Social living mitigates the costs of a chronic illness in a cooperative carnivore
Emily S. Almberg, Paul C. Cross, Andrew P. Dobson, Douglas W. Smith, Matthew C Metz, Daniel R. Stahler, Peter J. Hudson
2015, Ecology Letters (18) 660-667
Infection risk is assumed to increase with social group size, and thus be a cost of group living. We assess infection risk and costs with respect to group size using data from an epidemic of sarcoptic mange (Sarcoptes scabiei) among grey wolves (Canis lupus). We demonstrate that group size does...
MMI: Multimodel inference or models with management implications?
J. Fieberg, Douglas H. Johnson
2015, Journal of Wildlife Management (79) 708-718
We consider a variety of regression modeling strategies for analyzing observational data associated with typical wildlife studies, including all subsets and stepwise regression, a single full model, and Akaike's Information Criterion (AIC)-based multimodel inference. Although there are advantages and disadvantages to each approach, we suggest that there is no unique...
Climate-water quality relationships in Texas reservoirs
Rodica Gelca, Katharine Hayhoe, Ian Scott-Fleming, Caleb Crow, D. Dawson, Reynaldo Patino
2015, Hydrological Processes (30) 12-29
Water temperature, dissolved oxygen, and concentrations of salts in surface water bodies can be affected by the natural environment, local human activities such as surface and ground water withdrawals, land use, and energy extraction, and variability and long-term trends in atmospheric conditions including temperature and precipitation. Here, we quantify the...
A landsat data tiling and compositing approach optimized for change detection in the conterminous United States
Kurtis Nelson, Daniel R. Steinwand
2015, Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing (81) 573-586
Annual disturbance maps are produced by the LANDFIRE program across the conterminous United States (CONUS). Existing LANDFIRE disturbance data from 1999 to 2010 are available and current efforts will produce disturbance data through 2012. A tiling and compositing approach was developed to produce bi-annual images optimized for change detection. A...
Observational data on the effects of infection by the copepod Salmincola californiensis on the short- and long-term viability of juvenile Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) implanted with telemetry tags
John W. Beeman, Amy C. Hansen, Jamie M. Sprando
2015, Animal Biotelemetry (3) 1-7
Background Fish movements are often studied using radio or acoustic tags assuming the handling and tagging procedures have little effect on the behavior of the animal. Indeed, many studies provide guidelines for acceptable methods. However, these studies generally assume the fish are otherwise healthy but this may not...
Temperature profile around a basaltic sill intruded into wet sediments
Leslie Baker, Andrew Bernard, William C. Rember, Moses P. Milazzo, Colin M. Dundas, Oleg Abramov, Laszlo P. Keszthelyi
2015, Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research (302) 81-86
The transfer of heat into wet sediments from magmatic intrusions or lava flows is not well constrained from field data. Such field constraints on numerical models of heat transfer could significantly improve our understanding of water–lava interactions. We use experimentally calibrated pollen darkening to measure the temperature profile around a...
Chloride concentrations, loads, and yields in four watersheds along Interstate 95, southeastern Connecticut, 2008-11: factors that affect peak chloride concentrations during winter storms
Craig J. Brown, John R. Mullaney, Jonathan Morrison, Joseph W. Martin, Thomas J. Trombley
2015, Scientific Investigations Report 2015-5057
Chloride (Cl-) concentrations and loads and other water chemistry characteristics were assessed to evaluate potential effects of road-deicer applications on streamwater quality in four watersheds along Interstate 95 (I–95) in southeastern Connecticut from November 1, 2008, through September 30, 2011. Streamflow and water quality were studied in the Four Mile...
National assessment of shoreline change: a GIS compilation of vector shorelines and associated shoreline change data for the north coast of Alaska, U.S.-Canadian border to Icy Cape
Ann E. Gibbs, Karen A. Ohman, Bruce M. Richmond
2015, Open-File Report 2015-1030
The Arctic Coastal Plain of northern Alaska is an area of strategic economic importance to the United States, is home to remote Native communities, and encompasses unique habitats of global significance. Coastal erosion along the Arctic coast is chronic, widespread, and may be accelerating, which threatens defense- and energy-related infrastructure,...
Trench logs, terrestrial lidar system imagery, and radiocarbon data from the kilometer-62 site on the Greenville Fault, southeastern Alameda County, California, 2014
James J. Lienkaemper, Stephen B. DeLong, Nikita N. Avdievitch, Alexandra J. Pickering, Thomas P. Guilderson
2015, Open-File Report 2015-1122
In 2014, we investigated an abrupt 8.5-meter (m), right-laterally deflected stream channel located near the Greenville Fault in southeastern Alameda County, California (-121.56224° E, 37.53430° N) that we discovered using 0.5-m resolution, 2011 aerial lidar imagery flown along the active fault trace. Prior to trenching we surveyed the site using...
