Mussel community assessment tool for the Upper Mississippi River system
Heidi L. Dunn, Steven J. Zigler, Teresa Newton
2020, Freshwater Mollusk Biology and Conservation (23) 109-123
Upper Mississippi River (UMR) resource managers need a quantitative means of evaluating the health of mussel assemblages to measure effects of management and regulatory actions, assess restoration techniques, and inform regulatory tasks. Our objective was to create a mussel community assessment tool (MCAT), consisting of a suite of metrics and...
Assessment of burrowing behavior of freshwater juvenile mussels in sediment
Nile E. Kemble, John M. Besser, Jeffery A. Steevens, Jamie P. Hughes
2020, Freshwater Mollusk Biology and Conservation (23) 69-81
Standard laboratory sediment toxicity methods have been adapted for conducting toxicity tests with juvenile freshwater mussels. However, studies looking at juvenile mussel burrowing behavior at the water-sediment interface are limited. Juvenile mussels burrow in sediment for the first 0 to 4 yr of life but also may inhabit the sediment-water...
Topographic, soil, and climate drivers of drought sensitivity in forests and shrublands of the Pacific Northwest, USA
Jennifer M. Cartwright, Caitlin E. Littlefield, Julia Michalak, Joshua J. Lawler, Solomon Dobrowski
2020, Scientific Reports (10)
Climate change is anticipated to increase the frequency and intensity of droughts, with major impacts to ecosystems globally. Broad-scale assessments of vegetation responses to drought are needed to anticipate, manage, and potentially mitigate climate-change effects on ecosystems. We quantified the drought sensitivity of vegetation in the Pacific Northwest, USA, as...
Restoration of rapids habitat in a Great Lakes connecting channel, the St. Marys River, Michigan
A. Molina-Moctezuma, E. Ellis, K. Kapuscinski, Edward F. Roseman, T. Heatlie, A. Moerke
2020, Restoration Ecology (29)
Aquatic habitat has been extensively altered throughout the Laurentian Great Lakes to increase navigation connectivity. In particular, the St. Marys River, a Great Lakes connecting channel, lost >50% of its historic rapids habitat over the past century. In 2016, the natural flow was restored to the...
Detecting cover crop end-of-season using VENµS and sentinel-2 satellite imagery
Feng Gao, Martha Anderson, W. Dean Hively
2020, Remote Sensing (12)
Cover crops are planted during the off-season to protect the soil and improve watershed management. The ability to map cover crop termination dates over agricultural landscapes is essential for quantifying conservation practice implementation, and enabling estimation of biomass accumulation during the active cover period. Remote sensing detection of end-of-season (termination)...
Virome of bat guano from nine northern California roosts
Yanpeng Li, Eda Altan, Gabriel Reyes, Brian J. Halstead, Xutao Deng, Eric Delwart
2020, Journal of Virology (95) e01713-e01720
Bats are hosts to a large variety of viruses, including many capable of cross species transmissions to other mammals or humans. We characterized the virome in guano from five common bat species in 9 Northern California roosts and a pool of 5 individual bats. Genomes belonging to 14 viral families...
Ontogenetic shifts in mesohabitat use of young-of-year Rio Grande blue sucker in the Big Bend region of the Rio Grande
Seiji Miyazono, Allison A. Pease, Sarah Fritts, Timothy B. Grabowski
2020, Environmental Biology of Fishes (103) 1471-1480
Alteration of flow regimes by anthropogenic activities is one of the primary environmental problems in riverine systems. Understanding how hydrologic conditions can affect ontogenetic habitat shifts of imperiled fishes is important in order to develop conservation and management strategies for each life-history stage. We examined relationships between the abundance of...
Cenozoic tectonic evolution of the Ecemiş fault zone and adjacent basins, central Anatolia, Turkey during the transition from Arabia - Eurasia collision to escape tectonics
Paul J. Umhoefer, Stuart Thompson, Come Lefebre, Michael Cosca, Christian Teyssier, Donna L. Whitney
2020, Geosphere (16) 1358-1384
The effects of Arabia-Eurasia collision are recorded in faults, basins, and exhumed metamorphic massifs across eastern and central Anatolia. These faults and basins also preserve evidence of major changes in deformation and associated sedimentary processes along major suture zones including the Inner Tauride suture where it lies along the southern...
