Comparisons between vs30 and spectral response for 30 sites in Newcastle, Australia from collocated seismic cone penetrometer, active- and passive-source vs data
Theodora Volti, David Burbidge, Clive Collins, Michael W. Asten, Jackson K. Odum, William J. Stephenson, Chris Pascal, Josef Holzschuh
2016, Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (106) 1690-1709
Although the time‐averaged shear‐wave velocity down to 30 m depth (VS30) can be a proxy for estimating earthquake ground‐motion amplification, significant controversy exists about its limitations when used as a single parameter for the prediction of amplification. To examine this question in absence of relevant strong‐motion records, we use a range...
Damage and recovery assessment of the Philippines' mangroves following Super Typhoon Haiyan
Jordan Long, Chandra Giri, Jurgene H. Primavera, Mandar Trivedi
2016, Marine Pollution Bulletin (109) 734-743
We quantified mangrove disturbance resulting from Super Typhoon Haiyan using a remote sensing approach. Mangrove areas were mapped prior to Haiyan using 30 m Landsat imagery and a supervised decision-tree classification. A time sequence of 250 m eMODIS data was used to monitor mangrove condition prior to, and following, Haiyan. Based on...
sbtools: A package connecting R to cloud-based data for collaborative online research
Luke Winslow, Scott Chamberlain, Alison P. Appling, Jordan S. Read
2016, The R Journal (8) 387-398
The adoption of high-quality tools for collaboration and reproducible research such as R and Github is becoming more common in many research fields. While Github and other version management systems are excellent resources, they were originally designed to handle code and scale poorly to large text-based or binary datasets. A...
Multispecies cccupancy modeling as a tool for evaluating the status and distribution of Darters in the Elk River, Tennessee
Kathryn M. Potoka, Colin P. Shea, Phillip William Bettoli
2016, Transactions of the American Fisheries Society (145) 1110-1121
Sixteen darter species, including the federally endangered Boulder Darter Etheostoma wapiti, are known to occur in the Elk River, a large, flow-regulated tributary of the Tennessee River, Tennessee–Alabama. Since the construction of Tims Ford Dam (TFD) in 1970, habitat modification caused by cold, hypolimnetic water releases and peak-demand hydropower generation...
Development and assessment of indices to determine stream fish vulnerability to climate change and habitat alteration
Nicholas A. Sievert, Craig P. Paukert, Yin-Phan Tsang, Dana M. Infante
2016, Ecological Indicators (67) 403-416
Understanding the future impacts of climate and land use change are critical for long-term biodiversity conservation. We developed and compared two indices to assess the vulnerability of stream fish in Missouri, USA based on species environmental tolerances, rarity, range size, dispersal ability and on the average connectivity of the streams...
Using the North American Breeding Bird Survey to assess broad-scale response of the continent's most imperiled avian community, grassland birds, to weather variability
Jessica Gorzo, Anna M. Pidgeon, Wayne E. Thogmartin, Andrew J. Allstadt, Volker C. Radeloff, Patricia J. Heglund, Stephen J. Vavrus
2016, The Condor (118) 502-512
Avian populations can respond dramatically to extreme weather such as droughts and heat waves, yet patterns of response to weather at broad scales remain largely unknown. Our goal was to evaluate annual variation in abundance of 14 grassland bird species breeding in the northern mixed-grass prairie in relation to annual...
Comment on “Geochemistry of buried river sediments from Ghaggar Plains, NW India: Multi-proxy records of variations in provenance, paleoclimate, and paleovegetation patterns in the late quaternary” by Ajit Singh, Debajyoti Paul, Rajiv Sinha, Kristina J. Thomsen, Sanjeev Gupta
Peter D. Clift, Liviu Giosan, Amy E. East
2016, Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology (455) 65-67
Singh et al. (2016) published a geochemical record of sediment compositions from the flood plain of the Ghaggar River in western India and use the changing provenance, particularly as traced by Nd isotope composition, to reconstruct how erosion patterns have changed over the past 100 k.y. In doing so they...
The influence of vegetation cover on debris-flow density during an extreme rainfall in the northern Colorado Front Range
Francis K. Rengers, Luke McGuire, Jeffrey A. Coe, Jason W. Kean, Rex L. Baum, Dennis M. Staley, Jonathan W. Godt
2016, Geology (44) 823-826
We explored regional influences on debris-flow initiation throughout the Colorado Front Range (Colorado, USA) by exploiting a unique data set of more than 1100 debris flows that initiated during a 5 day rainstorm in 2013. Using geospatial data, we examined the influence of rain, hillslope angle, hillslope aspect, and vegetation...