Evaluating the relationship between biomass, percent groundcover and remote sensing indices across six winter cover crop fields in Maryland, United States
Kusuma Prabhakara, W. Dean Hively, Greg W. McCarty
2015, International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation (39) 88-102
Winter cover crops are an essential part of managing nutrient and sediment losses from agricultural lands. Cover crops lessen sedimentation by reducing erosion, and the accumulation of nitrogen in aboveground biomass results in reduced nutrient runoff. Winter cover crops are planted in the fall and are usually terminated in early...
Hydraulic fracturing water use variability in the United States and potential environmental implications
Tanya J. Gallegos, Brian A. Varela, Seth S. Haines, Mark A. Engle
2015, Water Resources Research (51) 5839-5845
Until now, up-to-date, comprehensive, spatial, national-scale data on hydraulic fracturing water volumes have been lacking. Water volumes used (injected) to hydraulically fracture over 263,859 oil and gas wells drilled between 2000 and 2014 were compiled and used to create the first U.S. map of hydraulic fracturing water use. Although median...
Can orchards help connect Mediterranean ecosystems? Animal movement data alter conservation priorities
Theresa M. Nogeire, Frank W. Davis, Kevin R. Crooks, Brad H. McRae, Lisa M. Lyren, Erin E. Boydston
2015, American Midland Naturalist (174) 105-116
As natural habitats become fragmented by human activities, animals must increasingly move through human-dominated systems, particularly agricultural landscapes. Mapping areas important for animal movement has therefore become a key part of conservation planning. Models of landscape connectivity are often parameterized using expert opinion and seldom distinguish between the risks and...
Methods used to parameterize the spatially-explicit components of a state-and-transition simulation model
Rachel Sleeter, William Acevedo, Christopher E. Soulard, Benjamin M. Sleeter
2015, AIMS Environmental Science (2) 668-693
Spatially-explicit state-and-transition simulation models of land use and land cover (LULC) increase our ability to assess regional landscape characteristics and associated carbon dynamics across multiple scenarios. By characterizing appropriate spatial attributes such as forest age and land-use distribution, a state-and-transition model can more effectively simulate the pattern and spread of...
Evapotranspiration in the Nile Basin: Identifying dynamics and drivers, 2002–2011
Henok Alemu, Armel T. Kaptue, Gabriel B. Senay, Michael C. Wimberly, Geoffrey M. Henebry
2015, Water (7) 4914-1931
Analysis of the relationship between evapotranspiration (ET) and its natural and anthropogenic drivers is critical in water-limited basins such as the Nile. The spatiotemporal relationships of ET with rainfall and vegetation dynamics in the Nile Basin during 2002–2011 were analyzed using satellite-derived data. Non-parametric statistics were used to quantify ET-rainfall...
The distribution of selected elements and minerals in soil of the conterminous United States
Laurel G. Woodruff, William F. Cannon, David B. Smith, Federico Solano
2015, Journal of Geochemical Exploration (154) 49-60
In 2007, the U.S. Geological Survey initiated a low-density (1 site per 1600 km2, 4857 sites) geochemical and mineralogical survey of soil of the conterminous United States as part of the North American Soil Geochemical Landscapes Project. Three soil samples were collected, if possible, from each site; (1) a sample from...
Tree mortality predicted from drought-induced vascular damage
William R.L. Anderegg, Alan L. Flint, Cho-ying Huang, Lorraine E. Flint, Joseph A. Berry, Frank W. Davis, John S. Sperry, Christopher B. Field
2015, Nature Geoscience (8) 367-371
The projected responses of forest ecosystems to warming and drying associated with twenty-first-century climate change vary widely from resiliency to widespread tree mortality1, <a id="ref-link-3"...
Downscaling global land-use/land-cover projections for use in region-level state-and-transition simulation modeling
Jason T. Sherba, Benjamin M. Sleeter, Adam W. Davis, Owen P. Parker
2015, AIMS Environmental Science (2) 623-647
Global land-use/land-cover (LULC) change projections and historical datasets are typically available at coarse grid resolutions and are often incompatible with modeling applications at local to regional scales. The difficulty of downscaling and reapportioning global gridded LULC change projections to regional boundaries is a barrier to the use of these datasets...
Comparing ecoregional classifications for natural areas management in the Klamath Region, USA
Daniel A. Sarr, Andrew Duff, Eric C. Dinger, Sarah L. Shafer, Michael Wing, Nathaniel E. Seavy, John D. Alexander
2015, Natural Areas Journal (35) 360-377
We compared three existing ecoregional classification schemes (Bailey, Omernik, and World Wildlife Fund) with two derived schemes (Omernik Revised and Climate Zones) to explore their effectiveness in explaining species distributions and to better understand natural resource geography in the Klamath Region, USA. We analyzed presence/absence data derived from digital distribution...
