Earthquakes, ShakeCast
Kuo-wan Lin, David J. Wald, Daniel Slosky
2020, Book chapter, Encyclopedia of solid earth geophysics, 2nd edition
ShakeCast® – short for ShakeMap Broadcast – is a fully automated software system for delivering specific ShakeMap products to critical users and for triggering established post-earthquake response protocols. ShakeCast is a freely available, postearthquake situational awareness software application that automatically retrieves earthquake shaking data from ShakeMap to compare ground shaking...
A historical look at changing water quality in the Delaware River basin
Jennifer C. Murphy, Megan E. Shoda
2020, Fact Sheet 2020-3007
In 2019 the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) launched a pilot regional Integrated Water Availability Assessment (IWAA) in the Delaware River Basin (fig. 1). IWAA is intended to explore, test, and refine systems and processes for assessing water availability for human and ecological uses and understanding their underlying controls. Water quality...
A pheromone antagonist liberates female sea lamprey from a sensory trap to enable reliable communication
Tyler John Buchinger, Anne M Scott, Skye D. Fissette, Cory Brant, Mar Huertas, Ke Li, Nicholas S. Johnson, Weiming Li
2020, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (117) 7284-7289
The evolution of male signals and female preferences remains a central question in the study of animal communication. The sensory trap model suggests males evolve signals that mimic cues used in nonsexual contexts and thus manipulate female behavior to generate mating opportunities. Much evidence supports the...
Dynamics, variability, and change in seasonal precipitation reconstructions for North America
David W. Stahle, Edward R Cook, Dorian J Burnette, Max C.A. Torbenson, Ian M Howard, Daniel Griffin, Jose Villanueva Diaz, Benjamin I. Cook, Park A. Williams, Emma Watson, David J. Sauchyn, Neil Pederson, Connie A. Woodhouse, Gregory T. Pederson, David M. Meko, Bethany Coulthard, Christopher J. Crawford
2020, Journal of Climate (8) 3173-3195
Cool and warm season precipitation totals have been reconstructed on a gridded basis for North America using 439 tree-ring chronologies correlated with December-April totals and 547 different chronologies correlated with May-July totals. These discrete seasonal predictor chronologies are not significantly correlated with the alternate season and the reconstructions calibrate...
Physical characteristics and simulated transport of pallid sturgeon and shovelnose sturgeon eggs
Kimberly Chojnacki, Susannah O. Erwin, Amy E. George, James Candrl, Robert B. Jacobson, Aaron J. Delonay
2020, Journal of Freshwater Ecology (35) 73-94
The imperiled pallid sturgeon (Scaphirhynchus albus) and closely related, but more common, shovelnose sturgeon (S. platorynchus) are believed to broadcast adhesive, demersal eggs in the current and over coarse substrate in turbid rivers of the North American midcontinent. It has been hypothesized that eggs settle immediately following fertilization, but field...
Map depicting susceptibility to landslides triggered by intense rainfall, Puerto Rico
K. Stephen Hughes, William H. Schulz
2020, Open-File Report 2020-1022
Landslides in Puerto Rico range from nuisances to deadly events. Centuries of agricultural and urban modification of the landscape have perturbed many already unstable hillsides on the tropical island. One of the main triggers of mass wasting on the island is the high-intensity rainfall that is associated with tropical atmospheric...
An overview of agent-based models in plant biology and ecology
Bo Zhang, Donald L. DeAngelis
2020, Annals of Botany (126) 539-557
Agent-based modeling (ABM) has become an established methodology in many areas of biology, ranging from the cellular to the ecological population and community levels. In plant science, two different scales have predominated in their use of ABM. One is the scale of populations and communities, through the modeling of collections...
The geometry of reaction norms yields insights on classical fitness functions for Great Lakes salmon
James E. Breck, Carl P. Simon, Edward S. Rutherford, Bobbi S. Low, P. J. Lamberson, Mark W. Rogers
Rachel A. Hovel, editor(s)
2020, PLoS ONE (15) 1-35
Life history theory examines how characteristics of organisms, such as age and size at maturity, may vary through natural selection as evolutionary responses that optimize fitness. Here we ask how predictions of age and size at maturity differ for the three classical fitness functions–intrinsic rate of natural increase r, net reproductive...
Pavement alters delivery of sediment and fallout radionuclides to urbanstreams
Allen C. Gellis, Christopher C. Fuller, Peter C. Van Metre, Barbara Mahler, C. Welty, Andrew Miller, Lucas A Nibert, Zachary J. Clifton, Jeremy Malen, J.T. Kemper
2020, Journal of Hydrology (588)
Sediment from urban impervious surfaces has the potential to be an important vector for contaminants, particularly where stormwater culverts and other buried channels draining large impervious areas exit from underground pipes into open channels. To better understand urban sediment sources and their relation to...
