerged as a powerful method of characterizing river systems but is subject to several important limitations. This study focused on defining the limits of spectrally based mapping in a large river. We used multibeam echosounder (MBES) surveys and hyperspectral images from a deep, clear-flowing channel to develop...
Regression models for estimating sediment and nutrient concentrations and loads at the Kankakee River, Shelby, Indiana, December 2015 through May 2018
Timothy R. Lathrop, Aubrey R. Bunch, Myles S. Downhour
2019, Scientific Investigations Report 2019-5005
The Kankakee River in northern Indiana flows through the area once known as the Grand Marsh. Beginning in the 1860s, anthropogenic changes to the river within Indiana resulted in downstream flooding and additional transport of sediment and nutrients. In 2015, the U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the Indiana Department...
State-space analysis of power to detect regional brook trout population trends over time
Kasey C. Pregler, R. Daniel Hanks, Evan S. Childress, Nathaniel P. Hitt, Daniel J. Hocking, Benjamin H. Letcher, Yoichiro Kanno
2019, Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences (76) 2145-2155
Threats to aquatic biodiversity are expressed at broad spatial scales, but identifying regional trends in abundance is challenging owing to variable sampling designs, and temporal and spatial variation in abundance. We compiled a regional dataset of brook trout Salvelinus fontinalis counts across their southern range representing 326 sites from eight...
User’s manual for the Draper climate-distribution software suite with data‑evaluation tools
John M. Donovan, Kathryn M. Koczot
2019, Techniques and Methods 7-C22
Development of a time series of spatially distributed climate data is an important step in the process of developing physically based environmental models requiring distributed inputs of climate data beyond what is available from observations collected at climate stations. To prepare inputs required for model-mapping units across the study area,...
Estimating the energy expenditure of free‐ranging polar bears using tri‐axial accelerometers: A validation with doubly labeled water
Anthony M. Pagano, Terrie M. Williams
2019, Ecology and Evolution (9) 4210-4219
Measures of energy expenditure can be used to inform animal conservation and management, but methods for measuring the energy expenditure of free‐ranging animals have a variety of limitations. Advancements in biologging technologies have enabled the use of dynamic body acceleration derived from accelerometers as a proxy for energy expenditure. Although...
Characteristics and spatial variability of wind noise on near-surface broadband seismometers
S. N. Dybing, Adam T. Ringler, David C. Wilson, Robert Anthony
2019, Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (109) 1082-1098
By coupling with the ground, wind causes ground motion that appears on seismic records as noise across a wide bandwidth. This wind-generated noise can drown out important features such as small earthquakes and prevent observation of normal modes from large earthquakes. Because the wind field is heterogeneous at local scales...
