Community for Data Integration 2014 annual report
Madison L. Langseth, Michelle Y. Chang, Jennifer Carlino, Daniella D. Birch, Joshua Bradley, R. Sky Bristol, Craig Conzelmann, Robert H. Diehl, Paul S. Earle, Laura E. Ellison, Anthony L. Everette, Pamela L. Fuller, Janice M. Gordon, David L. Govoni, Michelle R. Guy, Heather S. Henkel, Vivian B. Hutchison, Tim Kern, Frances L. Lightsom, Joseph W. Long, Ryan Longhenry, Todd M. Preston, Stan W. Smith, Roland J. Viger, Katherine E. Wesenberg, Eric C. Wood
2015, Open-File Report 2015-1184
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) researches Earth science to help address complex issues affecting society and the environment. In 2006, the USGS held the first Scientific Information Management Workshop to bring together staff from across the organization to discuss the data and information management issues affecting the integration and delivery...
Baseline coastal oblique aerial photographs collected from the Virginia/North Carolina border to Montauk Point, New York,
October 5-6, 2014
Karen L. M. Morgan
2015, Data Series 958
Summary The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) conducts baseline and storm response photography missions to document and understand the changes in vulnerability of the Nation's coasts to extreme storms (Morgan, 2009). On October 5-6, 2014, the USGS conducted an oblique aerial photographic survey from the Virginia/North Carolina border to Montauk Point, New...
Water productivity studies from earth observation data: characterization, modeling and mapping water use and water productivity
Antonio de C. Teixeira, Fernando B. T. Hernandez, Morris Scherer-Warren, Ricardo G. Andrade, Janice F. Leivas, Daniel C. Victoria, Edson L. Bolfe, Prasad S. Thenkabail, Renato A. M. Franco
2015, Book chapter, Remote sensing of water resources, disasters, and urban studies
Advantage of hyperspectral EO-1 Hyperion over multispectral IKONOS, GeoEye-1, WorldView-2, Landsat ETM+, and MODIS vegetation indices in crop biomass estimation
Michael T. Marshall, Prasad S. Thenkabail
2015, ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (108) 205-218
Crop biomass is increasingly being measured with surface reflectance data derived from multispectral broadband (MSBB) and hyperspectral narrowband (HNB) space-borne remotely sensed data to increase the accuracy and efficiency of crop yield models used in a wide array of agricultural applications. However, few studies compare the ability of MSBBs versus...
Groundwater-level and storage-volume changes in the Equus Beds aquifer near Wichita, Kansas, predevelopment through January 2015
Joshua A. Whisnant, Cristi V. Hansen, Patrick J. Eslick
2015, Scientific Investigations Report 2015-5121
Development of the Wichita well field began in the 1940s in the Equus Beds aquifer to provide the city of Wichita, Kansas, a new water-supply source. After development of the Wichita well field began, groundwater levels began to decline. Extensive development of irrigation wells that began in the 1970s also...
Olistostrome shed eastward from the Antler orogenic forebulge, Bisoni-McKay area, Fish Creek Range, central Nevada
Forrest G. Poole, Charles Sandberg
2015, Book chapter, Unusual central Nevada geologic terranes produced by Late Devonian antler orogeny and Alamo impact
The Bisoni-McKay area, a structurally isolated, fault-bounded horst, offset eastward at the south end of the Fish Creek Range, displays a geologic terrane that is previously unrecorded in Nevada, and perhaps elsewhere in North America. This unique terrane is an olistostrome that was shed eastward by listric faulting from the...
Characterization of shrubland ecosystem components as continuous fields in the northwest United States
George Z. Xian, Collin G. Homer, Matthew B. Rigge, Hua Shi, Debbie Meyer
2015, Remote Sensing of Environment (168) 286-300
Accurate and consistent estimates of shrubland ecosystem components are crucial to a better understanding of ecosystem conditions in arid and semiarid lands. An innovative approach was developed by integrating multiple sources of information to quantify shrubland components as continuous field products within the National Land Cover Database (NLCD). The approach...
Landsat-8: Status and on-orbit performance
Brian L. Markham, Julia A. Barsi, Ron Morfitt, Mike Choate, Matthew Montanaro, Terry Arvidson, James R. Irons
2015, Conference Paper, Proc. SPIE 9639, Sensors, Systems, and Next-Generation Satellites XIX
Landsat 8 and its two Earth imaging sensors, the Operational Land Imager (OLI) and Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS) have been operating on-orbit for 2 ½ years. Landsat 8 has been acquiring substantially more images than initially planned, typically around 700 scenes per day versus a 400 scenes per day requirement,...
Ionospheric current source modeling and global geomagnetic induction using ground geomagnetic observatory data
Jin Sun, Anna Kelbert, G. D. Egbert
2015, Journal of Geophysical Research (120) 6771-6796
Long-period global-scale electromagnetic induction studies of deep Earth conductivity are based almost exclusively on magnetovariational methods and require accurate models of external source spatial structure. We describe approaches to inverting for both the external sources and three-dimensional (3-D) conductivity variations and apply these methods to long-period (T≥1.2 days) geomagnetic observatory data....
