Spatial conservation planning under uncertainty using modern portfolio theory and nash bargaining solution
Alvaro Sierra-Altamiranda, Hadi Charkhgard, Mitchell J. Eaton, Julien Martin, Simeon Yurek, Bradley J. Udell
2020, Ecological Modelling (423)
In recent years, researchers from interdisciplinary teams involving ecologists, economists and operations re- searchers collaborated to provide decision support tools to address the challenges of preserving biodiversity by optimizing the design of reserves. The goal of this paper is to further advance this area of research and provide new...
Dust deposited on snow cover in the San Juan Mountains, Colorado, 2011-2016: Compositional variability bearing on snow-melt effects
Richard L. Reynolds, Harland L. Goldstein, Bruce M. Moskowitz, Raymond F. Kokaly, Seth M. Munson, Peat Solheid, George N. Breit, Corey R. Lawrence, Jeff Derry
2020, Journal of Geological Research (125)
Light-absorbing particles in atmospheric dust deposited on snow cover (dust-on-snow, DOS) diminish albedo and accelerate the timing and rate of snow melt. Identification of these particles and their effects are relevant to snow-radiation modeling and thus water-resource management. Laboratory-measured reflectance of DOS samples from the San Juan Mountains (USA) were...
Potential impacts of future urbanization and sea level rise on Florida’s natural resources
Stephanie Romanach, Allison Benscoter, Saira Haider
2020, Journal of Fish and Wildlife Management (11) 174-184
As urban development continues to encroach into natural systems, these ecosystems experience increasing degradation to their form and function. Losses in biodiversity and ecosystem function are further compounded by changing climatic conditions. The State of Florida is known for its biodiversity but has experienced declines in species populations and habitats...
Coupling of Indo-Pacific climate variability over the last millennium
Nerilie J. Abram, Nicky M. Wright, Bethany Ellis, Bronwyn C. Dixon, Jennifer B. Wurtzel, Matthew H. England, Caroline C. Ummenhofer, Belle E. Philibosian, Sri Yudawati Cahyarini, Tsai-Luen Yu, Chuan-Chou Shen, Hai Cheng, R. Lawrence Edwards, David Heslop
2020, Nature (579) 385-392
The Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) impacts climate and rainfall across the world, and most severely in nations surrounding the Indian Ocean1-4. The frequency and intensity of positive IOD events increased during the 20th Century5 and may continue to intensify in a warming world6; however, confidence in future IOD changes is limited by known...
Post-release monitoring of a stranded and rehabilitated short-finned pilot whale (Globicephala macrorhynchus) reveals current-assisted travel
Reny B Tyson Moore, David C. Douglas, Hendrik H. Nollens, Randall S. Wells
2020, Aquatic Mammals (46) 200-214
A subadult female short-finned pilot whale (Globicephala macrorhynchus), stranded on the northeastern Gulf of Mexico coast of Florida in June 2017, was rehabilitated for 38 days and then monitored with a satellite-linked, time-depth recording tag for 32 days after being released off the West Florida Shelf. The individual, “Gale,”...
Life-history plasticity and water-use trade-offs associated with drought resistance in a clade of California jewelflowers
Ian S. Pearse, Jessica Aguilar, Sharon Strauss
2020, The American Naturalist (195) 691-704
Water limitation is a primary driver of plant geographic distributions and individual plant fitness. Drought resistance is the ability to survive and reproduce despite limited water, and numerous studies have explored its physiological basis in plants. However, it is unclear how drought resistance and trade-offs associated with drought resistance evolve...
Quantification of trace element loading in the upper Tenmile Creek drainage basin near Rimini, Montana, September 2011
Tom Cleasby, Sara L. Caldwell Eldridge
2020, Scientific Investigations Report 2019-5126
The principle sources of trace elements entering upper Tenmile Creek, Montana, during September 2011, four trace metals and the metalloid arsenic, were identified and quantified by combining and analyzing streamflow data determined from tracer injection with trace-element concentrations and related water-quality data determined from synoptic sampling. The study reach was...
