Conservation paleobiology: Leveraging knowledge of the past to inform conservation and restoration
Gregory P. Dietl, Susan M. Kidwell, Mark Brenner, David A. Burney, Karl W. Flessa, Stephen T. Jackson, Paul L. Koch
2015, Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences (43) 79-103
Humans now play a major role in altering Earth and its biota. Finding ways to ameliorate human impacts on biodiversity and to sustain and restore the ecosystem services on which we depend is a grand scientific and societal challenge. Conservation paleobiology is an emerging discipline that uses geohistorical data to...
Western juniper management: assessing strategies for improving greater sage-grouse habitat and rangeland productivity
Shahla Farzan, Derek J.N. Young, Allison G. Dedrick, Mattew Hamilton, Erik C. Porse, Peter S. Coates, Gabriel Sampson
2015, Environmental Management (56) 675-683
Western juniper (Juniperus occidentalis subsp. occidentalis) range expansion into sagebrush steppe ecosystems has affected both native wildlife and economic livelihoods across western North America. The potential listing of the greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) under the U.S. Endangered Species Act has spurred a decade of juniper removal efforts,...
Flood-inundation maps for the White River at Indianapolis, Indiana, 2014
Elizabeth A. Nystrom
2015, Scientific Investigations Report 2015-5051
Digital flood-inundation maps for a 6.4-mile reach of the White River in Indianapolis, Indiana, from 0.3 miles upstream of Michigan Street to the Harding Street Generating Station dam (at the confluence with Lick Creek), were created by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in cooperation with the Indiana Office of Community...
Geochemical and mineralogical sampling of the Devonian shales in the Broadtop synclinorium, Appalachian basin, in Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania
Catherine B. Enomoto, James L. Coleman Jr., Christopher S. Swezey, Patrick W. Niemeyer, Frank T. Dulong
2015, Open-File Report 2015-1061
Reconnaissance field mapping and outcrop sampling for geochemical and mineralogical analyses indicate that the Middle Devonian Marcellus Shale in the Broadtop synclinorium and nearby areas from southeastern West Virginia to south-central Pennsylvania has an organic content sufficiently high and a thermal maturity sufficiently moderate to be considered for a shale...
Historic and forecasted population and land-cover change in eastern North Carolina, 1992-2030
Peter R. Claggett, Hearn Jr., David I. Donato
2015, Open-File Report 2014-1125
The Southeast Regional Partnership for Planning and Sustainability (SERPPAS) was formed in 2005 as a partnership between the Department of Defense (DOD) and State and Federal agencies to promote better collaboration in making resource-use decisions. In support of this goal, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) conducted a study to evaluate...
Coupled interactions between volatile activity and Fe oxidation state during arc crustal processes
Madeleine C.S. Humphreys, R Brooker, D.C. Fraser, A Burgisser, Margaret T. Mangan, C McCammon
2015, Journal of Petrology 1-20
Arc magmas erupted at the Earth’s surface are commonly more oxidized than those produced at mid-ocean ridges. Possible explanations for this high oxidation state are that the transfer of fluids during the subduction process results in direct oxidation of the sub-arc mantle wedge, or that oxidation is caused by the...
A pheromone outweighs temperature in influencing migration of sea lamprey
Cory O. Brant, Ke Li, Nicholas S. Johnson, Weiming Li
2015, Royal Society Open Science (2) 1-7
Organisms continuously acquire and process information from surrounding cues. While some cues complement one another in delivering more reliable information, others may provide conflicting information. How organisms extract and use reliable information from a multitude of cues is largely unknown. We examined movement decisions of sea lampreys (Petromyzon marinus L.) exposed...
A field investigation of the basaltic ring structures of the Channeled Scabland and the relevance to Mars
Laszlo P. Keszthelyi, Windy L. Jaeger
2015, Geomorphology (240) 34-43
The basaltic ring structure (BRS) is a class of peculiar features only reported in the Channeled Scabland of eastern Washington State. They have been suggested to be good analogs, however, for some circular features on Mars. BRSs are found where Pleistocene floods scoured the Columbia River Basin, stripping off the...