Using time series structural characteristics to analyze grain prices in food insecure countries
Frank Davenport, Chris Funk
2015, Food Security (7) 1055-1070
Two components of food security monitoring are accurate forecasts of local grain prices and the ability to identify unusual price behavior. We evaluated a method that can both facilitate forecasts of cross-country grain price data and identify dissimilarities in price behavior across multiple markets. This method, characteristic based clustering (CBC),...
Dynamics of a recovering Arctic bird population: the importance of climate, density dependence, and site quality
Jason E. Bruggeman, Ted Swem, David E. Andersen, Patricia L. Kennedy, Debora A. Nigro
2015, Ecological Applications (25) 1932-1943
Intrinsic and extrinsic factors affect vital rates and population-level processes, and understanding these factors is paramount to devising successful management plans for wildlife species. For example, birds time migration in response, in part, to local and broadscale climate fluctuations to initiate breeding upon arrival to nesting territories, and prolonged inclement...
Reconstructing turbidity in a glacially influenced lake using the Landsat TM and ETM+ surface reflectance climate data record archive, Lake Clark, Alaska
Carson Baughman, Benjamin M. Jones, Krista K. Bartz, Daniel Young, Christian E. Zimmerman
2015, Remote Sensing (7) 13692-13710
Lake Clark is an important nursery lake for sockeye salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka) in the headwaters of Bristol Bay, Alaska, the most productive wild salmon fishery in the world. Reductions in water clarity within Alaska lake systems as a result of increased glacial runoff have been shown to reduce salmon production...
Maximum likelihood Bayesian model averaging and its predictive analysis for groundwater reactive transport models
Gary P. Curtis, Dan Lu, Ming Ye
2015, Journal of Hydrology: Regional Studies (529) 1859-1873
While Bayesian model averaging (BMA) has been widely used in groundwater modeling, it is infrequently applied to groundwater reactive transport modeling because of multiple sources of uncertainty in the coupled hydrogeochemical processes and because of the long execution time of each model run. To resolve these problems, this study analyzed...
Impact of wastewater infrastructure upgrades on the urban water cycle: Reduction in halogenated reaction byproducts following conversion from chlorine gas to ultraviolet light disinfection
Larry B. Barber, Michelle Hladik, Alan M. Vajda, Kevin C. Fitzgerald, Chris Douville
2015, Science of the Total Environment (529) 264-274
The municipal wastewater treatment facility (WWTF) infrastructure of the United States is being upgraded to expand capacity and improve treatment, which provides opportunities to assess the impact of full-scale operational changes on water quality. Many WWTFs disinfect their effluent prior to discharge using chlorine gas,...
Spatial occupancy models for predicting metapopulation dynamics and viability following reintroduction
Richard B. Chandler, Erin L. Muths, Brent H. Sigafus, Cecil R. Schwalbe, Christopher J. Jarchow, Blake R. Hossack
2015, Journal of Applied Ecology (52) 1325-1333
The reintroduction of a species into its historic range is a critical component of conservation programmes designed to restore extirpated metapopulations. However, many reintroduction efforts fail, and the lack of rigorous monitoring programmes and statistical models have prevented a general understanding of the factors affecting metapopulation viability following...
Estimating demographic parameters using a combination of known-fate and open N-mixture models
Joshua H. Schmidt, Devin S. Johnson, Mark S. Lindberg, Layne G. Adams
2015, Ecology (96) 2583-2589
Accurate estimates of demographic parameters are required to infer appropriate ecological relationships and inform management actions. Known-fate data from marked individuals are commonly used to estimate survival rates, whereas N-mixture models use count data from unmarked individuals to estimate multiple demographic parameters. However, a joint approach combining the strengths of...
Effects of climate change on long-term population growth of pronghorn in an arid environment
Jay V. Gedir, James W. Cain III, Grant Harris, Trey T. Turnbull
2015, Ecosphere (6) 1-20
Climate often drives ungulate population dynamics, and as climates change, some areas may become unsuitable for species persistence. Unraveling the relationships between climate and population dynamics, and projecting them across time, advances ecological understanding that informs and steers sustainable conservation for species. Using pronghorn (Antilocapra americana) as an ecological model,...
