Mineral potential tracts for shoreline Ti-Zr placer deposits (phase V, deliverable 85): Chapter P in Second projet de renforcement institutionnel du secteur minier de la République Islamique de Mauritanie (PRISM-II)
Georges Beaudoin
2015, Open-File Report 2013-1280-P
Shoreline placer Ti deposits are composed of ilmenite, rutile, zircon, monazite, and magnetite in well-sorted, fine- to medium-grained sand in coastal dunes, beaches and inlets. In addition to titanium, zirconium, in particular, and rare earth elements (REE) have become a major source of value in shoreline placer deposits. Shoreline placer...
Book review: Rare earth elements—A new approach to the nexus of supply, demand and use: exemplified along the use of neodymium in permanent magnets
Bradley S. Van Gosen
2015, Economic Geology (110) 1137-1138
This book is part of the “Springer Theses” published by Springer, a book series designed to highlight and share outstanding Ph.D. research. As explained by Springer (on the second page), this series “brings together a selection of the very best Ph.D. theses from around the world and across the physical...
Factors affecting female space use in ten populations of prairie chickens
Virginia L. Winder, Kaylan M. Carrlson, Andrew J. Gregory, Christian A. Hagen, David A. Haukos, Dylan C. Kesler, Lena C. Larsson, Ty W. Matthews, Lance B. McNew, Michael Patten, Jim C. Pitman, Larkin A. Powell, Jennifer A. Smith, Tom Thompson, Donald H. Wolfe, Brett K. Sandercock
2015, Ecosphere (6) 1-17
Conservation of wildlife depends on an understanding of the interactions between animal movements and key landscape factors. Habitat requirements of wide-ranging species often vary spatially, but quantitative assessment of variation among replicated studies at multiple sites is rare. We investigated patterns of space use for 10 populations of two closely...
Isotopes in North American Rocky Mountain snowpack 1993–2014
Lesleigh Anderson, Max Berkelhammer, M. Alisa Mast
2015, Quaternary Science Reviews (131) 262-273
We present ∼1300 new isotopic measurements (δ18O and δ2H) from a network of snowpack sites in the Rocky Mountains that have been sampled since 1993. The network includes 177 locations where depth-integrated snow samples are collected each spring near peak accumulation. At 57 of...
Do geographically isolated wetlands influence landscape functions?
Matthew J. Cohen, Irena F. Creed, Laurie C. Alexander, Nandita Basu, Aram J.K. Calhoun, Christopher Craft, Ellen D’Amico, Edward S. DeKeyser, Laurie Fowler, Heather E. Golden, James W. Jawitz, Peter Kalla, L. Katherine Kirkman, Charles R. Lane, Megan Lang, Scott G. Leibowitz, David Bruce Lewis, John Marton, Daniel L. McLaughlin, David M. Mushet, Hadas Raanan-Kiperwas, Mark C. Rains, Lora Smith, Susan C. Walls
2015, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Geographically isolated wetlands (GIWs), those surrounded by uplands, exchange materials, energy, and organisms with other elements in hydrological and habitat networks, contributing to landscape functions, such as flow generation, nutrient and sediment retention, and biodiversity support. GIWs constitute most of the wetlands in many North American landscapes, provide a disproportionately...
Taxonomic characterization of honey bee (Apis mellifera) pollen foraging based on non-overlapping paired-end sequencing of nuclear ribosomal loci
Robert S. Cornman, Clint Otto, Deborah D. Iwanowicz, Jeffery S Pettis
2015, PLoS ONE (10) 1-26
Identifying plant taxa that honey bees (Apis mellifera) forage upon is of great apicultural interest, but traditional methods are labor intensive and may lack resolution. Here we evaluate a high-throughput genetic barcoding approach to characterize trap-collected pollen from multiple North Dakota apiaries across multiple years. We used the Illumina MiSeq...
An apparatus reconstruction of the conodont Caenodontus serrulatus Behnken 1975
Merlynd K. Nestell, Bruce R. Wardlaw
2015, Micropaleontology (v. 61) 293-300
The conodont species Caenodontus serrulatus Behnken is a rare coniform element first described in 1975 from Guadalupian strata exposed in the Guadalupe and Delaware Mountains of West Texas. Because it is rare, coniform, and occurs long after most coniform elements supposedly disappeared, it has been hauntingly mysterious. Based on new...
Establishing conservation baselines with dynamic distribution models for bat populations facing imminent decline
Thomas J. Rodhouse, Patricia C. Ormsbee, Kathryn M. Irvine, Lee A. Vierling, Joseph M. Szewczak, Kerri T. Vierling
2015, Diversity and Distributions (21) 1401-1413
Aim Bat mortality rates from white-nose syndrome and wind power development are unprecedented. Cryptic and wide-ranging behaviours of bats make them difficult to survey, and population estimation is often intractable. We advance a model-based framework for making spatially explicit predictions about summertime distributions of bats from capture and acoustic surveys. Motivated...
