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The U.S. Geological Survey Precipitation Chemistry Quality Assurance project operated five distinct programs to provide external quality assurance monitoring for the National Atmospheric Deposition Program’s (NADP) National Trends Network and Mercury Deposition Network during 2015–16. The National Trends Network programs include (1) a field audit program to evaluate sample contamination...

Many studies have quantified pharmaceuticals in the environment, few however, have incorporated detailed temporal and spatial variability due to associated costs in terms of time and materials. Here, we target 33 physico-chemically diverse pharmaceuticals in a spatiotemporal exposure study into the occurrence of pharmaceuticals in the wastewater system and the...

Landscapes are increasingly recognized for providing valuable cultural ecosystem services with numer- ous non-material benefits by serving as places of rest, relaxation, and inspiration that ultimately improve overall mental health and physical well-being. Maintaining and enhancing these valuable benefits through targeted management and conservation measures requires understanding the spatial and...

In occupancy studies, species misidentification can lead to false‐positive detections, which can cause severe estimator biases. Currently, all models that account for false‐positive errors only consider omnibus sources of false detections and are limited to single‐species occupancy.However, false detections for a given species often occur because of the misidentification...

Conservation science can be most effective in its decision‐support role when seeking answers to clearly formulated questions of direct management relevance. Emerging wildlife diseases, a driver of global biodiversity loss, illustrate the challenges of performing this role: in spite of considerable research, successful disease mitigation is uncommon. Decision analysis...

Quantifying the transport history of sand is a challenging but important goal in geomorphology. In this paper, we take a simple idea that luminescence is bleached during transport and regenerates during storage, and use this as a basis to re‐envision luminescence as a sediment tracer. We apply a mathematical model...

A new sulfur isotope stratigraphic profile has been developed for Ordovician-Silurian mudstones that host the Howards Pass Zn-Pb deposits (Canada) in an attempt to reconcile the traditional model of a stagnant euxinic basin setting with new contradictory findings. Our analyses of pyrite confirm the up-section 34S enrichment reported previously, but additional...

Hawai‘i's forest birds face a number of conservation challenges that, if unaddressed, will likely lead to the extinction of multiple species in the coming decades. Threats include habitat loss, invasive plants, non-native predators, and introduced diseases. Climate change is predicted to increase the geographic extent and intensity of these threats,...

A growing body of evidence indicates that climate change alone, or acting synergistically with current anthropogenic threats, is affecting the health of wild populations of aquatic and terrestrial wildlife. Measurable by-products of climate change include elevated atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, higher average global temperatures; variations in global precipitation patterns,...

The original paper under discussion states that it “explains the spectacular mobility of the 2014 Oso landslide.” It addresses this objective by using two versions of the DAN model to compute the distribution of deposits produced by the landslide. The main purpose of this discussion is to demonstrate...

Large rhyolitic volcanoes pose a hazard, yet the processes and signals foretelling an eruption are obscure. Satellite geodesy has revealed surface inflation signaling unrest within magma reservoirs underlying a few rhyolitic volcanoes. Although seismic, electrical, and potential field methods may illuminate the current configuration and state of these reservoirs, they...

Ecological models can provide estimates of future conditions that are useful for decision-making, including long-term planning and resource prioritization. However, these models often rely on assumptions about ecological relationships and trajectories, forcings (e.g., biophysical conditions), and management approaches that may not be explicitly considered. To make assumptions more transparent, disciplines...

Water level (WL) fluctuations in lakes influence many aspects of ecosystem processes. Concern about the potential impact of WL fluctuations on fisheries was one of the factors that motivated the decision in 2000 to alter the management of WL in the Rainy-Namakan reservoir complex (on the border between the U.S. state of Minnesota...

Bayesian statistical analyses of paleoseismic data result in the probabilistic determination of earthquake times using geochronological data evaluated in the context of a stratigraphic model. However, a fundamental problem in paleoseismology is how to use the Bayesian approach to model sparse and/or conflicting geochronological datasets, such as those derived from...

Among the numerous models that have been suggested for the primary and predominant source of silica for chert, we suggest that eolian dust is worthy of further considerations. Such considerations are supported by the common association of Phanerozoic chert with evaporites, limestones, dolomites, or other strata that were deposited within...

The Cosumnes River watershed requires a 57–64 percent reduction in loads to meet the new Delta methylmercury (MeHg) total maximum daily load allocation, established by the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board. Because there are no large point sources of MeHg in the watershed, the focus of MeHg load...

The use of preevent and postevent digital elevation models (DEMs) to estimate the volume of rock avalanches on glaciers is complicated by ablation of ice before and after the rock avalanche, scour of material during rock avalanche emplacement, and postevent ablation and compaction of the rock avalanche deposit. We present...

Besides performing multiple ecosystem services individually and collectively, biocrust constituents may also create biological networks connecting spatially and temporally distinct processes. In the fungal loop hypothesis rainfall variability allows fungi to act as conduits and reservoirs, translocating resources between soils and host plants. To evaluate the extent to which biocrust...

The U.S. Geological Survey developed a regional model of Lake Michigan Basin (LMB). This report describes the construction of five MODFLOW inset models extracted from the LMB regional model and their application using the particle-tracking code MODPATH to simulate the groundwater age distribution of discharge to wells pumping from glacial...

Enhanced oil recovery (EOR) and hydraulic fracturing practices are commonly used methods to improve hydrocarbon extraction efficiency; however the environmental impacts of such practices remain poorly understood. EOR is particularly prevalent in oil fields throughout California where water resources are in high demand and disposal of high volumes of produced...

In Switzerland, nearly all historical Mw ~ 6 earthquakes have induced damaging landslides, rockslides and snow avalanches that, in some cases, also resulted in damage to infrastructure and loss of lives. We describe the customisation to Swiss conditions of a globally calibrated statistical approach originally developed to rapidly assess earthquake-induced landslide...

Trade-offs between current and future reproduction are central to the evolution of life histories. Experiments that manipulate brood size provide an effective approach to investigating future costs of current reproduction. Most manipulative studies to date, however, have addressed only the short-term effects of brood size manipulation. Our goal was to...

We determined the specific biomass burning biomarker levoglucosan in an ice core from the TALos Dome Ice CorE drilling project (TALDICE) during the mid- to late Holocene (6000–750 BP). The levoglucosan record is characterized by a long-term increase with higher rates starting at ∼ 4000 BP and peaks between 2500 and 1500 BP. The...

The Lower Brule Reservation in central South Dakota is losing land because of shoreline erosion along Lake Sharpe, a reservoir on the Missouri River, which has caused detrimental effects for the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe including losses of cultural sites, recreation access points, wildlife habitat, irrigated cropland, and landmass. To...

We analyze the Fourier spectra of S+Lg+surface wave groups from the horizontal and vertical components of broadband and accelerogram recordings of 120 small and moderate (2< Mw <6) earthquakes recorded by Canadian and American stations sited on rock at distances from 3 to 600 kilometers. There are seven Mw 4.0–4.5,...