Machine learning predictions of nitrate in groundwater used for drinking supply in the conterminous United States
Katherine Marie Ransom, Bernard T. Nolan, Paul E. Stackelberg, Kenneth Belitz, Miranda S. Fram
2021, Science of the Total Environment
Groundwater is an important source of drinking water supplies in the conterminous United State (CONUS), and presence of high nitrate concentrations may limit usability of groundwater in some areas because of the...
Active virus-host interactions at sub-freezing temperatures in Arctic peat soil
Gareth Trubl, Jeffrey A Kimbrel, Jose Liquet-Gonzalez, Erin E. Nuccio, Peter K. Weber, Jennifer Pett-Ridge, Janet K. Jansson, Mark Waldrop, Steve Blazewicz
2021, Microbiome (9)
BackgroundWinter carbon loss in northern ecosystems is estimated to be greater than the average growing season carbon uptake and is primarily driven by microbial decomposers. Viruses modulate microbial carbon cycling via induced mortality and metabolic controls, but it is unknown whether viruses are active under winter conditions (anoxic and...
Effects of hydrologic variability and remedial actions on first flush and metal loading from streams draining the Silverton caldera, 1992–2014
Tanya N Petach, Robert L. Runkel, Rory M. Cowie, Diane M. McKnight
2021, Hydrological Processes (35)
This study examined water quality in the upper Animas River watershed, a mined watershed that gained notoriety following the 2015 Gold King mine release of acid mine drainage to downstream communities. Water-quality data were used to evaluate trends in metal concentrations and loads over a two-decade...
Developing climate resilience in aridlands using rock detention structures as green infrastructure
Laura M. Norman, Benjamin L. Ruddell, Deborah Tosline, Michael Fell, Blair P. Greimann, Jay Cederberg
2021, Sustainability (13)
The potential of ecological restoration and green infrastructure has been long suggested in the literature as adaptation strategies for a changing climate, with an emphasis on revegetation and, more recently, carbon sequestration and stormwater management. Tree planting and “natural” stormwater detention structures such as bioswales, stormwater detention...
Rapa Nui (Easter Island) Rano Raraku crater lake basin: Geochemical characterization and implications for the Ahu-Moai Period
Elena Argiriadis, Mara Bortolini, Natalie Kehrwald, Marco Roman, Clara Turetta, Shahpara Hanif, Evans Osayuki Erhendi, Jose Miguel Ramirez Aliaga, David B. McWethy, Amy E. Myrbo, Anibal Pauchard, Carlo Barbante, Dario Battistel
2021, PLoS ONE (10)
Rano Raraku, the crater lake constrained by basaltic tuff that served as the primary quarry used to construct the moai statues on Rapa Nui (Easter Island), has experienced fluctuations in lake level over the past centuries. As one of the only freshwater sources on the island, understanding the...
Growth inhibition of the harmful alga Prymnesium parvum by plant-derived products and identification of ellipticine as highly potent allelochemical
Mousumi Mary, R. H. Rashel, Reynaldo Patino
2021, Journal of Applied Phycology (33) 3853-3860
Prymnesium parvum is a toxin-producing harmful alga that has caused ecological and economic damage worldwide. Effective methods to control blooms of this species in the field, however, are unavailable. This study examined five natural compounds present in the invasive plant Arundo donax and one synthetic derivative (5,6-dichlorogramine) for their effect on P. parvum growth. All...
Landscape-scale drivers of endangered Cape Sable Seaside Sparrow (Ammospiza maritima mirabilis) presence using an ensemble modeling approach
Saira M. Haider, Allison Benscoter, Leonard G. Pearlstine, Laura D’Acunto, Stephanie Romanach
2021, Ecological Modelling (461)
The Florida Everglades is a vast and iconic wetland ecosystem in the southern United States that has undergone dramatic changes from habitat degradation, development encroachment, and water impoundment. Starting in the past few decades, large restoration projects have been undertaken to restore...
Earthcasting: Geomorphic forecasts for society
Behrooz Ferdowsi, John D. Gartner, Kerri N. Johnson, Alan Kasprak, Kimberly L. Miller, William Nardin, Alejandra C. Ortiz, Alejandro Tejedor
2021, Earth's Future (9)
Over the last several decades, the study of Earth surface processes has progressed from a descriptive science to an increasingly quantitative one due to advances in theoretical, experimental, and computational geosciences. The importance of geomorphic forecasts has never been greater, as technological development and global climate change...
