Arsenic speciation in solids using X-ray absorption spectroscopy
Andrea L. Foster, Chris S. Kim
2014, Reviews in Mineralogy and Geochemistry (79) 257-369
Synchrotron-based X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) is an in situ, minimally-destructive, element-specific, molecular-scale structural probe that has been employed to study the chemical forms (species) of arsenic (As) in solid and aqueous phases (including rocks, soils, sediment, synthetic compounds, and numerous types of biota including humans) for more than 20 years....
Elk monitoring in Lewis and Clark National Historical Park: 2008-2012 synthesis report
Paul C. Griffin, Kurt J. Jenkins, Carla Cole, Chris Clatterbuck, John Boetsch, Katherine Beirne
2014, Natural Resource Technical Report NPS/NCCN/NRTR--2014/837
Maintaining elk (Cervus elaphus roosevelti) herds that frequent Lewis and Clark National Historical Park (NHP) is central to the park’s purpose of preserving the historic, cultural, scenic, and natural resources associated with the winter encampment of the Lewis and Clark expedition. Elk were critically important to the Lewis and Clark...
Automated Cropland Classification Algorithm (ACCA) for California using multi-sensor remote sensing
Zhuoting Wu, Prasad S. Thenkabail, James Verdin
2014, Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing (80) 81-90
Increasing pressure to feed the growing population with scarce water resources requires accurate and routine cropland mapping. This paper develops and implements a rule-based automated cropland classification algorithm (ACCA) using multi-sensor remote sensing data. Pixel-by-pixel accuracy assessments showed that ACCA produced an overall accuracy of 96 percent (Khat = 0.8) when...
Source and progression of a submarine landslide and tsunami: The 1964 Great Alaska earthquake at Valdez
Thomas E. Parsons, Eric L. Geist, Holly F. Ryan, Homa J. Lee, Peter J. Haeussler, Patrick Lynett, Patrick E. Hart, Ray W. Sliter, Emily C. Roland
2014, Journal of Geophysical Research - Solid Earth (119) 8502-8516
Like many subduction zone earthquakes, the deadliest aspects of the 1964 M = 9.2 Alaska earthquake were the tsunamis it caused. The worst of these were generated by local submarine landslides induced by the earthquake. These caused high runups, engulfing several coastal towns in Prince William Sound. In this paper, we study one...
Integrating disparate lidar data at the national scale to assess the relationships between height above ground, land cover and ecoregions
Jason M. Stoker, Mark A. Cochrane, David P. Roy
2014, Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing (80) 59-70
With the acquisition of lidar data for over 30 percent of the US, it is now possible to assess the three-dimensional distribution of features at the national scale. This paper integrates over 350 billion lidar points from 28 disparate datasets into a national-scale database and evaluates if height above ground...
Reproductive ecology of American Oystercatchers nesting on shell rakes
Patrick G.R. Jodice, Janet M. Thibault, S.A. Collins, Mark D. Spinks, Felicia J. Sanders
2014, Condor (116) 588-598
Degradation of nesting habitat for coastal birds has led to the use of nontraditional nesting habitat. The American Oystercatcher (Haematopus palliatus) is listed as a "Species of High Concern'' by the U. S. Shorebird Conservation Plan and is declining in the southern portion of its U. S. breeding range, where...
Status of pelagic prey fishes in Lake Michigan, 2013
David M. Warner, Steven A. Farha, Timothy P. O’Brien, Lynn Ogilvie, Randall M. Claramunt, Dale Hanson
2014, Report
Acoustic surveys were conducted in late summer/early fall during the years 1992-1996 and 2001-2013 to estimate pelagic prey fish biomass in Lake Michigan. Midwater trawling during the surveys as well as target strength provided a measure of species and size composition of the fish community for use in scaling acoustic...
Spatially explicit modeling to evaluate regional stream water quality
Stephen D. Preston, Richard B. Alexander, Gregory Schwarz, Richard A. Smith
2014, Book chapter, Comprehensive water quality and purification
Spatially referenced regressions on watershed attributes (SPARROW) models have been developed and applied over the past two decades to address the need for large-scale, spatially explicit information on stream water quality conditions. The strength of SPARROW models is that they describe the primary environmental processes that affect the supply and transport of...
Influence of sediment presence on freshwater mussel thermal tolerance
Jennifer M. Archambault, W. Gregory Cope, Thomas J. Kwak
2014, Freshwater Science (33) 56-65
Median lethal temperature (LT50) data from water-only exposures with the early life stages of freshwater mussels suggest that some species may be living near their upper thermal tolerances. However, evaluation of thermal sensitivity has never been conducted in sediment. Mussels live most of their lives burrowed in sediment, so understanding...
