Fine-grained temporal population monitoring of a declining, critically endangered Hawaiian honeycreeper
Richard J. Camp, Chauncey K. Asing, Noah J. Hunt, Alexander Wang, Chris Farmer, Lindsey Neitmann, Paul C. Banko
2025, Frontiers in Conservation Science (6)
Annual point counts are commonly used to monitor birds to track population densities across space and time. Palila (Loxioides bailleui) are surveyed annually in the first quarter, but we recently instituted quarterly sampling that offers a unique opportunity to improve estimator precision. We conducted point-transect distance sampling point counts during...
Resolution sensitivities for subgrid modeling of coastal flooding
Johnathan Lucas Woodruff, Joel C. Dietrich, Damrongsak Wirasaet, Andrew B. Kennedy, Diogo Bolster, Richard A. Luettich
2025, Coastal Engineering (201)
Flooding due to storm surge can propagate through coastal regions to threaten the built and natural environments. This propagation is controlled by geographic features of varying scales, from the largest oceans to the smallest marsh channels and sandy dunes. Numerical models to predict coastal flooding have been improved via the...
Integrated distribution modeling resolves asynchrony between bat population impacts and occupancy trends through latent abundance
Bradley James Udell, Christian Stratton, Kathryn Irvine, Bethany R. Straw, Jonathan D. Reichard, Sarah M. Gaulke, Jeremy. T.H. Coleman, Frank C Tousley, Andrea Nichole Schuhmann, Rich D. Inman, Melinda Turner, Sarah Nystrom, Brian E. Reichert
2025, Communications Biology (8)
Monitoring populations is challenging for cryptic species with seasonal life cycles, where data from multiple field techniques are commonly collected and analyzed as multiple lines of evidence. Data integration can provide comprehensive inferences while improving accuracy, precision, and scope but faces challenges in modeling misaligned resolutions and observational uncertainties. We...
Foundational uncertainties in terminal Ediacaran chronostratigraphy revealed by high-precision zircon U-Pb geochronology of the Nama Group, Namibia
Fred T. Bowyer, Fabio Messori, Rachel Wood, Ulf Linnemann, Esther Rojo-Perez, Mandy Zieger-Hofmann, Johannes Zieger, Junias Ndeunyema, Martin Shipanga, Bontle Mataboge, Dan Condon, Catherine V. Rose, Collen-Issia Uahengo, Sean Patrick Gaynor, Inigo A. Müller, Gerd Geyer, Torsten W. Vennemann, Joshua H.F.L. Davies, Maria Ovtcharova
2025, Earth-Science Reviews (268)
The Nama Group of southern Namibia and northwestern South Africa hosts the best-dated mixed carbonate-siliciclastic foreland basin succession of the terminal Ediacaran [ca. 551 million years (Ma) ago to <538 Ma] and is key for resolving the chronology of early metazoan evolution. Numerous silicified volcanic tuff interbeds are present,...
Critical minerals in mine waste
Nadine M. Piatak, Sarah Jane White, Sarah M. Hayes, Robert R. Seal, II
2025, Fact Sheet 2025-3026
Introduction Critical minerals are commodities with vulnerable supply chains that play a vital role in supporting the United States’ economy, national defense and security, emerging technologies, and energy independence. The prosperity of our Nation depends on generating a resilient supply of domestic critical minerals; mine waste may be an untapped source...
Hydrogeologic mapping and three-dimensional geologic modeling of glacial deposits in a multicounty area of southeastern Michigan, northeastern Indiana, and northwestern Ohio
Alexander D. Riddle, Leslie D. Arihood, Shawn Naylor, David C. Lampe
2025, Scientific Investigations Report 2025-5008
The glacial deposits underlying southeastern Michigan, northeastern Indiana, and northwestern Ohio are a substantial source of water to communities, agriculture, and industry in the region. Previous efforts to characterize aquifer materials in the area cited a need for additional information about the underlying hydrogeologic characteristics and related groundwater availability as...
Pysochron: A Python-based solution for calculating cosmogenic 26Al/10Be isochron burial ages
William E. Odom
2025, Quaternary Geochronology (89)
Cosmogenic 26Al/10Be isochron burial dating is a powerful tool for dating sediment burial over the past several million years. By measuring in-situ 26Al and 10Be in a suite of samples from the same depth in a buried deposit, it is possible to quantify the inventory of cosmogenic nuclides produced after burial, date the...
Simulation of the impacts of projected climate change on groundwater resources in the urban, semiarid Yucaipa Valley watershed, southern California using an integrated hydrologic model
Derek W. Ryter, Ayman H. Alzraiee, Richard G. Niswonger
2025, Journal of Hydrology, Regional Studies (60)
Managing water resources in semiarid watersheds is challenging due to limited supply and uncertain future climate conditions. This paper examines the impact of future climate changes on an urban watershed in southern California using an integrated hydrologic model. GSFLOW modeling software is used to simulate the nonlinear relationships between climate...
