2016 Volcanic activity in Alaska—Summary of events and response of the Alaska Volcano Observatory
Cheryl E. Cameron, James P. Dixon, Christopher F. Waythomas, Alexandra M. Iezzi, Kristi L. Wallace, Robert G. McGimsey, Katharine F. Bull
2020, Scientific Investigations Report 2020-5125
The Alaska Volcano Observatory responded to eruptions, volcanic unrest or suspected unrest, and seismic events at 15 volcanic centers in Alaska during 2016. The most notable volcanic activity consisted of eruptions at Pavlof and Bogoslof volcanoes. Both eruptions produced significant ash clouds that affected regional air travel. Mount Cleveland continued...
Incorporating established conservation networks into freshwater conservation planning results in more workable prioritizations
Nicholas Sievert, Craig P. Paukert, J. B. Whittier
2020, Frontiers in Environmental Science (8)
Resources for addressing stream fish conservation issues are often limited and the stressors impacting fish continue to increase, so decision makers often rely on tools to prioritize locations for conservation actions. Because conservation networks already exist in many areas, incorporating these into the planning process can increase the ability of...
Forest management and bats
Daniel A. R. Taylor, Roger W. Perry, Darren A. Miller, W. Mark Ford
2020, Report
Because more than half of the forest land in the United States is privately owned, forest landowners play an important role in the stewardship of our wildlife resources. This publication will introduce you to a group of wildlife that is particularly important to forest ecosystems, but also one of the...
The ghosts of propagation past: Haplotype information clarifies the relative influence of stocking history and phylogeographic processes on contemporary population structure of walleye (Sander vitreus)
Matthew L. Bootsma, Loren Miller, Greg G. Sass, Peter T. Euclide, Wesley Larson
2020, Evolutionary Applications (14) 1124-1144
Stocking of fish is an important tool for maintaining fisheries but can also significantly alter population genetic structure and erode the portfolio of within-species diversity that is important for promoting resilience and adaptability. Walleye (Sander vitreus) are a highly valued sportfish in the midwestern United States, a region characterized by...
Research priorities for migratory birds under climate change—A qualitative value of information assessment
Madeleine A. Rubenstein, Clark S. Rushing, James E. Lyons, Michael C. Runge
2020, Circular 1472
The mission of the U.S. Geological Survey National Climate Adaptation Science Center is to provide actionable, management-relevant research on climate change effects on ecosystems and wildlife to U.S. Department of the Interior bureaus. Providing this kind of useful scientific information requires understanding how natural-resource managers make decisions and identifying research...
Structure contour and isopach maps of the Wolfcamp shale and Bone Spring Formation of the Delaware Basin, Permian Basin Province, New Mexico and Texas
Stephanie B. Gaswirth
2020, Open-File Report 2020-1126
A series of structure contour and isopach maps for the Wolfcamp shale and the Bone Spring Formation of the Delaware Basin, Permian Basin Province, were generated in support of the U.S. Geological Survey 2018 assessment of undiscovered continuous oil and gas resources. The interpreted formation tops used to generate the...
Depositional sequence stratigraphy of Turonian to Santonian sediments, Cape Fear arch, North Carolina Coastal Plain, USA
Wilma Aleman Gonzalez, Jean Self-Trail, W. Burleigh Harris, Jessica P. Moore, Kathleen Farrell
2020, Stratigraphy (17) 293-314
A new sequence stratigraphic framework for Turonian to Santonian (94-84 Ma) sediments is established using data from the USGS Kure Beach and Elizabethtown cores collected from the Atlantic Coastal Plain of North Carolina (NC). These sediments represent some of the oldest marine units deposited on the southeastern Atlantic Coastal Plain...
