Evaluating slash piles as habitat for a threatened salamander
Rachel A. Loehman, Nancy E Karraker
2025, Fire Ecology (21)
BackgroundAmplified wildfire activity in forests of the western United States threatens biodiversity. Fuel treatments can reduce fire severity, modify fire behavior, and restore forest structure and composition, yet impacts of some treatments, including slash piling and burning, on wildlife have received little attention. Piling of residual woody material...
Timescales of surface faulting preservation in low-strain intraplate regions from landscape evolution modeling and the geomorphic and historical record
Jessica A. Thompson Jobe, Nadine G. Reitman
2025, Journal of Geophysical Research Solid Earth (130)
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...
Sustainability trade-offs across modeled floating solar waterscapes of the Northeastern United States
Adam Gallaher, Elizabeth L. Kalies, Steven Mark Grodsky
2025, Cell Reports Sustainability (2)
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...
Assessing nonpoint-source uranium pollution in an irrigated stream-aquifer system
Ibraheem A. Qurban, Timothy K. Gates, Eric D. Morway, John T. Cox, Jeremy T. White, Ryan T. Bailey, Michael N. Fienen
2025, Science of the Total Environment (989)
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...
Canopy and surface fuels measurement using terrestrial lidar single-scan approach in the Mogollon highlands of Arizona
Johnathan T. Tenny, Temuulen Tsagaan Sankey, Seth M. Munson, Andrew J. Sánchez Meador, Scott J. Goetz
2025, International Journal of Wildland Fire (34)
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 terrapin resource use in a seagrass-dominated coastal bay varies by life stage
Margaret Lamont, Carson L. Arends, Daniel J. Catizone, Hannah B. Vander Zanden
2025, Estuaries and Coasts (48)
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)...
Multi-model comparison of salt marsh longevity under relative sea-level rise
Melinda Martinez, Kevin J. Buffington, Neil K. Ganju, Zafer Defne, Kate Ackerman, Karen M. Thorne, Glenn R. Guntenspergen, Joel A. Carr
2025, Estuaries and Coasts (48)
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...
Not all spatially structured populations are metapopulations: Re-examining paradigms for a threatened shorebird
Rose J. Swift, Michael J. Anteau, Kristen S. Ellis, Garrett J. MacDonald, Megan M. Ring, Mark H. Sherfy, Dustin L. Toy, David N. Koons
2025, Ecological Applications (35)
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...
U.S. Geological Survey Pollinator Science Strategy, 2025–35—A Review and Look Forward
Clint Otto, Tabitha A. Graves, Desi Robertson-Thompson, Ian S. Pearse, Wayne E. Thogmartin, Caroline E. Murphy, Elisabeth B. Webb, Sam Droege, Melanie J. Steinkamp, Ralph Grundel
2025, Circular 1556
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...
Hydraulic connectivity and hydrochemistry influence microbial community structure in agriculturally-affected alluvial aquifers in the Midwestern United States
Hunter Schroer, Kendra M. Markland, Fangqiong Ling, Craig L. Just
2025, Environmental Science and Technology (59) 12279-12291
Alluvial aquifers can provide ecosystem services and drinking water, but much remains unknown about human effects on aquifer microbiomes. Therefore, we used amplicon sequencing and hydrochemical characterization to pair microbial communities with environmental conditions across 37 alluvial aquifer wells. The study region spanned eastern Iowa and southern Minnesota (USA) and...
Assimilation of reduced carbon triggers platinum alloy saturation in mafic and ultramafic magmas
Ying Zhou Li, William D. Smith, Michael Jenkins, Zhuosen Yao, James E. Mungall
2025, Economic Geology (120) 1025-1036
It is generally observed that magmatic sulfide ores have higher ratios of Pd/Pt than the mantle-like values of their parental magmas. This discrepancy has defied simple explanation because the partitioning behavior of both elements between sulfide and silicate liquids is very similar. Assimilation of sulfur- and carbon-rich country rocks by...