Carbonatite-hosted residual REE deposits
Peter R Siegfried, Frances Wall, Philip L. Verplanck
Robert J. Bowell, Charles R.M. Butt, editor(s)
2025, Book chapter, Geology, geochemistry and formation of supergene mineral deposits in deeply weathered terrain
Rare earth elements (REEs) occur in magmatic rocks but are especially enriched in carbonatite and alkaline silicates. If these rocks are chemically weathered, then the REEs may become further enriched within the regolith developed from these rocks. Primary magmatic REE minerals, as well as the various carbonate minerals and apatite,...
The 3D Elevation Program—Supporting Connecticut's economy
Laura Harrington, Dan Walters
2025, Fact Sheet 2025-3030
Introduction Connecticut has a diverse, largely forested landscape characterized by hills and low mountains in the Western Upland, hills in the Eastern Upland, ridges and broad valleys in the Central Lowland, and many beaches and harbors along the coast of Long Island Sound. Connecticut is manufacturing and service focused, ranking almost...
Denning black bear response to anthropogenic disturbance and implications for cub survival in Florida
Darcy Doran-Myers, Kaili Gregory, Conor P. McGowan, Vanessa Hull, Brian K. Scheick
2025, Ursus (2525) 1-20
Wildlife research and management can be disruptive to wildlife. By advancing our understanding of the impacts of these activities, we can reduce adverse effects, improve decision-making, and enhance the outcomes of research and management. During 2017–2019, we observed the responses of denning female American black bears (Ursus americanus) to 3...
Combining acoustic telemetry and side-scan sonar to estimate abundance of endangered shortnose sturgeon in the Hudson River, New York
Amanda Higgs, Shannon L. White, John Madsen, David C. Kazyak, Dewayne Fox, Richard Pendleton, Adam Bonemery, Tomasz Smolinski, Amanda Simmonds, Patrick Sullivan
2025, Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences (82) 1-12
For endangered shortnose sturgeon (Acipenser brevirostrum), the ability to estimate and monitor population size is critical for tracking species’ recovery. Yet, contemporary abundance estimates have not been completed for many shortnose sturgeon populations, largely owing to the difficulty in using traditional abundance estimators for sturgeons. Here, we estimate the adult...
Factors associated with survival, recovery, and movements in the western Gulf Coast population of mottled ducks
Christopher P. Malachowski, William L. Kendall, Daniel P. Collins, Kevin J. Kraai, Jason Olszak, Larry Reynolds
2025, Journal of Wildlife Management (89)
The mottled duck (Anas fulvigula) is nonmigratory and a priority species for regional conservation and management because of its limited range and declining population trajectory in the western Gulf Coast (WGC) of Louisiana and Texas, USA. We developed multistate dead-recovery models for banding and recovery data (1997–2020) to evaluate potential...
Harnessing geospatial artificial intelligence and deep learning for landslide inventory mapping: Advances, challenges, and emerging directions
Xiao Chen, Wenwen Li, Chia-Yu Hsu, Samantha T. Arundel, Bretwood Higman
2025, Remote Sensing (17)
Recent advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning enable more accurate, scalable, and automated mapping. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the applications of AI, particularly deep learning, in landslide inventory mapping. In addition to examining commonly used data sources and model architectures, we explore...
Reliability of satellite-based vegetation maps for planning wildfire-fuel treatments in shrub steppe: Inferences from two contrasting national parks
Samuel J. Price, Chad Raymond Kluender, Matthew J. Germino, Thomas Rodhouse
2025, Journal of Environmental Management (387)
Protecting habitat threatened by increasing wildfire size and frequency requires identifying the spatial intersection of wildfire behavior and ecological conditions that favor positive management outcomes. In the perennial sagebrush steppe of Western North America, invasions by fire-prone annual grasses are a key concern, and management of them requires reliable maps...
Using subducting plate motion to constrain Cascadia slab geometry and interface strength
Menno Fraters, Magali Billen, John Naliboff, Lydia M. Staisch, Janet Watt, Haoyuan Li
2025, Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems (26)
Subduction zones are home to multiple geohazards driven by the evolution of the regional tectonics, including earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and landslides. Past evolution builds the present-day structure of the margin, while the present-day configuration of the system determines the state-of-stress in which individual hazardous events manifest. Regional simulations of subduction...
