A long-term study of ecological impacts of river channelization on the population of an endangered fish: Lessons learned for assessment and restoration
James H. Roberts, Gregory B. Anderson, Paul L. Angermeier
2016, Water (8) 1-38
Projects to assess environmental impact or restoration success in rivers focus on project-specific questions but can also provide valuable insights for future projects. Both restoration actions and impact assessments can become “adaptive” by using the knowledge gained from long-term monitoring and analysis to revise the actions, monitoring, conceptual model, or...
Slab melting and magma formation beneath the southern Cascade arc
Kristina J. Walowski, Paul J. Wallace, Michael A. Clynne, D.J. Rasmussen, D. Weis
2016, Earth and Planetary Science Letters (446) 100-112
The processes that drive magma formation beneath the Cascade arc and other warm-slab subduction zones have been debated because young oceanic crust is predicted to largely dehydrate beneath the forearc during subduction. In addition, geochemical variability along strike in the Cascades has led to contrasting interpretations about the role of...
The statistical power to detect cross-scale interactions at macroscales
Tyler Wagner, C. Emi Fergus, Craig A. Stow, Kendra S. Cheruvelil, Patricia A. Soranno
2016, Ecosphere (7)
Macroscale studies of ecological phenomena are increasingly common because stressors such as climate and land-use change operate at large spatial and temporal scales. Cross-scale interactions (CSIs), where ecological processes operating at one spatial or temporal scale interact with processes operating at another scale, have been documented in a variety of...
Predicting arsenic in drinking water wells of the Central Valley, California
Joseph D. Ayotte, Bernard T. Nolan, JoAnn M. Gronberg
2016, Environmental Science & Technology (50) 7555-7563
Probabilities of arsenic in groundwater at depths used for domestic and public supply in the Central Valley of California are predicted using weak-learner ensemble models (boosted regression trees, BRT) and more traditional linear models (logistic regression, LR). Both methods captured major processes that affect arsenic concentrations, such as the chemical...
Automated mapping of persistent ice and snow cover across the western U.S. with Landsat
David J. Selkowitz, Richard R. Forster
2016, ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (117) 126-140
We implemented an automated approach for mapping persistent ice and snow cover (PISC) across the conterminous western U.S. using all available Landsat TM and ETM+ scenes acquired during the late summer/early fall period between 2010 and 2014. Two separate validation approaches indicate this dataset provides...
Flood-inundation maps for Lake Champlain in Vermont and in northern Clinton County, New York
Robert H. Flynn, Laura Hayes
2016, Scientific Investigations Report 2016-5060
Digital flood-inundation maps for an approximately100-mile length of Lake Champlain in Addison, Chittenden, Franklin, and Grand Isle Counties in Vermont and northern Clinton County in New York were created by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in cooperation with the International Joint Commission (IJC). The flood-inundationmaps, which can be accessed through...
Updated logistic regression equations for the calculation of post-fire debris-flow likelihood in the western United States
Dennis M. Staley, Jacquelyn A. Negri, Jason W. Kean, Jayme L. Laber, Anne C. Tillery, Ann M. Youberg
2016, Open-File Report 2016-1106
Wildfire can significantly alter the hydrologic response of a watershed to the extent that even modest rainstorms can generate dangerous flash floods and debris flows. To reduce public exposure to hazard, the U.S. Geological Survey produces post-fire debris-flow hazard assessments for select fires in the western United States. We use...
Regional variability in bed-sediment concentrations of wastewater compounds, hormones and PAHs for portions of coastal New York and New Jersey impacted by hurricane Sandy
Patrick J. Phillips, Cathy A Gibson, Shawn C. Fisher, Irene Fisher, Timothy J. Reilly, Kelly L. Smalling, Kristin M. Romanok, William T. Foreman, Rhiannon C. ReVello, Michael J. Focazio, Daniel K. Jones
2016, Marine Pollution Bulletin (107) 489-498
Bed sediment samples from 79 coastal New York and New Jersey, USA sites were analyzed for 75 compounds including wastewater associated contaminants, PAHs, and other organic compounds to assess the post-Hurricane Sandy distribution of organic contaminants among six regions. These results provide the first assessment of wastewater compounds, hormones, and...
Diet of pumas (Puma concolor) in Sonora, Mexico, as determined by GPS kill sites and molecular identified scat, with comments on jaguar (Panthera onca) diet
Ivonne Cassaigne, Rodrigo A. Medellin, Ron W. Thompson, Melanie Culver, Alexander Ochoa, Karla Vargas, Jack L. Childs, Jim Sanderson, Rurik List, Armando Torres-Gomez
2016, Southwestern Naturalist (61) 125-132
We documented puma (Puma concolor) and jaguar (Panthera onca) prey consumption in northeastern Sonora, Mexico, by investigating global positioning system cluster sites (n = 220), and conducting molecular analyses of scat (n = 116) collected between 2011 and 2013. We used camera trap data (n = 8,976 camera days) to estimate relative abundances...
