Simulation of potential groundwater recharge for the glacial aquifer system east of the Rocky Mountains, 1980–2011, using the Soil-Water-Balance Model
Jared J. Trost, Jason L. Roth, Stephen M. Westenbroek, Howard W. Reeves
2018, Scientific Investigations Report 2018-5080
An understanding of the spatial and temporal extent of groundwater recharge is critical for many types of hydrologic assessments involving water quality, contaminant transport, ecosystem health, and sustainable use of groundwater. Annual potential groundwater recharge was simulated at a 1-kilometer resolution with the Soil-Water-Balance (SWB) model for the glacial aquifer...
Landsat time series analysis of fractional plant cover changes on abandoned energy development sites
Eric K. Waller, Miguel L. Villarreal, Travis B. Poitras, Travis W. Nauman, Michael C. Duniway
2018, International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation (73) 407-419
Oil and natural gas development in the western United States has increased substantially in recent decades as technological advances like horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing have made extraction more commercially viable. Oil and gas pads are often developed for production, and then capped, reclaimed, and left to recover when no...
Past role and future outlook of the Conservation Reserve Program for supporting honey bees in the Great Plains
Clint Otto, Haochi Zheng, Alisa L. Gallant, Rich Iovanna, Benjamin L. Carlson, Matthew Smart, Skip Hyberg
2018, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (115) 7629-7634
Human dependence on insect pollinators continues to grow even as pollinators face global declines. The Northern Great Plains (NGP), a region often referred to as America’s last honey bee (Apis mellifera) refuge, has undergone rapid land-cover change due to cropland expansion and weakened land conservation programs. We conducted a trend...
Turing-style tests for UCERF3 synthetic catalogs
Morgan T. Page, Nicholas van der Elst
2018, Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (108) 729-741
Epidemic-Type Aftershock Sequence (ETAS) catalogs generated from the 3rd Uniform California Earthquake Rupture Forecast (UCERF3) model are unique in that they are the first to combine a complex, fault-based long-term forecast with short-term earthquake clustering statistics. We present Turing-style tests to examine whether these synthetic catalogs can successfully imitate observed...
Statistical approach to neural network imaging of karst systems in 3D seismic reflection data
Daniel Ebuna, Jared W. Kluesner, Kevin J. Cunningham, Joel H. Edwards
2018, Interpretation (6) B15-B35
The current lack of a robust, standardized technique for geophysical mapping of karst systems can be attributed to both the complexity of the environment and prior technological limitations. Abrupt lateral variations in physical properties that are inherent to karst systems generate significant geophysical noise, challenging conventional seismic signal processing and...
Landscape-scale wildlife species richness metrics to inform wind and solar energy facility siting: An Arizona case study
Kathryn A. Thomas, Christopher Jarchow, Terence R. Arundel, Pankaj Jamwal, Amanda Borens, Charles A. Drost
2018, Energy Policy (116) 145-152
The juxtaposition of wildlife and wind or solar energy facility infrastructure can present problems for developers, planners, policy makers, and management agencies. Guidance on siting of these renewable energy facilities may help identify potential wildlife-facility conflicts with species of regulatory or economic concern. However, existing spatial guidance usually does not...
The science, engineering applications, and policy implications of simulation-based PSHA
Morgan P. Moschetti, Sandra P. Chang, C.B Crouse, Arthur D. Frankel, Robert Graves, H Puangnak, Nico Luco, Christine A. Goulet, Sanaz Rezaeian, Allison Shumway, Peter M. Powers, Mark D. Petersen, Scott Callaghan, T.H. Jordan, Kevin R. Milner
2018, Conference Paper, Eleventh United States national conference on earthquake engineering
We summarize scientific methods for developing probabilistic seismic hazard assessments from 3-D earthquake ground motion simulations, describe current use of simulated ground motions for engineering applications, and discuss on-going efforts to incorporate these effects in the U.S. national seismic hazard model. The 3-D simulations provide important, additional information about earthquake...
Outburst floods provide erodability estimates consistent with long-term landscape evolution
Daniel Garcia-Castellanos, Jim E. O'Connor
2018, Scientific Reports (8) 1-9
Most current models for the landscape evolution over geological timescales are based on semi-empirical laws that consider riverbed incision proportional to rock erodability (dependent on lithology) and to the work performed by water flow (stream power). However, the erodability values obtained from these models are entangled with poorly known conditions...