Statistical methods in water resources
Dennis R. Helsel, Robert M. Hirsch, Karen R. Ryberg, Stacey A. Archfield, Edward J. Gilroy
2020, Techniques and Methods 4-A3
This text began as a collection of class notes for a course on applied statistical methods for hydrologists taught at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Training Center. Course material was formalized and organized into a textbook, first published in 1992 by Elsevier as part of their Studies in Environmental...
Water resources in the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribal jurisdictional area, west-central Oklahoma, with an analysis of data gaps through 2015
Carol Becker, Matthew S. Varonka
2020, Scientific Investigations Report 2020-5105
This report provides an overview of existing hydrologic information describing the quality, quantity, and extent of the major surface-water and groundwater resources in the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribal jurisdictional area, west-central Oklahoma. Hydrologic information is provided for five major river systems (Cimarron River, North Canadian River, Canadian River, Washita River,...
Distribution of giant gartersnakes (Thamnophis gigas) in the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta, California, 2018–2019
Kristen J. Fouts, Richard Kim, Anna C. Jordan, Alexandria M. Fulton, Jonathan P. Rose, Julia S. M. Ersan, Brian J. Halstead
2020, Open-File Report 2020-1119
SummaryWe examined the occurrence of giant gartersnakes in the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta, California, in 2018 and 2019. We made eight captures of seven giant gartersnakes (three females, four males) in 2018, and six captures of six giant gartersnakes (four females, two males) in 2019. Detection probabilities were exceedingly low despite using methods...
Meeting the challenge: U.S. Geological Survey North Atlantic and Appalachian Region fiscal year 2020 in review
U.S. Geological Survey
2020, General Information Product 207
The utilization, preservation, and conservation of the Nation’s resources requires well-informed management decisions. The North Atlantic and Appalachian Region (NAAR) of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) supports science-based decision making for Federal, State, and local policymakers to meet the challenges of today and into the future. The science centers in...
Hydrogeology and groundwater flow in alluvial deposits, north Summerset, South Dakota
William G. Eldridge, Todd M. Anderson
2020, Scientific Investigations Report 2020-5097
The city of Summerset is a growing community in west South Dakota. The Sun Valley Estates subdivision in the north part of the city was developed on unconsolidated deposits surrounded by steep terrain. During years with greater than normal precipitation, particularly in 2019, groundwater levels increased in the unconsolidated deposits...
Outsized nutrient contributions from small tributaries to a Great Lake
Robert J Mooney, Emily H. Stanley, William C. Rosenthal, Peter C. Esselman, Anthony D Kendall, Peter B. McIntyre
2020, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (117)
Excessive nutrient inputs from tributary streams and rivers contribute to harmful algal blooms and coastal ecosystem degradation worldwide. However, the role that small tributaries play in coastal nutrient dynamics remains unknown because most monitoring and regulatory efforts focus only on the largest tributaries. We combined a 6-d sampling...
Imperatives for predicting preferential and diffuse flow in the unsaturated zone: 1. Equal emphasis
John R. Nimmo
2020, Hydrological Processes (34) 5690-5693
No abstract available....
Imperatives for predicting preferential and diffuse flow in the unsaturated zone: 2. Disparate formulation
John R. Nimmo
2020, Hydrological Processes (34) 5694-5698
No abstract available....
Integrated geophysical analysis provides an alternate interpretation of the northern margin of the North American Midcontinent Rift System, Central Lake Superior
V. J. Grauch, Eric D. Anderson, Samuel J. Heller, Esther K. Stewart, Laurel G. Woodruff
2020, Interpretation (8) SS63-SS85
The Midcontinent Rift System (MRS) is a 1.1 Ga sequence of voluminous basaltic eruptions and multiple intrusions followed by widespread sedimentation that extends across the Midcontinent and northern Great Lakes region of North America. Previous workers have commonly used seismic-reflection data (Great Lakes International Multidisciplinary...
Lava–water interaction and hydrothermal activity within the 2014–2015 Holuhraun Lava Flow Field, Iceland
Colin M. Dundas, Laszlo P. Keszthelyi, Einat Lev, M. Elise Rumpf, Christopher W. Hamilton, Armann Hoskuldsson, Thorvaldur Thordarson
2020, Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research (408)
Lava that erupted during the 2014–2015 Holuhraun eruption in Iceland flowed into a proglacial river system, resulting in aqueous cooling of the lava and an ephemeral hydrothermal system. We carried out a monitoring study of this system from 2015 to 2018...