A generalized deep learning model to detect and classify volcano seismicity
David Fee, Darren Tan, John J. Lyons, Mariangela Sciotto, Andrea Cannata, Alicia J. Hotovec-Ellis, Tarsilo Girona, Aaron Wech, Diana Roman, Matthew M. Haney, Silvio De Angelis
2025, Volcanica (8) 305-323
Volcano seismicity is often detected and classified based on its spectral properties. However, the wide variety of volcano seismic signals and increasing amounts of data make accurate, consistent, and efficient detection and classification challenging. Machine learning (ML) has proven very effective at detecting and classifying tectonic seismicity, particularly using Convolutional...
Risk implications of Poisson assumptions and declustering inferred from a fully time-dependent earthquake forecast
Edward H. Field, Kevin Ross Milner, Keith A. Porter
2025, Earthquake Spectra (41) 1977-1997
We use the Third Uniform California Earthquake Rupture Forecast Epidemic Type Aftershock Sequence model, which is fully time-dependent in terms of including spatiotemporal clustering, to evaluate the effects of the Poisson assumption and declustering algorithms on statewide loss exceedance curves. The model is simulation based, meaning it...
Human perturbations to mercury in global rivers
Dong Peng, Zeli Tan, Tengfei Yuan, Peipei Wu, Zhengcheng Song, Peng Zhang, Shaojian Huang, Yanxu Zhang, Ting Lei, Beth Middleton, Jeroen E. Sonke, Guangchun Lei, Jianhua Gao
2025, Science Advances (11)
Mercury compounds are potent neurotoxins that pose threats to human health, primarily through fish consumption. Rivers, critical for drinking water and food supply, have seen rapid increases in mercury concentrations and export to coastal margins since the Industrial Revolution (~1850). However, patterns of these changes remain understudied, limiting assessments of...
Population growth of threatened Gulf Sturgeon may be limited by the frequency of adult episodic mortality events
Stephen W. Parker, William E. Pine III, Brian D. Healy, James E. Hines
2025, Marine and Coastal Fisheries: Dynamics, Management and Ecosystem Science (17)
ObjectiveWe identified spatial and temporal variation in population trends for Gulf Sturgeon Acipenser desotoi (previously known as Acipenser oxyrinchus desotoi) across the species’ range to inform recovery strategies. We also assessed whether adult survival or recruitment more strongly influences population change.MethodsWe analyzed adult Gulf Sturgeon...
Assessing the combined influence of biotic and anthropogenic stressors on polar bears to inform conservation planning
Todd C. Atwood, Bruce G. Marcot, David C. Douglas, Jeffrey F. Bromaghin, Anthony M. Pagano
2025, Ecosphere (16)
Developing conservation strategies for species vulnerable to the effects of climate change, like polar bears (Ursus maritimus), can be challenging given the uncertainty of future environmental conditions. Effective conservation planning requires identifying and ranking threats to the persistence of polar bears throughout their circumpolar range and then assessing the ability...
High-pass corner frequency selection and review tool for use in ground-motion processing
Maria E. Ramos-Sepulveda, Scott J. Brandenberg, Tristan E Buckreis, Grace Alexandra Parker, Jonathan P. Stewart
2025, Seismological Research Letters (96) 3244-3252
Raw seismological waveform data contain noise from the instrument’s surroundings and the instrument itself that can dominate recordings at low and high frequencies. To use these data in ground‐motion modeling, the effects of noise on the signals must be reduced and the signals’ usable frequency range identified. We present automated...
Bioaccumulation and trophic transfer of selenium in a large oligotrophic river
Christopher A. Mebane, A. Robin Stewart, Erin Murray, Terry M. Short, Veronika A. Kocen, Lauren M. Zinsser
2025, Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (44) 2864-2888
In flowing waters with elevated selenium concentrations, fish are often considered to be at risk from selenium toxicity owing to dietary exposure and accumulation in ovary tissues and subsequent deformities in developing larvae. We studied selenium throughout components of the aquatic food webs at geomorphically distinct locations along the oligotrophic...
Estimating disease prevalence from preferentially sampled, pooled data
Clinton P. Pollock, Andrew Hoegh, Kathryn Irvine, Luz de Wit, Brian E. Reichert
2025, Journal of Data Science (23) 542-559
After the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, scientific interest in coronaviruses endemic in animal populations has increased dramatically. However, investigating the prevalence of disease in animal populations across the landscape, which requires finding and capturing animals can be difficult. Spatial random sampling over...