A global ecological classification of coastal segment units to complement marine biodiversity observation network assessments
Roger Sayre, Kevin Butler, Keith Van Graafeiland, Sean Breyer, Dawn Wright, Charlie Frye, Deniz Karagulle, Madeline T. Martin, Jill Janene Cress, Tom Allen, Rebecca Allee, Rost Parsons, Bjorn Nyberg, Mark Costello, Peter Harris, Frank Muller-Karger
2021, Oceanography (34)
A new data layer provides Coastal and Marine Ecological Classification Standard (CMECS) labels for global coastal segments at 1 km or shorter resolution. These characteristics are summarized for six US Marine Biodiversity Observation Network (MBON) sites and one MBON Pole to Pole of the Americas site in Argentina. The global...
Augmentation of natural prey reduces cattle predation by puma (Puma concolor) and jaguar (Panthera onca) on a ranch in Sonora, Mexico
Ivonne Cassaigne, Ron W. Thompson, Rodrigo A. Medellin, Melanie Culver, Alexander Ochoa, Karla Vargas, Jack L. Childs, Manuel Galaz, Jim Sanderson
2021, Southwestern Naturalist (65) 123-130
Retaliatory killing of large carnivores due to livestock predation is one of the major threats for the conservation of many declining populations of predators. According to empirical observations, there is a higher incidence of livestock predation when native prey abundance is low. In this study, we applied a treatment consisting...
Evaluating lava flow propagation models with a case study from the 2018 eruption of Kīlauea Volcano, Hawai'i
Rebecca deGraffenried, Julia E. Hammer, Hannah R. Dietterich, Ryan L. Perroy, Matthew R. Patrick, Thomas Shea
2021, Bulletin of Volcanology (83)
The 2018 lower East Rift Zone (LERZ) eruption of Kīlauea, Hawai’i, provides an excellent natural laboratory with which to test models of lava flow propagation. During early stages of eruption crises, the most useful lava flow propagation equations utilize readily determined parameters and require fewer a...
Iñupiaq knowledge of polar bears (Ursus maritimus) in the southern Beaufort Sea, Alaska
Karyn D. Rode, Hannah Voorhees, Henry P. Huntington, George M. Durner
2021, Arctic (74) 239-257
Successful wildlife management depends upon coordination and consultation with local communities. However, much of the research used to inform management is often derived solely from data collected directly from wildlife. Indigenous people living in the Arctic have a close connection to their environment, which provides unique opportunities to observe...
Ecosystem modification and network position impact insect-mediated contaminant fluxes from a mountaintop mining-impacted river network
Laura C. Naslund, Jacqueline R. Gerson, Alexander C. Brooks, Amy D. Rosemond, David Walters, Emily S. Bernhardt
2021, Environmental Pollution (291)
Aquatic-terrestrial contaminant transport via emerging aquatic insects has been studied across contaminant classes and aquatic ecosystems, but few studies have quantified the magnitude of these insect-mediated contaminant fluxes, limiting our understanding of their drivers. Using a recent conceptual model, we identified watershed mining extent, settling ponds, and network position as potential...
Making research relevant: Sharing climate change research with rangeland advisors to transform results into drought resilience
Maude Dinan, Peter B. Adler, John B. Bradford, Mark Brunson, Emile Elias, Andrew J Felton, Christina Greene, Jeremy J. James, Katharine Suding, Eric Thacker
2021, Rangelands (43) 185-193
On the Ground• Public programs, strategies, and incentives to implement rangeland climate adaptation are more effective if they are tailored to local drought exposures, sensitivities, and adaptation opportunities. As such, local rangeland advisers who aid in climate adaptation are pivotal to the development of these resources.• We hosted a virtual...
Seasonal diet and habitat use of large, introduced Rainbow Trout in an Ozark Highland stream
A. W. Rodger, S. L. Wolf, T. A. Starks, J. P. Burroughs, Shannon K. Brewer
2021, North American Journal of Fisheries Management (41) 1764-1780
Stocking of Rainbow Trout Oncorhynchus mykiss commonly provides seasonal or mitigation fisheries; however, these fish are usually small and ecosystem effects are spatially or temporally limited. Yet agencies receive requests to stock Rainbow Trout in relatively natural settings (i.e., not tailwater or mitigation fisheries), where introductions may have greater ecosystem consequences. The...
Machine learning can assign geologic basin to produced water samples using major ion geochemistry
Jenna L. Shelton, Aaron M. Jubb, Samuel Saxe, Emil D. Attanasi, Alexei Milkov, Mark A Engle, Philip A. Freeman, Christopher Shaffer, Madalyn S. Blondes
2021, Natural Resources Research (30) 4147-4163
Understanding the geochemistry of waters produced during petroleum extraction is essential to informing the best treatment and reuse options, which can potentially be optimized for a given geologic basin. Here, we used the US Geological Survey’s National Produced Waters Geochemical Database (PWGD) to determine if major ion chemistry could be...
