Understanding the signature of rock coatings in laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy data
Nina L. Lanza, Ann M. Ollila, Agnes Cousin, Roger C. Wiens, Samuel M. Clegg, Nicolas Mangold, Nathan Bridges, Daniel Cooper, Mariek E. Schmidt, Jeffrey Berger, Raymond E. Arvidson, Noureddine Melikechi, Horton E. Newsom, Robert Tokar, Craig Hardgrove, Alissa Mezzacappa, Ryan S. Jackson, Benton C. Clark, Olivier Forni, Sylvestre Maurice, Marion Nachon, Ryan B. Anderson, Jennifer Blank, Matthew Deans, Dorothea Delapp, Richard Léveillé, Rhonda McInroy, Ronald Martinez, Pierre-Yves Meslin, Patrick Pinet
2015, Icarus (249) 62-73
Surface compositional features on rocks such as coatings and weathering rinds provide important information about past aqueous environments and water–rock interactions. The search for these features represents an important aspect of the Curiosity rover mission. With its unique ability to do fine-scale chemical depth profiling, the ChemCam laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy...
Completion of the 2011 National Land Cover Database for the conterminous United States – Representing a decade of land cover change information
Collin G. Homer, Jon Dewitz, Limin Yang, Suming Jin, Patrick Danielson, George Z. Xian, John Coulston, Nathaniel Herold, James Wickham, Kevin Megown
2015, Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing (81) 345-354
The National Land Cover Database (NLCD) provides nationwide data on land cover and land cover change at the native 30-m spatial resolution of the Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM). The database is designed to provide five-year cyclical updating of United States land cover and associated changes. The recent release of NLCD...
Suburban groundwater quality as influenced by turfgrass and septic sources, Delmarva Peninsula, USA
Joshua W. Kasper, Judith M. Denver, Joanna K. York
2015, Journal of Environmental Quality (44) 642-654
Suburban land use is expanding in many parts of the United States and there is a need to better understand the potential water-quality impacts of this change. This study characterized groundwater quality in a sandy, water-table aquifer influenced by suburban development and compared the results to known patterns in water...
Migrations and swimming capabilities of endangered pallid sturgeon (Scaphirhynchus albus) to guide passage designs in the fragmented Yellowstone River
P. J. Braaten, Caroline M. Elliott, Jason C. Rhoten, D. B. Fuller, Brandon J. McElroy
2015, Restoration Ecology (23) 186-195
Fragmentation of the Yellowstone River is hypothesized to preclude recruitment of endangered Scaphirhynchus albus (pallid sturgeon) by impeding upstream spawning migrations and access to upstream spawning areas, thereby limiting the length of free-flowing river required for survival of early life stages. Building on this hypothesis, the reach of the Yellowstone River affected...
Uranium in the Islamic Republic of Mauritania (phase V, deliverable 81)
Gregory Fernette
2015, Open-File Report 2013-1280-N
Mauritania has 80 known uranium mineral occurrences and is the current focus of active exploration for uranium by a number of private companies. Seventeen occurrences have had resource estimates published and can be considered as mineral deposits. Fourteen of these are calcrete-type deposits with a total resource of 138.3 million...
Estimating switchgrass productivity in the Great Plains using satellite vegetation index and site environmental variables
Yingxin Gu, Bruce K. Wylie, Daniel M. Howard
2015, Ecological Indicators (48) 472-476
Switchgrass is being evaluated as a potential feedstock source for cellulosic biofuels and is being cultivated in several regions of the United States. The recent availability of switchgrass land cover maps derived from the National Agricultural Statistics Service cropland data layer for the conterminous United States provides an opportunity to...
Impacts of fire management on aboveground tree carbon stocks in Yosemite and Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks
John R. Matchett, James A. Lutz, Leland W. Tarnay, Douglas G. Smith, Kendall M.L. Becker, Matthew L. Brooks
2015, Report, Natural Resource Report NPS/SIEN/NRR—2015/910
Forest biomass on Sierra Nevada landscapes constitutes one of the largest carbon stocks in California, and its stability is tightly linked to the factors driving fire regimes. Research suggests that fire suppression, logging, climate change, and present management practices in Sierra Nevada forests have altered historic patterns of landscape carbon...
The Yellowstone “hot spot” track results from migrating basin-range extension
Gillian R. Foulger, Robert L. Christiansen, Don L. Anderson
Gillian R. Foulger, Michele Lustrino, Scott D. King, editor(s)
2015, Book chapter, The interdisciplinary earth: A volume in honor of Don L. Anderson (GSA Special Papers volume 514)
Whether the volcanism of the Columbia River Plateau, eastern Snake River Plain, and Yellowstone (western U.S.) is related to a mantle plume or to plate tectonic processes is a long-standing controversy. There are many geological mismatches with the basic plume model as well as logical flaws, such as citing data...
