Will there be water? Climate change, housing needs, and future water demand in California
Tamara Wilson, Paul Selmants, Ryan M Boynton, James H. Thorne, Nathan D. Van Schmidt, Timothy Thomas
2024, Journal of Environmental Management (369)
Climate change in California is expected to alter future water availability, impacting water supplies needed to support future housing growth and agriculture demand. In groundwater-dependent regions like California's Central Coast, new land-use related water demand and decreasing recharge is already stressing...
Aboveground carbon stocks across a hydrological gradient: Ghost forests to non-tidal freshwater forested wetlands
Christopher J. Shipway, Jamie A. Duberstein, William H. Conner, Ken Krauss, Gregory E. Noe, Stefanie L. Whitmire
2024, Forests (15)
Upper estuarine forested wetlands (UEFWs) play an important role in the sequestration of atmospheric carbon (C), which is facilitated by their position at the boundary of terrestrial and maritime environments but threatened by sea level rise. This study assessed the change in aboveground C stocks along the estuarine–riverine hydrogeomorphic...
3-D mapping of the conterminous U.S. within the USGS National Cooperative Geologic Mapping Program: Progress and future prospects
Donald S. Sweetkind
2024, Conference Paper, Three-dimensional geological mapping: Workshop extended abstracts; Geological Society of America annual meeting
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Cooperative Mapping Program (NCGMP) is bringing together subsurface and three-dimensional information at multiple scales for the conterminous United States from data produced throughout the USGS and by federal and state partners. Components of this work include data inventory and catalog development, data integration and...
Reference 1D seismic velocity models for volcano monitoring and imaging: Methods, models, and applications
Jeremy D. Pesicek, Trond Ryberg
2024, Seismological Research Letters (95) 2722-2744
Seismic velocity models of the crust are an integral part of earthquake monitoring systems at volcanoes. 1D models that vary only in depth are typically used for real‐time hypocenter determination and serve as critical reference models for detailed 3D imaging studies and...
Correcting for measurement errors in a long-term aerial survey with auxiliary photographic data
Jamie L. Brusa, Matthew T. Farr, Joseph Evenson, Emily Silverman, Bryan Murphie, Thomas A. Cyra, Heather Tschaekofske, Kyle A. Spragens, Sarah J. Converse
2024, Ecosphere (15)
Long-term, large-scale monitoring of wildlife populations is an integral part of conservation research and management. However, some traditional monitoring protocols lack the information needed to account for sources of measurement error in data analyses. Ignoring measurement error, such as partial availability, imperfect detection, and species misidentification, can lead to mischaracterizations...
Occupancy dynamics of the California Gnatcatcher in southern California
Barbara E. Kus, Alexandra Houston, Kristine L. Preston
2024, Open-File Report 2024-1015
Executive SummaryThe Coastal California Gnatcatcher (Polioptila californica californica: “gnatcatcher”) is a resident species restricted to coastal sage scrub habitat in southern California. Listed as federally threatened, the gnatcatcher is subject to multiple threats, including habitat loss, fragmentation, and degradation, particularly in association with the increasing frequency of large wildfires....
Computation of bromide concentrations at the Kansas River at De Soto, Kansas, January 2021 through October 2023
Thomas J. Williams, Greg S. Totzke
2024, Scientific Investigations Report 2024-5078
The Kansas River is an essential water resource that provides drinking water to more than 950,000 people in northeastern Kansas. Water suppliers that rely on the Kansas River as a water-supply source use physical and chemical water-treatment strategies to remove contaminants before distribution. Water District No. 1 of Johnson County,...
Constraining mean landslide occurrence rates for non-temporal landslide inventories using high-resolution elevation data
Jacob Bryson Woodard, Sean Richard LaHusen, Benjamin B. Mirus, Katherine R. Barnhart
2024, Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface (129)
Constraining landslide occurrence rates can help to generate landslide hazard models that predict the spatial and temporal occurrence of landslides. However, most landslide inventories do not include any temporal data due to the difficulties of dating landslide deposits. Here we introduce a method for estimating the mean...
Post-glacial stratigraphy and late Holocene record of great Cascadia earthquakes in Ozette Lake, Washington, USA
Daniel Brothers, Brian L. Sherrod, Drake Moore Singleton, Jason Scott Padgett, Jenna C. Hill, Andrew C. Ritchie, Jared W. Kluesner, Peter Dartnell
2024, Geosphere (20) 1315-1346
Ozette Lake is an ~100-m-deep coastal lake located along the outer coast of the Olympic Peninsula (Washington, USA); it is situated above the locked portion of the northern Cascadia megathrust but also relatively isolated from active crustal faults and intraslab earthquakes. Here we...
