Hurricane Sandy science plan: impacts of storm surge, including disturbed estuarine and bay hydrology
Sarah A. Caskie
2013, Fact Sheet 2013-3092
Hurricane Sandy devastated some of the most heavily populated eastern coastal areas of the Nation. With a storm surge peaking at more than 19 feet, the powerful landscape-altering destruction of Hurricane Sandy is a stark reminder of why the Nation must become more resilient to coastal hazards. In response to...
Revised shallow and deep water-level and storage-volume changes in the Equus Beds Aquifer near Wichita, Kansas, predevelopment to 1993
Cristi V. Hansen, Jennifer L. Lanning-Rush, Andrew C. Ziegler
2013, Scientific Investigations Report 2013-5170
Beginning in the 1940s, the Wichita well field was developed in the Equus Beds aquifer in southwestern Harvey County and northwestern Sedgwick County to supply water to the city of Wichita. The decline of water levels in the aquifer was noted soon after the development of the Wichita well field...
Influence of monsoon-related riparian phenology on yellow-billed cuckoo habitat selection in Arizona
Cynthia S.A. Wallace, Miguel L. Villarreal, Charles van Riper III
2013, Journal of Biogeography (40) 2094-2107
Aim: The western yellow-billed cuckoo (Coccyzus americanus occidentalis), a Neotropical migrant bird, is facing steep population declines in its western breeding grounds owing primarily to loss of native habitat. The favoured esting habitat for the cuckoo in the south-western United States is low-elevation riparian forests and woodlands. Our aim...
Influence of management and precipitation on carbon fluxes in greatplains grasslands
Matthew B. Rigge, Bruce K. Wylie, Li Zhang, Stephen P. Boyte
2013, Ecological Indicators (34) 590-599
Suitable management and sufficient precipitation on grasslands can provide carbon sinks. The net carbon accumulation of a site from the atmosphere, modeled as the Net Ecosystem Productivity (NEP), is a useful means to gauge carbon balance. Previous research has developed methods to integrate flux tower data with satellite biophysical datasets...
Estimating riparian and agricultural evapotranspiration by reference crop evapotranspiration and MODIS Enhanced Vegetation Index
Pamela L. Nagler, Edward P. Glenn, Uyen Nguyen, Russell Scott, Tania Doody
2013, Remote Sensing (5) 3849-3871
Dryland river basins frequently support both irrigated agriculture and riparian vegetation and remote sensing methods are needed to monitor water use by both crops and natural vegetation in irrigation districts. We developed an algorithm for estimating actual evapotranspiration (ETa) based on the Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) from the Moderate Resolution...
InSAR Evidence for an active shallow thrust fault beneath the city of Spokane Washington, USA
Charles W. Wicks Jr., Craig S. Weaver, Paul Bodin, Brian L. Sherrod
2013, Journal of Geophysical Research B: Solid Earth (118) 1268-1276
In 2001, a nearly five month long sequence of shallow, mostly small magnitude earthquakes occurred beneath the city of Spokane, a city with a population of about 200,000, in the state of Washington. During most of the sequence, the earthquakes were not well located because seismic instrumentation was sparse. Despite...
Low copper and high manganese levels in prion protein plaques
Christopher J. Johnson, P.U.P.A. Gilbert, Mike Abrecth, Katherine L. Baldwin, Robin E. Russell, Joel A. Pedersen, Debbie McKenzie
2013, Viruses (5) 654-662
Accumulation of aggregates rich in an abnormally folded form of the prion protein characterize the neurodegeneration caused by transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs). The molecular triggers of plaque formation and neurodegeneration remain unknown, but analyses of TSE-infected brain homogenates and preparations enriched for abnormal prion protein suggest that reduced levels of...
Chuckwalla Valley multiple-well monitoring site, Chuckwalla Valley, Riverside County
Rhett R. Everett
2013, Open-File Report 2013-1221
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in cooperation with the Bureau of Land Management, is evaluating the geohydrology and water availability of the Chuckwalla Valley, California. As part of this evaluation, the USGS installed the Chuckwalla Valley multiple-well monitoring site (CWV1) in the southeastern portion of the Chuckwalla Basin. Data collected...
A computational- And storage-cloud for integration of biodiversity collections
A. Matsunaga, A. Thompson, R. J. Figueiredo, C.C Germain-Aubrey, M. Collins, R.S Beeman, B.J. Macfadden, G. Riccardi, P.S Soltis, L. M. Page, J.A.B Fortes
2013, Conference Paper, Proceedings - IEEE 9th International Conference on e-Science, e-Science 2013
A core mission of the Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio) project is the building and deployment of a cloud computing environment customized to support the digitization workflow and integration of data from all U.S. nonfederal biocollections. iDigBio chose to use cloud computing technologies to deliver a cyberinfrastructure that is flexible, agile,...