Preliminary data used to assess the accuracy of estimating female white-tailed deer diel birthing-season home ranges using only daytime locations
Shannon M. Barber-Meyer, L. David Mech
2014, Wildlife Biology in Practice (10) 62-68
Because many white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) home-range and habitat-use studies rely only on daytime radio-tracking data, we were interested in whether diurnal data sufficiently represented diel home ranges. We analyzed home-range and core-use size and overlap of 8 adult-female Global-Positioning-System-collared deer during May and June 2001 and 2002 in the...
Influence of riparian and watershed alterations on sandbars in a Great Plains river
Jeffrey M. Fischer, Craig P. Paukert, M.L. Daniels
2014, River Research and Applications (31) 1140-1150
Anthropogenic alterations have caused sandbar habitats in rivers and the biota dependent on them to decline. Restoring large river sandbars may be needed as these habitats are important components of river ecosystems and provide essential habitat to terrestrial and aquatic organisms. We quantified factors within the riparian zone of the...
Density and abundance of Wilson's snipe Gallinago delicata in winter in the Lower Mississippi Flyway, USA
James M. Carroll, David G. Krementz
2014, Wildlife Biology (20) 108-114
Wilson's snipe Gallinago delicata is one of the least studied North American game birds, and information on snipe populations and abundance is mostly unknown. We conducted roadside surveys stratified at the township level in the lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley (LMAV) in Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana, as well as the Red...
Mining continuous activity patterns from animal trajectory data
Y. Wang, Ze Luo, Yan Baoping, John Y. Takekawa, Diann J. Prosser, Scott H. Newman
2014, Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics) (8933) 239-252
The increasing availability of animal tracking data brings us opportunities and challenges to intuitively understand the mechanisms of animal activities. In this paper, we aim to discover animal movement patterns from animal trajectory data. In particular, we propose a notion of continuous activity pattern as the concise representation of underlying...
A Global Lake Ecological Observatory Network (GLEON) for synthesising high-frequency sensor data for validation of deterministic ecological models
David P. Hamilton, Cayelan C. Carey, Lauri Arvola, Peter Arzberger, Carol A. Brewer, Jon J Cole, Evelyn Gaiser, Paul C. Hanson, Bas W Ibelings, Eleanor Jennings, Tim K Kratz, Fang-Pang Lin, Christopher G. McBride, David de Motta Marques, Kohji Muraoka, Ami Nishri, Boqiang Qin, Jordan S. Read, Kevin C. Rose, Elizabeth Ryder, Kathleen C. Weathers, Guangwei Zhu, Dennis Trolle, Justin D Brookes
2014, Inland Waters (5) 49-56
A Global Lake Ecological Observatory Network (GLEON; www.gleon.org) has formed to provide a coordinated response to the need for scientific understanding of lake processes, utilising technological advances available from autonomous sensors. The organisation embraces a grassroots approach to engage researchers from varying disciplines, sites spanning geographic and ecological gradients, and...
Reconstructing historical habitat data with predictive models Read More: http://www.esajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1890/13-0327.1
Christa L. Zweig, Wiley M. Kitchens
2014, Ecological Applications (24) 196-203
Historical vegetation data are important to ecological studies, as many structuring processes operate at long time scales, from decades to centuries. Capturing the pattern of variability within a system (enough to declare a significant change from past to present) relies on correct assumptions about the temporal scale of the processes...
Native plant recovery in study plots after fennel (Foeniculum vulgare) control on Santa Cruz Island
Paula Power, Thomas R. Stanley, Clark Cowan, James R. Robertson
2014, Monographs of the Western North American Naturalist (7) 465-476
Santa Cruz Island is the largest of the California Channel Islands and supports a diverse and unique flora which includes 9 federally listed species. Sheep, cattle, and pigs, introduced to the island in the mid-1800s, disturbed the soil, browsed native vegetation, and facilitated the spread of exotic invasive plants. Recent...
Protection benefits desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii) abundance: the influence of three management strategies on a threatened species
Kristin H. Berry, Lisa M. Lyren, Julie L. Yee, Tracy Y. Bailey
2014, Herpetological Monographs (28) 66-92
We surveyed an area of ∼260 km2 in the western Mojave Desert to evaluate relationships between condition of Agassiz's Desert Tortoise populations (Gopherus agassizii) and habitat on lands that have experienced three different levels of management and protection. We established 240 1-ha plots using random sampling, with 80 plots on each of...
