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This report, prepared in cooperation with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, presents a method for estimating daily public supply water use by drinking water service area systems for New Jersey. The ability to accurately estimate daily public supply water use could help water supply planners in New Jersey...

Anthropogenic climate change is an existential threat to our planet, impacting everything from the delicate balance of ecosystems to the availability of vital resources. Coastal regions, particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change due to rising sea levels and changing weather patterns, are experiencing increased erosion, flooding, and habitat...

Wildlife reintroduction projects are an important tool for restoring traditional wildlife heritage, increasing species diversity, providing subsistence and sport hunting and other recreational opportunities, and assisting ecosystem adaption to future climate change. In Minnesota, the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and some conservationists advocate for the expansion...

Emergent tidal wetlands are declining globally as a result of sea level rise and land use change. This habitat loss can keenly affect rare plant species within wetlands, and may require restoration to meet species recovery goals related to retaining populations throughout species' ranges. Soft salty bird’s-beak (Chloropyron molle ssp....

Natural capital accounting has the potential to yield important policy insights at multiple scales, but there remains a disconnect between regional-scale natural capital accounts and their use for informing policy. In this paper, we propose a roadmap that could lead to the creation of policy-relevant regional accounts, with steps split...

In a changing climate, resource management depends on anticipating changes and considering uncertainties. To facilitate effective decision making on public lands, we regionally summarized the magnitude and uncertainty of projected change in management-relevant climate variables for 332 national park units across the contiguous US. Temperature, frequency of extreme precipitation events,...

No abstract available....

The frequency and severity of wildfire activity in the western United States emphasises the utility of hydrologic models to predict water-quality response. This study presents a novel application of the Weighted Regressions on Time, Discharge and Season (WRTDS) method to assess potential changes in water quality in two watersheds draining...

Greenland White-fronted Geese Anser albifrons flavirostris exhibit prolonged parent–offspring and sibling–sibling associations, suggesting fitness advantages to such behaviour, so we used reduced representation genome sequence data to determine the degree to which marked flock members observed associating in apparent parent–offspring and sibling–sibling relationships in the field were genetically related. Among 50 bled,...

Invasion of non-native riparian vegetation along southwestern USA rivers is associated with channel narrowing and simplification, prompting numerous and varied removal efforts. Channel width and migration rate often, but not always, increase following treatment. The cause of this variability and the duration of response is poorly understood. Using flow records...

This document examines the Chesapeake Bay watershed response to nutrient and sediment reduction efforts under the Clean Water Act's total maximum daily load (TMDL) regulation. As the 2025 Chesapeake Bay TMDL deadline approaches, water quality goals remain unmet, primarily because of nonpoint source pollution, the largest remaining source of nutrients...

Large surface-rupturing intraplate earthquakes in stable continental regions (SCRs) are uncommon globally and have recurrence intervals of thousands to hundreds of thousands of years based on the paleoseismic and geomorphic record, challenging accurate active fault identification in these regions. To constrain the timescales of preservation for scarps created by surface...

No abstract available....

Expansion of floating photovoltaic (FPV) solar systems provides a low-conflict renewable energy option to help mitigate climate change while sparing land, but potential sustainability trade-offs remain unquantified. We compare the technical potential of maximum FPV deployment to address the climate crisis with FPV-buildout scenarios that prioritize biodiversity and social values...

Uranium (U) in rocks and soils of arid and semi-arid environments can be mobilized by irrigation and fertilization, posing environmental and health risks. Elevated U, along with selenium (Se) and nitrate (NO3) co-constituents, necessitates careful monitoring and management. We developed a distributed-parameter numerical model to assess U pollution in an...

We present geochemical data from gas samples from ∼1200 km of arc in the Central Volcanic Zone of the Andes (CVZA), the volcanic arc with the thickest (∼70 km) continental crust globally. The primary goals of this study are to characterize and understand how magmatic gases interact with hydrothermal systems, assess the...

BackgroundFuel monitoring data are essential to evaluate wildfire risk, plan management activities and evaluate fuel treatment effects. Terrestrial light detection and ranging (lidar) is a field-based 3D scanning technology with great potential to reduce labor-intensive field measurements and provide new depths of vegetation structure data.AimsTo facilitate...

Diamondback terrapins, hereafter referred to as terrapins, are the only estuarine turtle species native to North America. However, terrapins are also occasionally found in marine habitats, such as seagrass beds, and yet little is known about how they use those marine habitats. We sampled epidermis from terrapins (Malaclemys terrapin macrospilota)...

The range of the endangered black abalone (Haliotis cracherodii) is divided into the North Central California region, the Central California region, the Southern California Mainland region, the Channel Islands region, and the Baja California region by the National Marine Fisheries Service for management purposes. San Nicolas Island is one of...

Understanding salt marsh resilience under increasing sea levels can inform for management decisions. We compared temporal projections from various wetland process-based models and a geospatially derived metric (i.e., marsh lifespan) to understand key considerations and uncertainties about salt marsh resilience when using these products for decision-making. The influences of lidar...

More than 60% of emerging infectious diseases of humans have a wildlife origin, and when these diseases spread through human populations to new geographical areas, there is a considerable risk of spillback from humans to wildlife species. Spillback events can have severe consequences for wildlife populations, where the disease may...

For at-risk species, understanding population vital rates is imperative for developing informed conservation strategies and population models. Managers often assume that species that are spatially distributed among patches of suitable habitat meet the criteria of a metapopulation. Metapopulation dynamics are determined not only by within-patch birth and death processes but...

The U.S. Geological Survey monitors a suite of intertidal black abalone (Haliotis cracherodii) sites at San Nicolas Island, California, in cooperation with the U.S. Navy, which owns the island. The nine rocky intertidal sites were established in 1980 to study the potential effect of translocated southern sea otters (Enhydra lutris...

This report details the application of the chains of consequences method within the postfire hazard context after the 2021 Cedar Creek and Muckamuck Fires around Okanogan County, Washington. The U.S. Geological Survey Social and Economic Analysis branch convened 20 stakeholders with content- and context-specific knowledge related to these fires and...

This “U.S. Geological Survey Pollinator Science Strategy, 2025–35—A Review and Look Forward” (“Pollinator Science Strategy”) describes the science vision of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to support management, conservation, and policy decisions on animal pollinators and their habitats. As the science arm of the Department of the Interior, the USGS has...