Spatial occupancy models for large data sets
Devin S. Johnson, Paul B. Conn, Mevin Hooten, Justina C. Ray, Bruce A. Pond
2013, Ecology (94) 801-808
Since its development, occupancy modeling has become a popular and useful tool for ecologists wishing to learn about the dynamics of species occurrence over time and space. Such models require presence–absence data to be collected at spatially indexed survey units. However, only recently have researchers recognized the need to correct...
Aggregation of carbon dioxide sequestration storage assessment units
Madalyn S. Blondes, John H. Schuenemeyer, Ricardo A. Olea, Lawrence J. Drew
2013, Stochastic Environmental Research and Risk Assessment (27) 1839-1859
The U.S. Geological Survey is currently conducting a national assessment of carbon dioxide (CO2) storage resources, mandated by the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. Pre-emission capture and storage of CO2 in subsurface saline formations is one potential method to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the negative impact of...
At-sea behavior varies with lunar phase in a nocturnal pelagic seabird, the swallow-tailed gull
Sebastian M. Cruz, Mevin Hooten, Kathryn P. Huyvaert, Carolina B. Proano, David J. Anderson, Vsevolod Afanasyev, Martin Wikelski
2013, PLoS ONE (8)
Strong and predictable environmental variability can reward flexible behaviors among animals. We used long-term records of activity data that cover several lunar cycles to investigate whether behavior at-sea of swallow-tailed gulls Creagrus furcatus, a nocturnal pelagic seabird, varied with lunar phase in the Galápagos Islands. A Bayesian hierarchical model showed...
Inferential consequences of modeling rather than measuring snow accumulation in studies of animal ecology
Paul C. Cross, Robert W. Klaver, Angela Brennan, Scott Creel, Jon P. Beckmann, Megan D. Higgs, Brandon M. Scurlock
2013, Ecological Applications (23) 643-653
Abstract. It is increasingly common for studies of animal ecology to use model-based predictions of environmental variables as explanatory or predictor variables, even though model prediction uncertainty is typically unknown. To demonstrate the potential for misleading inferences when model predictions with error are used in place of direct measurements, we...
One hundred and six years of population and community dynamics of Sonoran Desert Laboratory perennials
Susana Rodriguez-Buritica, Helen Raichle, Robert H. Webb, Raymond M. Turner, Larry Venable
2013, Ecological Archives (94) 976-976
This data set constitutes all information associated with the Spalding-Shreve permanent vegetation plots from 1906 through 2012, which is the longest-running plant monitoring program in the world. The program consists of detailed maps of all Sonoran Desert perennial plants in 30 permanent plots located on Tumamoc Hill, near Tucson, Arizona,...
Hydrogeology of the West Branch Delaware River basin, Delaware County, New York
Richard J. Reynolds
2013, Scientific Investigations Report 2013-5025
In 2009, the U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, began a study of the hydrogeology of the West Branch Delaware River (Cannonsville Reservoir) watershed. There has been recent interest by energy companies in developing the natural gas reserves that are trapped within...
The 3D Elevation Program: summary for Wisconsin
William J. Carswell Jr.
2013, Fact Sheet 2013-3032
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 Wisconsin, elevation data are critical for agriculture and precision farming, natural resources conservation, flood risk management, infrastructure and construction management, water supply...
In situ quantification of Br and Cl in minerals and fluid inclusions by LA-ICP-MS: a powerful tool to identify fluid sources
Johannes Hammerli, Brian Rusk, Carl Spandler, Poul Emsbo, Nicholas H.S. Oliver
2013, Chemical Geology (337-338) 75-87
Bromine and chlorine are important halogens for fluid source identification in the Earth's crust, but until recently we lacked routine analytical techniques to determine the concentration of these elements in situ on a micrometer scale in minerals and fluid inclusions. In this study, we evaluate the potential of in situ...
New perspectives on the geometry of the Albuquerque Basin, Rio Grande rift, New Mexico: Insights from geophysical models of rift-fill thickness
V. J. Grauch, Sean D. Connell
2013, Special Paper of the Geological Society of America (494) 427-462
Discrepancies among previous models of the geometry of the Albuquerque Basin motivated us to develop a new model using a comprehensive approach. Capitalizing on a natural separation between the densities of mainly Neogene basin fill (Santa Fe Group) and those of older rocks, we developed a three-dimensional (3D) geophysical model...