Completion summary for boreholes TAN-2271 and TAN‑2272 at Test Area North, Idaho National Laboratory, Idaho
Brian V. Twining, Roy C. Bartholomay, Mary Hodges
2016, Scientific Investigations Report 2016-5088
In 2015, the U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Energy, drilled and constructed boreholes TAN-2271 and TAN-2272 for stratigraphic framework analyses and long-term groundwater monitoring of the eastern Snake River Plain aquifer at the Idaho National Laboratory in southeast Idaho. Borehole TAN-2271 initially was cored...
Induced earthquake magnitudes are as large as (statistically) expected
Nicholas van der Elst, Morgan T. Page, Deborah A. Weiser, Thomas Goebel, S. Mehran Hosseini
2016, Journal of Geophysical Research B: Solid Earth (121) 4575-4590
A major question for the hazard posed by injection-induced seismicity is how large induced earthquakes can be. Are their maximum magnitudes determined by injection parameters or by tectonics? Deterministic limits on induced earthquake magnitudes have been proposed based on the size of the reservoir or the volume of fluid injected....
Three-dimensional visualization maps of suspended-sediment concentrations during placement of dredged material in 21st Avenue West Channel Embayment, Duluth-Superior Harbor, Duluth, Minnesota, 2015
Joel T. Groten, Christopher A. Ellison, Mollie H. Mahoney
2016, Scientific Investigations Report 2016-5086
Excess sediment in rivers and estuaries poses serious environmental and economic challenges. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) routinely dredges sediment in Federal navigation channels to maintain commercial shipping operations. The USACE initiated a 3-year pilot project in 2013 to use navigation channel dredged material to aid in restoration...
Adjusting annual maximum peak discharges at selected stations in northeastern Illinois for changes in land-use conditions
Thomas M. Over, Riki J. Saito, David T. Soong
2016, Scientific Investigations Report 2016-5049
The effects of urbanization on annual maximum peak discharges in northeastern Illinois and nearby areas from 1945 to 2009 were analyzed with a two-step longitudinal-quantile linear regression approach. The peak discharges were then adjusted to 2010 land-use conditions. The explanatory variables used were daily precipitation at the time of the...
Predicting the stability of endangered stonecats in the LaPlatte River, Vermont
Elizabeth A. Puchala, Donna L. Parrish, Therese M. Donovan
2016, Transactions of the American Fisheries Society (145) 903-912
Stonecats Noturus flavus in Vermont conform to a rare distribution pattern (as designated by Rabinowitz 1981) because their known distribution within the state is limited to the LaPlatte and Missisquoi rivers. We focused on Stonecats in the LaPlatte River to predict the stability of the population. During 2012–2014, we captured Stonecats via...
Misapplied survey data and model uncertainty result in incorrect conclusions about the role of predation on alewife population dynamics in Lake Huron: a comment on He et al. (2015)
Stephen C. Riley, Erin S. Dunlop
2016, Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences (73) 860-864
Drastic recent and ongoing changes to fish populations and food webs in the Great Lakes have been well-described (Riley et al. 2008; Barbiero et al. 2009; Nalepa et al. 2009; Fahnenstiel et al. 2010;Evans et al. 2011; Gobin et al. 2015), and uncertainty regarding their potential effects on...
Age- and season-specific variation in local and long-distance movement behavior of golden eagles
Sharon A. Poessel, Peter H. Bloom, Melissa A. Braham, Todd E. Katzner
2016, European Journal of Wildlife Research (62) 377-393
Animal movements can determine the population dynamics of wildlife. We used telemetry data to provide insight into the causes and consequences of local and long-distance movements of multiple age classes of conservation-reliant golden eagles (Aquila chrysaetos) in the foothills and mountains near Tehachapi, California. We estimated size and habitat-related correlates of...
Modeled historical land use and land cover for the conterminous United States
Terry L. Sohl, Ryan R. Reker, Michelle A. Bouchard, Kristi L. Sayler, Jordan Dornbierer, Steve Wika, Robert Quenzer, Aaron M. Friesz
2016, Journal of Land Use Science (11) 476-499
The landscape of the conterminous United States has changed dramatically over the last 200 years, with agricultural land use, urban expansion, forestry, and other anthropogenic activities altering land cover across vast swaths of the country. While land use and land cover (LULC) models have been developed to model potential future...