Trends in groundwater quality in principal aquifers of the United States, 1988-2012
Bruce D. Lindsey, Michael G. Rupert
2014, Book, 9th National Monitoring Conference
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Water-Quality Assessment (NAWQA) Program analyzed trends in groundwater quality throughout the nation for the sampling period of 1988-2012. Trends were determined for networks (sets of wells routinely monitored by the USGS) for a subset of constituents by statistical analysis of paired water-quality measurements...
Survival of adult Red-throated Loons (Gavia stellata) may be linked to marine conditions
Joel A. Schmutz
2014, Waterbirds (37) 118-124
Large variations in the summering population size of Red-throated Loons (Gavia stellata) have occurred in recent decades in Alaska. Little information exists about annual or seasonal survival rates of adult Red-throated Loons. This study used tracking data from satellite transmitters implanted into 33 Red-throated Loons captured on breeding areas in Alaska...
Generalisation operators
Larry V. Stanislawski, Barbara P. Buttenfield, Pia Bereuter, Sandro Savino, Cynthia A. Brewer
Dirk Burghardt, Cecile Duchene, William Mackaness, editor(s)
2014, Book chapter, Abstracting geographic information in a data rich world
This chapter summarises cartographic generalisation operators used to generalise geospatial data. It includes a review of recent approaches that have been tested or implemented to generalise networks, points, or groups. Emphasis is placed on recent advances that permit additional flexibility to tailor generalisation processing in particular geographic contexts, and to...
Presence of the Corexit component dioctyl sodium sulfosuccinate in Gulf of Mexico waters after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill
James L. Gray, Leslie K. Kanagy, Edward T. Furlong, Chris J. Kanagy, Jeff W. McCoy, Andrew Mason, Gunnar Lauenstein
2014, Chemosphere (95) 124-130
Between April 22 and July 15, 2010, approximately 4.9 million barrels of oil were released into the Gulf of Mexico from the Deepwater Horizon oil well. Approximately 16% of the oil was chemically dispersed, at the surface and at 1500 m depth, using Corexit 9527 and Corexit 9500, which contain...
Inference of strata separation and gas emission paths in longwall overburden using continuous wavelet transform of well logs and geostatistical simulation
C. Ozgen Karacan, Ricardo A. Olea
2014, Journal of Applied Geophysics (105) 147-158
Prediction of potential methane emission pathways from various sources into active mine workings or sealed gobs from longwall overburden is important for controlling methane and for improving mining safety. The aim of this paper is to infer strata separation intervals and thus gas emission pathways from standard well log...
A bootstrap estimation scheme for chemical compositional data with nondetects
Javier Palarea-Albaladejo, J.A Martin-Fernandez, Ricardo A. Olea
2014, Journal of Chemometrics (28) 585-599
The bootstrap method is commonly used to estimate the distribution of estimators and their associated uncertainty when explicit analytic expressions are not available or are difficult to obtain. It has been widely applied in environmental and geochemical studies, where the data generated often represent parts of whole, typically chemical concentrations....
Distribution of soil organic carbon in the conterminous United States
Norman B. Bliss, Sharon Waltman, Larry T. West, Anne Neale, Megan Mehaffey
Alfred E. Hartemink, Kevin M. McSweeney, editor(s)
2014, Book chapter, Soil Carbon
The U.S. Soil Survey Geographic (SSURGO) database provides detailed soil mapping for most of the conterminous United States (CONUS). These data have been used to formulate estimates of soil carbon stocks, and have been useful for environmental models, including plant productivity models, hydrologic models, and ecological models for studies of...
Holocene and latest Pleistocene paleoseismology of the Salt Lake City segment of the Wasatch Fault Zone, Utah, at the Penrose Drive Trench Site
Christopher B. DuRoss, Michael D. Hylland, Greg N. McDonald, Anthony J. Crone, Stephen F. Personius, Ryan D. Gold, Shannon Mahan
2014, Report, Evaluating surface faulting chronologies of Graben-Bounding Faults in Salt Lake Valley, Utah: new paleoseismic data from the Salt Lake City segment of the Wasatch Fault Zone and the West Valley Fault Zone
The Salt Lake City segment (SLCS) of the Wasatch fault zone (WFZ) and the West Valley fault zone (WVFZ) compromise Holocene-active normal faults that bound a large intrabasin graben in northern Salt Lake Valley and have evidence of recurrent, large-magnitude (M ~6-7) surface-faulting earthquakes. However, at the time of this...