History and evaluation of national-scale geochemical data sets for the United States
David B. Smith, Steven M. Smith, John D. Horton
2013, Geoscience Frontiers (4) 167-183
Six national-scale, or near national-scale, geochemical data sets for soils or stream sediments exist for the United States. The earliest of these, here termed the ‘Shacklette’ data set, was generated by a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) project conducted from 1961 to 1975. This project used soil collected from a depth...
Groundwater well inventory and assessment in the area of the proposed Normally Pressured Lance natural gas development project, Green River Basin, Wyoming, 2012
Michael J. Sweat
2013, Data Series 770
During May through September 2012, the U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the Bureau of Land Management, inventoried and assessed existing water wells in southwestern Wyoming for inclusion in a possible groundwater-monitor network. Records were located for 3,282 wells in the upper Green River Basin, which includes the U.S. Geological...
UNLV’s environmentally friendly Science and Engineering Building is monitored for earthquake shaking
Erol Kalkan, Woody Savage, Shahneam Reza, Eric Knight, Ying Tian
2013, Fact Sheet 2013-3022
The University of Nevada Las Vegas’ (UNLV) Science and Engineering Building is at the cutting edge of environmentally friendly design. As the result of a recent effort by the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Strong Motion Project in cooperation with UNLV, the building is now also in the forefront of buildings...
Landscape consequences of natural gas extraction in Fayette and Lycoming Counties, Pennsylvania, 2004–2010
E.T. Slonecker, L.E. Milheim, C.M. Roig-Silva, A.R. Malizia, B.H. Gillenwater
2013, Open-File Report 2013-1119
Increased demands for cleaner burning energy, coupled with the relatively recent technological advances in accessing unconventional hydrocarbon-rich geologic formations, have led to an intense effort to find and extract natural gas from various underground sources around the country. One of these sources, the Marcellus Shale, located in the Allegheny Plateau,...
The timing of scour and fill in a gravel-bedded river measured with buried accelerometers
Andrew S. Gendaszek, Christopher S. Magirl, Christiana R. Czuba, Christopher P. Konrad
2013, Journal of Hydrology (495) 186-196
A device that measures the timing of streambed scour and the duration of sediment mobilization at specific depths of a streambed was developed using data-logging accelerometers placed within the gravel substrate of the Cedar River, Washington, USA. Each accelerometer recorded its orientation every 20 min and remained stable until the...
Heterogeneous rupture in the great Cascadia earthquake of 1700 inferred from coastal subsidence estimates
Pei-Ling Wang, Simon E. Engelhart, Kelin Wang, Andrea D. Hawkes, Benjamin P. Horton, Alan R. Nelson, Robert C. Witter
2013, Journal of Geophysical Research B: Solid Earth (118) 2460-2473
Past earthquake rupture models used to explain paleoseismic estimates of coastal subsidence during the great A.D. 1700 Cascadia earthquake have assumed a uniform slip distribution along the megathrust. Here we infer heterogeneous slip for the Cascadia margin in A.D. 1700 that is analogous to slip distributions during instrumentally recorded great...
Documenting the stages and streamflows associated with the 2011 activation of the New Madrid Floodway, Missouri
Todd A. Koenig, Robert R. Holmes Jr.
2013, Professional Paper 1798-E
The U.S. Geological Survey initiated a substantial effort in the summer of 2011 to measure and document the record-setting floods of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, including the reach in and near the New Madrid Floodway. The activation of the floodway, which had not occurred since 1937, provided a rare...
Estimating wildfire risk on a Mojave Desert landscape using remote sensing and field sampling
Peter F. Van Linn III, Kenneth E. Nussear, Todd C. Esque, Lesley A. DeFalco, Richard D. Inman, Scott R. Abella
2013, International Journal of Wildland Fire (22) 770-779
Predicting wildfires that affect broad landscapes is important for allocating suppression resources and guiding land management. Wildfire prediction in the south-western United States is of specific concern because of the increasing prevalence and severe effects of fire on desert shrublands and the current lack of accurate fire prediction tools. We...
