A unified approach to long-term population monitoring of grizzly bears in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem
Matthew J. Gould, Justin Clapp, Mark A. Haroldson, Cecily M. Costello, J. Joshua Nowak, Hans Martin, Michael Ebinger, Daniel D. Bjornlie, Daniel Thompson, Justin A. Dellinger, Matthew Mumma, Paul Lukacs, Frank T. van Manen
2024, Global Ecology and Conservation (54)
Long-term wildlife research and monitoring programs strive to maintain consistent data collections and analytical methods. Incorporating new techniques is important but can render data sets incongruent and limit their potential to discern trends in demographic parameters. Integrated population models (IPMs) can address these limitations by combining data sources that may...
Skill assessment of a total water level and coastal change forecast during the landfall of a hurricane
Justin J. Birchler, Margaret L. Palmsten, Kara S. Doran, Sharifa Karwandyar, Joshua Michael Pardun, Elora M. Oades, Ryan P. Mulligan, Eli Sawyer Whitehead-Zimmers
2024, Coastal Engineering (193)
The Total Water Level and Coastal Change Forecast (TWL&CC Forecast) provides coastal communities with 6-day notice of potential elevated water levels and coastal change (i.e., dune erosion, overwash, or inundation) on sandy beaches that threatens safety, infrastructure, or resources. This continuously operating model provides hourly information for select regions along...
Abiotic and demographic drivers of flea parasitism on deer mice in a recovering mixed-conifer forest a decade postfire
Colton J. Padilla, Jessica T. Martin, James W. Cain III, Matthew E. Gompper
2024, Journal of Parasitology (110) 375-385
With the intensity and frequency of wildfires increasing rapidly, the need to study the ecological effects of these wildfires is also growing. An understudied aspect of fire ecology is the effect fires have on parasite–host interactions, including ectoparasites that might be pathogen vectors. Although some studies have examined the impacts...
Testing tree-ring cellulose δ18O with water isotopes for Holocene lake δ18O interpretations in the central Rocky Mountains USA
Lesleigh Anderson, M. Alisa Mast, Rebecca Lynn Brice, Max Berkelhammer
2024, The Holocene
Stable isotopes of water preserved in geologic archives, primarily as oxygen (δ18O), have proven critical for documenting Earth’s climatic and hydrologic systems past and present. However, timescale differences of water isotope inputs to proxy systems and the signal embedded in long paleorecords often confound translation to observed hydroclimatic metrics. Here,...
Global assessment of aquatic Isoëtes species ecology
Mattia M. Azzella, Alice Dalla Vecchia, Thomas Abeli, Janne Alahuhta, Victor B. Amoroso, Enric Ballesteros, Vincent Bertrin, Daniel Brunton, Alexander A. Bobrov, Cecilio Caldeira, Simona Ceschin, Elena V. Chemeris, Martina Ctvrtlikova, Mary de Winton, Esperanca Gacia, Oleg G. Grishutkin, Deborah Hofstra, Daniella Ivanova, Maria O. Ivanova, Nikita K. Konotop, Danelle M. Larson, Sara Magrini, Marit Mjelde, Olga A. Mochalova, Guilherme Oliveira, Ole Pedersen, Jovani B. de S. Pereira, Cristina Ribaudo, Maria Inmaculada Romero Bujan, Angelo Troia, Yulia S. Vinogradova, Polina A. Volkova, Daniel Zandonadi, Nadezhda V. Zueva, Rossano Bolpagni
2024, Freshwater Biology (69) 1420-1437
Isoëtes are iconic but understudied wetland plants, despite having suffered severe losses globally mainly because of alterations in their habitats. We therefore provide the first global ecological assessment of aquatic Isoëtes to identify their environmental requirements and to evaluate if taxonomically related species differ in their...
Spatial variability of water temperature within the White River basin, Mount Rainier National Park Washington
Andrew Gendaszek, Anya Clare Leach, Kristin Jaeger
2024, Preprint
Water temperature is a primary control on the occurrence and distribution of cold-water species. Rivers draining Mount Rainier in western Washington, including the White River along its northern flank, support several cold-water fish populations, but the spatial distribution of water temperatures, particularly during late-summer base flow between August and September,...