Ecology of influenza A viruses in wild birds and wetlands of Alaska
Andrew M. Ramey, Andrew B. Reeves
2020, Avian Diseases (64) 109-122
Alaska represents a globally important region for the ecology of avian-origin influenza A viruses (IAVs) given expansive wetlands in this region which serve as habitat for numerous hosts of IAVs that disperse among four continents during the annual cycle. Extensive sampling of wild birds for IAVs in Alaska since...
Methylmercury-Total mercury ratios in predator and primary consumer insects from Adirondack streams (New York, USA)
Karen Riva-Murray, Paul M. Bradley, Mark E. Brigham
2020, Ecotoxicology (29) 1658
Mercury (Hg) is a global pollutant that affects biota in remote settings due to atmospheric deposition of inorganic Hg, and its conversion to methylmercury (MeHg), the bioaccumulating and toxic form. Characterizing biotic MeHg is important for evaluating aquatic ecosystem responses to changes in Hg inputs. Aquatic insects possess many qualities...
The effects of swimming exercise and dissolved oxygen on growth performance, fin condition and survival of rainbow trout Oncorhynchus mykiss
Thomas Waldrop, Steven Summerfelt, Patricia M. Mazik, P. Brett Kenney, Christopher Good
2020, Aquaculture Research (51) 2582-2589
Swimming exercise and dissolved oxygen (DO) are important parameters to consider when operating intensive salmonid aquaculture facilities. While previous research has focused on each of these two variables in rainbow trout Oncorhynchus mykiss, studies examining both variables in combination, and their potential interaction, are absent from the scientific literature. Both swimming...
North Carolina State climate report
Kenneth E. Kunkel, David R Easterling, Andrew Ballinger, Solomon Bililign, Sarah M Champion, D Reide Corbett, Kathie Dello, Jenny Dissen, James P. Kossin, Gary Lackmann, Rick Luettich, Baker Perry, Walter Robinson, Laura E. Stevens, Brooke C. Stewart, Adam Terando
2020, Report
Our scientific understanding of the climate system strongly supports the conclusion that North Carolina’s climate has changed in recent decades and the expectation that large changes—much larger than at any time in the state’s history—will occur if current trends in greenhouse gas concentrations continue. Even under a scenario where emissions...
Investigation of bed and den site selection by American black bears (Ursus americanus) in a landscape impacted by forest restoration treatments and wildfires
Susan M. Bard, James W. Cain III
2020, Forest Ecology and Management (460) 1-11
The combined effects of long-term fire suppression, logging, and overgrazing have negatively impacted many southwestern U.S. forests, resulting in decreased habitat quality for wildlife, and more frequent and severe wildfires. In response, land management agencies are implementing large-scale forest restoration treatments, but data on how wildlife respond to restoration...
Methodology for estimating the prospective CO2 storage resource of residual oil zones at the national and regional scale
Sean Sanguinito, Harpreet Singh, Evgeniy M. Myshakin, Angela L. Goodman, Robert M. Dilmore, Timothy C. Grant, David Morgan, Grant Bromhal, Peter D. Warwick, Sean T. Brennan, Philip A. Freeman, C. Ozgen Karacan, Charles Gorecki, Wesley Peck, Matthew Burton-Kelly, Neil Dotzenrod, Scott Frailey, Rajesh Pawar
2020, International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control (96)
Residual oil zones (ROZs) are increasingly gaining interest as potential reservoirs for carbon dioxide (CO2) storage. Here, we present a national- and regional-scale methodology for estimating prospective CO2 storage resources in residual oil zones. This methodology uses a volumetric equation that accounts for CO2 storage as a free phase in pore space...
Validation of a screening method for the detection of colistin-resistant E. coli containing mcr-1 in feral swine feces
Jeffrey C Chandler, Alan B. Franklin, Sarah N. Bevins, Kevin T Bentler, Jonas Bonnedahl, Christina Ahlstrom, Bledar Bisha, Susan A. Shriner
2020, Journal of Microbiological Methods (172)
A method was developed and validated for the detection of colistin-resistant Escherichia coli containing mcr-1 in the feces of feral swine. Following optimization of an enrichment method using EC broth supplemented with colistin (1 µg/mL) and vancomycin (8 µg/mL), aliquots derived from 100 feral swine fecal samples were spiked with...
A 'weight of evidence' approach to evaluating structural equation models
James Grace
2020, One Ecosystem (5)
It is possible that model selection has been the most researched and most discussed topic in the history of both statistics and structural equation modeling (SEM). The reason for this is because selecting one model for interpretive use from amongst many possible models is both essential and difficult. The published...
