Lake Michigan Diversion Accounting land cover change estimation by use of the National Land Cover Dataset and raingage network partitioning analysis
Jennifer B. Sharpe, David T. Soong
2015, Open-File Report 2014-1258
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), Chicago District, is responsible for monitoring and computation of the quantity of Lake Michigan water diverted by the State of Illinois. As part of this effort, the USACE uses the Hydrological Simulation Program–FORTRAN (HSPF) with measured meteorological data inputs to estimate runoff from...
Maps showing the change in modern sediment thickness on the Inner Continental Shelf offshore of Fire Island, New York, between 1996-97 and 2011
William C. Schwab, Wayne E. Baldwin, Jane F. Denny
2015, Open-File Report 2014-1238
The U.S. Geological Survey mapped approximately 336 square kilometers of the lower shoreface and inner continental shelf offshore of Fire Island, New York, in 1996 and 1997, using high-resolution sidescan-sonar and seismic-reflection systems, and again in 2011, using interferometric sonar and high-resolution chirp seismic-reflection systems. This report presents a comparison...
Low-flow characteristics for selected streams in Indiana
Kathleen K. Fowler, John T. Wilson
2015, Scientific Investigations Report 2014-5242
The management and availability of Indiana’s water resources increase in importance every year. Specifically, information on low-flow characteristics of streams is essential to State water-management agencies. These agencies need low-flow information when working with issues related to irrigation, municipal and industrial water supplies, fish and wildlife protection, and the dilution...
Status and trends of prey fish populations in Lake Michigan, 2013
Charles P. Madenjian, David B. Bunnell, Timothy J. Desorcie, Melissa Jean Kostich, Patricia M. Dieter, Jean V. Adams
2015, Report
The U.S. Geological Survey Great Lakes Science Center has conducted lake-wide surveys of the fish community in Lake Michigan each fall since 1973 using standard 12-m bottom trawls towed along contour at depths of 9 to 110 m at each of seven index transects. The resulting data on relative abundance,...
Wetland paleoecological study of southwest coastal Louisiana: sediment cores and diatom calibration dataset
Kathryn E. L. Smith, James G. Flocks, Gregory D. Steyer, Sarai C. Piazza
2015, Data Series 877
Wetland sediment data were collected in 2009 and 2010 throughout the southwest Louisiana Chenier Plain as part of a pilot study to develop a diatom-based proxy for past wetland water chemistry and the identification of sediment deposits from tropical storms. The complete dataset includes forty-six surface sediment samples and nine...
Mount St. Helens: Controlled-source audio-frequency magnetotelluric (CSAMT) data and inversions
Jeff Wynn, Herbert A. Pierce
2015, Data Series 901
This report describes a series of geoelectrical soundings carried out on and near Mount St. Helens volcano, Washington, in 2010–2011. These soundings used a controlled-source audio-frequency magnetotelluric (CSAMT) approach (Zonge and Hughes, 1991; Simpson and Bahr, 2005). We chose CSAMT for logistical reasons: It can be deployed by helicopter, has...
Mapping migratory flyways in Asia using dynamic Brownian bridge movement models
E.C. Palm, S. H. Newman, Diann J. Prosser, Xiangming Xiao, Ze Luo, Nyambayar Batbayar, Sivananinthaperumal Balachandran, John Y. Takekawa
2015, Movement Ecology (3) 1-10
Background Identifying movement routes and stopover sites is necessary for developing effective management and conservation strategies for migratory animals. In the case of migratory birds, a collection of migration routes, known as a flyway, is often hundreds to thousands of kilometers long and can extend across political boundaries. Flyways encompass the...
Potentiometric surfaces and water-level trends in the Cockfield (upper Claiborne) aquifer in southern Arkansas and the Wilcox (lower Wilcox) aquifer of northeastern and southern Arkansas, 2012
Kirk D. Rodgers
2015, Scientific Investigations Report 2014-5232
The Cockfield aquifer, located in southern Arkansas, is composed of Eocene-age sand beds found near the base of the Cockfield Formation of Claiborne Group. The Wilcox aquifer, located in northeastern and southern Arkansas, is composed of Paleocene-age sand beds found in the middle to lower part of the Wilcox Group....
Geospatial datasets for assessing the effects of rangeland conditions on dissolved-solids yields in the Upper Colorado River Basin
Fred D. Tillman, Marilyn E. Flynn, David W. Anning
2015, Open-File Report 2015-1007
In 2009, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) developed a Spatially Referenced Regressions on Watershed Attributes (SPARROW) surface-water quality model for the Upper Colorado River Basin (UCRB) relating dissolved-solids sources and transport in the 1991 water year to upstream catchment characteristics. The SPARROW model focused on geologic and agricultural sources of...