The petroleum geologist and the insurance policy
Susan E. Hough, Morgan T. Page
2015, Seismological Research Letters (87) 171-176
In a recent study, Hough and Page (2015) presented several lines of evidence suggesting that most of the significant earthquakes in Oklahoma during the twentieth century, including the Mw 5.7 El Reno earthquake of 9 April 1952, were likely induced by wastewater injection and possibly secondary oil recovery operations. We...
Comparison of U.S. net import reliance for nonfuel mineral commodities—A 60-year retrospective (1954–1984–2014)
Steven M. Fortier, DeYoung Jr., Elizabeth S. Sangine, Emily K. Schnebele
2015, Fact Sheet 2015-3082
Introduction The economic vitality and national security of the United States depend on the reliable supply of numerous nonfuel mineral commodities. Over the past six decades, many of these commodities have been sourced increasingly from outside the United States. The mix of commodities for which the United States is import dependent...
Occupancy estimation for rare species using a spatially-adaptive sampling design
Krishna Pacifici, Brian J. Reich, Robert Dorazio, Michael J. Conroy
2015, Methods in Ecology and Evolution (7) 285-293
Summary 1. Spatially clustered populations create unique challenges for conservation monitoring programmes. Advances in methodology typically are focused on either the design or the modelling stage of the study but do not involve integration of both. 2. We integrate adaptive cluster sampling and spatial occupancy modelling by developing two models to handle...
Water quality and fish dynamics in forested wetlands associated with an oxbow lake
Caroline S. Andrews, Leandro E. Miranda, Robert Kroger
2015, Southeastern Naturalist (14) 623-634
Forested wetlands represent some of the most distinct environments in the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley. Depending on season, water in forested wetlands can be warm, stagnant, and oxygen-depleted, yet may support high fish diversity. Fish assemblages in forested wetlands are not well studied because of difficulties in sampling heavily structured...
Hybridization between Dusky Grouse and Sharp-tailed Grouse
Ryan P. O’Donnell
2015, Western Birds (46) 351-352
Cache County, Utah, 7 April 2013: rare hybrid combination of grouse noted. Hybridization between Dusky Grouse (Dendragapus obscurus) and Sharp-tailed Grouse (Tympanuchus phasianellus) has been rarely documented in the wild. The only published record was of one collected from Osoyoos, British Columbia, in 1906 (Brooks 1907, Lincoln 1950). There is...
Evaluating potential conservation conflicts between two listed species: Sea otters and black abalone
Peter T. Raimondi, Laura J. Jurgens, M. Tim Tinker
2015, Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics (96) 3102-3108
Population consequences of endangered species interacting as predators and prey have been considered theoretically and legally, but rarely investigated in the field. We examined relationships between spatially variable populations of a predator, the California sea otter, Enhydra lutris nereis, and a prey species, the black abalone, Haliotis cracherodii. Both species are federally...
Rare earth elements in sedimentary phosphate deposits: Solution to the global REE crisis?
Poul Emsbo, Patrick I. McLaughlin, George N. Breit, Edward A. du Bray, Alan E. Koenig
2015, Gondwana Research (27) 776-785
The critical role of rare earth elements (REEs), particularly heavy REEs (HREEs), in high-tech industries has created a surge in demand that is quickly outstripping known global supply and has triggered a worldwide scramble to discover new sources. The chemical analysis of 23 sedimentary phosphate deposits (phosphorites) in the United...
Persistent U(IV) and U(VI) following in-situ recovery (ISR) mining of a sandstone uranium deposit, Wyoming, USA
Tanya J. Gallegos, Kate M. Campbell, Robert A. Zielinski, P.W. Reimus, J.T. Clay, N. Janot, J. J. Bargar, William Benzel
2015, Applied Geochemistry (63) 222-234
Drill-core samples from a sandstone-hosted uranium (U) deposit in Wyoming were characterized to determine the abundance and distribution of uranium following in-situ recovery (ISR) mining with oxygen- and carbon dioxide-enriched water. Concentrations of uranium, collected from ten depth intervals, ranged from 5 to 1920 ppm. A...
Case Study, California Black Rail (Laterallus jamaicensis corturniculus): Science Foundation Chapter 5, Appendix 5.1 in The Baylands and climate change: What can we do?
Jules G. Evens, Karen M. Thorne
2015, Report, The Baylands and climate change: What can we do? Baylands Ecosystem Habitat Goals science update 2015
The Black Rail is the smallest member of the avian family Rallidae and has a wide-ranging but highly scattered distribution throughout the New World. Of five subspecies, two occur in North America—the Eastern Black Rail (L.j. jamaicensis) and the California Black Rail (L.j. coturniculus). Throughout its range, the Black Rail...