Comparison of a karst groundwater model with and without discrete conduit flow
Stephen P. Saller, Michael J. Ronayne, Andrew J. Long
2013, Hydrogeology Journal (21) 1555-1566
Karst aquifers exhibit a dual flow system characterized by interacting conduit and matrix domains. This study evaluated the coupled continuum pipe-flow framework for modeling karst groundwater flow in the Madison aquifer of western South Dakota (USA). Coupled conduit and matrix flow was simulated within a regional finite-difference model over a...
The 3D Elevation Program: summary for Texas
William J. Carswell Jr.
2013, Fact Sheet 2013-3097
Elevation data are essential to a broad range of applications, including forest resources management, wildlife and habitat management, national security, recreation, and many others. For the State of Texas, elevation data are critical for natural resources conservation; wildfire management, planning, and response; flood risk management; agriculture and precision farming; infrastructure...
Geologic map of the Washougal quadrangle, Clark County, Washington, and Multnomah County, Oregon
Russell C. Evarts, Jim E. O'Connor, Terry L. Tolan
2013, Scientific Investigations Map 3257
The Washougal 7.5’ quadrangle spans the boundary between the Portland Basin and the Columbia River Gorge, approximately 30 km east of Portland, Oregon. The map area contains the westernmost portion of the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic area as well as the rapidly growing areas surrounding the Clark County, Washington,...
Bayes and empirical Bayes estimators of abundance and density from spatial capture-recapture data
Robert M. Dorazio
2013, PLoS ONE (8)
In capture-recapture and mark-resight surveys, movements of individuals both within and between sampling periods can alter the susceptibility of individuals to detection over the region of sampling. In these circumstances spatially explicit capture-recapture (SECR) models, which incorporate the observed locations of individuals, allow population density and abundance to be estimated...
Classification of freshwater ice conditions on the Alaskan Arctic Coastal Plain using ground penetrating radar and TerraSAR-X satellite data
Benjamin M. Jones, Alessio Gusmeroli, Christopher D. Arp, Tazio Strozzi, Guido Grosse, Benjamin V. Gaglioti, Matthew S. Whitman
2013, International Journal of Remote Sensing (34) 8267-8279
Arctic freshwater ecosystems have responded rapidly to climatic changes over the last half century. Lakes and rivers are experiencing a thinning of the seasonal ice cover, which may increase potential over-wintering freshwater habitat, winter water supply for industrial withdrawal, and permafrost degradation. Here, we combined the use of ground penetrating...
A model of strength
Douglas H. Johnson, R.D. Cook
2013, Science (342) 192-193
In her AAAS News & Notes piece "Can the Southwest manage its thirst?" (26 July, p. 362), K. Wren quotes Ajay Kalra, who advocates a particular method for predicting Colorado River streamflow "because it eschews complex physical climate models for a statistical data-driven modeling approach." A preference for data-driven models...
Segmenting images automatically for granulometry and sedimentology: a martian case study
Suniti Karunatillake, Scott M. McLennan, Kenneth E. Herkenhoff, Jonathan M. Husch, Craig Hardgrove, J.R. Skok
2013, Icarus 408-417
In a companion work, we bridge the gap between mature segmentation software used in terrestrial sedimentology and emergent planetary segmentation with an original algorithm optimized to segment whole images from the Microscopic Imager (MI) of the Mars Exploration Rovers (MER). In this work, we compare its semi-automated outcome with manual photoanalyses using unconsolidated...
Phylogenetic conservatism in plant phenology
T. Jonathan Davies, Elizabeth M. Wolkovich, Nathan J. B. Kraft, Nicolas Salamin, Jenica M. Allen, Toby R. Ault, Julio L. Betancourt, Kjell Bolmgren, Elsa E. Cleland, Benjamin I. Cook, Theresa M. Crimmins, Susan J. Mazer, Gregory J. McCabe, Stephanie Pau, Jim Regetz, Mark D. Schwartz, Steven E. Travers
2013, Journal of Ecology (101) 1520-1530
Phenological events – defined points in the life cycle of a plant or animal – have been regarded as highly plastic traits, reflecting flexible responses to various environmental cues. The ability of a species to track, via shifts in phenological events, the abiotic environment through time might dictate its vulnerability to...