The Louisiana Amphibian Monitoring Program from 1997 to 2017: Results, analyses, and lessons learned
Jacoby Carter, Darren Johnson, Jeff Boundy, William Vermillion
2021, PLoS ONE (16)
To determine trends in either frog distribution or abundance in the State of Louisiana, we reviewed and analyzed frog call data from the Louisiana Amphibian Monitoring Program (LAMP). The data were collected between 1997 and 2017 using North American Amphibian Monitoring Program protocols. Louisiana was divided...
Effect of an algal amendment on the microbial conversion of coal to methane at different sulfate concentrations from the Powder River Basin, USA
Heidi J. Smith, Hannah S. Schweitzer, Elliott P. Barnhart, William H. Orem, Robin Gerlach, Matthew W. Fields
2021, International Journal of Coal Geology (248)
Biogenic methane is estimated to account for one-fifth of the natural gas worldwide and there is great interest in controlling methane from different sources. Biogenic coalbed methane (CBM) production relies on syntrophic associations between fermentative bacteria and methanogenic archaea to anaerobically degrade recalcitrant coal and produce methanogenic substrates. However, very...
Late Cenozoic paleogeographic reconstruction of the San Francisco Bay Area from analysis of stratigraphy, tectonics, and tephrochronology
Andrei Sarna-Wojcicki
2021, GSA Memoirs (217) 443-472
The Neogene stratigraphic and tectonic history of the Mount Diablo area is a consequence of the passage of the Mendocino Triple Junction (MTJ) by the San Francisco Bay area between 12 and 6 Ma, volcanism above a slab-window trailing the MTJ, and crustal transpression beginning ~8-6 Ma, when the Pacific...
Shifting correlations among multiple aspects of weather complicate predicting future demography of a threatened species
Allison M Louthan, Jeffrey R. Walters, Adam Terando, Victoria Garcia, William F. Morris
2021, Ecosphere (12)
Most studies of the ecological effects of climate change consider only a limited number of weather drivers that could affect populations, though we know that multiple weather drivers can simultaneously affect population growth rate. Multiple drivers could simultaneously increase/decrease one vital rate, or one may increase...
Culverts delay upstream and downstream migrations of river herring (Alosa spp.)
Derrick Alcott, Elsa Goerig, Theodore R. Castro-Santos
2021, River Research and Applications (37) 1400-1412
Alewife (Alosa pseudoharengus) and blueback herring (Alosa aestivalis) are iteroparous anadromous fish found throughout the East Coast of North America. The phenology of anadromous fish migrations is important for fitness, and the duration of spawning migrations has been compressed in recent years in response to climate...
Deep learning approaches for improving prediction of daily stream temperature in data-scarce, unmonitored, and dammed basins
Farshid Rahmani, Chaopeng Shen, Samantha K. Oliver, Kathryn Lawson, Alison P. Appling
2021, Hydrological Processes (35) e14400
Basin-centric long short-term memory (LSTM) network models have recently been shown to be an exceptionally powerful tool for stream temperature (Ts) temporal prediction (training in one period and predicting in another period at the same sites). However, spatial extrapolation is a well-known challenge to modelling Ts and...
The sensitivity of a unionid mussel (Lampsilis siliquoidea) to a permitted effluent and elevated potassium in the effluent
James L. Kunz, Ning Wang, David Martinez, Suzanne Dunn, Danielle M. Cleveland, Jeffery A. Steevens
2021, Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (40) 3410-3420
Freshwater mussels are one of the most imperiled groups of animals in the world and are among the most sensitive species to a variety of chemicals. However, little is known about the sensitivity of freshwater mussels to wastewater effluents. The objectives of the present study were to (1) assess the...
The Biscuit Brook and Neversink Reservoir Watersheds: Long-term investigations of stream chemistry, soil chemistry, and aquatic ecology in the Catskill Mountains, New York, USA, 1983 to 2020
Peter S. Murdoch, Douglas A. Burns, Michael McHale, Jason Siemion, Barry P. Baldigo, Gregory B. Lawrence, Scott D. George, Michael R. Antidormi, Donald B. Bonville
2021, Hydrological Processes (35)
This data note describes the Biscuit Brook and Neversink Reservoir watershed Long-Term Monitoring Data that includes: 1) stream discharge, (1983 – 2020 for Biscuit Brook and 1937 – 2020 for the Neversink Reservoir watershed), 2) stream water chemistry, 1983-2020, at 4 stations, 3) fish survey data from 16 locations in...
Effects of variable-density thinning on non-native understory plants in coniferous forests of the Pacific Northwest
Yianna Bekris, Janet S. Prevey, Leslie C. Brodie, Connie Harrington
2021, Forest Ecology and Management (502)
Old-growth forests serve as critical habitat for many sensitive species, but management practices have diminished their prevalence, and former regions of old-growth are now dominated by second-growth stands lacking the structural heterogeneity, diversity, and species richness that these older forests possess. In...