Hydrology of the middle San Pedro area, southeastern Arizona
Jeffrey T. Cordova, Jesse E. Dickinson, Kimberly R. Beisner, Candice B. Hopkins, Jeffrey R. Kennedy, Donald R. Pool, Edward P. Glenn, Pamela L. Nagler, Blakemore E. Thomas
2015, Scientific Investigations Report 2013-5040
In the middle San Pedro Watershed in southeastern Arizona, groundwater is the primary source of water supply for municipal, domestic, industrial, and agricultural use. The watershed comprises two smaller subareas, the Benson subarea and the Narrows-Redington subarea. Early 21st century projections for heavy population growth in the watershed have not...
A Systems Thinking approach to post-disaster restoration of maritime transportation systems
Lizzette Perez Lespier, Suzanna K. Long, Thomas G. Shoberg
2015, Conference Paper
A Systems Thinking approach is used to examine elements of a maritime transportation system that are most likely to be impacted by an extreme event. The majority of the literature uses a high-level view that can fail to capture the damage at...
Temporal patterns in adult salmon migration timing across southeast Alaska
Ryan P. Kovach, Stephen Ellison, Sanjay Pyare, David Tallmon
2015, Global Change Biology (21) 1821-1833
Pacific salmon migration timing can drive population productivity, ecosystem dynamics, and human harvest. Nevertheless, little is known about long-term variation in salmon migration timing for multiple species across broad regions. We used long-term data for five Pacific salmon species throughout rapidly warming southeast Alaska to describe long-term changes in salmon...
AMDTreat 5.0+ with PHREEQC titration module to compute caustic chemical quantity, effluent quality, and sludge volume
Charles A. Cravotta III, Brent P Means, Willam Arthur, Robert M McKenzie, David L. Parkhurst
2015, Mine Water and the Environment (34) 136-152
Alkaline chemicals are commonly added to discharges from coal mines to increase pH and decrease concentrations of acidity and dissolved aluminum, iron, manganese, and associated metals. The annual cost of chemical treatment depends on the type and quantities of chemicals added and sludge produced. The AMDTreat computer program, initially developed...
From patterns to causal understanding: Structural equation modeling (SEM) in soil ecology
Nico Eisenhauer, Jeff R Powell, James B. Grace, Matthew A. Bowker
2015, Pedobiologia (58) 65-72
In this perspectives paper we highlight a heretofore underused statistical method in soil ecological research, structural equation modeling (SEM). SEM is commonly used in the general ecological literature to develop causal understanding from observational data, but has been more slowly adopted by soil ecologists. We provide some basic information on...
Landscape characteristics influencing the genetic structure of greater sage-grouse within the stronghold of their range: a holistic modeling approach
Jeff R Row, Sara J. Oyler-McCance, Jennifer A. Fike, Michael S. O’Donnell, Kevin E. Doherty, Cameron L. Aldridge, Zachary H. Bowen, Brad C. Fedy
2015, Ecology and Evolution (5) 1955-1969
Given the significance of animal dispersal to population dynamics and geographic variability, understanding how dispersal is impacted by landscape patterns has major ecological and conservation importance. Speaking to the importance of dispersal, the use of linear mixed models to compare genetic differentiation with pairwise resistance derived from landscape resistance surfaces...
Dam-breach analysis and flood-inundation mapping for selected dams in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and near Atoka, Oklahoma
Molly J. Shivers, S. Jerrod Smith, Trevor S. Grout, Jason M. Lewis
2015, Scientific Investigations Report 2015-5052
Dams provide beneficial functions such as flood control, recreation, and storage of water supplies, but they also entail risk; dam breaches and resultant floods can cause substantial property damage and loss of life. The State of Oklahoma requires each owner of a high-hazard dam, which the Federal Emergency Management Agency...
Geologic and structural controls on rupture zone fabric: A field-based study of the 2010 Mw 7.2 El Mayor–Cucapah earthquake surface rupture
Orlando Teran, John L. Fletcher, Michael Oskin, Thomas Rockwell, Kenneth W. Hudnut, Ronald Spelz, Sinan Akciz, Ana Paula Hernandez-Flores, Alexander Morelan
2015, Geosphere (11) 899-920
We systematically mapped (scales >1:500) the surface rupture of the 4 April 2010 Mw (moment magnitude) 7.2 El Mayor-Cucapah earthquake through the Sierra Cucapah (Baja California, northwestern Mexico) to understand how faults with similar structural and lithologic characteristics control rupture zone fabric, which is here defined by the thickness, distribution,...