Optimal spatial prioritization of control resources for elimination of invasive species under demographic uncertainty
Kim M. Pepin, Timothy J. Smyser, Amy J. Davis, Ryan S. Miller, Sophie McKee, Kurt C. VerCauteren, William L. Kendall, Chris Slootmaker
2020, Ecological Applications (30)
Populations of invasive species often spread heterogeneously across a landscape, consisting of local populations that cluster in space but are connected by dispersal. A fundamental dilemma for invasive species control is how to optimally allocate limited fiscal resources across local populations. Theoretical work based on perfect knowledge of demographic connectivity...
Eradication of peste des petits ruminants and the wildlife-livestock interface
Amanda E. Fine, Mathieu Pruvot, Camila Benfield, Alexandre Caron, Giovanni Cattoli, Philippe Chardonnet, Maurizio Dioli, Thomas Dulu, Martin Gilbert, Richard Kock, Juan Lubroth, Jeffery Mariner, Stephane Ostrowski, Satya Parida, Sasan Fereidouni, Enkhtuvshin Shiilegdamba, Jonathan M. Sleeman, Claudia Schultz, Jean-Jacques Soula, Yves van der Stede, Berhe G. Tekola, Chris Walzer, Steffen Zuther, Feliz Njeumi
2020, Frontiers in Veterinary Science (7)
Growing evidence suggests that multiple wildlife species can be infected with peste des petits ruminants virus (PPRV), with important consequences for the potential maintenance of PPRV in communities of susceptible hosts, and the threat that PPRV may pose to the conservation of wildlife populations and resilience of ecosystems. Significant...
Colorado River flow dwindles as warming-driven loss of reflective snow energizes evaporation
Paul C. D. Milly, Krista A. Dunne
2020, Science (367) 1252-1255
The sensitivity of river discharge to climate-system warming is highly uncertain, and the processes that govern river discharge are poorly understood, which impedes climate-change adaptation. A prominent exemplar is the Colorado River, where meteorological drought and warming are shrinking a water resource that supports more than 1 trillion dollars of...
Bathymetry of Morris Lake (Newton Reservoir), New Jersey, 2018
Elizabeth A. Nystrom, Jerilyn V. Collenburg
2020, Scientific Investigations Report 2020-5010
Morris Lake, also known as Newton Reservoir, has been the source of drinking water for the Town of Newton, New Jersey, since the early 1900s. Although Morris Lake has been used as a source of drinking water for many years, its capacity was previously uncertain. In April 2018, the U.S....
Sub-annual streamflow responses to rainfall and snowmelt inputs in snow-dominated watersheds of the western U.S.
John C. Hammond, Stephanie K. Kampf
2020, Water Resources Research (56)
Streamflow generation in mountain watersheds is strongly influenced by snow accumulation and melt, and multiple studies have found that snow loss leads to earlier snowmelt timing and declines in annual streamflow. However, hydrologic responses to snow loss are heterogeneous, and not all areas experience streamflow declines....
Organic compounds in produced waters from the Bakken Formation and Three Forks Formation in the Williston Basin, North Dakota
Matthew S. Varonka, Tanya Gallegos, Anne L. Bates, Colin A. Doolan, William H. Orem
2020, Heliyon (6)
The organic composition of produced waters (flowback and formation waters) from the middle member of the Bakken Formation and the Three Forks Formation in the Williston Basin, North Dakota were examined to aid in the remediation of surface contamination and help develop treatment methods for produced-water recycling. Twelve produced water...
Building a landslide hazard indicator with machine learning and land surface models
T. A. Stanley, D. B. Kirschbaum, Steven Sobieszczyk, M. F. Jasinski, J. S. Borak, Stephen L. Slaughter
2020, Environmental Modelling & Software (129)
The U.S. Pacific Northwest has a history of frequent and occasionally deadly landslides caused by various factors. Using a multivariate, machine-learning approach, we combined a Pacific Northwest Landslide Inventory with a 36-year gridded hydrologic dataset from the National Climate Assessment – Land Data Assimilation System to produce a landslide hazard indicator (LHI) on a...
Landfill leachate contributes per-/poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and pharmaceuticals to municipal wastewater
Jason R. Masoner, Dana W. Kolpin, Isabelle M. Cozzarelli, Kelly L. Smalling, Stephanie Bolyard, Jennifer Field, Edward T. Furlong, James L. Gray, Duncan Lozinski, Debra Reinhart, Alix Rodowa, Paul M. Bradley
2020, Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology (6) 1300-1311
Widespread disposal of landfill leachate to municipal sewer infrastructure in the United States calls for an improved understanding of the relative organic-chemical contributions to the wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) waste stream and associated surface-water discharge to receptors in the environment. Landfill leachate, WWTP influent, and WWTP effluent samples were collected...