Observing glacier elevation changes from spaceborne optical and radar sensors – an inter-comparison experiment using ASTER and TanDEM-X data
Livia Piermattei, Michael Zemp, Christian Sommer, Fanny Brun, Matthias H. Braun, Liss M. Andreassen, Joaquin M. C. Belart, Etienne Berthier, Atanu Bhattacharya, Laura Boehm Vock, Tobias Bolch, Amaury Dehecq, Ines Dussaillant, Daniel Falaschi, Caitlyn Florentine, Dana Floricioiu, Christian Ginzler, Gregoire Guillet, Romain Hugonnet, Andreas Kaab, Owen King, Christoph Klug, Friedrich Knuth, Lukas Krieger, Jeff La Frenierre, Robert McNabb, Christopher McNeil, Rainer Prinz, Louis C. Sass, Thorsten Seehaus, David Shean, Desiree Treichler, Anja Wendt, Ruitang Yang
2024, The Cryosphere (18) 3195-3230
Observations of glacier mass changes are key to understanding the response of glaciers to climate change and related impacts, such as regional runoff, ecosystem changes, and global sea level rise. Spaceborne optical and radar sensors make it possible to quantify glacier elevation changes, and...
The use of conceptual ecological models to identify critical data and uncertainties to support numerical modeling: The northern Gulf of Mexico eastern oyster Crassostrea virginica example
Megan K. La Peyre, Shaye Sable, Danielle A. Marshall, Elise R. Irwin, Chad W. Hanson
2024, Marine and Coastal Fisheries: Dynamics, Management, and Ecosystem Science (16)
ObjectiveIncreasing reliance on numerical simulation models to help inform management and restoration choices benefits from careful consideration of critical early steps in model development. Along the northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico, the eastern oyster Crassostrea virginica fulfills important ecological and economic roles. Using the eastern oyster...
Least Bell's Vireos and Southwestern Willow Flycatchers—Breeding activities and habitat use—2023 annual report
Alexandra Houston, Lisa D. Allen, Shannon M. Mendia, Barbara E. Kus
2024, Open-File Report 2024-1040
Executive SummaryWe completed four protocol surveys for Least Bell’s Vireos (Vireo bellii pusillus; hereinafter vireo) during the breeding season, supplemented by weekly territory monitoring visits between April 6 and July 20 at the San Luis Rey Flood Risk Management Project Area (hereinafter Project Area). We identified a total of 136...
Climate and weather drivers in southern California Santa Ana Wind and non-Santa Wind fires
Jon Keeley, Michael Flannigan, Tim J. Brown, Tom Rolinski, Daniel Cayan, Alexandra D. Syphard, Janin Guzman-Morales, Alexander Gershunov
2024, International Journal of Wildland Fire (33)
Background. Autumn and winter Santa Ana Winds (SAW) are responsible for the largest and most destructive wildfires in southern California. Aims. 1) To contrast fires ignited on SAW days vs non-SAW days, 2) evaluate the predictive ability of the Canadian Fire Weather Index (CFWI) for these two fire types, and...
Water-quality constituent concentrations and loads computed using real-time water-quality data for the Republican River, Clay Center, Kansas, August 2018 through July 2023
Ariele R. Kramer, Justin R. Abel
2024, Scientific Investigations Report 2024-5072
Milford Lake, the largest reservoir by surface area in Kansas, has had confirmed harmful algal blooms every summer since reporting began in 2011, except 2018–19. Milford Lake has been listed as impaired and designated hypereutrophic under section 303(d) of the 1972 Clean Water Act. In 2014, the Kansas Department of...