Spatial and temporal variability in growth of southern flounder (Paralichthys lethostigma)
Stephen R. Midway, Tyler Wagner, Stephen A. Arnott, Patrick Biondo, Fernando Martinez-Andrade, Thomas F. Wadsworth
2015, Fisheries Research (167) 323-332
Delineation of stock structure is important for understanding the ecology and management of many fish populations, particularly those with wide-ranging distributions and high levels of harvest. Southern flounder (Paralichthys lethostigma) is a popular commercial and recreational species along the southeast Atlantic coast and Gulf of Mexico, USA. Recent studies have...
Habitat quality from individual- and population-level perspectives and implications for management
Than J. Boves, Amanda D. Rodewald, Petra Bohall Wood, David A. Buehler, Jeffrey L. Larkin, T. Bently Wigley, Patrick D. Keyser
2015, Wildlife Society Bulletin (39) 443-447
Many wildlife management prescriptions are either implicitly or explicitly designed to improve habitat quality for a focal species, but habitat quality is often difficult to quantify. Depending upon the approach used to define and identify high-quality habitat, management decisions may differ widely. Although individual-level measures of habitat quality based on...
Linking degradation status with ecosystem vulnerability to environmental change
David G. Angeler, Didier L. Baho, Craig R. Allen, Richard K. Johnson
2015, Oecologia (178) 899-913
Environmental change can cause regime shifts in ecosystems, potentially threatening ecosystem services. It is unclear if the degradation status of ecosystems correlates with their vulnerability to environmental change, and thus the risk of future regime shifts. We assessed resilience in acidified (degraded) and circumneutral (undegraded) lakes with long-term data (1988–2012),...
Exposure and food web transfer of pharmaceuticals in ospreys (Pandion haliaetus): Predictive model and empirical data
Rebecca S. Lazarus, Barnett A. Rattner, Bowen Du, Peter C. McGowan, Vicki S. Blazer, Mary Ann Ottinger
2015, Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management (11) 118-129
The osprey (Pandion haliaetus) is a well-known sentinel of environmental contamination, yet no studies have traced pharmaceuticals through the water–fish–osprey food web. A screening-level exposure assessment was used to evaluate the bioaccumulation potential of 113 pharmaceuticals and metabolites, and an artificial sweetener in this food web. Hypothetical concentrations in water...
Building a multi-scaled geospatial temporal ecology database from disparate data sources: Fostering open science through data reuse
Patricia A. Soranno, E.G. Bissell, Kendra S. Cheruvelil, Samuel T. Christel, Sarah M. Collins, C. Emi Fergus, Christopher T. Filstrup, Jean-Francois Lapierre, Noah R. Lotting, Samantha K. Oliver, Caren E. Scott, Nicole J. Smith, Scott Stopyak, Shuai Yuan, Mary Tate Bremigan, John A. Downing, Corinna Gries, Emily N. Henry, Nick K. Skaff, Emily H. Stanley, Craig A. Stow, Pang-Ning Tan, Tyler Wagner, Katherine E. Webster
2015, GigaScience (4)
Although there are considerable site-based data for individual or groups of ecosystems, these datasets are widely scattered, have different data formats and conventions, and often have limited accessibility. At the broader scale, national datasets exist for a large number of geospatial features of land, water, and air that are needed...
Use of structured decision making to identify monitoring variables and management priorities for salt marsh ecosystems
Hilary A. Neckles, James E. Lyons, Glenn R. Guntenspergen, W. Gregory Shriver, Susan C. Adamowicz
2015, Estuaries and Coasts (38) 1215-1232
Most salt marshes in the USA have been degraded by human activities, and coastal managers are faced with complex choices among possible actions to restore or enhance ecosystem integrity. We applied structured decision making (SDM) to guide selection of monitoring variables and management priorities for salt marshes within the National...
Statistical analysis of soil geochemical data to identify pathfinders associated with mineral deposits: An example from the Coles Hill uranium deposit, Virginia, USA
Denise M. Levitan, Carl E. Zipper, Patricia Donovan, Madeline E. Schreiber, Robert R. Seal, Mark A. Engle, John A. Chermak, Robert J. Bodnar, Daniel K. Johnson, Joseph G. Aylor Jr.
2015, Journal of Geochemical Exploration (154) 238-251
Soil geochemical anomalies can be used to identify pathfinders in exploration for ore deposits. In this study, compositional data analysis is used with multivariate statistical methods to analyse soil geochemical data collected from the Coles Hill uranium deposit, Virginia, USA, to identify pathfinders associated with this deposit. Elemental compositions and...
