Monitoring Least Bitterns (Ixobrychis exilis) in Vermont: Detection probability and occupancy modeling
Aswini Cherukuri, Allan Strong, Therese M. Donovan
2018, Northeastern Naturalist (25) 56-71
Ixobrychus exillis (Least Bittern) is listed as a species of high concern in the North American Waterbird Conservation Plan and is a US Fish and Wildlife Service migratory bird species of conservation concern in the Northeast. Little is known about the population of Least Bitterns in the Northeast because of their...
Environmental risks and challenges associated with neonicotinoid insecticides
Michelle L. Hladik, Anson Main, Dave Goulson
2018, Environmental Science & Technology (52) 3329-3335
Neonicotinoid use has increased rapidly in recent years, with a global shift towards insecticide applications as seed coatings rather than aerial spraying. While the use of seed coatings can lessen the amount of overspray and drift, the near universal and prophylactic use of neonicotinoid seed coatings on major agricultural crops...
Evidence for regional nitrogen stress on chlorophyll a in lakes across large landscape and climate gradients
Christopher T. Filstrup, Tyler Wagner, Samantha K. Oliver, Craig A. Stow, Katherine E. Webster, Emily H. Stanley, John A. Downing
2018, Limnology and Oceanography (63) S324-S339
Nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) commonly stimulate phytoplankton production in lakes, but recent observations from lakes from an agricultural region suggest that nitrate may have a subsidy‐stress effect on chlorophyll a (Chl a). It is unclear, however, how generalizable this effect might be. Here, we analyzed a large water quality dataset of 2385...
Drivers of variability in public‐supply water use across the contiguous United States
Scott C. Worland, Scott Steinschneider, George M. Hornberger
2018, Water Resources Research (54) 1868-1889
This study explores the relationship between municipal water use and an array of climate, economic, behavioral, and policy variables across the contiguous U.S. The relationship is explored using Bayesian‐hierarchical regression models for over 2,500 counties, 18 covariates, and three higher‐level grouping variables. Additionally, a second analysis is included for 83...
Efficacy of otoliths and first dorsal spines for preliminary age and growth determination in Atlantic Tripletails
Russell T. Parr, Robert B. Bringolf, Cecil A. Jennings
2018, Marine and Coastal Fisheries: Dynamics, Management, and Ecosystem Science (10) 71-79
The Atlantic Tripletail Lobotes surinamensis is a popular sport fish for which age and growth data are scarce in general and nonexistent for Georgia (GA), USA, waters. These data are necessary to ensure that management regulations are adequate to protect this species, especially given its popularity as a sport fish. We evaluated...
Species‐ and habitat‐specific otolith chemistry patterns inform riverine fisheries management
William Radigan, Andrew K. Carlson, Jeremy Kientz, Steven R. Chipps, Mark J. Fincel, Brian D. S. Graeb
2018, River Research and Applications (34) 279-287
Geology and hydrology are drivers of water chemistry and thus important considerations for fish otolith chemistry research. However, other factors such as species and habitat identity may have predictive ability, enabling selection of appropriate elemental signatures prior to costly, perhaps unnecessary water/age‐0 fish sampling. The goal...
Quantifying seining detection probability for fishes of Great Plains sand‐bed rivers
Robert Mollenhauer, Daniel R. Logue, Shannon K. Brewer
2018, Transactions of the American Fisheries Society (147) 329-341
Species detection error (i.e., imperfect and variable detection probability) is an essential consideration when investigators map distributions and interpret habitat associations. When fish detection error that is due to highly variable instream environments needs to be addressed, sand‐bed streams of the Great Plains represent a unique challenge. We quantified seining...
Porosity of the Marcellus Shale: A contrast matching small-angle neutron scattering study
Jitendra Bahadur, Leslie F. Ruppert, Vitaliy Pipich, Richard Sakurovs, Yuri B. Melnichenko
2018, International Journal of Coal Geology (188) 156-164
Neutron scattering techniques were used to determine the effect of mineral matter on the accessibility of water and toluene to pores in the Devonian Marcellus Shale. Three Marcellus Shale samples, representing quartz-rich, clay-rich, and carbonate-rich facies, were examined using contrast matching small-angle neutron...
Technical note: False low turbidity readings from optical probes during high suspended-sediment concentrations
Nicholas Voichick, David J. Topping, Ronald E. Griffiths
2018, Hydrology and Earth System Sciences (22) 1767-1773
Turbidity, a measure of water clarity, is monitored for a variety of purposes including (1) to help determine whether water is safe to drink, (2) to establish background conditions of lakes and rivers and detect pollution caused by construction projects and stormwater discharge, (3) to study sediment transport in rivers and erosion in catchments, (4) to...