Assessment of undiscovered oil and gas resources in the Upper Cretaceous Austin Chalk and Tokio and Eutaw Formations, U.S. Gulf Coast, 2019
Janet K. Pitman, Stanley T. Paxton, Scott A. Kinney, Katherine J. Whidden, Seth S. Haines, Brian A. Varela, Tracey J. Mercier, Cheryl A. Woodall, Christopher J. Schenk, Heidi M. Leathers-Miller, Ofori N. Pearson, Lauri A. Burke, Phuong A. Le, Justin E. Birdwell, Nicholas J. Gianoutsos, Katherine L. French, Ronald M. Drake II, Thomas M. Finn, Geoffrey S. Ellis, Stephanie B. Gaswirth, Kristen R. Marra, Marilyn E. Tennyson, Chilisa M. Shorten
2020, Fact Sheet 2020-3045
Using a geology-based assessment methodology, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated undiscovered, technically recoverable mean resources of 6.9 billion barrels of oil and 41.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in conventional and continuous accumulations in the Upper Cretaceous Austin Chalk and Tokio and Eutaw Formations onshore and in State waters...
Genetically-informed seed transfer zones for Cleome lutea and Machaeranthera canescens across the Colorado Plateau and adjacent regions
Robert Massatti
2020, Report
Genetically-based seed transfer zones are described herein for two priority restoration species on and adjacent to the Colorado Plateau (Massatti 2020). Species include Cleome lutea Hook. (Capparaceae; commonly called yellow spiderflower or yellow beeplant; synonym Peritoma lutea (Hook.) Raf.) and Machaeranthera canescens (Pursh) A. Gray (Asteraceae; commonly called hoary tansyaster;...
Quantifying and addressing the prevalence and bias of study designs in the environmental and social sciences
Alec P. Christie, David Abecasis, Mehdi Adjeroud, Juan C. Alonso, Tatsuya Amano, Alvaro Anton, Barry P. Baldigo, Rafael Barrientos, Jake E. Bicknell, Deborah A. Buhl, Just Cebrian, Ricardo S. Ceia, Luciana Cibils-Martina, Sarah Clarke, Joachim Claudet, Michael D. Craig, Dominique Davoult, Annelies De Backer, Mary K. Donovan, Tyler D. Eddy, Filipe M. Franca, Jonathan P.A. Gardner, Bradley P. Harris, Ari Huusko, Ian L. Jones, Brendan P. Kelaher, Janne S. Kotiaho, Adrià López-Baucells, Heather L. Major, Aki Maki-Petays, Beatriz Martinez-Lopez, Carlos A. Martin, Philip A. Martin, Daniel Mateos-Molina, Robert A. McConnaughey, Michele Meroni, Christoph F. J. Meyer, Kade Mills, Monica Montefalcone, Norbertas Noreika, Carlos Palacin, Anjali Pande, C. Roland Pitcher, Carlos Ponce, Matthew J. Rinella, Ricardo Rocha, Maria C. Ruiz-Delgado, Juan J. Schmitter-Soto, Jill A. Shaffer, Shailesh Sharma, Anna A. Sher, Doriane Stagnol, Thomas Stanley, Kevin D.E. Stokesbury, Aurora Torres, Oliver Tully, Teppo Vehanen, Corinne Watts, Qingyuan Zhao, William J. Sutherland
2020, Nature Communications (11)
Building trust in science and evidence-based decision-making depends heavily on the credibility of studies and their findings. Researchers employ many different study designs that vary in their risk of bias to evaluate the true effect of interventions or impacts. Here, we empirically quantify, on a large...
Characteristics of frequent dynamic triggering of microearthquakes in Southern California
Wenyuan Fan, Andrew J. Barbour, Elizabeth S. Cochran, Guoqing Lin
2020, Journal of Geophysical Research (126)
Dynamic triggering of earthquakes has been reported at various fault systems. The triggered earthquakes are thought to be caused either directly by dynamic stress changes due to the passing seismic waves, or indirectly by other nonlinear processes that are initiated by the passing waves. Distinguishing these physical...