Range-wide salamander densities reveal a key component of terrestrial vertebrate biomass in eastern North American forests
Evan H. Campbell Grant, Jillian Elizabeth Fleming, Elizabeth Bastiaans, Adrianne Brand, Jacey Brooks, Catherine Devlin, Kristen Epp, Matt Evans, M. Caitlin Fisher-Reid, Brian Gratwicke, Kristine Grayson, Natalie Haydt, Raisa Hernandez-Pacheco, Daniel J. Hocking, Amanda Hyde, Michael Losito, Maisie MacKnight, Tanya Matlaga, Louise Mead, David J. Munoz, William B. Peterman, Veronica Puza, Charles Shafer, Sean Sterrett, Chris Sutherland, Lily M. Thompson, Alexa R. Warwick, Alexander D. Wright, Kerry Yurewicz, David A. W. Miller
2024, Biology Letters (20)
Characterizing the population density of species is a central interest in ecology. Eastern North America is the global hotspot for biodiversity of plethodontid salamanders, an inconspicuous component of terrestrial vertebrate communities, and among the most widespread is the eastern red-backed salamander, Plethodon cinereus. Previous work suggests...
Wildland fire effects on sediment, salinity, and selenium yields in a basin underlain by Cretaceous marine shales near Rangely, Colorado
Natalie K. Day, Todd M. Preston, Patrick C. Longley
2024, Scientific Investigations Report 2024-5043
Understanding and quantifying soil erosion from rangelands is a high priority for land managers, especially in areas underlain by Cretaceous Mancos Shale, which is a natural source of sediment, salinity, and selenium to surface waters in many areas of western Colorado and eastern Utah. The purpose of this report is...
Monitoring and simulation of hydrology, suspended sediment, and nutrients in selected tributary watersheds of Lake Erie, New York
Katherine R. Merriman, Benjamin N. Fisher, Elizabeth A. Nystrom, Aubrey R. Bunch, Robert J. Welk, William M. Kappel
2024, Scientific Investigations Report 2024-5022
The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with Erie County, New York, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, and the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, collected water-quality samples in nine selected New York tributaries to Lake Erie, computed estimates of suspended sediment and nutrient loads using the R scripting package...
Fish size structures in lakes of the Lower Mississippi River floodplain
Leandro E. Miranda, D.J. Dembkowski
2024, Freshwater Biology (69) 1390-1398
The Lower Mississippi River has a floodplain that includes >1350 perennial lakes carved by shifts in river courses and other hydro-fluvial processes over eons. Notwithstanding their similar provenances, these waterbodies exhibit an immense variety of morphologies and successional stages that illustrate their natural trajectory from aquatic to forested wetlands....
Redistribution of debris-flow sediment following severe wildfire and floods in the Jemez Mountains, New Mexico, USA
Jonathan M. Friedman, Anne C. Tillery, Samuel J. Alfieri, Elizabeth Rachaelann Skaggs, Patrick B. Shafroth, Craig D. Allen
2024, Earth Surface Processes and Landforms (49) 4263-4274
Severe fire on steep slopes increases stormwater runoff and the occurrence of runoff-initiated debris flows. Predicting locations of debris flows and their downstream effects on trunk streams requires watershed-scale high-resolution topographic data. Intense precipitation in July and September 2013 following the June 2011 Las Conchas Fire in the Jemez Mountains,...
Developing, testing, and communicating earthquake forecasts: Current practices and future directions
Leila Mizrahi, Irina Dallo, Nicholas van der Elst, Annemarie Christophersen, Ilaria Spassiani, Maximillian J. Werner, Pablo Iturrieta, Jose Bayona, Iunio Iervolino, Max Schneider, Morgan T. Page, Jiancang Zhuang, Marcus Herrmann, Andrew J. Michael, Guiseppe Falcone, Warner Marzocchi, David A. Rhoades, Matthew Gerstenberger, Laura Gulia, Danijel Schorlemmer, Julia Becker, Marta Han, Lorena Kuratle, Michele Marti, Stefan Wiemer
2024, Reviews of Geophysics (63)
While deterministically predicting the time and location of earthquakes remains impossible, earthquake forecasting models can provide estimates of the probabilities of earthquakes occurring within some region over time. To enable informed decision-making of civil protection, governmental agencies, or the public, Operational Earthquake Forecasting (OEF) systems aim to provide authoritative earthquake...
Effects of temporal hydrologic shifts on the population biology of an endangered freshwater fish in a dryland river ecosystem
Jonathan Q. Richmond, Philip Robert Gould, Jennifer Pareti, Andrew Aitken, Eric Morrissette, Adam R. Backlin, Chris Dellith, Robert N. Fisher
2024, Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems (34)
Species occupying dryland river ecosystems often experience “boom-and-bust” demographic cycles that coincide with shifts in habitat availability. Knowing whether declines are within natural thresholds versus those caused by acute human disturbance is critical for managing protected species. We investigated temporal shifts in abundance and habitat use of an endangered population...