Improving predictions of hydrological low-flow indices in ungaged basins using machine learning
Scott C. Worland, William H. Farmer, Julie E. Kiang
2018, Environmental Modelling and Software (101) 169-182
We compare the ability of eight machine-learning models (elastic net, gradient boosting, kernel-k-nearest neighbors, two variants of support vector machines, M5-cubist, random forest, and a meta-learning ensemble M5-cubist model) and four baseline models (ordinary kriging, a unit area discharge model, and two variants of censored regression) to generate estimates of the...
Ecological drought: Accounting for the non-human impacts of water shortage in the Upper Missouri Headwaters Basin, Montana, USA
Jamie McEvoy, Deborah J. Bathke, Nina Burkardt, Amanda E. Cravens, Tonya Haigh, Kimberly R. Hall, Michael J. Hayes, Theresa Jedd, Marketa Podebradska, Elliot Wickham
2018, Resources (7) 1-16
Water laws and drought plans are used to prioritize and allocate scarce water resources. Both have historically been human-centric, failing to account for non-human water needs. In this paper, we examine the development of instream flow legislation and the evolution of drought planning to highlight the growing concern for the...
Bottom trawl assessment of Lake Ontario prey fishes
Brian Weidel, Michael J. Connerton, Jeremy Holden
2018, Report, NYSDEC Lake Ontario Annual Report 2017
Managing Lake Ontario fisheries in an ecosystem-context requires prey fish community and population data. Since 1978, multiple annual bottom trawl surveys have quantified prey fish dynamics to inform management relative to published Fish Community Objectives. In 2017, two whole-lake surveys collected 341 bottom trawls (spring: 204, fall: 137), at depths...
Volcanic aquifers of Hawai‘i—Hydrogeology, water budgets, and conceptual models
Scot K. Izuka, John A. Engott, Kolja Rotzoll, Maoya Bassiouni, Adam G. Johnson, Lisa D. Miller, Alan Mair
2018, Scientific Investigations Report 2015-5164
Hawai‘i’s aquifers have limited capacity to store fresh groundwater because each island is small and surrounded by saltwater. Saltwater also underlies much of the fresh groundwater. Fresh groundwater resources are, therefore, particularly vulnerable to human activity, short-term climate cycles, and long-term climate change. Availability of fresh groundwater for human use...
Ground ruptures attributed to groundwater overexploitation damaging Jocotepec city in Jalisco, Mexico: 2016 field excursion of IGCP-641
Pietro Teatini, Dora Carreon-Freyre, Gil Ochoa-Gonzalez, Shujun Ye, Devin L. Galloway, Martin Hernandez-Marin
2018, Episodes, Journal of International Geoscience (41) 69-73
IGCP Project 641 (Mechanisms, Monitoring and Modeling Earth Fissure generation and Fault activation due to subsurface Fluid exploitation – M3EF3) held its second international workshop from November 2 to 6, 2016, in Puerto Vallarta and included a two-day field trip to Guadalajara and Jocotepec in the Mexican state of Jalisco (Fig. 1a). M3EF3 is aimed...
General introduction for the “National Field Manual for the Collection of Water-Quality Data”
U.S. Geological Survey
2018, Techniques and Methods 9-A0
BackgroundAs part of its mission, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) collects data to assess the quality of our Nation’s water resources. A high degree of reliability and standardization of these data are paramount to fulfilling this mission. Documentation of nationally accepted methods used by USGS personnel serves to maintain consistency...
Suspended-sediment transport from the Green-Duwamish River to the Lower Duwamish Waterway, Seattle, Washington, 2013–17
Craig A. Senter, Kathleen E. Conn, Robert W. Black, Norman Peterson, Ann M. Vanderpool-Kimura, James R. Foreman
2018, Open-File Report 2018-1029
The Green-Duwamish River transports watershed-derived sediment to the Lower Duwamish Waterway Superfund site near Seattle, Washington. Understanding the amount of sediment transported by the river is essential to the bed sediment cleanup process. Turbidity, discharge, suspended-sediment concentration (SSC), and particle-size data were collected by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)...