Optimizing water depth for wetland-dependent wildlife could increase wetland restoration success, water efficiency, and water security
Christopher P. Nadeau, Courtney J. Conway
2015, Restoration Ecology (23) 292-300
Securing water for wetland restoration efforts will be increasingly difficult as human populations demand more water and climate change alters the hydrologic cycle. Minimizing water use at a restoration site could help justify water use to competing users, thereby increasing future water security. Moreover, optimizing water depth for focal species...
Vegetation community response to tidal marsh restoration of a large river estuary
Lisa J. Belleveau, John Y. Takekawa, Isa Woo, Kelley L. Turner, Jesse B. Barham, Jean E. Takekawa, Christopher S. Ellings, Gerardo Chin-Leo
2015, Northwest Science (89) 136-147
Estuaries are biologically productive and diverse ecosystems that provide ecosystem services including protection of inland areas from flooding, filtering freshwater outflows, and providing habitats for fish and wildlife. Alteration of historic habitats, including diking for agriculture, has decreased the function of many estuarine systems, and recent conservation efforts have been...
Characterizing ground motions that collapse steel special moment-resisting frames or make them unrepairable
Anna H. Olsen, Thomas H. Heaton, John F. Hall
2015, Earthquake Spectra (31) 813-840
This work applies 64,765 simulated seismic ground motions to four models each of 6- or 20-story, steel special moment-resisting frame buildings. We consider two vector intensity measures and categorize the building response as “collapsed,” “unrepairable,” or “repairable.” We then propose regression models to predict the building responses from the intensity...
Hydrogeologic framework of the Santa Clara Valley, California
Randall T. Hanson
2015, Geosphere (11) 606-637
The hydrologic framework of the Santa Clara Valley in northern California was redefined on the basis of new data and a new hydrologic model. The regional groundwater flow systems can be subdivided into upper-aquifer and lower-aquifer systems that form a convergent flow system within a basin bounded by mountains...
Evidence of bottom-up limitations in nearshore marine systems based on otolith proxies of fish growth
Vanessa R. von Biela, Gordon H. Kruse, Franz J. Mueter, Bryan A. Black, David C. Douglas, Thomas E. Helser, Christian E. Zimmerman
2015, Marine Biology (162) 1019-1031
Fish otolith growth increments were used as indices of annual production at nine nearshore sites within the Alaska Coastal Current (downwelling region) and California Current (upwelling region) systems (~36–60°N). Black rockfish (Sebastes melanops) and kelp greenling (Hexagrammos decagrammus) were identified as useful indicators in pelagic and...
Consequences of actively managing a small Bull Trout population in a fragmented landscape
Robert K. Al-Chokhachy, Sean Moran, Peter McHugh, Shana Bernall, Wade Fredenberg, Joseph M. DosSantos
2015, Transactions of the American Fisheries Society (144) 515-531
Habitat fragmentation, which affects many native salmonid species, is one of the major factors contributing to the declines in distribution and abundance of Bull Trout Salvelinus confluentus. Increasingly, managers are considering options to maintain and enhance the persistence of isolated local populations through active management strategies. Understanding the ecological consequences of...
Minimizing marker mass and handling time when attaching radio-transmitters and geolocators to small songbirds
Henry M. Streby, Tara L. McAllister, Sean M. Peterson, Gunnar R. Kramer, Justin A. Lehman, David E. Andersen
2015, The Condor (117) 249-255
Radio-transmitters and light-level geolocators are currently small enough for use on songbirds weighing <15 g. Various methods are used to attach these markers to larger songbirds, but with small birds it becomes especially important to minimize marker mass and bird handling time. Here, we offer modifications to harness materials and...
Life-stage-specific physiology defines invasion extent of a riverine fish
David J. Lawrence, David A. Beauchamp, Julian D. Olden
2015, Journal of Animal Ecology (84) 879-888
Many ecologists have called for mechanism-based investigations to identify the underlying controls on species distributions. Understanding these controls can be especially useful to construct robust predictions of how a species range may change in response to climate change or the extent to which a non-native species may...
Intertidal biological indicators of coseismic subsidence during the Mw 7.8 Haida Gwaii, Canada, earthquake
Peter J. Haeussler, Robert C. Witter, Kelin Wang
2015, Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (105) 1265-1279
The 28 October 2012 Mw 7.8 Haida Gwaii earthquake was a megathrust earthquake along the very obliquely convergent Queen Charlotte margin of British Columbia, Canada. Coseismic deformation is not well constrained by geodesy, with only six Global Positioning System (GPS) sites and two tide gauge stations within 250 km of the rupture area....