Doppler weather radar observations of the 2009 eruption of Redoubt Volcano, Alaska
David J. Schneider, Richard P. Hoblitt
2013, Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research (259) 133-144
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) deployed a transportable Doppler C-band radar during the precursory stage of the 2009 eruption of Redoubt Volcano, Alaska that provided valuable information during subsequent explosive events. We describe the capabilities of this new monitoring tool and present data captured during the Redoubt eruption. The MiniMax...
A Unified Flash Flood Database across the United States
Jonathan J. Gourley, Yang Hong, Zachary L. Flamig, Ami Arthur, Robert Clark, Martin Calianno, Isabelle Ruin, Terry W. Ortel, Michael Wieczorek, Pierre-Emmanuel Kirstetter, Edward Clark, Witold F. Krajewski
2013, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (94) 799-805
Despite flash flooding being one of the most deadly and costly weather-related natural hazards worldwide, individual datasets to characterize them in the United States are hampered by limited documentation and can be difficult to access. This study is the first of its kind to assemble, reprocess, describe, and disseminate a...
A natural resource condition assessment for Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks: Appendix 14: plants of conservation concern
Ann Huber, Adrian Das, Rebecca Wenk, Sylvia Haultain
2013, Natural Resource Report NPS/SEKI/NRR--2013/665.14
Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks are located in the California Floristic Province, which has been named one of world‘s hotspots of endemic biodiversity (Myers et al. 2000). The California Floristic Province is the largest and most important geographic floristic unit in California and extends from the Klamath Mountains of...
Modeling rain-fed maize vulnerability to droughts using the standardized precipitation index from satellite estimated rainfall—Southern Malawi case study
Christopher C. Funk, James Verdin, Adams Chavula, Gregory J. Husak, Harikishan Jayanthi, Tamuka Magadzire
2013, International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction (4) 71-81
During 1990s, disaster risk reduction emerged as a novel, proactive approach to managing risks from natural hazards. The World Bank, USAID, and other international donor agencies began making efforts to mainstream disaster risk reduction in countries whose population and economies were heavily dependent on rain-fed agriculture. This approach has more...
Operational evapotranspiration mapping using remote sensing and weather datasets: A new parameterization for the SSEB approach
Gabriel B. Senay, Stefanie Bohms, Ramesh K. Singh, Prasanna H. Gowda, Naga Manohar Velpuri, Henok Alemu, James P. Verdin
2013, Journal of the American Water Resources Association (49) 577-591
The increasing availability of multi-scale remotely sensed data and global weather datasets is allowing the estimation of evapotranspiration (ET) at multiple scales. We present a simple but robust method that uses remotely sensed thermal data and model-assimilated weather fields to produce ET for the contiguous United States (CONUS) at monthly...
Legal, ethical, and procedural bases for the use of aseptic techniques to implant electronic devices
Daniel M. Mulcahy
2013, Journal of Fish and Wildlife Management (4) 211-219
The popularity of implanting electronic devices such as transmitters and data loggers into captive and free-ranging animals has increased greatly in the past two decades. The devices have become smaller, more reliable, and more capable (Printz 2004; Wilson and Gifford 2005; Metcalfe et al. 2012). Compared with externally mounted devices,...
The influence of coarse-scale environmental features on current and predicted future distributions of narrow-range endemic crayfish populations
Joseph J. Dyer, Shannon K. Brewer, Thomas A. Worthington, Elizabeth A. Bergey
2013, Freshwater Biology (58) 1071-1088
1.A major limitation to effective management of narrow-range crayfish populations is the paucity of information on the spatial distribution of crayfish species and a general understanding of the interacting environmental variables that drive current and future potential distributional patterns. 2.Maximum Entropy Species Distribution Modeling Software (MaxEnt) was used to predict...
Tree growth and competition in an old-growth Picea abies forest of boreal Sweden: influence of tree spatial patterning
Shawn Fraver, Anthony W. D’Amato, John B. Bradford, Bengt Gunnar Jonsson, Mari Jonsson, Per-Anders Esseen
2013, Journal of Vegetation Science (25) 374-385
Question: What factors best characterize tree competitive environments in this structurally diverse old-growth forest, and do these factors vary spatially within and among stands? Location: Old-growth Picea abies forest of boreal Sweden. Methods: Using long-term, mapped permanent plot data augmented with dendrochronological analyses, we evaluated the effect of neighbourhood competition on focal...
