Seismic hazard assessment: Honing the debate, testing the models
Ross Stein, Mark W. Stirling
2015, Eos, Earth and Space Science News
Four workshops held in 2013–2014 at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) John Wesley Powell Center for Analysis and Synthesis brought together university, government, and insurance industry scientists from countries that straddle plate boundaries and those in plate interiors. Participants were invited; the workshops’ goals involved developing tests of Probabilistic Seismic...
Construction ages of the Upton Stone Chamber: Preliminary findings and suggestions for future luminescence research
Shannon A. Mahan, Frederick Martin, Cathy Taylor
2015, Quaternary Geochronology (30 ) 422-430
The Upton Chamber in Massachusetts, an earth-covered stone structure 3.4 meters (m) in diameter, with a corbelled stone dome, and a 4.3 m long entrance passageway, is studied with the aim of determining whether optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating methods can be used to establish the approximate construction date of...
Shaking intensity from injection-induced versus tectonic earthquakes in the central-eastern United States
Susan E. Hough
2015, The Leading Edge (34) 690-697
Although instrumental recordings of earthquakes in the central and eastern United States (CEUS) remain sparse, the U. S. Geological Survey's “Did you feel it?” (DYFI) system now provides excellent characterization of shaking intensities caused by induced and tectonic earthquakes. Seventeen CEUS events are considered between 2013 and 2015. It is...
Soil formation: Chapter 6
Martin B. Goldhaber, Steven A. Banwart
2015, Book chapter, Soil carbon: Science, management and policy for multiple benefits
Soil formation reflects the complex interaction of many factors, among the most important of which are (i) the nature of the soil parent material, (ii) regional climate, (iii) organisms, including humans, (iv) topography and (v) time. These processes operate in Earth's critical zone; the thin veneer of our planet where...
User-interactive sediment budgets in a browser: A web application for river science and management
David M. Sibley, David J. Topping, Megan Hines, Bradley D. Garner
2015, Conference Paper, Proceedings of the 5th Federal Interagency Hydrologic Modeling Conference and the 10th Federal Interagency Sedimentation Conference
Decision-support tools providing accurate, near-real-time data and user-friendly interactive visualizations are of critical value to resource managers tasked with planning and carrying out management programs in their domain. Creating a system to continuously aggregate datasets and recompute derived values is difficult and error-prone when attempted by hand. To address this...
Prey use and provisioning rates of urban-nesting Mississippi Kites in west Texas
Brandi C. Welch, Clint W. Boal
2015, Journal of Raptor Research (49) 141-151
Urban ecosystems are attractive to several raptor species, including the Mississippi Kite (Ictinia mississippiensis). To better understand the niche filled by urban-nesting Mississippi Kites, we observed nesting kites at 10 nests for a total of 269 hr during the breeding seasons of 2010 and 2011. We assessed prey delivery rates...
A comparative study of surface waves inversion techniques at strong motion recording sites in Greece
Panagiotis C. Pelekis, Alexandros Savvaidis, Robert E. Kayen, Vasileios S. Vlachakis, George A. Athanasopoulos
2015, Conference Paper, Symposium on the Application of Geophysics to Engineering and Environmental Problems 2015
Surface wave method was used for the estimation of Vs vs depth profile at 10 strong motion stations in Greece. The dispersion data were obtained by SASW method, utilizing a pair of electromechanical harmonic-wave source (shakers) or a random source (drop weight). In this study, three inversion techniques were used...
Combining split-beam and dual-frequency identification sonars to estimate abundance of anadromous fishes in the Roanoke River, North Carolina
Jacob B. Hughes, Joseph E. Hightower
2015, North American Journal of Fisheries Management (35) 229-240
Riverine hydroacoustic techniques are an effective method for evaluating abundance of upstream migrating anadromous fishes. To use these methods in the Roanoke River, North Carolina, at a wide site with uneven bottom topography, we used a combination of split-beam sonar and dual-frequency identification sonar (DIDSON) deployments. We aimed a split-beam...