Thermokarst amplifies fluvial inorganic carbon cycling and export across watershed scales on the Peel Plateau, Canada
Scott Zolkos, Suzanne E. Tank, Robert G. Striegl, Steven V. Kokelj, Justin Kokszka, Cristian Estop-Aragones, David Olefeldt
2020, Biogeosciences (17) 5163-5182
As climate warming and precipitation increase at high latitudes, permafrost terrains across the circumpolar north are poised for intensified geomorphic activity and sediment mobilization that are expected to persist for millennia. In previously glaciated permafrost terrain, ice-rich deposits are associated with large stores of reactive mineral substrate. Over geological timescales,...
Distribution of aseismic deformation along the central San Andreas and Calaveras Faults from differencing repeat airborne lidar
Chelsea P Scott, Stephen B. DeLong, J Ramon Arrosmith
2020, Geophysical Research Letters (47)
Fault creep reduces seismic hazard and serves as a window into plate boundary processes; however, creep rates are typically constrained with sparse measurements. We use differential lidar topography (11–13 year time span) to measure a spatially dense surface deformation field along a 150 km section of the Central San Andreas and Calaveras...
Isolation and characterization of microsatellite loci in merlins (Falco columbarius) and cross-species amplification in gyrfalcons (F. rusticolus) and peregrine falcons (F. peregrinus)
Joshua M. Hull, George K. Sage, Sarah A. Sonsthagen, Megan C. Gravley, Breanna L. Martinico, Travis L. Booms, Ted Swem, Sandra L. Talbot
2020, Molecular Biology Reports (47) 8377-8383
I. Background: Merlins, Falco columbarius, breed throughout temperate and high latitude habitats in Asia, Europe, and North America. Like peregrine falcons, F. peregrinus, merlins underwent population declines during the mid-to-late 20th century, due to organochlorine-based contamination, and have subsequently recovered, at least in North American populations. II....
Characterization of acoustic detection efficiency using a gliding robotic fish as a mobile receiver platform
Osama Ennasr, Christopher Holbrook, Darryl W. Hondorp, Charles C. Krueger, Demetris Coleman, Pratap Solanki, John Thon, Xiaobo Tan
2020, Animal Biotelemetry (8)
BackgroundAutonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) and animal telemetry have become important tools for understanding the relationships between aquatic organisms and their environment, but more information is needed to guide the development and use of AUVs as effective animal tracking platforms. A forward-facing acoustic telemetry receiver (VR2Tx 69 kHz; VEMCO, Bedford,...
Evaluation of the U.S. Geological Survey streamgage network in South Carolina, 2017
Toby D. Feaster, Katharine Kolb
2020, Open-File Report 2020-1104
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has been monitoring streamflow in South Carolina since the late 1800s. From the beginning, the USGS streamgage network in South Carolina has been dynamic, with streamgages being added or removed depending on their purpose and the availability of funding from Federal, State, and local partners....
Chapter A6.2. Dissolved oxygen
U.S. Geological Survey
2020, Techniques and Methods 9-A6.2
The “National Field Manual for the Collection of Water-Quality Data” (NFM) provides guidelines and procedures for U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) personnel who collect data used to assess the quality of the Nation’s surface water and groundwater resources. This chapter, NFM A6.2, provides guidance and protocols for the measurement of dissolved...
Common insecticide disrupts aquatic communities: A mesocosm-to-field ecological risk assessment of fipronil and its degradates in U.S. streams
Janet L. Miller, Travis S. Schmidt, Peter C. Van Metre, Barbara Mahler, Mark W. Sandstrom, Lisa H. Nowell, Daren M. Carlisle, Patrick W. Moran
2020, Science Advances (6) eabc1299
Insecticides in streams are increasingly a global concern, yet information on safe concentrations for aquatic ecosystems is sparse. In a 30-day mesocosm experiment exposing native benthic aquatic invertebrates to the common insecticide fipronil and four degradates, fipronil compounds caused altered emergence and trophic cascades. Effect concentrations eliciting a 50% response...