Development of the Global Earthquake Model’s neotectonic fault database
Annemarie Christophersen, Nicola Litchfield, Kelvin Berryman, Richard Thomas, Roberto Basili, Laura Wallace, William Ries, Gavin P. Hayes, Kathleen M. Haller, Toshikazu Yoshioka, Richard D. Koehler, Dan Clark, Monica Wolfson-Schwehr, Margaret S. Boettcher, Pilar Villamor, Nick Horspool, Teraphan Ornthammarath, Ramon Zuniga, Robert M. Langridge, Mark W. Stirling, Tatiana Goded, Carlos Costa, Robert Yeats
2015, Natural Hazards (79) 111-135
The Global Earthquake Model (GEM) aims to develop uniform, openly available, standards, datasets and tools for worldwide seismic risk assessment through global collaboration, transparent communication and adapting state-of-the-art science. GEM Faulted Earth (GFE) is one of GEM’s global hazard module projects. This paper describes GFE’s development of a modern neotectonic...
Estuarine fish communities respond to climate variability over both river and ocean basins
Frederick V. Feyrer, James E. Cloern, Larry R. Brown, Maxfield Fish, Kathryn Hieb, Randall Baxter
2015, Global Change Biology (21) 3608-3619
Estuaries are dynamic environments at the land–sea interface that are strongly affected by interannual climate variability. Ocean–atmosphere processes propagate into estuaries from the sea, and atmospheric processes over land propagate into estuaries from watersheds. We examined the effects of these two separate climate-driven processes on pelagic and demersal fish community...
On the reconstruction of palaeo-ice sheets: Recent advances and future challenges
Chris R. Stokes, Lev Tarasov, Robin Blomdin, Thomas M. Cronin, Timothy G. Fisher, Richard Gyllencreutz, Clas Hattestrand, Jakob Heyman, Richard C. A. Hindmarsh, Anna L. C. Hughes, Martin Jakobsson, Nina Kirchner, Stephen J. Livingstone, Martin Margold, Julian B. Murton, Riko Noormets, W. Richard Peltier, Dorothy M. Peteet, David J. W. Piper, Frank Preusser, Hans Renssen, David H. Roberts, Didier M. Roche, Francky Saint-Ange, Arjen P. Stroeven, James T. Teller
2015, Quaternary Science Reviews (125) 15-49
Reconstructing the growth and decay of palaeo-ice sheets is critical to understanding mechanisms of global climate change and associated sea-level fluctuations in the past, present and future. The significance of palaeo-ice sheets is further underlined by the broad range of disciplines concerned with reconstructing their behaviour, many of which have...
Riverbed clogging associated with a California riverbank filtration system: An assessment of mechanisms and monitoring approaches
Craig Ulrich, Susan S. Hubbard, Joan Florsheim, Donald O. Rosenberry, Sharon Borglin, Marcus Trotta, Donald Seymour
2015, Journal of Hydrology (529) 1740-1753
An experimental field study was performed to investigate riverbed clogging processes and associated monitoring approaches near a dam-controlled riverbank filtration facility in Northern California. Motivated by previous studies at the site that indicated riverbed clogging plays an important role in the performance of the riverbank filtration system, we investigated the...
Regional and temporal differences in nitrate trends discerned from long-term water quality monitoring data
Edward G. Stets, Valerie J. Kelly, Charles G. Crawford
2015, Journal of the American Water Resources Association (51) 1394-1407
Riverine nitrate (NO3) is a well-documented driver of eutrophication and hypoxia in coastal areas. The development of the elevated river NO3 concentration is linked to anthropogenic inputs from municipal, agricultural, and atmospheric sources. The intensity of these sources has varied regionally, through time, and in response to multiple causes such as...
Understanding natural capital
Robert F. Stallard
Jefferson S. Hall, Vanessa Kirn, Estrella Yanguas-Fernandez, editor(s)
2015, Book chapter, Managing watersheds for ecosystem services in the steepland neotropics
This chapter serves to introduce the geophysics of Neotropical steeplands. Topics are covered in a general manner with hyperlinks to active research and monitoring sites (such as the National Hurricane Center and US Geological Survey publication). Topics covered include ‘tropical climate and weather,’ ‘climate variations and trends,’ Neotropical ‘geology, and...
Discharge, suspended sediment, bedload, and water quality in Clear Creek, western Nevada, water years 2010-12
Jena M. Huntington, Charles S. Savard
2015, Scientific Investigations Report 2015-5124
Clear Creek is a small stream that drains the eastern Sierra Nevada near Lake Tahoe, flows roughly parallel to the U.S. Highway 50 corridor, and discharges to the Carson River near Carson City, Nevada. Historical and ongoing development in the drainage basin is thought to be affecting Clear Creek and...
Evaluation and comparison of methods to estimate irrigation withdrawal for the National Water Census Focus Area Study of the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint River Basin in southwestern Georgia
Jaime A. Painter, Lynn J. Torak, John W. Jones
2015, Scientific Investigations Report 2015-5118
Methods to estimate irrigation withdrawal using nationally available datasets and techniques that are transferable to other agricultural regions were evaluated by the U.S. Geological Survey as part of the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint (ACF) River Basin focus area study of the National Water Census (ACF–FAS). These methods investigated the spatial, temporal, and quantitative...