Selection and quality assessment of Landsat data for the North American forest dynamics forest history maps of the US
Karen Schleeweis, Samuel N. Goward, Chengquan Huang, John L. Dwyer, Jennifer L. Dungan, Mary A. Lindsey, Andrew Michaelis, Khaldoun Rishmawi, Jeffery G. Masek
2016, International Journal of Digital Earth (9) 963-980
Using the NASA Earth Exchange platform, the North American Forest Dynamics (NAFD) project mapped forest history wall-to-wall, annually for the contiguous US (1986–2010) using the Vegetation Change Tracker algorithm. As with any effort to identify real changes in remotely sensed time-series, data gaps, shifts in seasonality, misregistration, inconsistent radiometry and...
Prospective earthquake forecasts at the Himalayan Front after the 25 April 2015 M 7.8 Gorkha Mainshock
Margaret Segou, Thomas E. Parsons
2016, Seismological Research Letters (87) 816-825
When a major earthquake strikes, the resulting devastation can be compounded or even exceeded by the subsequent cascade of triggered seismicity. As the Nepalese recover from the 25 April 2015 shock, knowledge of what comes next is essential. We calculate the redistribution of crustal stresses and implied earthquake probabilities for...
Chemical abrasion-SIMS (CA-SIMS) U-Pb dating of zircon from the late Eocene Caetano caldera, Nevada
Kathryn E. Watts, Matthew A. Coble, Jorge A. Vazquez, Christopher D. Henry, Joseph P. Colgan, David A. John
2016, Chemical Geology (439) 139-151
Zircon geochronology is a critical tool for establishing geologic ages and time scales of processes in the Earth's crust. However, for zircons compromised by open system behavior, achieving robust dates can be difficult. Chemical abrasion (CA) is a routine step prior to thermal ionization mass spectrometry (TIMS) dating of zircon...
Manual hierarchical clustering of regional geochemical data using a Bayesian finite mixture model
Karl J. Ellefsen, David Smith
2016, Applied Geochemistry (75) 200-210
Interpretation of regional scale, multivariate geochemical data is aided by a statistical technique called “clustering.” We investigate a particular clustering procedure by applying it to geochemical data collected in the State of Colorado, United States of America. The clustering procedure partitions the field samples for the entire survey area into...
Year-round monitoring of contaminants in Neal and Rogers Creeks, Hood River Basin, Oregon, 2011-12, and assessment of risks to salmonids
Whitney B. Temple, Jennifer L. Morace, Elena B. Nilsen, David Alvarez, Kevin Masterson
2016, PLoS ONE (11)
Pesticide presence in streams is a potential threat to Endangered Species Act listed salmonids in the Hood River basin, Oregon, a primarily forested and agricultural basin. Two types of passive samplers, polar organic chemical integrative samplers (POCIS) and semipermeable membrane devices (SPMDs), were simultaneously deployed at four sites in the...
Digestive physiology comparisons of aquatic invertebrates in the Upper Mississippi River Basin
Blake W. Sauey, Jon Amberg, Scott T. Cooper, Sandra K. Grunwald, Roger J. Haro, Mark P. Gaikowski
2016, Journal of Freshwater Ecology (31) 303-314
Limited information is available on the composition of digestive enzymes present in unionid mussels and the zebra mussel, Dreissena polymorpha. Available information is nearly exclusive to species used for culture purposes. A commercially available enzyme assay kit was used to examine the effect of habitat within an ecosystem, season, and species...
An assessment of mercury in estuarine sediment and tissue in Southern New Jersey using public domain data
Kara Ng, Zoltan Szabo, Pamela A. Reilly, Julia Barringer, Kelly L. Smalling
2016, Marine Pollution Bulletin (107) 22-35
Mercury (Hg) is considered a contaminant of global concern for coastal environments due to its toxicity, widespread occurrence in sediment, and bioaccumulation in tissue. Coastal New Jersey, USA, is characterized by shallow bays and wetlands that provide critical habitat for wildlife but share space with expanding urban landscapes. This study...
The role of ocean tides on groundwater-surface water exchange in a mangrove-dominated estuary: Shark River Slough, Florida Coastal Everglades, USA
Christopher G. Smith, Rene M. Price, Peter W. Swarzenski, Jeremy C. Stalker
2016, Estuaries and Coasts (39) 1600-1616
Low-relief environments like the Florida Coastal Everglades (FCE) have complicated hydrologic systems where surface water and groundwater processes are intimately linked yet hard to separate. Fluid exchange within these lowhydraulic-gradient systems can occur across broad spatial and temporal scales, with variable contributions to material transport and transformation. Identifying and assessing...
