Special topic—Rapid-response instrumentation
Ashton F. Flinders
2024, Scientific Investigations Report 2024-5062-M
IntroductionBased on the reports of Ewert and others (2005, 2018) and Moran and others (2008), most U.S. volcanoes are currently under-monitored and are likely to remain so until the goals of the National Volcano Early Warning System are fulfilled. In addition, volcanoes determined to have low to moderate threat...
Special topic—Unoccupied aircraft systems
Angela K. Diefenbach
2024, Scientific Investigations Report 2024-5062-L
IntroductionUnoccupied aircraft systems (UAS) increasingly support volcano monitoring and eruption response activities in the United States and abroad (James and others, 2020). Advances in UAS platforms and miniaturization of sensors over the past decade have expanded the use of this technology for a wide range of applications within volcanology...
Special topic—Eruption plumes and clouds
David J. Schneider, Alexa R. Van Eaton
2024, Scientific Investigations Report 2024-5062-J
IntroductionExplosive eruptions create plumes of volcanic ash and gas that can rise more than 30,000 feet (9.1 kilometers [km]) above sea level within minutes of eruption onset. The resulting clouds disperse under prevailing winds and may cause hazardous conditions hundreds to thousands of kilometers from the volcano, including in international...
Monitoring marine eruptions
Gabrielle Tepp
2024, Scientific Investigations Report 2024-5062-I
IntroductionSubmarine volcanoes produce much of the same seismicity and eruptive activity as subaerial volcanoes and can pose hazards to society. Although they can be monitored with similar techniques and methods as described in other chapters of this volume, their submerged location brings unique challenges. This chapter addresses these challenges and...
Ground deformation and gravity for volcano monitoring
Emily K. Montgomery-Brown, Kyle R. Anderson, Ingrid A. Johanson, Michael P. Poland, Ashton F. Flinders
2024, Scientific Investigations Report 2024-5062-D
IntroductionWhen magma accumulates or migrates, it can cause pressurization and related ground deformation. Characterization of surface deformation provides important constraints on the potential for future volcanic activity, especially in combination with seismic activity, gas emissions, and other indicators. A wide variety of techniques and instrument types have been applied to...
Postrelease survival of Eleutherodactylus coqui: Advancing managed translocations as an adaptive tool for climate-vulnerable anurans
Rafael Chaparro, Ana C. Rivera-Burgos, Mitchell J. Eaton, Adam Terando, Eloy Martinez, Jaime A. Collazo
2024, Herpetologica (80) 314-320
Translocating amphibians to alternative, suitable habitat is a climate adaptation strategy aimed at minimizing the risk of extinction due to projected global warming and drying. Projected conditions could undermine their physiological performance, and thus survival and reproduction. Translocations minimize risks of extinction by increasing spatial redundancy across climate-resilient habitats, particularly...
Arctic fishes reveal patterns in radiocarbon age across habitats and with recent climate change
Ashley E. Stanek, Jonathan A. O’Donnell, Michael P. Carey, Sarah M. Laske, Xiaomei Xu, Kenneth H. Dunton, Vanessa R. von Biela
2024, Limnology and Oceanography Letters (9) 796-805
Climate change alters the sources and age of carbon in Arctic food webs by fostering the release of older carbon from degrading permafrost. Radiocarbon (14C) traces carbon sources and age, but data before rapid warming are rare and limit assessments over time. We capitalized on 14C...
New insights on the origin of the Richardson-Richards equation
John R. Nimmo
2024, Hydrological Sciences Journal (69) 2153-2158
The Richardson-Richards equation (RRE), despite known shortcomings especially in regard to preferential flow, provides the basis of the vast majority of unsaturated flow models in use today. L.F. Richardson published this equation in 1922, nine years before L.A. Richards. Whereas Richards approached this problem directly from the groundbreaking developments of...
Dust in the Critical Zone: North American case studies
Janice Brahney, Ruth C. Heindel, Thomas E. Gill, Gregory Carling, Juan M Gonzalez-Olalla, Jenny L. Hand, Derek V. Mallia, Jeffrey S. Munroe, Kevin Perry, Annie L. Putman, S. McKenzie Skiles, Brad R. Adams, Zachary T. Aanderud, Sarah M. Aarons, Daniela Aguirre, Karin Ardon-Dryer, Molly A. Blakowski, Jessie M. Creamean, Diego P. Fernandez, Hosein Foroutan, Cassandra J. Gaston, Maura Hahnenberger, Sebastian W. Hoch, Daniel K. Jones, Kerry E. Kelly, Otto I. Lang, Josh Lemonte, Richard L. Reynolds, Ramesh P. Singh, Mark Sweeney, Thorn K. Merrill
2024, Earth-Science Reviews (258)
The dust cycle facilitates the exchange of particles among Earth's major systems, enabling dust to traverse ecosystems, cross geographic boundaries, and even move uphill against the natural flow of gravity. Dust in the atmosphere is composed of a complex and ever-changing mixture that reflects the evolving human footprint on the...