Field scale test of multi-dimensional flow and morphodynamic simulations used for restoration design analysis
Richard R. McDonald, Jonathan M. Nelson, Ryan L. Fosness, Peter O. Nelson
George Constantinescu, Marcelo H. Garcia, Dan Hanes, editor(s)
2016, Conference Paper, RiverFlow 2016
Two- and three-dimensional morphodynamic simulations are becoming common in studies of channel form and process. The performance of these simulations are often validated against measurements from laboratory studies. Collecting channel change information in natural settings for model validation is difficult because it can be expensive and under most channel forming...
Origin of the pulse-like signature of shallow long-period volcano seismicity
Bernard A. Chouet, Phillip B. Dawson
2016, Journal of Geophysical Research B: Solid Earth (121) 5931-5941
Short-duration, pulse-like long-period (LP) events are a characteristic type of seismicity accompanying eruptive activity at Mount Etna in Italy in 2004 and 2008 and at Turrialba Volcano in Costa Rica and Ubinas Volcano in Peru in 2009. We use the discrete wave number method to compute the free surface response...
Observations and modeling of fjord sedimentation during the 30 year retreat of Columbia Glacier, AK
Katherine B Love, Bernard Hallet, Thomas L. Pratt, Shad O’Neel
2016, Journal of Glaciology (62) 778-793
To explore links between glacier dynamics, sediment yields and the accumulation of glacial sediments in a temperate setting, we use extensive glaciological observations for Columbia Glacier, Alaska, and new oceanographic data from the fjord exposed during its retreat. High-resolution seismic data indicate that 3.2 × 108 m3 of...
Population characteristics and the suppression of nonnative Burbot
Zachary B. Klein, Michael C. Quist, Darren T. Rhea, Anna C. Senecal
2016, North American Journal of Fisheries Management (36) 1006-1017
Burbot Lota lota were illegally introduced into the Green River, Wyoming, drainage and have since proliferated throughout the system. Burbot in the Green River pose a threat to native species and to socially, economically, and ecologically important recreational fisheries. Therefore, managers of the Green River are interested in implementing a...
Amplification of postwildfire peak flow by debris
Jason W. Kean, Luke McGuire, Francis K. Rengers, Joel B. Smith, Dennis M. Staley
2016, Geophysical Research Letters (43) 8545-8553
In burned steeplands, the peak depth and discharge of postwildfire runoff can substantially increase from the addition of debris. Yet methods to estimate the increase over water flow are lacking. We quantified the potential amplification of peak stage and discharge using video observations of postwildfire runoff, compiled data on postwildfire...
Landscape effects of wildfire on permafrost distribution in interior Alaska derived from remote sensing
Dana R. N. Brown, M. Torre Jorgenson, Knut Kielland, David L. Verbyla, Anupma Prakash, Joshua C. Koch
2016, Remote Sensing (8) 1-22
Climate change coupled with an intensifying wildfire regime is becoming an important driver of permafrost loss and ecosystem change in the northern boreal forest. There is a growing need to understand the effects of fire on the spatial distribution of permafrost and its associated ecological consequences. We focus on the...
The road to NHDPlus — Advancements in digital stream networks and associated catchments
Richard B. Moore, Thomas A. Dewald
2016, Journal of the American Water Resources Association (52) 890-900
A progression of advancements in Geographic Information Systems techniques for hydrologic network and associated catchment delineation has led to the production of the National Hydrography Dataset Plus (NHDPlus). NHDPlus is a digital stream network for hydrologic modeling with catchments and a suite of related geospatial data. Digital stream networks with...
Overwintering strategies of migratory birds: a novel approach for estimating seasonal movement patterns of residents and transients
Viviana Ruiz-Gutierrez, William L. Kendall, James F. Saracco, Gary C. White
2016, Journal of Applied Ecology (53) 1035-1045
Our understanding of movement patterns in wildlife populations has played an important role in current ecological knowledge and can inform landscape conservation decisions. Direct measures of movement can be obtained using marked individuals, but this requires tracking individuals across a landscape or multiple sites.We demonstrate how movements...
Complex explosive volcanic activity on the Moon within Oppenheimer crater
Kristen A Bennett, Briony H. N. Horgan, Lisa R. Gaddis, Benjamin T Greenhagen, Carlton C. Allen, Paul O. Hayne, James F. Bell, David A. Paige
2016, Icarus (273) 296-314
Oppenheimer Crater is a floor-fractured crater located within the South Pole-Aitken basin on the Moon, and exhibits more than a dozen localized pyroclastic deposits associated with the fractures. Localized pyroclastic volcanism on the Moon is thought to form as a result of intermittently explosive Vulcanian eruptions under low effusion rates,...