Forest cover lessens hurricane impacts on peak streamflow
Jazlynn S. Hall, Martha A. Scholl, James B. Shanley, Serena Matt, Maria Uriarte
2024, Hydrological Processes (38)
Cyclonic storms (i.e., hurricanes) are powerful disturbance events that often cause widespread forest damage. Storm-related canopy damage reduces rainfall interception and evapotranspiration, but impacts on streamflow regimes are poorly understood. We quantify streamflow changes in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria in September 2017, and evaluate whether forest cover and storm-related...
Hyperspectral imaging predicts differences in carbon and nitrogen status among representative biocrust functional groups of the Colorado Plateau
Dong Yan, Sasha C. Reed, William A. Rutherford, Mostafa Javadian, Robin H. Reibold, Miguel L. Villarreal, Benjamin Poulter, Shujun Song, William K. Smith
2024, Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences (129)
Biological soil crusts (biocrusts) are widespread soil photosynthetic communities covering about 12% of Earth's land surface and play crucial roles in terrestrial carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) cycles, yet scalable quantifications of biocrusts and their biogeochemical contributions are notably lacking. While remote sensing has enormous potential to assess, scale, and...
Trends in plant cover derived from vegetation plot data using ordinal zero-augmented beta regression
Arco van Strien, Kathryn Irvine, Cas Retel
2024, Journal of Vegetation Science (35)
QuestionsPlant cover values in vegetation plot data are bounded between 0 and 1, and cover is typically recorded in discrete classes with non-equal intervals. Consequently, cover data are skewed and heteroskedastic, which hampers the application of conventional regression methods. Recently developed ordinal beta regression models consider these...
Seasonal patterns in riverine carbon form and export from a temperate forested watershed in Southeast Alaska
Claire Delbecq, Jason B. Fellman, J. Ryan Bellmore, Emily J. Whitney, Eran Hood, Kevin Fitzgerald, Jeffrey A. Falke
2024, Biogeochemistry (167) 1353-1369
Riverine export of carbon (C) is an important part of the global C cycle; however, most riverine C budgets focus on individual forms of C and fail to comprehensively measure both organic and inorganic C species in concert. To address this knowledge gap, we conducted high frequency sampling of multiple...
Cold blood in warming waters: Effects of air temperature, precipitation, and groundwater on Gulf Sturgeon thermal habitats in a changing climate
Andrew Kenneth Carlson, Bethany M. Gaffey
2024, North American Journal of Fisheries Management (44) 987-1007
ObjectiveIn a changing climate, the effects of air temperature, precipitation, and groundwater on water temperature and thermal habitat suitability for Gulf Sturgeon Acipenser desotoi, listed as threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, are not well understood. Hence, we incorporated these factors into thermal habitat models to...
Vulnerability of endemic insular mole skinks to sea-level rise
Erin L. Koen, William Barichivich, Susan Walls
2024, Conservation Science and Practice (6)
Although coastal islands are home to many endemic species, they are also at risk of inundation from storm surge and sea level rise. Three subspecies of mole skink (Plestiodon egregius egregius, P. e. insularis, and the Egmont Key Mole Skink known from a single occurrence)...
Assessment of water levels, nitrate, and arsenic in the Carson Valley Alluvial Aquifer and the development of a data visualization tool for the Carson River Basin, Nevada
Ramon C. Naranjo, Anjela Bubiy
2024, Open-File Report 2024-1045
Residents of Carson Valley, Douglas County, Nevada, rely on the basin-fill alluvial aquifer underlying the valley for drinking water. Since the 1980s, groundwater levels and water-quality data have been collected to monitor the status of the aquifer system and to assist in planning efforts to address current (2024) and future...
Community for Data Integration 2020 project report
Leslie Hsu, Emily G. Chapin, Theodore B. Barnhart, Amanda E. Cravens, Richard A. Erickson, Jason Ferrante, Aaron Fox, Nathaniel P. Hitt, Margaret Hunter, Katharine Kolb, Jared R. Peacock, Matthew D. Petkewich, Sasha C. Reed, Terry Sohl, Tanja N. Williamson
2024, Open-File Report 2024-1027
The U.S. Geological Survey Community for Data Integration annually funds small projects focusing on data integration for interdisciplinary research, innovative data management, and demonstration of new technologies. This report provides a summary of the 12 projects funded in fiscal year 2020, outlining their goals, activities, and accomplishments....
Aurora: An open-source Python implementation of the EMTF package for magnetotelluric data processing using MTH5 and mt-metadata
Karl Kappler, Jared R. Peacock, Gary D. Egbert, Andrew Frassetto, Lindsey Heagy, Anna Kelbert, Laura Keyson, Douglas W. Oldenburg, Timothy Ronan, Justin Sweet
2024, Journal of Open Source Software (9)
The Aurora software package robustly estimates single station and remote reference electromagnetic transfer functions (TFs) from magnetotelluric (MT) time series. Aurora is part of an open-source processing workflow that leverages the self-describing data container MTH5, which in turn leverages the general mt-metadata framework to manage metadata. These pre-existing packages simplify...