Modeling individual-level and population-level nest success of California Condors from movement data
Andrea Blackburn, Joseph Michael Eisaguirre, Joseph C. Brandt, Arianna Punzalan, Laura Mcmahon, Molly Astell, Nadya E. Seal Faith, David J. Meyer, Estelle A. Sandhaus
2025, Journal of Raptor Research (59)
The California Condor (Gymnogyps californianus) is a critically endangered species with populations that are not currently self-sustaining. Although understanding nest success is key to understanding trends in their populations, field monitoring of condor nests has become increasingly challenging as the number of nesting condors has increased and their range has...
Optimizing the effectiveness of connectivity modifiers to reduce dryland degradation
Kristina E. Young, Brandon L. Edwards, Michael C. Duniway, Nicholas P. Webb
2025, Restoration Ecology (33)
Dryland degradation from unsustainable land use and increasing aridity often manifests as bare, interconnected areas that facilitate the loss or redistribution of resources (soil, seeds, and nutrients) through wind and run-off. Physical structures like branches and stick bundles, which disrupt these pathways and retain resources, are crucial for rehabilitation and...
Quality assessment of past spawning mark estimations from a long-term survey in the Connecticut River watershed
Jacqueline B. Stephens, Adrian Jordaan, David Perkins, Kenneth Sprankle, Allison H. Roy
2025, Cooperator Science Series CSS-168-2025
The calcified structures of fishes provide insight into their periodic growth rates and can be combined with other biological variables to identify metrics such as size or age at maturity and mortality rates. Collecting this information on growth and life history can help evaluate the success of conservation efforts and...
Foraging of wading birds on a patchy landscape: Simulating effects of social information, interference competition, and patch selection on prey intake and individual distribution
Hyo Won Lee, Donald L. DeAngelis, Simeon Yurek, Yannis P. Papastamatiou
2025, Ecological Modelling (507)
Foragers on patchy landscapes must acquire sufficient resources despite uncertainty in the location and amount of the resources. Optimal Foraging Theory posits that foragers deal with this uncertainty by using strategies that optimize resource intake within foraging periods. For species such as wading birds, this optimization is closely linked to...
Bayesian ETAS modeling for the Pacific Northwest: Uncovering effects of tectonic regimes, regional differences, and swarms on aftershock parameters
Max Schneider, Michael Barall, Peter Guttorp, Jeanne L. Hardebeck, Andrew J. Michael, Morgan T. Page, Nicholas van der Elst
2025, Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (115) 2219-2236
The Pacific Northwest (PNW) of North America has high seismic hazard due to numerous earthquake sources under populated areas. It hosts several tectonic regimes and subregional seismic zones that are hypothesized to have different patterns of earthquake and aftershock occurrence. It is also predisposed to earthquake swarms, which can complicate...
Linking fire radiative power to land cover, fire history, and environmental setting in Alaska, 2003–2022
Jessica J. Walker, Rachel A. Loehman, Britt Windsor Smith, Christopher E. Soulard
2025, International Journal of Wildland Fire (34)
BackgroundFire radiative power (FRP) shows promise as a diagnostic and predictive indicator of fire behavior and post-fire effects in Alaska, USA.AimsTo investigate relationships between FRP, vegetation functional groups, and environmental settings in Alaska (2003–2022) under various fire history conditions.MethodsWe tested for distinctness of MODIS...
Flood-inundation maps for 14.8 miles of Little and Big Papillion Creeks in Omaha, Nebraska, 2023
Kellan R. Strauch, Bradley R. Hoefer
2025, Scientific Investigations Report 2025-5032
Digital flood-inundation map libraries for two reaches that constitute 14.8 miles of Little and Big Papillion Creeks in Omaha, Nebraska, were created by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in cooperation with the Papio-Missouri River Natural Resource District. The flood-inundation maps, which can be accessed through the USGS Flood Inundation Mapping...
Kiloyear cycles of carbonate and Mg-silicate replacement at Von Damm hydrothermal vent field
Amy Gartman, Terrence Blackburn, Kiana Frank, Susan Q. Lang, Jeffrey S. Seewald
2025, Geology (53) 668-672
The Von Damm vent field (VDVF) on the Mid-Cayman Rise in the Caribbean Sea is unique among modern hydrothermal systems in that the chimneys and mounds are almost entirely composed of talc. We analyzed samples collected in 2020 and report that in addition to disordered talc of variable crystallinity, carbonates...
Peak streamflow trends in Montana and northern Wyoming and their relation to changes in climate, water years 1921–2020
Steven K. Sando, Nancy A. Barth, Roy Sando, Katherine J. Chase
2025, Scientific Investigations Report 2023-5064-G
Frequency analysis on annual peak streamflow (hereinafter, peak flow) is essential to water-resources management applications, including critical structure design (for example, bridges and culverts) and floodplain mapping. Nonstationarity is a statistical property of a peak-flow series such that the distributional properties (the mean, variance, or skew) change either gradually (monotonic...