The evolution of mapping habitat for northern spotted owls (Strix occidentalis caurina): A comparison of photo-interpreted, Landsat-based, and lidar-based habitat maps
Steven H. Ackers, Raymond J. Davis, K. Olsen, Katie M. Dugger
2015, Remote Sensing of Environment (156) 361-373
Wildlife habitat mapping has evolved at a rapid pace over the last few decades. Beginning with simple, often subjective, hand-drawn maps, habitat mapping now involves complex species distribution models (SDMs) using mapped predictor variables derived from remotely sensed data. For species that inhabit large geographic areas, remote sensing technology...
Refinements to the Graves and Pitarka (2010) Broadband Ground Motion Simulation Method
Robert Graves, Arben Pitarka
2015, Seismological Research Letters (86) 75-80
This brief article describes refinements to the Graves and Pitarka (2010) broadband ground motion simulation methodology (GP2010 hereafter) that have been implemented in version 14.3 of the SCEC Broadband Platform (BBP). The updated version of our method on the current SCEC BBP is referred to as GP14.3. Our simulation technique...
The role of suspension events in cross-shore and longshore suspended sediment transport in the surf zone
Bruce E. Jaffe
2015, Conference Paper, The Proceedings of the Coastal Sediments 2015
Suspension of sand in the surf zone is intermittent. Especially striking in a time series of concentration are periods of intense suspension, suspension events, when the water column suspended sediment concentration is an order of magnitude greater than the mean concentration. The prevalence, timing, and contribution of suspension events to...
Adaptive harvest management for the Svalbard population of pink-footed geese: 2015 progress summary
Fred A. Johnson, Jesper Madsen
2015, Technical Report from DCE - Danish Centre for Environment and Energy 64
This document describes progress to date on the development of an adaptive harvest management strategy for maintaining the Svalbard population of pink‐footed geese (Anser brachyrhynchus) near their agreed target level (60,000) by providing for sustainable harvests in Norway and Denmark. This report provides an assessment of the most recent monitoring...
Testing the effectiveness of automated acoustic sensors for monitoring vocal activity of Marbled Murrelets Brachyramphus marmoratus
Jenna L. Cragg, Alan E. Burger, John F. Piatt
2015, Marine Ornithology: Journal of Seabird Research and Conservation (43) 151-160
Cryptic nest sites and secretive breeding behavior make population estimates and monitoring of Marbled Murrelets Brachyramphus marmoratus difficult and expensive. Standard audio-visual and radar protocols have been refined but require intensive field time by trained personnel. We examined the detection range of automated sound recorders (Song Meters; Wildlife Acoustics Inc.)...
Hydrologic response for a high-elevation storm in the South Dakota Black Hills
Matthew J. Bunkers, Melissa Smith, Daniel G. Driscoll, Galen K. Hoogestraat
2015, Internal Report 2015-01
A group of thunderstorms produced >4 in of rain during four periods of progressively more intense rainfall across a small part of a relatively high-elevation area of the northern Black Hills on 5 August 2014. The resulting hydrologic response was noteworthy in two very small headwater drainage basins, where the...
Potential application of radiogenic isotopes and geophysical methods to understand the hydrothermal dystem of the Upper Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park
James B. Paces, Andrew J. Long, Karl R. Koth
2015, Natural Resource Report NPS/YELL/NRR—2015/1077
Numerous geochemical and geophysical studies have been conducted at Yellowstone National Park to better understand the hydrogeologic processes supporting the thermal features of the Park. This report provides the first 87Sr/86Sr and 234U/238U data for thermal water from the Upper Geyser Basin (UGB) intended to evaluate whether heavy radiogenic isotopes...
Upscaling of U (VI) desorption and transport from decimeter‐scale heterogeneity to plume‐scale modeling
Gary P. Curtis, Matthias Kohler, Ramakrishnan Kannappan, Martin A. Briggs, Frederick D. Day-Lewis
2015, Technical Report DOE-USGS--SC0003681
Scientifically defensible predictions of field scale U(VI) transport in groundwater requires an understanding of key processes at multiple scales. These scales range from smaller than the sediment grain scale (less than 10 μm) to as large as the field scale which can extend over several kilometers. The key processes that...