Calculating crop water requirement satisfaction in the West Africa Sahel with remotely sensed soil moisture
Amy McNally, Gregory J. Husak, Molly Brown, Mark L. Carroll, Christopher C. Funk, Soni Yatheendradas, Kristi Arsenault, Christa Peters-Lidard, James Verdin
2015, Journal of Hydrometeorology (16) 295-305
The Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission will provide soil moisture data with unprecedented accuracy, resolution, and coverage, enabling models to better track agricultural drought and estimate yields. In turn, this information can be used to shape policy related to food and water from commodity markets to humanitarian relief efforts....
An integrated Riverine Environmental Flow Decision Support System (REFDSS) to evaluate the ecological effects of alternative flow scenarios on river ecosystems
Kelly O. Maloney, Colin B. Talbert, Jeffrey C. Cole, Heather S. Galbraith, Carrie J. Blakeslee, Leanne Hanson, Christopher L. Holmquist-Johnson
2015, Fundamental and Applied Limnology (186) 171-192
In regulated rivers, managers must evaluate competing flow release scenarios that attempt to balance both human and natural needs. Meeting these natural flow needs is complex due to the myriad of interacting physical and hydrological factors that affect ecosystems. Tools that synthesize the voluminous scientific data and models on these...
The forcing of southwestern Asia teleconnections by low-frequency sea surface temperature variability during boreal winter
Andrew Hoell, Christopher C. Funk, Mathew Barlow
2015, Journal of Climate (28) 1511-1526
Southwestern Asia, defined here as the domain bounded by 20°–40°N and 40°–70°E, which includes the nations of Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, is a water-stressed and semiarid region that receives roughly 75% of its annual rainfall during November–April. The November–April climate of southwestern Asia is strongly influenced by tropical Indo-Pacific...
Sources of endocrine-disrupting compounds in North Carolina waterways: a geographic information systems approach
Dana K. Sackett, Crystal Lee Pow, Matthew J. Rubino, D.D. Aday, W. Gregory Cope, Seth W. Kullman, J. A. Rice, Thomas J. Kwak, LeRoy M. Law
2015, Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (34) 437-445
The presence of endocrine-disrupting compounds (EDCs), particularly estrogenic compounds, in the environment has drawn public attention across the globe, yet a clear understanding of the extent and distribution of estrogenic EDCs in surface waters and their relationship to potential sources is lacking. The objective of the present study was to...
Seasonal patterns in stream periphyton fatty acids and community benthic algal composition in six high quality headwater streams
Dale C. Honeyfield, Kelly O. Maloney
2015, Hydrobiologia (744) 35-47
Fatty acids are integral components of periphyton and differ among algal taxa. We examined seasonal patterns in periphyton fatty acids in six minimally disturbed headwater streams in Pennsylvania’s Appalachian Mountains, USA. Environmental data and periphyton were collected across four seasons for fatty acid and algal taxa content. Non-metric multidimensional scaling...
Comment on “Models of stochastic, spatially varying stress in the crust compatible with focal‐mechanism data, and how stress inversions can be biased toward the stress rate” by Deborah Elaine Smith and Thomas H. Heaton
Jeanne L. Hardebeck
2015, Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (105) 447-451
Smith and Heaton (2011) propose a model in which stress in the crust is fractal‐like and highly variable on a range of length scales, including short length‐scales of ~1 km. Smith and Heaton (2011) motivate the need for stress heterogeneity on short length‐scales by citing observations such as short length‐scale...
Spatial genetic structure of bristle-thighed curlews (Numenius tahitiensis): Breeding area differentiation not reflected on the non-breeding grounds
Sarah A. Sonsthagen, T. Lee Tibbitts, Robert E. Gill Jr., Ian S. Williams, Sandra L. Talbot
2015, Conservation Genetics (16) 223-233
Migratory birds occupy geographically and ecologically disparate areas during their annual cycle with conditions on breeding and non-breeding grounds playing separate and important roles in population dynamics. We used data from nuclear microsatellite and mitochondrial DNA control region loci to assess the breeding and non-breeding spatial genetic structure of a...