Shoreface response and recovery to Hurricane Sandy: Fire Island, NY
Timothy R. Nelson, Cheryl J. Hapke
Ping Wang, Julie D. Rosati, Jun Cheng, editor(s)
2015, Conference Paper, The proceedings of the coastal sediments 2015
The shoreface of Fire Island was extensively modified by Hurricane Sandy and subsequent storms in the following winter months. The changes were evaluated using various morphometrics of the shoreface from four bathymetric surveys, one prior to Hurricane Sandy, and three over the course of twenty months following Sandy. The datasets...
Using the Maxent program for species distribution modelling to assess invasion risk
Catherine S. Jarnevich, Nicholas E. Young
R.C Venette, editor(s)
2015, Book chapter, Pest Risk Modelling and Mapping for Invasive Alien Species
MAXENT is a software package used to relate known species occurrences to information describing the environment, such as climate, topography, anthropogenic features or soil data, and forecast the presence or absence of a species at unsampled locations. This particular method is one of the most popular species distribution modelling techniques...
Guide to luminescence dating techniques and their application for paleoseismic research
Harrison J. Gray, Shannon A. Mahan, Tammy M. Rittenour, Michelle Summa Nelson
William R. Lund, editor(s)
2015, Conference Paper, Proceedings volume: Basin and range province seismic hazards summit III, 2015 (Utah Geological Survey Miscellaneous Publication 15-5)
Over the past 25 years, luminescence dating has become a key tool for dating sediments of interest in paleoseismic research. The data obtained from luminescence dating has been used to determine timing of fault displacement, calculate slip rates, and estimate earthquake recurrence intervals. The flexibility of luminescence is a key...
Continuous monitoring of meteorological conditions and movement of a deep-seated, persistently moving rockslide along Interstate Route 79 near Pittsburgh
Francis Ashland, Helen L. Delano
2015, Pennsylvania Geology (45) 22-26
A large inventory of landslides exists for Allegheny County, Pa., and historical movement of manyof these has resulted in considerable damage to property, roads, and infrastructure. Along InterstateRoute 79, a subset of the landslide inventory includes deep-seated rockslides, two of which reactivatedduring construction of the highway in the late 1960s...
Observational changes to the natural flow regime in Lee Creek in relation to altered precipitation patterns and its implication for fishes
Michael R. Gatlin, James M. Long, Donald J. Turton
2015, Proceedings of the Oklahoma Academy of Science (95) 135-146
The natural flow regime is important for structuring streams and their resident ichthyofauna and alterations to this regime can have cascading consequences. We sought to determine if changes in hydrology could be attributed to changes in precipitation in a minimally altered watershed (Lee Creek). The stream flow regime was analyzed...
Estimating bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) abundance using noninvasive sampling at a mineral lick within a National Park Wilderness Area
Kathryn A. Schoenecker, Mary Kay Watry, Laura E. Ellison, Michael A. Schwarz, Gordon Luikart
2015, Western North American Naturalist (75) 181-191
Conservation of species requires accurate population estimates. We used genetic markers from feces to determine bighorn sheep abundance for a herd that was hypothesized to be declining and in need of population status monitoring. We sampled from a small but accessible portion of the population's range where animals naturally congregate...
Phenological response of an Arizona dryland forest to short-term climatic extremes
Jessica J. Walker, Kirsten de Beurs, Randolph Wynne
2015, Remote Sensing (7) 10832-10855
Baseline information about dryland forest phenology is necessary to accurately anticipate future ecosystem shifts. The overarching goal of our study was to investigate the variability of vegetation phenology across a dryland forest landscape in response to climate alterations. We analyzed the influence of site characteristics and climatic conditions on the...
Combining state-and-transition simulations and species distribution models to anticipate the effects of climate change
Brian W. Miller, Leonardo Frid, Tony Chang, N. B. Piekielek, Andrew J. Hansen, Jeffrey T. Morisette
2015, AIMS Environmental Science (2) 400-426
State-and-transition simulation models (STSMs) are known for their ability to explore the combined effects of multiple disturbances, ecological dynamics, and management actions on vegetation. However, integrating the additional impacts of climate change into STSMs remains a challenge. We address this challenge by combining an STSM with species distribution modeling (SDM)....
Ground-based thermal imaging of stream surface temperatures: Technique and evaluation
Scott A. Bonar, Sally J. Petre
2015, North American Journal of Fisheries Management (35) 1209-1218
We evaluated a ground-based handheld thermal imaging system for measuring water temperatures using data from eight southwestern USA streams and rivers. We found handheld thermal imagers could provide considerably more spatial information on water temperature (for our unit one image = 19,600 individual temperature measurements) than traditional methods could supply...