Water budget of the upper Chehalis River Basin, southwestern Washington
Andrew S. Gendaszek, Wendy B. Welch
2018, Scientific Investigations Report 2018-5084
Groundwater and surface water collectively supply the domestic, agricultural, and industrial needs of the 895-square mile upper Chehalis River Basin upstream of Grand Mound, Washington, while providing streamflow for fish and other aquatic species in the Chehalis River and its tributaries. To support sustainable water management decision-making, a water budget...
Explicit consideration of preferential groundwater discharges as surface water ecosystem control points
Martin A. Briggs, Danielle K. Hare
2018, Hydrological Processes (32) 2435-2440
Heterogeneities in sediment and rock permeability induce preferentialgroundwater flow from the scale of pore networks to large basins. Inthe unsaturated zone, preferential flow is frequently conceptualizedas an infiltration process dominated by macropores, resulting in stron-ger delivery of surface‐derived solute...
Using earthquakes, T waves, and infrasound to investigate the eruption of Bogoslof Volcano, Alaska
Aaron Wech, Gabrielle Tepp, John J. Lyons, Matthew M. Haney
2018, Geophysical Research Letters (45) 6918-6925
The 2016‐2017 eruption of Bogoslof volcano, a submarine stratovolcano in the Bering Sea, produced 70 discrete explosive eruptions over 8 months. With no local monitoring data, activity was seismically recorded on nearby islands 50‐100 km away, limiting the detection and resolution of seismic observations. We construct a matched filter catalog...
Accurate predictions of microscale oxygen barometry in basaltic glasses using V K-edge X-ray absorption spectroscopy: A multivariate approach
Antonio Lanzirotti, M. Darby Dyar, Steve Sutton, Matthew Newville, Elisabet Head, CJ Carey, Molly McCanta, R. Lopaka Lee, Penelope L. King, John Jones
2018, American Mineralogist (103)
Because magmatic oxygen fugacity (fO2) exerts a primary control on the discrete vanadium (V) valence states that will exist in quenched melts, V valence proxies for fO2, measured using X-ray absorption near-edge spectroscopy (XANES), can provide highly sensitive measurements of the redox conditions in basaltic melts. However, published calibrations for basaltic...
Icebergs in the Nordic Seas throughout the Late Pliocene
Yvonne M. Smith, Daniel Hill, Aisling M Dolan, Alan M Haywood, Harry J. Dowsett, Bjorg Risebrobakken
2018, Paleoceanography (33) 318-335
The Arctic cryosphere is changing and making a significant contribution to sea level rise. The Late Pliocene had similar CO2 levels to the present and a warming comparable to model predictions for the end of this century. However, the state of the Arctic cryosphere during the Pliocene remains poorly constrained....
Rapid, remote assessment of Hurricane Matthew impacts using four-dimensional structure-from-motion photogrammetry
Christopher R. Sherwood, Jonathan A. Warrick, Andrew D. Hill, Andrew C. Ritchie, Brian D. Andrews, Nathaniel G. Plant
2018, Journal of Coastal Research (34) 1303-1316
Timely assessment of coastal landforms and structures after storms is important for evaluating storm impacts, aiding emergency response and restoration, and initializing and assessing morphological models. Four-dimensional multiview photogrammetry, also known as structure from motion (4D SfM), provides a method for generating three-dimensional reconstructions of landscapes at two times (before...
Breaching of strike-slip faults and successive flooding of pull-apart basins to form the Gulf of California seaway from ca. 8–6 Ma
Paul J. Umhoefer, Michael H. Darin, Scott E.K. Bennett, Lisa A. Skinner, Rebecca J. Dorsey, Michael E. Oskin
2018, Geology (46) 695-698
The geologic record of the formation of marine basins during continental rifting is uncommonly preserved. Using GIS-based paleotectonic maps, we show that marine basin formation in the Gulf of California–Salton trough oblique rift (Mexico and the United States) occurred in a stepwise manner as crustal thinning lowered elevations within the...
Flood-inundation maps for the Pawtuxet River in West Warwick, Warwick, and Cranston, Rhode Island
Gardner C. Bent, Pamela J. Lombard
2018, Scientific Investigations Report 2018-5043
A series of 15 digital flood-inundation maps was developed for a 10.2-mile reach of the Pawtuxet River in the municipalities of West Warwick, Warwick, and Cranston, Rhode Island, by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in cooperation with the Rhode Island Emergency Management Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers....