Integrated survival analysis using an event-time approach in a Bayesian framework
Daniel P. Walsh, VJ Dreitz, Dennis M. Heisey
2015, Ecology and Evolution (5) 769-780
Event-time or continuous-time statistical approaches have been applied throughout the biostatistical literature and have led to numerous scientific advances. However, these techniques have traditionally relied on knowing failure times. This has limited application of these analyses, particularly, within the ecological field where fates of marked animals may be unknown. To...
Ephemeral stream reaches preserve the evolutionary and distributional history of threespine stickleback in the Santa Clara and Ventura River watersheds of southern California
Jonathan Q. Richmond, David K. Jacobs, Adam R. Backlin, Camm C. Swift, Chris Dellith, Robert N. Fisher
2015, Conservation Genetics (16) 85-101
Much remains to be understood about the evolutionary history and contemporary landscape genetics of unarmored threespine stickleback in southern California, where populations collectively referred to as Gasterosteus aculeatus williamsoni have severely declined over the past 70+ years and are now endangered. We used mitochondrial sequence and microsatellite data to assess...
An open-population hierarchical distance sampling model
Rachel Sollmann, Beth Gardner, Richard B Chandler, J. Andrew Royle, T Scott Sillett
2015, Ecology (96) 325-331
Modeling population dynamics while accounting for imperfect detection is essential to monitoring programs. Distance sampling allows estimating population size while accounting for imperfect detection, but existing methods do not allow for direct estimation of demographic parameters. We develop a model that uses temporal correlation in abundance arising from underlying population...
The cost of reproduction: differential resource specialization in female and male California sea otters
Emma A. Elliott Smith, Seth D. Newsome, James A. Estes, M. Tim Tinker
2015, Oecologia (178) 17-29
Intraspecific variation in behavior and diet can have important consequences for population and ecosystem dynamics. Here, we examine how differences in reproductive investment and spatial ecology influence individual diet specialization in male and female southern sea otters (Enhydra lutris nereis). We hypothesize that greater reproductive constraints and smaller home...
Ground motion observations of the 2014 South Napa earthquake
Annemarie S. Baltay Sundstrom, John Boatwright
2015, Seismological Research Letters (86) 355-360
Ground motions of the South Napa earthquake (24 August 2014; M 6.0) were recorded at 19 stations within 20 km and 292 stations within 100 km of the rupture surface trace, generating peak ground motions in excess of 50%g and 50 cm/s in and near Napa Valley. This large dataset allows us to compare the...
Preliminary evaluation of an in vivo fluorometer to quantify algal periphyton biomass and community composition
Theodore D. Harris, Jennifer L. Graham
2015, Lake and Reservoir Management (31) 127-133
The bbe-Moldaenke BenthoTorch (BT) is an in vivo fluorometer designed to quantify algal biomass and community composition in benthic environments. The BT quantifies total algal biomass via chlorophyll a (Chl-a) concentration and may differentiate among cyanobacteria, green algae, and diatoms based on pigment fluorescence. To evaluate how BT measurements of...
Evaluation of satellite rainfall estimates for drought and flood monitoring in Mozambique
Carolien Tote, Domingos Patricio, Hendrik Boogaard, Raymond van der Wijngaart, Elena Tarnavsky, Christopher C. Funk
2015, Remote Sensing (7) 1758-1776
Satellite derived rainfall products are useful for drought and flood early warning and overcome the problem of sparse, unevenly distributed and erratic rain gauge observations, provided their accuracy is well known. Mozambique is highly vulnerable to extreme weather events such as major droughts and floods and thus, an understanding of...
Genetic diversity and host specificity varies across three genera of blood parasites in ducks of the Pacific Americas Flyway
Andrew B. Reeves, Matthew M. Smith, Brandt W. Meixell, Joseph P. Fleskes, Andrew M. Ramey
2015, PLoS ONE (10)
Birds of the order Anseriformes, commonly referred to as waterfowl, are frequently infected by Haemosporidia of the genera Haemoproteus, Plasmodium, and Leucocytozoon via dipteran vectors. We analyzed nucleotide sequences of the Cytochrome b (Cytb) gene from parasites of these genera detected in six species of ducks from Alaska and California,...
Vegetation burn severity mapping using Landsat-8 and WorldView-2
Zhuoting Wu, Barry R. Middleton, Robert Hetzler, John M. Vogel, Dennis G. Dye
2015, Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing (2) 143-154
We used remotely sensed data from the Landsat-8 and WorldView-2 satellites to estimate vegetation burn severity of the Creek Fire on the San Carlos Apache Reservation, where wildfire occurrences affect the Tribe's crucial livestock and logging industries. Accurate pre- and post-fire canopy maps at high (0.5-meter) resolution were created from...