Revision of ModelMuse to support the use of PEST software with MODFLOW and SUTRA models
Richard B. Winston
2024, Techniques and Methods 6-A64
Executive SummaryModelMuse is a graphical user interface for several groundwater modeling programs. ModelMuse was updated to generate the input files for the parameter estimation software suite PEST. The software is used with MODFLOW or SUTRA models to run PEST-based parameter estimation and display the updated model inputs after parameter estimation....
Population genetic structure and demographic history reconstruction of introduced flathead catfish (Pylodictis olivaris) in two US Mid-Atlantic rivers
Justin Waraniak, Michael S. Eackles, Jason Keagy, Geoffrey D. Smith, Megan Schall, Sydney Stark, Shannon L. White, David C. Kazyak, Tyler Wagner
2024, Journal of Fish Biology
Population genetic analysis of invasive populations can provide valuable insights into the source of introductions, pathways for expansion, and their demographic histories. Flathead catfish (Pylodictis olivaris) are a prolific invasive species with high fecundity, long-distance dispersal, and piscivorous feeding habits that can lead to declines in native fish populations. In...
Riverine dissolved organic matter transformations increase with watershed area, water residence time, and Damköhler numbers in nested watersheds
Kevin Alexander Ryan, Vanessa Garayburu-Caruso, Byron Crump, Ted Bambakidis, Peter Raymond, Shaoda Liu, James Stegen
2024, Biogeochemistry (167) 1203-1224
Quantifying the relative influence of factors and processes controlling riverine ecosystem function is essential to predicting future conditions under global change. Dissolved organic matter (DOM) is a fundamental component of riverine ecosystems that fuels microbial food webs, influences nutrient and light availability, and represents a significant carbon flux globally. The...
It's about time: A multistate semicontinuous time mark–recapture model to evaluate seasonal survival and movement rates of juvenile Coho Salmon in a small coastal watershed
Nicholas P. Van Vleet, Darren Ward, Nicholas A. Som, Daniel C. Barton, Colin Anderson, Mark J. Henderson
2024, Transactions of the American Fisheries Society (153) 541-558
ObjectiveMany mark–recapture models assume that releases and recaptures are discrete events, and researchers often aggregate continuous recapture data (e.g., passive integrated transponder [PIT] detections) into coarse temporal scales to satisfy this assumption. This temporal discretization could result in parameter biases by ignoring the individual heterogeneity in the...
A heuristic method to evaluate consequences for flight control and stability induced by attachment of biologging devices to birds and bats
Todd E. Katzner, George Young
2024, Methods in Ecology and Evolution (15) 1553-1560
Biologging is central to the study of wildlife, but questions remain about the minimization of effects of biologging devices. Rarely considered are changes biologging devices induce on an animal's centre of mass (COM) and resulting losses of flight control and stability.We applied established...
In-situ valve opening response of eastern oysters to estuarine conditions
Romain Lavaud, Stephanie K. Archer, Megan K. La Peyre, Finella M. Campanino, Sandra M. Casas, Jerome F. La Peyre
2024, Marine Biology (171)
High-frequency recordings of valve opening behavior (VOB) in bivalves are often used to detect changes in environmental conditions. However, generally a single variable such as temperature or the presence of toxicants in the water is the focus. A description of routine VOB under non-stressful conditions is also important for interpreting...
Mapping eelgrass cover and biomass at Izembek Lagoon, Alaska, using in-situ field data and Sentinel-2 satellite imagery
David C. Douglas, Michael D. Fleming, Vijay P. Patil, David H. Ward
2024, Preprint
Two eelgrass (Zostera marina) maps of Izembek Lagoon, Alaska, were generated by first creating maps of spectrally unique classes from each of two Sentinel-2 satellite images collected on July 1, 2016, and August 14, 2020, then attributing the spectral classes with information about eelgrass conditions based on field data. Maps...