Limited nitrate retention capacity in the Upper Mississippi River
Luke C. Loken, John T. Crawford, Mark M. Dornblaser, Robert G. Striegl, Jeffrey N. Houser, Peter A Turner, Emily H. Stanley
2018, Environmental Research Letters (13)
The Mississippi River and other large rivers have the potential to regulate nitrogen export from terrestrial landscapes, and thus mitigate eutrophication in downstream aquatic ecosystems. In large rivers, human-constructed impoundments and connected backwaters may facilitate nitrogen removal; however, the capacity of these features is poorly quantified and...
A comparison of synthetic flowpaths derived from light detection and ranging topobathymetric data and National Hydrography Dataset High Resolution Flowlines
Cynthia Miller-Corbett
2018, Open-File Report 2018-1058
Bathymetric and topobathymetric light detection and ranging (lidar) digital elevation models created for the Delaware River were provided to the National Geospatial Program and used to evaluate synthetic flowpath extraction from bathymetric/topobathymetric lidar survey data as a data source for improving the density, distribution, and connectivity of the National Hydrography...
An update on Toxoplasma gondii infections in northern sea otters (Enhydra lutris kenyoni) from Washington State, USA
Shiv K. Verma, Susan Knowles, Camila K. Cerqueira-Cezar, Oliver C. Kwok, Tiantian Jiang, Chunlei Su, Jitender P. Dubey
2018, Veterinary Parasitology (258) 133-137
Toxoplasmosis in marine mammals is epidemiologically and clinically important. Toxoplasma gondii antibodies (by modified agglutination test, cut-off ≥1:25) were detected in serum of 65 of 70 (92.9%) northern sea otters (Enhydra lutris kenyoni) from Washington State, USA. Brains and/or muscles of 44 sea otters were bioassayed in mice (INF-γ knock-out...
Reestablishing a host–affiliate relationship: Migratory fish reintroduction increases native mussel recruitment
Heather S. Galbraith, Julie L. Devers, Carrie J. Blakeslee, Jeffrey C. Cole, Barbara St. John White, Steven Minkkinen, William A. Lellis
2018, Ecological Applications (28) 1841-1852
Co‐extirpation among host–affiliate species is thought to be a leading cause of biodiversity loss worldwide. Freshwater mussels (Unionida) are at...
Quantifying variance across spatial scales as part of fire regime classifications
Scholtz Rheinhardt, Samuel D. Fuhlendorf, Sherry A. Leis, Joshua J. Picotte, Dirac Twidwell
2018, Ecosphere (9)
The emergence of large‐scale fire classifications and products informed by remote sensing data has enabled opportunities to include variability or heterogeneity as part of modern fire regime classifications. Currently, basic fire metrics such as mean fire return intervals are calculated without considering spatial variance in a management context. Fire return...
Santa Barbara and Foothill groundwater basins Geohydrology and optimal water resources management—Developed using density dependent solute transport and optimization models
Scott R. Paulinski, Tracy Nishikawa, Geoffrey Cromwell, Scott E. Boyce, Zachary P. Stanko
Tracy Nishikawa, editor(s)
2018, Scientific Investigations Report 2018-5059
Groundwater has been a part of the city of Santa Barbara’s water-supply portfolio since the 1800s; however, since the 1960s, the majority of the city’s water has come from local surface water, and the remainder has come from groundwater, State Water Project, recycled water, increased water conservation, and as needed,...
On the reliability of N‐mixture models for count data
Richard J. Barker, Matthew J. Schofield, William A. Link, John R. Sauer
2018, Biometrics (74) 369-377
N‐mixture models describe count data replicated in time and across sites in terms of abundance N and detectability p. They are popular because they allow inference about N while controlling for factors that influence p without the need for marking animals. Using a capture–recapture perspective, we show that the loss...
A simple method for partitioning total solar radiation into diffuse/direct components in the United States
Jingjing Fan, Qiang Huang, David M. Sumner, Dingbao Wang
2018, International Journal of Green Energy (15) 497-506
Solar radiation is a major sustainable and clean energy resource, and use of solar radiation is expected to increase. The utilization efficiency of solar energy varies with the relative proportions of the direct and diffuse components that compose total solar radiation and with the slope and aspect of the irradiated...
Candidate products for operational earthquake forecasting illustrated using the HayWired planning scenario, including one very quick (and not‐so‐dirty) hazard‐map option
Edward H. Field, Kevin R. Milner
2018, Seismological Research Letters (89) 1420-1434
In an effort to help address debates on the usefulness of operational earthquake forecasting (OEF), we illustrate a number of OEF products that could be automatically generated in near‐real time. To exemplify, we use an M">M 7.1...
