Water resources of St. Landry Parish, Louisiana
Maxwell A. Lindaman, Vincent E. White
2021, Fact Sheet 2021-3026
Information concerning the availability, use, and quality of water in St. Landry Parish, Louisiana, is critical for proper water-supply management. The purpose of this fact sheet is to present information that can be used by water managers, parish residents, and others for stewardship of this vital resource. In 2014, about...
Workflow for using unmanned aircraft systems and traditional geospatial data to delineate agricultural drainage tiles at edge-of-field sites
J. Jeremy Webber, Tanja N. Williamson
2021, Scientific Investigations Report 2021-5013
Managing nutrient and sediment runoff from fields that drain to the Great Lakes is key to mitigating harmful algal blooms. Implementation of best management practices on agricultural land is considered a critical step to improving water quality in these streams, however the effect of these best management practices is difficult...
Online-coupling of widely-ranged timescales to model coral reef development
Gijs Hendrickx, Peter M. J. Herman, Jasper T. Dijkstra, Curt D. Storlazzi, Lauren Toth
2021, Environmental Modeling and Software (143)
The increasing pressure on Earth's ecosystems due to climate change is becoming more and more evident and the impacts of climate change are especially visible on coral reefs. Understanding how climate change interacts with the physical environment of reefs to impact coral growth and reef development is critically important to...
Wildfires and global change
Juli G. Pausas, Jon Keeley
2021, Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment (19) 387-395
No single factor produces wildfires; rather, they occur when fire thresholds (ignitions, fuels, and drought) are crossed. Anomalous weather events may lower these thresholds and thereby enhance the likelihood and spread of wildfires. Climate change increases the frequency with which some of these thresholds are crossed, extending the duration of...
Raising the West: Mid-Cenozoic Colorado-plano related to subvolcanic batholith assembly in the Southern Rocky Mountains (USA)?
Peter W. Lipman
2021, Geology (49) 1107-1111
The Southern Rocky Mountains of Colorado, United States, have the highest regional elevation in North America, but present-day crustal thickness (∼42–47 km) is no greater than for the adjacent, topographically lower High Plains and Colorado Plateau. The chemistry of continental-arc rocks of the...
Effects of climate and irrigation on GRACE-based estimates of water storage changes in major US aquifers
Bridget R. Scanlon, Ahsraf Rateb, Donald R. Pool, Ward E. Sanford, Himanshu Save, Alexander Y. Sun, Di Long, Brian Fuchs
2021, Environmental Research Letters (16)
Understanding climate and human impacts on water storage is critical for sustainable water-resources management. Here we assessed climate and human drivers of total water storage (TWS) variability from Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites compared with drought severity and irrigation water use in 14 major aquifers...
Tracking the source of metals to the San Juan River
Johanna M. Blake, Shaleene B. Chavarria, Anne-Marie Matherne
2021, Fact Sheet 2021-3029
IntroductionThe San Juan River is a major water source for communities in the Four Corners Region of the United States (Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah) and is a vital source of water for the Navajo Nation. The Navajo Nation Environmental Protection Agency (NNEPA) periodically samples surface water on the Navajo...
Benzotriazole concentrations in airport runoff are reduced following changes in airport deicer formulations
Hayley Olds, Steven R. Corsi, Troy D. Rutter
2021, Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management (18) 245-257
A comparison of the presence of additives in airport deicers commonly used in the United States and in airport runoff was conducted with data collected before and after changes in deicer formulations. Three isomers of benzotriazoles (BTs)—4-methyl-1H-benzotriazole (4-MeBT), 5-methyl-1H-benzotriazole (5-MeBT), and 1H-benzotriazole (1H-BT)—are corrosion inhibitors added to some formulations of...
Bakken and Three Forks Formations, Williston basin, North Dakota and Montana
Kristen R. Marra
2021, Newsletter
No abstract available....
The roles of environmental variation and parasite survival in virulence–transmission relationships
Wendy Christine Turner, Pauline L. Kamath, Henriette van Heerden, Yen-Hua Huang, Zoe R. Barandongo, Spencer A. Bruce, Kyrre Kausrud
2021, Royal Society Open Science (8)
Disease outbreaks are a consequence of interactions among the three components of a host–parasite system: the infectious agent, the host and the environment. While virulence and transmission are widely investigated, most studies of parasite life-history trade-offs are conducted with theoretical models or tractable experimental systems where transmission is standardized and...