Network modularity reveals critical scales for connectivity in ecology and evolution
Robert J. Fletcher, Andre Revell, Brian E. Reichert, Wiley M. Kitchens, J. Dixon, James D. Austin
2013, Nature Communications (4) 1-7
For nearly a century, biologists have emphasized the profound importance of spatial scale for ecology, evolution and conservation. Nonetheless, objectively identifying critical scales has proven incredibly challenging. Here we extend new techniques from physics and social sciences that estimate modularity on networks to identify critical scales for movement and gene...
Estimated global nitrogen deposition using NO2 column density
Xuehe Lu, Hong Jiang, Xiuying Zhang, Jinxun Liu, Zhen Zhang, Jiaxin Jin, Ying Wang, Jianhui Xu, Miaomiao Cheng
2013, International Journal of Remote Sensing (34) 8893-8906
Global nitrogen deposition has increased over the past 100 years. Monitoring and simulation studies of nitrogen deposition have evaluated nitrogen deposition at both the global and regional scale. With the development of remote-sensing instruments, tropospheric NO2 column density retrieved from Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment (GOME) and Scanning Imaging Absorption...
Effects of dreissenids on monitoring and management of fisheries in western Lake Erie
Martin A. Stapanian, Patrick M. Kocovsky
2013, Book chapter, Quagga and zebra mussels: biology, impacts, and control
Water clarity increased in nearshore areas of western Lake Erie by the early-1990s mainly as a result of the filtering activities of dreissenid mussels (Dreissena spp.), which invaded in the mid-1980s. We hypothesized that increased water clarity would result in greater trawl avoidance and thus reduced ability to capture fish...
Variability and trends in irrigated and non-irrigated croplands in the central U.S
Jesslyn F. Brown, Md Shahriar Pervez
2013, Conference Paper, Information for sustainable agriculture, International Conference on Agro-Geoinformatics, 2nd, Fairfax, Va., 12–16 August 2013, Proceedings
Over 23 million hectares (233 thousand km2) of U.S. croplands are irrigated and there was an overall net expansion of 522 thousand hectares nationally from 2002 to 2007. Most of this expansion occurred across the High Plains Aquifer (HPA) in the central Great Plains. Until recently, there has been a...
Statistical mapping of zones of focused groundwater/surface-water exchange using fiber-optic distributed temperature sensing
Kisa Mwakanyamale, Frederick D. Day-Lewis, Lee D. Slater
2013, Water Resources Research (49) 6979-6984
Fiber-optic distributed temperature sensing (FO-DTS) increasingly is used to map zones of focused groundwater/surface-water exchange (GWSWE). Previous studies of GWSWE using FO-DTS involved identification of zones of focused GWSWE based on arbitrary cutoffs of FO-DTS time-series statistics (e.g., variance, cross-correlation between temperature and stage, or spectral power). New approaches are...
Seasonal circulation over the Catalan inner-shelf (northwest Mediterranean Sea)
Manel Grifoll, Alfredo L. Aretxabaleta, Josep L. Pelegri, Manuel Espino, John C. Warner, Agustin Sanchez-Arcilla
2013, Journal of Geophysical Research C: Oceans (118) 5844-5857
This study characterizes the seasonal cycle of the Catalan inner-shelf circulation using observations and complementary numerical results. The relation between seasonal circulation and forcing mechanisms is explored through the depth-averaged momentum balance, for the period between May 2010 and April 2011, when velocity observations were partially available. The monthly-mean along-shelf...
Alternative ways of using field-based estimates to calibrate ecosystem models and their implications for carbon cycle studies
Yujie He, Qianlai Zhuang, David McGuire, Yaling Liu, Min Chen
2013, Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences (118) 983-993
Model-data fusion is a process in which field observations are used to constrain model parameters. How observations are used to constrain parameters has a direct impact on the carbon cycle dynamics simulated by ecosystem models. In this study, we present an evaluation of several options for the use of observations...
Vs30 and spectral response from collocated shallow, active- and passive-source Vs data at 27 sites in Puerto Rico
Jack K. Odum, William J. Stephenson, Robert A. Williams, Christa von Hillebrandt-Andrade
2013, Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (103) 2709-2728
Shear‐wave velocity (VS) and time‐averaged shear‐wave velocity to 30 m depth (VS30) are the key parameters used in seismic site response modeling and earthquake engineering design. Where VS data are limited, available data are often used to develop and refine map‐based proxy models of VS30 for predicting ground‐motion intensities. In...