A Bayesian framework for assessing extinction risk based on ordinal categories of population condition and projected landscape change
Daniel Bruce Fitzgerald, Andrew R Henderson, Kelly O. Maloney, Mary Freeman, John A. Young, Amanda E. Rosenberger, David C. Kazyak, David R. Smith
2020, Biological Conservation (253)
Many at-risk species lack standardized surveys across their range or quantitative data capable of detecting demographic trends. As a result, extinction risk assessments often rely on ordinal categories of risk based on explicit criteria or expert elicitation. This study demonstrates a...
Soil organic carbon development and turnover in natural and disturbed salt marsh environments
Sheron Luk, Katherine Todd-Brown, Meagan J. Eagle, Ann McNichol, Jonathan Sanderman, Kelsey Gosselin, Amanda C. Spivak
2020, Geophysical Research Letters (48)
Salt marsh survival with sea‐level rise (SLR) increasingly relies on soil organic carbon (SOC) accumulation and preservation. Using a novel combination of geochemical approaches, we characterized fine SOC (≤1 mm) supporting marsh elevation maintenance. Overlaying thermal reactivity, source (δ13C), and age (F14C) information demonstrates several processes contributing to soil development:...
Environmental data associated with sites infected with white-nose syndrome (WNS) before October 2011 in North America
Christopher S. Swezey, Christopher P. Garrity
2020, Open-File Report 2020-1117
White-nose syndrome (WNS) is an emerging infectious disease of hibernating bats caused by a fungus previously known as Geomyces destructans and reclassified as Pseudogymnoascus destructans. The disease was first documented in 2006 in New York, has since spread across much of eastern North America, and as of January 2012, had...
Groundwater quality and groundwater levels in Dougherty County, Georgia, April 2019 through March 2020
Debbie W. Gordon
2020, Open-File Report 2020-1120
The Upper Floridan aquifer is the uppermost, reliable aquifer in southwest Georgia. The aquifer lies on top of the Claiborne, Clayton, and Cretaceous aquifers, all of which exhibited water level declines in the 1960s and 1970s. The U.S. Geological Survey has been working cooperatively with Albany Utilities to monitor groundwater...
Effects of density reduction on age-specific growth of stream-dwelling Brown Trout
Travis R. Rehm, Steven R. Chipps, Jacob L. Davis
2020, North American Journal of Fisheries Management (40) 1355-1366
Density-dependent growth has been well documented among stream-dwelling Brown Trout Salmo trutta populations. In Spearfish Creek, South Dakota, biomass of adult Brown Trout (>200 mm) is about three times greater than that reported for similar Black Hills streams, whereas the mean length of adult fish is about 30% less. Here, we evaluate...
Creating annotations for web ontology language ontology generated from relational databases
Matthew Edward Wagner, Tanner Edward Fry, Jacques Jules Bourquin, Dalia E. Varanka
2020, Conference Paper, Knowledge graphs and semantic web. KGSWC 2020
Many approaches that have been proposed that allow users to create a Web Ontology Language (OWL) ontology from a relational database fail to include metadata that are inherent to the database tables. Without metadata, the resulting ontology lacks annotation properties. These properties are key when performing ontology alignment. This paper...
Cretaceous to Oligocene magmatic and tectonic evolution of the western Alaska Range: Insights from U-Pb and 40Ar/39Ar geochronology
James V. Jones III, Erin Todd, Stephen E. Box, Peter J. Haeussler, Christopher S. Holm-Denoma, Susan M. Karl, Garth E. Graham, Dwight Bradley, Andrew R.C. Kylander-Clark, Richard M. Friedman, Paul W. Layer
2020, Geosphere (17) 118-153
New U-Pb and 40Ar/39Ar ages integrated with geologic mapping and observations across the western Alaska Range constrain the distribution and tectonic setting of Cretaceous to Oligocene magmatism along an evolving accretionary plate margin in south-central Alaska. These rocks were emplaced across basement domains that include Neoproterozoic...