Hydrothermal response to a volcano-tectonic earthquake swarm, Lassen, California
Steven E. Ingebritsen, David R. Shelly, Paul A. Hsieh, Laura Clor, P.H. Seward, William C. Evans
2015, Geophysical Research Letters (42) 9223-9230
The increasing capability of seismic, geodetic, and hydrothermal observation networks allows recognition of volcanic unrest that could previously have gone undetected, creating an imperative to diagnose and interpret unrest episodes. A November 2014 earthquake swarm near Lassen Volcanic National Park, California, which included the largest earthquake in the area in...
Potential estrogenic effects of wastewaters on gene expression in Pimephales promelas and fish assemblages in streams of southeastern New York
Barry P. Baldigo, Scott D. George, Patrick J. Phillips, Joceyln D. C. Hemming, Nancy D. Denslow, Kevin J. Kroll
2015, Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (34) 2803-2815
Direct linkages between endocrine-disrupting compounds (EDCs) from municipal and industrial wastewaters and impacts on wild fish assemblages are rare. The levels of plasma vitellogenin (Vtg) and Vtg messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) in male fathead minnows (Pimephales promelas) exposed to wastewater effluents and dilutions of 17α-ethinylestradiol (EE2), estrogen activity, and fish...
Multiple estimates of effective population size for monitoring a long-lived vertebrate: An application to Yellowstone grizzly bears
Pauline L. Kamath, Mark A. Haroldson, Gordon Luikart, David Paetkau, Craig L. Whitman, Frank T. van Manen
2015, Molecular Ecology (24) 5507-5521
Effective population size (Ne) is a key parameter for monitoring the genetic health of threatened populations because it reflects a population's evolutionary potential and risk of extinction due to genetic stochasticity. However, its application to wildlife monitoring has been limited because it is difficult to measure in natural populations. The...
Ground motions from the 2015Mw 7.8 Gorkha, Nepal, earthquake constrained by a detailed assessment of macroseismic data
Stacey Martin, Susan E. Hough, Charleen Hung
2015, Seismological Research Letters (86) 1524-1532
To augment limited instrumental recordings of the Mw 7.8 Gorkha, Nepal, earthquake on 25 April 2015 (Nepali calendar: 12 Baisakh 2072, Bikram Samvat), we collected 3831 detailed media and first-person accounts of macroseismic effects that include sufficiently detailed information to assign intensities. The resulting intensity map reveals the distribution of shaking within...
Spatially explicit spectral analysis of point clouds and geospatial data
Daniel D. Buscombe
2015, Computers & Geosciences (86) 92-108
The increasing use of spatially explicit analyses of high-resolution spatially distributed data (imagery and point clouds) for the purposes of characterising spatial heterogeneity in geophysical phenomena necessitates the development of custom analytical and computational tools. In recent years, such analyses have become the basis of, for example, automated texture characterisation...
Geochemistry and origin of metamorphosed mafic rocks from the Lower Paleozoic Moretown and Cram Hill Formations of North-Central Vermont: Delamination magmatism in the western New England appalachians
Raymond Coish, Jonathan Kim, Evan Twelker, Scott P. Zolkos, Gregory J. Walsh
2015, American Journal of Science (315) 809-845
The Moretown Formation, exposed as a north-trending unit that extends from northern Vermont to Connecticut, is located along a critical Appalachian litho-tectonic zone between the paleomargin of Laurentia and accreted oceanic terranes. Remnants of magmatic activity, in part preserved as metamorphosed mafic rocks in the Moretown Formation and the overlying...
Using hydrophones as a surrogate monitoring technique to detect temporal and spatial variability in bedload transport
Mathieu D. Marineau, J. Toby Minear, Scott Wright
2015, Conference Paper
Collecting physical bedload measurements is an expensive and time-consuming endeavor that rarely captures the spatial and temporal variability of sediment transport. Technological advances can improve monitoring of sediment transport by filling in temporal gaps between physical sampling periods. We have developed a low-cost hydrophone recording system designed to record the...
Arctic Alaska’s Lower Cretaceous (Hauterivian and Barremian) mudstone succession—Linking lithofacies, texture, and geochemistry to marine processes
Margaret A. Keller, Joe H.S. Macquaker
Julie A. Dumoulin, editor(s)
2015, Professional Paper 1814-B
We present new images and descriptions of the lithofacies and organic facies of the pebble shale unit and lower part of the Hue Shale (Lower Cretaceous) of Arctic Alaska at a high magnification that illustrates their textural characteristics. Our aims were to describe and determine the distribution of facies in...