Application of mercury stable isotopes to examine sources and hydrologic factors impacting mercury bioaccumulation and cycling in invertebrates of a model saline lake
Samuel Francisco Lopez, Sarah E. Janssen, Michael T. Tate, Frank J. Black, Hannah Erin Mcilwain, Laura Elizabeth Flucke, Jacob M. Ogorek, William P. Johnson
2025, Water Research (284)
Invertebrates, such as brine shrimp and brine flies, are key prey items for millions of resident and migratory birds that utilize saline lakes such as Great Salt Lake (GSL). Elevated methylmercury (MeHg) in invertebrate and waterfowl species of GSL has been assumed to be linked to elevated MeHg in GSL’s...
Quantifying the substantive influence of public comment on United States federal environmental decisions under NEPA
Ashley Stava, Wayne E. Thogmartin, Robert Merideth, Steven Bethard, Faiz Currim, Jonathan J. Derbridge, Kirk Emerson, Egoitz Laparra, Aaron M. Lien, Emily McGovern, Justin Pidot, Marc Miller, Krista Romero-Carvenas, Blaze Smith, Carly Winnebald, Laura Lopez-Hoffman
2025, Environmental Research Letters (20)
A citizen’s right to comment on, and criticize, government decisions makes a difference. The U.S. National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA) institutionalized public engagement in environmental review in the belief it would lead to better decisions and more sustainable outcomes. But, 50 years later, NEPA’s public comment process has...
Preliminary field report of landslide hazards following Hurricane Helene
Kate E. Allstadt, Sara K. McBride, Jonathan W. Godt, Stephen L. Slaughter, Kelli Wadsworth Baxstrom, Steven Sobieszczyk, Anna Stull
2025, Open-File Report 2025-1028
Executive SummaryThis report reflects our knowledge regarding the widespread landslide activity associated with Hurricane Helene observed during the U.S. Geological Survey’s (USGS) mission assignment to North Carolina in October 2024. The material in this report was originally prepared for the Federal Emergency Management Agency under mission assignment DR-4827-NC. The data...
Introgression, phylogeography, and genomic species cohesion in the eastern North American white oak syngameon
Gabe Ribicoff, Mira Garner, Kasey Pham, Kieren Althaus, Jeannine Cavendar-Bares, Andy Crowl, Samantha Gray, Paul F. Gugger, Marlene Hahn, S Liao, Paul Manos, Rebekah Mohn, Ian S. Pearse, Nicholas Steichmann, Ashley Tuffin, Alan T. Whittemore, Andrew Hipp
2025, Molecular Ecology (34)
Hybridization and interspecific gene flow play a substantial role in the evolution of plant taxa. The eastern North American white oak syngameon, a group of approximately 15 ecologically, morphologically and genomically distinguishable species, has long been recognised as a model system for studying introgressive hybridization in temperate trees. However, the...
Assessing uncertainty in forecasts of refugia for Joshua trees using high-density distribution data
Daniel F. Shryock, Todd Esque, Gabrielle A. Berr, Lesley A. DeFalco
2025, Ecosphere (16)
Joshua trees (Yucca brevifolia and Yucca jaegeriana) are iconic, foundational species of the Mojave and Sonoran Deserts in North America. Due to their ecosystem importance, long generation times, and low resilience to disturbance, these hybridizing sister species are increasingly the focus of conservation efforts. Predicting Joshua tree responses to impending climate variability,...
Population genomics of recovery and extinction in Hawaiian honeycreepers
Christopher Kyriazis, Madhvi Venkatraman, Bryce Masuda, Cynthia Steiner, Loren Cassin-Sackett, Lisa H. Crampton, Alison Flanagan, Jeffrey T. Foster, Marlys Houck, Ann Misuraca, Eben H. Paxton, Jacqueline Robinson, Robert C. Fleischer, Oliver A. Ryder, Michael G. Campana, Aryn P. Wilder
2025, Current Biology (35) 2697-2708
Native Hawaiian forest birds are experiencing an unprecedented extinction crisis. In particular, the iconic Hawaiian honeycreeper radiation has declined to just 17 out of ∼60 species remaining, most threatened with extinction due to avian malaria. Here, we investigate the genomic signatures of these declines in three honeycreeper species: the critically...