Interpretation of hydrogeologic data to support groundwater management, Bazile Groundwater Management Area, northeast Nebraska, 2019—A case demonstration of the Nebraska Geocloud
Christopher M. Hobza, Gregory V. Steele
2020, Scientific Investigations Report 2020-5113
Nitrate, age tracer, and continuous groundwater-level data were interpreted in conjunction with airborne electromagnetic (AEM) survey data to understand the movement of nitrate within the Bazile Groundwater Management Area (BGMA) in northeastern Nebraska. Previously published age tracer data and nitrate data indicated vertical stratification of groundwater quality. Younger groundwater sampled...
Feral burros and other influences on desert tortoise presence in the western Sonoran Desert
Kristin H. Berry, Julie L. Yee, Lisa L. Lyren
2020, Herpetologica (76) 403-413
Across the globe, conflicting priorities exist in how land and resources are managed. In the American West, conflicts are common on public lands with historical mandates for multiple uses. We explored the impacts of multiple uses of land in a case study of Agassiz's Desert...
Inter-population differences in salinity tolerance of adult wild Sacramento splittail: osmoregulatory and metabolic responses to salinity
Christine E. Verhille, Theresa F. Dabruzzi, Dennis E. Cocherell, Brian Mahardja, Frederick V. Feyrer, Theodore C. Foin, Melinda R. Baerwald, Nann A. Fangue
2020, Conservation Physiology (8)
The Sacramento splittail (Pogonichthys macrolepidotus) is composed of two genetically distinct populations endemic to the San Francisco Estuary (SFE). The allopatric upstream spawning habitat of the Central Valley (CV) population connects with the sympatric rearing grounds via relatively low salinity waters, whereas the San Pablo (SP) population must pass through...
Tidal wetland resilience to increased rates of sea level rise in the Chesapeake Bay: Introduction to the special feature
Taryn A Sudol, Gregory E. Noe, Denise J Reed
2020, Wetlands (40) 1667-1671
The papers in this Special Feature are the result of the first Marsh Resilience Summit in the Chesapeake Bay region, which occurred in February 2019. The Chesapeake Bay region has one of the highest rates of relative sea level rise in the U.S., jeopardizing over 1000 km2 of...
What processes must we understand to forecast regional-scale population dynamics?
Jesse R. Lasky, Mevin Hooten, Peter B. Adler
2020, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (287)
An urgent challenge facing biologists is predicting the regional-scale population dynamics of species facing environmental change. Biologists suggest that we must move beyond predictions based on phenomenological models and instead base predictions on underlying processes. For example, population biologists, evolutionary biologists, community ecologists and ecophysiologists all argue that the respective...
Analyzing vegetation change in a sagebrush ecosystem using long-term field observations and Landsat imagery in Wyoming
Hua Shi, Collin Homer, Matthew B. Rigge, Kory Postma, George Z. Xian
2020, Ecosphere (11)
The importance of monitoring shrublands to detect and understand changes through time is increasingly recognized as critical to management. This research focuses on ecological change observed over 10 yr of field observation at 126 plots and over 35 yr of the Landsat archive in a shrubland ecosystem. Field data consisting of the...
Population estimates for selected breeding seabirds at Kīlauea Point National Wildlife Refuge, Kauaʻi, in 2019
Jonathan J. Felis, Emily C. Kelsey, Josh Adams, Jennilyn G. Stenske, Laney M. White
2020, Data Series 1130
Kīlauea Point National Wildlife Refuge (KPNWR) is an important seabird breeding site located at the northeastern tip of Kauaʻi in the main Hawaiian Islands. Despite the regional significance of KPNWR as one of the most important breeding sites for red-tailed tropicbirds (Phaethon rubricauda), red-footed boobies (Sula sula), and wedge-tailed shearwaters...