On the deterministic and stochastic use of hydrologic models
William H. Farmer, Richard M. Vogel
2016, Water Resources Research (52) 5619-5633
Environmental simulation models, such as precipitation-runoff watershed models, are increasingly used in a deterministic manner for environmental and water resources design, planning, and management. In operational hydrology, simulated responses are now routinely used to plan, design, and manage a very wide class of water resource systems. However, all such models...
Budgets and chemical characterization of groundwater for the Diamond Valley flow system, central Nevada, 2011–12
David L. Berger, C. Justin Mayers, C. Amanda Garcia, Susan G. Buto, Jena M. Huntington
2016, Scientific Investigations Report 2016-5055
The Diamond Valley flow system consists of six hydraulically connected hydrographic areas in central Nevada. The general down-gradient order of the areas are southern and northern Monitor Valleys, Antelope Valley, Kobeh Valley, Stevens Basin, and Diamond Valley. Groundwater flow in the Diamond Valley flow system terminates at a large playa...
ChemCam activities and discoveries during the nominal mission of the Mars Science Laboratory in Gale crater, Mars
Sylvestre Maurice, Samuel M. Clegg, Roger C. Wiens, O. Gasnault, W. Rapin, O. Forni, Agnes Cousin, V. Sautter, Nicolas Mangold, L. Le Deit, Marion Nachon, Ryan B. Anderson, Nina Lanza, Cecile Fabre, Valerie Payre, Jeremie Lasue, Pierre-Yves Meslin, Richard A. LeVeille, Bruce Barraclough, Pierre Beck, Steven C. Bender, Gilles Berger, John C. Bridges, Nathan Bridges, Gilles Dromert, M. Darby Dyar, Raymond Francis, Jens Frydenvang, B. Gondet, Bethany L. Ehlmann, Kenneth E. Herkenhoff, Jeffrey R. Johnson, Yves Langevin, Madsen Morten B., N. Melikechi, J.-L. Lacour, Stephane Le Mouelic, Eric Lewin, Horton E. Newsom, Ann M. Ollila, Patrick Pinet, S. Schroder, Jean-Baptiste Sirven, Robert L. Tokar, M.J. Toplis, Claude d’Uston, David Vaniman, Ashwin R. Vasavada
2016, Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry (31) 863-889
At Gale crater, Mars, ChemCam acquired its first laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) target on Sol 13 of the landed portion of the mission (a Sol is a Mars day). Up to Sol 800, more than 188 000 LIBS spectra were acquired on more than 5800 points distributed over about 650 individual...
Seasonal flux and assemblage composition of planktic foraminifera from the northern Gulf of Mexico, 2008–14
Caitlin E. Reynolds, Julie N. Richey
2016, Open-File Report 2016-1115
The U.S. Geological Survey anchored a sediment trap in the northern Gulf of Mexico in January 2008 to collect seasonal time-series data on the flux and assemblage composition of live planktic foraminifers. This report provides an update of the previous time-series data to include continuous results from January 2013 through...
Soil data for a vegetation gradient located at Bonanza Creek Long Term Ecological Research Site, interior Alaska
Kristen L. Manies, Jennifer W. Harden, Christopher C. Fuller, Xiaomei Xu, John P. McGeehin
2016, Open-File Report 2016-1034
Boreal soils play an important role in the global carbon cycle owing to the large amount of carbon stored within this northern region. To understand how carbon and nitrogen storage varied among different ecosystems, a vegetation gradient was established in the Bonanza Creek Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) site,...
Agricultural irrigated land-use inventory for the counties in the Suwannee River Water Management District in Florida, 2015
Richard L. Marella, Joann F. Dixon, Darbi R. Berry
2016, Open-File Report 2016-1111
A detailed inventory of irrigated crop acreage is not available at the level of resolution needed to accurately estimate agricultural water use or to project future water demands in many Florida counties. A detailed digital map and summary of irrigated acreage during the 2015 growing season was developed for 13...
Ordinary kriging as a tool to estimate historical daily streamflow records
William H. Farmer
2016, Hydrology and Earth System Sciences (20) 2721-2735
Efficient and responsible management of water resources relies on accurate streamflow records. However, many watersheds are ungaged, limiting the ability to assess and understand local hydrology. Several tools have been developed to alleviate this data scarcity, but few provide continuous daily streamflow records at individual streamgages within an entire region....
Evaluation of leaf removal as a means to reduce nutrient concentrations and loads in urban stormwater
William R. Selbig
2016, Science of the Total Environment (571) 124-133
While the sources of nutrients to urban stormwater are many, the primary contributor is often organic detritus, especially in areas with dense overhead tree canopy. One way to remove organic detritus before it becomes entrained in runoff is to implement a city-wide leaf collection and...