Adapting standardized trout monitoring to a changing climate for the upper Yellowstone River, Montana, USA
Michelle A. Briggs, Hayley Corrine Glassic, Christopher S. Guy, Scott T. Opitz, Jay J. Rotella, David A. Schmetterling
2024, North American Journal of Fisheries Management (44) 947-961
ObjectiveLong‐term standardized monitoring programs are fundamental to assessing how fish populations respond to anthropogenic stressors. Standardized monitoring programs may need to adopt new methods to adapt to rapid environmental changes that are associated with a changing climate. In the upper Yellowstone River, Montana, biologists have used a standardized,...
Onset of aftershocks: Constraints on the Rate-and-State model
Sebastian Hainzl, Morgan T. Page, Nicholas van der Elst
2024, Seismological Research Letters (95) 3507-3516
Aftershock rates typically decay with time t after the mainshock according to the Omori–Utsu law, R(t)=K(c+t)−p, with parameters K, c, and p. The rate‐and‐state (RS) model, which is currently the most popular physics‐based seismicity model, also predicts an Omori–Utsu decay with p = 1 and a c‐value that depends on the size of the coseismic stress change....
Adapting standardized trout monitoring to a changing climate for the upper Yellowstone River, Montana, USA
Michelle A. Briggs, Hayley Corrine Glassic, Christopher S. Guy, Scott T. Opitz, Jay J. Rotella, David A. Schmetterling
2024, North American Journal of Fisheries Management (44) 947-961
ObjectiveLong-term standardized monitoring programs are fundamental to assessing how fish populations respond to anthropogenic stressors. Standardized monitoring programs may need to adopt new methods to adapt to rapid environmental changes associated with a changing climate. In the upper Yellowstone River, Montana, biologists have used a standardized, mark-recapture monitoring protocol to...
Effects of recent wildfires on giant sequoia groves were anomalous at millennial timescales: a response to Hanson et al.
Nathan L. Stephenson, David Nicolas Bertil Soderberg, Joshua A. Flickinger, Anthony C. Caprio, Adrian Das
2024, Fire Ecology (20)
BackgroundThe giant sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum [Lindley] Buchholz) of California’s Sierra Nevada recently suffered historically unprecedented wildfires that killed an estimated 13–19% of seed-bearing sequoias across their native range. Hanson et al. recently sought to characterize post-fire reproduction in two severely burned sequoia groves, but their two papers (1) inaccurately...
Brodifacoum isomer formulations with potentially lower risk to non-target wildlife
Barnett A. Rattner, Richard A. Erickson, Julia S. Lankton, Etienne Benoit, Virginie Lattard
2024, Conference Paper, Proceedings of the 31st vertebrate pest conference
Anticoagulant rodenticides (ARs) have a long history of successful use in controlling vertebrate pest and invasive species. Despite regulatory efforts to mitigate risk, non-target wildlife may be unintentionally exposed to ARs through various trophic pathways, and depending on dose, exposure can result in adverse effects and mortality. Second-generation ARs (SGARs)...
Fish health altered by contaminants and low water temperatures compounded by prolonged regional drought in the Lower Colorado River Basin, USA
Steven L Goodbred, Reynaldo Patino, David A. Alvarez, Darren Johnson, Deena Hannoun, Kathy R. Echols, Jill Jenkins
2024, Toxics (12)
The goal of this study was to assess health of male Common Carp (carp, Cyprinus carpio) at four sites with a wide range in environmental organic contaminant (EOC) concentrations and water temperatures in Lake Mead National Recreation Area NV/AZ, US, and the potential influence of regional drought. Histological and reproductive...
Estimating groundwater level records using MOVE.1 and computing monthly percentiles from estimated groundwater records in Massachusetts
Elizabeth A. Ahearn, Dee-Ann E. Crozier
2024, Scientific Investigations Report 2024-5080
The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, performed record extensions on groundwater levels at select wells using the Maintenance of Variance Extension type 1 (MOVE.1) method. The groundwater levels estimated from these record extensions were used to compute monthly percentiles to improve future determinations...
