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In Great Plains rangelands, drought is a recurring disturbance. Ranchers in this region expect to encounter drought but may not be adequately prepared for it. Efforts to encourage drought preparedness would benefit from a better understanding of the conditions under which managers make decisions...

Southern New England provides key wintering habitat for White-winged Scoters (Melanitta fusca). This area has also pioneered the development of offshore wind energy in North America and the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has established nine Wind Energy Area (WEA) lease blocks along the Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf...

The U.S. Geological Survey three-part method for mineral resource assessments estimates numbers of undiscovered mineral deposits as probability distributions in geologically defined regions termed “permissive tracts.” This report describes a graphical user interface (GUI) script developed in open-source statistical software (R) that aggregates estimated undiscovered deposits of a given type...

Large‐scale citizen‐science projects, such as atlases of species distribution, are an important source of data for macroecological research, for understanding the effects of climate change and other drivers on biodiversity, and for more applied conservation tasks, such as early‐warning systems for biodiversity loss.However, citizen‐science data are challenging to analyse...

In order to produce useful hydrologic and aquatic habitat data from the Landsat system, the U.S. Geological Survey has developed the “Dynamic Surface Water Extent” (DSWE) Landsat Science Product. DSWE will provide long-term, high-temporal resolution data on variations in inundation extent. The model used to generate DSWE is composed of...

An important metric for many aspects of species conservation planning and risk assessment is an estimate of total population size. For landbirds breeding in North America, Partners in Flight (PIF) generates global, continental, and regional population size estimates. These estimates are an important component of the PIF species assessment process,...

The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with Broward County Environmental Planning and Resilience Division, has developed county-scale and local-scale groundwater/surface-water models to study the potential for increased inundation and flooding in eastern Broward County that are due to changes in future climate and sea-level rise. These models were constructed by...

Despite conservation efforts, large mammals such as tigers (Panthera tigris) and their main prey, gaur (Bos gaurus), banteng (Bos javanicus), and sambar (Rusa unicolor), are highly threatened and declining across their entire range. The only large viable source population of tigers in mainland Southeast Asia occurs in Thailand's Western Forest...

Aquatic features critical to watershed hydrology range widely in size from narrow, shallow streams to large, deep lakes. In this study we evaluated wetland, lake, and river systems across the Prairie Pothole Region to explore where pan-sharpened high-resolution (PSHR) imagery, relative to Landsat imagery, could provide additional...

The General Lake Model (GLM) is a one-dimensional open-source code designed to simulate the hydrodynamics of lakes, reservoirs, and wetlands. GLM was developed to support the science needs of the Global Lake Ecological Observatory Network (GLEON), a network of researchers using sensors to understand lake functioning and address questions about...

Active floodplains can putatively store large amounts of organic carbon (SOC) in subsoils originating from catchment erosion processes with subsequent floodplain deposition. Our study focussed on the assessment of SOC pools associated with alluvial floodplain soils that are affected by human-induced changes in floodplain deposition and in situ SOC mineralisation due to land use change and drainage. We evaluated depth-dependent...

During 2016, as part of the National Water-Quality Assessment Project (NAWQA), the U.S. Geological Survey conducted the Northeast Stream Quality Assessment (NESQA) to investigate stream quality in the northeastern United States. The goal of the NESQA was to assess the health of wadeable streams in the region by characterizing multiple...

The effectiveness of Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) modeling hinges on the quality of practices employed through the process, starting from early problem definition all the way through to using the model in a way that serves its intended purpose. The adoption and implementation of effective modeling practices need to be guided...

The success of species reintroductions can depend on a combination of environmental, demographic, and genetic factors. Although the importance of these factors in the success of reintroductions is well‐accepted, they are typically evaluated independently, which can miss important interactions. For species that persist in metapopulations, movement through and interaction with...

Inundation dynamics are a key driver of ecosystem form and function in river‐valley bottoms. Inundation itself is an outcome of multi‐scalar interactions and can vary strongly within and among river reaches. As a result, establishing to what degree and how inundation dynamics vary spatially both within and among river reaches...

During 2014, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Water-Quality Assessment(NAWQA) project assessed stream quality in 75 streams across an urban disturbance gradient within the Piedmont ecoregion of southeastern United States. Our objectives were to identify primary instream stressors affecting algal, macroinvertebrate and fish assemblages in wadeable streams. Biotic communities were surveyed once at each site,...

Oxygen-isotope thermometry played a critical role in the rise of modern geochemistry and remains extensively used in (bio-)geoscience. Its theoretical foundations rest on the assumption that 18O/16O partitioning among water and carbonate minerals primarily reflects thermodynamic equilibrium. However, after decades of research, there is no consensus on the true equilibrium 18O/16O fractionation...

This document defines a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) digital topographic map. This map product series, named “US Topo,” is modeled on the now historical USGS 7.5-minute (1:24,000 scale) topographic map series produced and printed by the USGS from 1947 to 2006. US Topo maps have the...

Recent coastal storms and associated recovery efforts have led to increased investment in nature-based coastal protection, including restoration of salt marshes and construction of living shorelines. In particular, many of these efforts focus on increasing vertical elevation through sediment nourishment, where sediment is removed from the tidal channel and placed...

The characterization of pore-space connectivity in porous media at the sediment/water interface is critical to understanding contaminant transport and reactive biogeochemical processes in zones of groundwater and surface-water exchange. Previous in situ studies of dual-domain (i.e., mobile/less-mobile porosity) studies have been limited to solute tracer injections at...

Remote Sensing Open Access Journal (RS OAJ) is an international leading journal in the field of remote sensing science and technology. It was first published in the year 2009 and is currently celebrating tenth year of publications. In this research, a bibliometric analysis of RS OAJ was conducted based on...

Long-period Rayleigh wave horizontal to vertical amplitude (H/V) ratios at a station provide information about local earth structure that is complementary to phase velocity. However, a number of studies have observed that significant scatter appears in these measurements making it difficult to use H/V ratio measurements to resolve earth structure....

Biogeochemical reactions occur unevenly in space and time, but this heterogeneity is often simplified as a linear average due to sparse data, especially in subsurface environments where access is limited. For example, little is known about the spatial variability of groundwater denitrification, an important process in...

In theory, extirpated plant species can be reintroduced and managed to restore sustainable populations. However, few reintroduced plants are known to persist for more than a few years. Our adaptive‐management case study illustrates how we restored the endangered hemiparasitic annual plant, Chloropyron maritimum subsp. maritimum (salt marsh bird's beak), to Sweetwater Marsh, San Diego...

We developed a unique set of landscape projections for the Great Plains that use real land-management parcels to represent landscape patterns at high spatial and thematic resolution.Both anthropogenic land use and natural vegetation respond in the model to projected changes in groundwater availability and climate change.Thirty-three scenario combinations were modeled, facilitating landscape planning and mitigation efforts under...