How to recognize a “Beast Quake” and a “Dance Quake”
Stephen Malone, Kelley Hall, Lynn Simmons, John Vidale
2015, Seismological Research Letters (86) 449-450
Any good seismologist–carryball (i.e., American football) fan remembers the “beast quake” of 2011. Seahawks fans’ exuberant reactions to a Marshawn Lynch (in beast mode) run caused the stadium to shake enough to be well recorded on a strong‐motion seismograph a block away (Vidale, 2011). With the...
Regulating services as measures of ecological resilience on DoD lands
Paul L. Angermeier, Amy M. Villamagna
2015, Report
Knowledge of the capacity and flow of ecosystem services can help DoD land managers make decisions that enhance cost-effectiveness, minimize environmental damage, and maximize resources available for military missions. We demonstrated a methodology to quantify and map selected regulating services (RS), which helps land managers envision tradeoffs. Our objectives were...
Testing assumptions for conservation of migratory shorebirds and coastal managed wetlands
Jaime Collazo, James Lyons, Garth Herring
2015, Wetlands Ecology and Management
Managed wetlands provide critical foraging and roosting habitats for shorebirds during migration; therefore, ensuring their availability is a priority action in shorebird conservation plans. Contemporary shorebird conservation plans rely on a number of assumptions about shorebird prey resources and migratory behavior to determine stopover habitat requirements. For example,...
Second Projet de Renforcement Institutionnel du Secteur Minier de la République Islamique de Mauritanie (PRISM-II) Phase V
Cliff D. Taylor, editor(s)
2015, Open-File Report 2013-1280
In 1996, at the request of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, a team of U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) scientists produced a strategic plan for the acquisition, improvement and modernization of multidisciplinary sets of data to support the growth of the Mauritanian minerals sector and to highlight the...
Development of flood regressions and climate change scenarios to explore estimates of future peak flows
Douglas A. Burns, Martyn J. Smith, Douglas A. Freehafer
2015, Open-File Report 2015-1235
A new Web-based application, titled “Application of Flood Regressions and Climate Change Scenarios To Explore Estimates of Future Peak Flows”, has been developed by the U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the New York State Department of Transportation, that allows a user to apply a set of regression equations to...
Application of a process-based shallow landslide hazard model over a broad area in Central Italy
Eleonora Gioia, Gabriella Speranza, Maurizio Ferretti, Jonathan W. Godt, Rex L. Baum, Fausto Marincioni
2015, Landslides 1-18
Process-based models are widely used for rainfall-induced shallow landslide forecasting. Previous studies have successfully applied the U.S. Geological Survey’s Transient Rainfall Infiltration and Grid-Based Regional Slope-Stability (TRIGRS) model (Baum et al. 2002) to compute infiltration-driven changes in the hillslopes’ factor of safety on small scales (i.e., tens of square...
A laboratory investigation of the suspension, transport, and settling of silver carp eggs using synthetic surrogates
Tatiana Garcia, Carlo Zuniga Zamalloa, P. Ryan Jackson, Elizabeth A. Murphy, Marcelo H. Garcia
2015, PLoS ONE 1-19
Asian carp eggs are semi-buoyant and must remain suspended in the water to survive, supported by the turbulence of the flow, until they hatch and develop the ability to swim. Analysis of the transport and dispersal patterns of Asian carp eggs will facilitate the development and implementation of control strategies...
Isotopes in North American Rocky Mountain snowpack 1993–2014
Lesleigh Anderson, Max Berkelhammer, M. Alisa Mast
2015, Quaternary Science Reviews (131) 262-273
We present ∼1300 new isotopic measurements (δ18O and δ2H) from a network of snowpack sites in the Rocky Mountains that have been sampled since 1993. The network includes 177 locations where depth-integrated snow samples are collected each spring near peak accumulation. At 57 of...
Taxonomic characterization of honey bee (Apis mellifera) pollen foraging based on non-overlapping paired-end sequencing of nuclear ribosomal loci
Robert S. Cornman, Clint Otto, Deborah D. Iwanowicz, Jeffery S Pettis
2015, PLoS ONE (10) 1-26
Identifying plant taxa that honey bees (Apis mellifera) forage upon is of great apicultural interest, but traditional methods are labor intensive and may lack resolution. Here we evaluate a high-throughput genetic barcoding approach to characterize trap-collected pollen from multiple North Dakota apiaries across multiple years. We used the Illumina MiSeq...