Extending the Boore and Abrahamson (2023) modified square-root-impedance method for the development of site amplifications consistent with the full-resonance approach to a range of VS30 values
Linda Al Atik, David Boore
2024, Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (114) 3093-3102
The square-root-impedance (SRI) method is commonly used to approximate the seismic site amplifications computed using the full-resonance (FR) method for gradient shear-wave velocity (VS) profiles that are smoothly varying with depth. The SRI site amplifications have been observed to systematically underpredict the FR site amplifications by a ratio of FR/SRI...
Evaluation of the lithium resource in the Smackover Formation brines of southern Arkansas using machine learning
Katherine J. Knierim, Madalyn S. Blondes, Andrew Laurence Masterson, Philip A. Freeman, Bonnie McDevitt, Amanda Sha Herzberg, Peng Li, Ciara Mills, Colin A. Doolan, Aaron M. Jubb, Scott Ausbrooks, Jessica Chenault
2024, Science Advances (10)
Global demand for lithium, the primary component of lithium-ion batteries, greatly exceeds known supplies, and this imbalance is expected to increase as the world transitions away from fossil fuel energy sources. High concentrations of lithium in brines have been observed in the Smackover Formation in southern Arkansas (>400 milligrams per...
Length-weight relationships of native and non-native fishes in the lower Red River catchment, USA
Mariaguadalupe Vilchez, John Dattilo, Shannon K. Brewer
2024, Journal of Applied Ichthyology (2024)
Length-weight relationships are useful for stock assessments and modeling alternative conservation and management strategies for both native and non-native fishes. We developed length-weight relationships for 18 native and non-native riverine fishes in the lower Red River catchment. Fishes were sampled in the summer and autumn seasons between May 2021 and...
Framework for mapping liquefaction hazard–Targeted design ground motions
Andrew James Makdisi, Steven L. Kramer
2024, Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering (150)
Liquefaction-induced ground failure poses substantial challenges to geotechnical earthquake engineering design. Current approaches for designing against liquefaction hazards, as specified in most seismic provisions, focus on estimating a liquefaction factor of safety (𝐹𝑆𝐿) and typically characterize earthquake loading using design parameters based on probabilistic or deterministic ground...
Transdisciplinary research supports the sustainability of barrier island systems threatened by climate change
Patrick L. Barnard, Davina Passeri
2024, Earth's Future (12)
The management of developed barrier islands is often piece-meal and reactionary despite the complex, dynamic nature of these systems, and sustainable practices will become increasingly difficult due to heightened pressures of climate change. Adaptation actions, including nature-based solutions, need to be thoroughly evaluated prior to implementation to...
Beyond the wedge: Impact of tidal streams on salinization of groundwater in a coastal aquifer stressed by pumping and sea-level rise
Mary C. Hingst, R.M. Housego, C. He, Burke J. Minsley, Lyndsay B. Ball, Holly A. Michael
2024, Water Resources Research (60)
Saltwater intrusion (SWI) is a well-studied phenomenon that threatens the freshwater supplies of coastal communities around the world. The development and advancement of numerical models has led to improved assessment of the risk of salinization. However, these studies often fail to include the impact of surface waters...
Simulated mean monthly groundwater-transported nitrogen loads in watersheds on the north shore of Long Island Sound, 1993–2022
Janet R. Barclay, Madeleine J. Holland, John R. Mullaney
2024, Scientific Investigations Report 2024-5090
Elevated nitrogen loads are pervasive in the Long Island Sound, an estuary that receives freshwater and nutrients from both surface-water and groundwater discharge. Surface-water nitrogen loads to the Long Island Sound are relatively well characterized, but less is known about groundwater-transported nitrogen loads. Prior work on the northern shore of...
The value of hyperparameter optimization in phase-picking neural networks
Yongsoo Park, David R. Shelly
2024, The Seismic Record (4) 231-239
The effectiveness of using neural networks for picking seismic phase arrival times has been demonstrated through several case studies, and seismic monitoring programs are starting to adopt the technology into their workflows. However, published models were designed and trained using rather arbitrary choices of hyperparameters, limiting their performance. In this...
Stream nitrate dynamics driven primarily by discharge and watershed physical and soil characteristics at intensively monitored sites: Insights from deep learning
Galen Gorski, Laurel Larsen, Jordan Wingenroth, Liang Zhang, Dino Bellugi, Alison P. Appling
2024, Water Resources Research (60)
We developed a suite of models using deep learning to make hindcast predictions of the 7‐day average backward‐looking nitrate concentration at 46 predominantly agricultural sites across the midwestern and eastern United States. The models used daily observations of discharge and meteorological variables and watershed attributes describing anthropogenic modification to hydrology, nitrogen...