Spatial and temporal variation in recruitment and growth of Channel Catfish Alabama bass and Tallapoosa Bass in the Tallapoosa River and associated tributaries
Elise R. Irwin, Taconya Goar
2015, Cooperator Science Series FWS/CSS -116
Effects of hydrology on growth and hatching success of age-0 black basses and Channel Catfish were examined in regulated and unregulated reaches of the Tallapoosa River, Alabama. Species of the family Centrarchidae, Ictalurus punctatus Channel Catfish and Pylodictis olivaris Flathead Catfish were also collected from multiple tributaries in the basin....
Quality assurance testing of acoustic doppler current profiler transform matrices
Brandy Armstrong, Janice M. Fulford, Kirk G. Thibodeaux
2015, Conference Paper, 2015 IEEE/OES Eleveth Current, Waves and Turbulence Measurement (CWTM)
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Hydrologic Instrumentation Facility (HIF) is nationally responsible for the design, testing, evaluation, repair, calibration, warehousing, and distribution of hydrologic instrumentation in use within the USGS Water Mission Area (WMA). The HIF's Hydraulic Laboratory has begun routine quality assurance (QA) testing and documenting the performance of...
Geologic setting of the proposed Fallon FORGE Site, Nevada: Suitability for EGS research and development
James E. Faulds, Douglas Blankenship, Nicholas H. Hinz, Andrew Sabin, Josh Nordquist, Stephen H. Hickman, Jonathan M.G. Glen, Mack Kennedy, Drew Siler, Ann Robinson-Tait, Colin F. Williams, Peter Drakos, Wendy M. Calvin
2015, GRC Transactions (39) 293-302
The proposed Fallon FORGE site lies within and adjacent to the Naval Air Station Fallon (NASF) directly southeast of the town of Fallon, Nevada, within the large basin of the Carson Sink in west-central Nevada. The site is located on two parcels that include land owned by the NASF and...
Cenozoic stratigraphy and structure of the Chesapeake Bay region
David S. Powars, Lucy E. Edwards, Susan M. Kidwell, J. Stephen Schindler
2015, Book
The Salisbury embayment is a broad tectonic downwarp that is filled by generally seaward-thickening, wedge-shaped deposits of the central Atlantic Coastal Plain. Our two-day field trip will take us to the western side of this embayment from the Fall Zone in Washington, D.C., to some of the bluffs along Aquia...
Synoptic evaluation of scale-dependent metrics for hydrographic line feature geometry
Larry V. Stanislawski, Barbara P. Buttenfield, Paulo Raposo, Madeline Cameron, Jeff T. Falgout
2015, Conference Paper, 18th ICA Workshop on Generalisation and Multiple Representation
Methods of acquisition and feature simplification for vector feature data impact cartographic representations and scientific investigations of these data, and are therefore important considerations for geographic information science (Haunert and Sester 2008). After initial collection, linear features may be simplified to reduce excessive detail or to furnish a reduced-scale version...
Thin‐ or thick‐skinned faulting in the Yakima fold and thrust belt (WA)? Constraints from kinematic modeling of the saddle mountains anticline
Gabriele Casale, Thomas L. Pratt
2015, Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (105) 745-752
The Yakima fold and thrust belt (YFTB) deforms the Columbia River Basalt Group flows of Washington State. The YFTB fault geometries and slip rates are crucial parameters for seismic‐hazard assessments of nearby dams and nuclear facilities, yet there are competing models for the subsurface fault geometry involving shallowly rooted versus...
Crowdsourced earthquake early warning
Sarah E. Minson, Benjamin A. Brooks, Craig L. Glennie, Jessica R. Murray, John O. Langbein, Susan E. Owen, Thomas H. Heaton, Robert A. Iannucci, Darren L. Hauser
2015, Science Advances (1) 1-7
Earthquake early warning (EEW) can reduce harm to people and infrastructure from earthquakes and tsunamis, but it has not been implemented in most high earthquake-risk regions because of prohibitive cost. Common consumer devices such as smartphones contain low-cost versions of the sensors used in EEW. Although less accurate than scientific-grade...
PESTools – A Python toolkit for processing PEST-related information
Evan Christianson, Andrew T. Leaf
2015, Conference Paper, MODFLOW and More 2015 Proceedings
PESTools is an open-source Python package for processing and visualizing information associated with the parameter estimation software PEST and PEST++. While PEST output can be reformatted for post- processing in spreadsheets or other menu-driven software packages, that approach can be error-prone and time-consuming. Managing information from highly parameterized models with thousands of parameters and...