Impacts of sediment removal from and placement in coastal barrier island systems
Jennifer L. Miselis, James G. Flocks, Sara Zeigler, Davina Passeri, David R. Smith, Jill R. Bourque, Christopher R. Sherwood, Christopher G. Smith, Daniel J. Ciarletta, Kathryn Smith, Kristen Hart, David C. Kazyak, Alicia Berlin, Bianca Prohaska, Teresa Calleson, Kristi Yanchis
2021, Open-File Report 2021-1062
Executive SummaryOn June 24, 2019, Congressman Raul Grijalva of Arizona, Chair of the House Committee on Natural Resources, sent a letter to the directors of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Geological Survey to request their assistance in answering questions regarding coastal sediment resource management within the...
Use of dissolved oxygen monitoring to evaluate phosphorus loading in Connecticut streams, 2015–18
Brittney Izbicki, Jonathan Morrison
2021, Scientific Investigations Report 2021-5024
The Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (CT DEEP) has developed an interim phosphorus reduction strategy to establish water-quality-based phosphorus limits in nontidal freshwaters for industrial and municipal water pollution control facilities. A recommendation in the strategy included the addition of diurnal dissolved oxygen (DO) sampling to the sampling...
Short‐period surface‐wave tomography in the continental United States— A resource for research
R. B. Herrmann, C. J. Ammon, Harley M. Benz, A. Aziz-Zanjani, J. Boschelli
2021, Seismological Research Letters (92) 3642-3656
The variation of phase and group velocity dispersion of Love and Rayleigh waves was determined for the continental United States and adjacent Canada. By processing ambient noise from the broadband channels of the Transportable Array (TA) of USArray and several Program for the Array Seismic...
The liquefaction record of past earthquakes in the Central Virginia Seismic Zone, Eastern United States
Martitia P. Tuttle, Kathleen Dyer-Williams, Mark W. Carter, Steven L. Forman, Kathleen Tucker, Zamara Fuentes, Carlos Velez, Laurel Bauer
2021, Seismological Research Letters (92) 3126-3144
Following the 2011 moment magnitude, M">MM 5.7 Mineral, Virginia, earthquake, we conducted a search for paleoliquefaction features and found 41 sand dikes, sand sills, and soft‐sediment deformation features at 24 sites exposed in cutbanks along several rivers:...
Sediment concentrations and loads upstream from and through John Redmond Reservoir, east-central Kansas, 2010–19
Ariele R. Kramer, Cara L. Peterman-Phipps, Matthew D. Mahoney, Bradley S. Lukasz
2021, Scientific Investigations Report 2021-5037
Streambank erosion and reservoir sedimentation are primary concerns of resource managers in Kansas and throughout many regions of the United States and negatively affect flood control, water supply, and recreation. The Cottonwood and upper Neosho Rivers drain into John Redmond Reservoir, and since reservoir completion in 1964, there has been...
Accelerating ecological sciences from above: Spatial contrastive learning for remote sensing
Johan Bjorck, Qinru Shi, Brendan H. Rapazzo, Jennifer Dean, Angela K. Fuller, Carrie Brown-Lima, Carla Gomes
2021, Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (35)
The rise of neural networks has opened the door for automatic analysis of remote sensing data. A challenge to using this machinery for computational sustainability is the necessity of massive labeled data sets, which can be cost-prohibitive for many non-profit organizations. The primary motivation for this work is one such...
Synthetic aperture radar and optical mapping used to monitor change and replacement of Phragmites australis marsh in the Lower Mississippi River Delta, Louisiana
Elijah W. Ramsey III, Amina Rangoonwala
2021, Open-File Report 2021-1046
Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) mapping of density as an enhancement of Phragmites australis optical live fractional cover (LFC) mapping was carried out in the lower Mississippi Delta during 2016 to 2019. Also, as part of the study, the replacement of P. australis with elephant-ear was analyzed. To that end, yearly...