Overcoming equifinality: Leveraging long time series for stream metabolism estimation
Alison P. Appling, Robert O. Hall Jr., Charles B. Yackulic, Maite Arroita
2018, Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences (123) 624-645
The foundational ecosystem processes of gross primary production (GPP) and ecosystem respiration (ER) cannot be measured directly but can be modeled in aquatic ecosystems from subdaily patterns of oxygen (O2) concentrations. Because rivers and streams constantly exchange O2 with the atmosphere, models must either use empirical estimates of the gas exchange...
Future southcentral US wildfire probability due to climate change
Michael C. Stambaugh, Richard P. Guyette, Esther D. Stroh, Matthew A. Struckhoff, Joanna B. Whittier
2018, Climate Change (147) 617-631
Globally, changing fire regimes due to climate is one of the greatest threats to ecosystems and society. In this paper, we present projections of future fire probability for the southcentral USA using downscaled climate projections and the Physical Chemistry Fire Frequency Model (PC2FM). Future fire probability is projected to both...
Flood-inundation maps for Cedar Creek at 18th Street at Auburn, Indiana
Kathleen K. Fowler
2018, Scientific Investigations Report 2017-5156
Digital flood-inundation maps for a 1.9-mile reach of Cedar Creek at Auburn, Indiana (Ind.), from the First Street bridge, downstream to the streamgage at 18th Street, then ending approximately 1,100 feet (ft) downstream of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad, were created by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in cooperation with...
U.S. Geological Survey - Virginia Department of Transportation: Bridge scour pilot study
Samuel H. Austin
2018, Fact Sheet 2018-3006
BackgroundCost effective and safe highway bridge designs are required to ensure the long-term sustainability of Virginia’s road systems. The streamflows that, over time, scour streambed sediments from bridge piers inherently affect bridge safety and design costs. To ensure safety, bridge design must anticipate streambed scour at bridge piers over the...
An analytical framework for estimating aquatic species density from environmental DNA
Thierry Chambert, David S. Pilliod, Caren S. Goldberg, Hideyuki Doi, Teruhiko Takahara
2018, Ecology and Evolution (8) 3468-3477
Environmental DNA (eDNA) analysis of water samples is on the brink of becoming a standard monitoring method for aquatic species. This method has improved detection rates over conventional survey methods and thus has demonstrated effectiveness for estimation of site occupancy and species distribution. The frontier of eDNA applications, however, is...
Effects of the proposed California WaterFix North Delta Diversion on flow reversals and entrainment of juvenile Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) into Georgiana Slough and the Delta Cross Channel, northern California
Russell W. Perry, Jason G. Romine, Adam C. Pope, Scott D. Evans
2018, Open-File Report 2018-1028
The California Department of Water Resources and Bureau of Reclamation propose new water intake facilities on the Sacramento River in northern California that would convey some of the water for export to areas south of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta (hereinafter referred to as the Delta) through tunnels rather...
Neoproterozoic–early Paleozoic provenance evolution of sedimentary rocks in and adjacent to the Farewell terrane (interior Alaska)
Julie A. Dumoulin, James V. Jones III, Dwight Bradley, Alison B. Till, Stephen E. Box, Paul B. O’Sullivan
2018, Geosphere (14) 367-394
New detrital zircon U-Pb data from the Farewell terrane of interior Alaska illuminate its early provenance evolution and connections with other Alaskan terranes. Five samples come from Neoproterozoic units in the central Farewell terrane. Basal “ferruginous beds” and the overlying Windy Fork Formation have prominent detrital zircon age populations between...
Spatially distributed groundwater recharge estimated using a water-budget model for the Island of Maui, Hawai`i, 1978–2007
Adam G. Johnson, John A. Engott, Maoya Bassiouni, Kolja Rotzoll
2018, Scientific Investigations Report 2014-5168
Demand for freshwater on the Island of Maui is expected to grow. To evaluate the availability of fresh groundwater, estimates of groundwater recharge are needed. A water-budget model with a daily computation interval was developed and used to estimate the spatial distribution of recharge on Maui for average climate conditions...
Effect of cattle exclosures on Columbia Spotted Frog abundance
M. J. Adams, Christopher Pearl, Thierry Chambert, Brome McCreary, Stephanie Galvan, Jennifer Rowe
2018, Wetlands Ecology and Management (26) 627-634
Livestock grazing is an important land use in the western USA and can have positive or negative effects on amphibians. Columbia Spotted Frog (Rana luteiventris) often use ponds that provide water for cattle. We conducted a long-term manipulative study on US Forest Service land in northeastern Oregon to...