Remote sensing large-wood storage downstream of reservoirs during and after dam removal: Elwha River, Washington, USA
Daniel D. Buscombe, Jonathan A. Warrick, Andrew C. Ritchie, Amy E. East, M. McHenry, Randall McCoy, Amy C. Foxgrover, E. Wohl
2024, Earth and Space Science (11)
Large wood is an integral part of many rivers, often defining river-corridor morphology and habitat, but its occurrence, magnitude, and evolution in a river system are much less well understood than the sedimentary and hydraulic components, and due to methodological limitations, have seldom previously been mapped in...
Age, growth, and trophic ecology of the Redeye Bass, an introduced invader of California rivers
Beth C. Long, Peter B. Moyle, Matthew J. Young, Patrick K. Crain
2024, Transactions of the American Fisheries Society (153) 559-575
ObjectiveThe Redeye Bass Micropterus coosae is a piscivore introduced into California, which has become a threat to the state's endemic freshwater fishes. It has eliminated native fishes from the middle reaches of the Cosumnes River, our study stream, which is the largest stream without a major dam on its...
DNA-based studies and genetic diversity indicator assessments are complementary approaches to conserving evolutionary potential
Sean M. Hoban, Ivan Paz-Vinas, Robyn E. Shaw, Luis Castillo-Reina, Jessica M. da Silva, J. Andrew DeWoody, Robert Ekblom, Ancuta Fedorca, Brenna R. Forester, W. Chris Funk, Julia C. Geue, Myriam Heuertz, Peter M. Hollingsworth, Alice C. Hughes, Margaret Hunter, Christina Hvilsom, Fumiko Ishihama, Rebecca Jordan, Belma Kalamujic Stroil, Francine Kershaw, Colin K. Khoury, Viktoria Koppa, Linda Laikre, Anna J. MacDonald, Alicia Mastretta-Yanes, Mariah H. Meek, Joachim Mergeay, Katie L. Millette, David O'Brien, Victor J. Rincon-Parra, M. Alejandra Rodriguez-Morales, Meredith C. Schuman, Gernot Segelbacher, Paul Sunnucks, Rebecca S. Taylor, Henrik Thurfjell, Cristiano Vernesi, Catherine E. Grueber
2024, Conservation Genetics (25) 1147-1153
Genetic diversity is essential for maintaining healthy populations and ecosystems. Several approaches have recently been developed to evaluate population genetic trends without necessarily collecting new genetic data. Such “genetic diversity indicators” enable rapid, large-scale evaluation across dozens to thousands of species. Empirical genetic studies, when available, provide detailed information that...
Despite regional variation, Gymnorhinus cyanocephalus (Pinyon Jay) densities generally increase with local pinyon–juniper cover and heterogeneous ground cover
Nicholas J. Van Lanen, Adrian P. Monroe, Cameron L. Aldridge
2024, Ornithological Applications (126)
Traditionally, local-scale habitat-relationship models are developed over small spatial extents, limiting model transferability and inference outside the study area. Thus, habitat managers frequently lack fine-scale information regarding the influence of vegetation composition and structure on site suitability or species abundance. Gymnorhinus cyanocephalus (Pinyon Jay) represents one declining species for which managers...
On the uncertain intensity estimate of the 1859 Carrington storm
Jeffrey J. Love, E. Joshua Rigler, H. Hayakawa, Kalevi Mursula
2024, Journal of Space Weather and Space Climate (14) 21
A study is made of the intensity of the Carrington magnetic storm of September 1859 as inferred from visual measurements of horizontal-component geomagnetic disturbance made at the Colaba observatory in India. Using data from modern observatories, a lognormal statistical model of storm intensity is developed, to characterize the maximum-negative value...
Airborne lidar accuracy analysis for dual photogrammetric and lidar sensor pilot project in Colorado, 2019
Aparajithan Sampath, Jeff Irwin, Minsu Kim
2024, Open-File Report 2024-1036
This report presents accuracy assessment results of the light detection and ranging (lidar) data collected in Colorado during a pilot project in fall 2019. The purpose of the pilot project was to assess the accuracy of lidar and imagery data collected simultaneously for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) National...
Simulation of groundwater flow in the Long Island, New York regional aquifer system for pumping and recharge conditions from 1900 to 2019
Donald A. Walter, Kalle Jahn, John P. Masterson, Sarken E. Dressler, Jason S. Finkelstein, Monti
2024, Scientific Investigations Report 2024-5044
The U.S. Geological Survey has developed a transient, groundwater-flow model that simulates hydrologic conditions in the Long Island aquifer system as part of an ongoing (since 2016) multiyear, cooperative investigation with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. The goals of this investigation are to assist stakeholders and resource...