Diverse patterns of migratory timing, site use, and site fidelity by Alaska-breeding Whimbrels
Daniel R. Ruthrauff, Christopher M. Harwood, T. Lee Tibbitts, Nils Warnock, Robert E. Gill Jr.
2021, Journal of Field Ornithology (92) 156-172
Birds that conduct long-distance migrations exhibit varied patterns of consistency in migratory timing and site use. Understanding variation in these traits among populations can help uncover mechanisms driving migratory behaviors and identify potential population threats. Whimbrels (Numenius phaeopus)...
Multivariate classification of the crude oil petroleum systems in southeast Texas, USA, using conventional and compositional data analysis of biomarkers
Ricardo A. Olea, J. A Martin-Fernandez, William H. Craddock
Peter Fitzmoser, Karel Hron, Josep Antoni Martin-Fernandez, Javier Palarea-Albaladejo, editor(s)
2021, Book chapter, Advances in compositional data analysis—Festschrift in honor of Vera-Pawlowsky-Glahn
Chemically, petroleum is an extraordinarily complex mixture of different types of hydrocarbons that are now possible to isolate and identify because of advances in geochemistry. Here, we use biomarkers and carbon isotopes to establish genetic differences and similarities among oil samples. Conventional approaches for evaluating biomarker and carbon isotope relative...
Distribution and demography of coastal cactus wrens (Campylorhynchus brunneicapillus) in southern San Diego County, California—2020 data summary
Suellen Lynn, Barbara E. Kus
2021, Data Series 1138
Executive SummarySurveys for coastal Cactus Wren (Campylorhynchus brunneicapillus) were done in 378 established plots in southern San Diego County in 2020, encompassing three genetic clusters (Otay, Lake Jennings, and Sweetwater/Encanto genetic clusters). Two surveys were completed at each plot between March 1 and July 31. Cactus Wrens were detected in...
Greater Yellowstone climate assessment: Past, present, and future climate change in the greater Yellowstone watersheds
Steven W. Hostetler, Cathy Whitlock, Bryan Shuman, David Liefert, Charles Wolf Drimal, Scott Bischke
Jay R. Alder, Gregory T. Pederson, editor(s)
2021, Report
The Greater Yellowstone Area (GYA) is one of the last remaining large and nearly intact temperate ecosystems on Earth. GYA was originally defined in the 1970s as the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, which encompassed the minimum range of the grizzly bear. The boundary now includes about 22 million acres (8.9 million...
Modeling opportunistic exploitation: Increased extinction risk when targeting more than one species
S. Thurner, Sarah J. Converse, Trevor A. Branch
2021, Ecological Modelling (454)
Extinction rates are increasing globally, and direct exploitation is an important driver. Many pathways have been proposed to explain how exploitation can lead to extinction. One of these proposed but understudied multispecies pathways is opportunistic exploitation, which occurs when a highly valuable but rare species is encountered and targeted during exploitation of...
Fisheries research and monitoring activities of the Lake Erie Biological Station, 2020
Kevin R. Keretz, Patrick Kocovsky, Richard Kraus, James Roberts, Joseph Schmitt
2021, Report
This report presents biomass-based summaries of fish communities in the West Basin of Lake Erie derived from USGS bottom trawl surveys conducted from 2013 to 2020 during June and September. The survey design provided temporal and spatial coverage that did not exist in the interagency trawl database, and thus complemented...
Status and trends of pelagic and benthic prey fish populations in Lake Michigan, 2020
Ralph William Tingley, David Bunnell, David Warner, Charles P. Madenjian, Patricia Dieter
2021, Report
Lakewide acoustic (AC) and bottom trawl (BT) surveys are conducted annually to generate indices of pelagic and benthic prey fish densities in Lake Michigan. The BT survey had been conducted each fall from 1973 through 2019 using 12-m trawls at depths ranging from 9 to 110 m and included...
Ambassador wolves participate In scientific research
Shannon Barber-Meyer, Lori Schmidt, Vicente Palacios, Barbara Marti-Domken
2021, International Wolf (2021) 4-8
The International Wolf Center wolves are famous for providing unique educational opportunities to visitors to Ely and to people around the globe. Less known, are the contributions these wolves make to scientific research. Recently the Center’s Exhibit Pack were subjects of behavioral and acoustic research....