A modeling workflow that balances automation and human intervention to inform invasive plant management decisions at multiple spatial scales
Nicholas E. Young, Catherine S. Jarnevich, Helen Sofaer, Ian S. Pearse, Julia Sullivan, Peder Engelstad, Thomas J. Stohlgren
2020, PLoS ONE (15)
Predictions of habitat suitability for invasive plant species can guide risk assessments at regional and national scales and inform early detection and rapid-response strategies at local scales. We present a general approach to invasive species modeling and mapping that meets objectives at multiple scales. Our methodology is designed...
Predicting barrier island habitats and oyster and seagrass habitat suitability for various restoration measures and future conditions for Dauphin Island, Alabama
Nicholas M. Enwright, Hongqing Wang, P. Soupy Dalyander, Elizabeth Godsey, editor(s)
2020, Open-File Report 2020-1003
Barrier islands, such as Dauphin Island, Alabama, provide numerous invaluable ecosystem services including storm damage reduction and erosion control to the mainland, habitat for fish and wildlife, carbon sequestration in marshes, water catchment and purification, recreation, and tourism. These islands are dynamic environments that are gradually shaped by currents, waves,...
Estimating population abundance with a mixture of physical capture and passive PIT tag antenna detection data
Mary M. Conner, Phaedra E. Budy, Richard A. Wilkison, Michael Mills, David Speas, Peter D. Mackinnon, Mark C. Mckinstry
2020, Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences (77) 1163-1171
The inclusion of passive interrogation antenna (PIA) detection data has promise to increase precision of population abundance estimates (). However, encounter probabilities are often higher for PIAs than for physical capture. If the difference is not accounted for, may be biased....
Assessing population-level consequences of anthropogenic stressors for terrestrial wildlife
Todd E. Katzner, Melissa A. Braham, Tara Conkling, James E. Diffendorfer, Adam E. Duerr, Scott R. Loss, David M. Nelson, Hannah B. Vander Zanden, Julie L. Yee
2020, Ecosphere (11)
Human activity influences wildlife. However, the ecological and conservation significances of these influences are difficult to predict and depend on their population‐level consequences. This difficulty arises partly because of information gaps, and partly because the data on stressors are usually collected in a count‐based manner (e.g., number of dead animals)...
Climate change can drive marine diseases
Colleen A Burge, Paul Hershberger
2020, Book chapter, Marine disease ecology
As an ultimate driver of marine ecosystem processes, climate change is expected to influence proximate disease drivers in marine systems. The observable effects of climate change, including changes in temperature, hypoxia, CO2 accumulation, precipitation, and storm and cyclone frequencies and intensities, may directly act as proximate drivers of marine disease, especially...
A socio-environmental geodatabase for integrative research in the transboundary Rio Grande/Río Bravo basin
Jennifer Villa
2020, Report
Management of water resources in the transboundary Rio Grande/Río Bravo Basin (the Basin) presents challenges for state and Federal entities in the United States and Mexico making management decisions on shared water resources. Damming, channelization, water availability, and allocation are governed by water rights and water-sharing agreements. Data and...
An analysis of the factors that control fault zone architecture and the importance of fault orientation relative to regional stress
John Fletcher, Orlando Teran, Tom Rockwell, Michael E. Oskin, Kenneth W. Hudnut, Ronald Spelz, Pierre Lacan, Mathew Dorsey, Giles Ostermijer, Thomas M. Mitchell, Sinan Akciz, Ana Paula Hernandez-Flores, Alejandro Hinojosa-Corona, Ivan Pena-Villa, David K. Lynch
2020, GSA Bulletin (132) 2084-2104
The moment magnitude 7.2 El Mayor−Cucapah (EMC) earthquake of 2010 in northern Baja California, Mexico produced a cascading rupture that propagated through a geometrically diverse network of intersecting faults. These faults have been exhumed from depths of 6−10 km since the late Miocene based on low-temperature thermochronology, synkinematic alteration, and...
Evidence for late Quaternary deformation along Crowley's Ridge, New Madrid seismic zone
Jessica Thompson Jobe, Ryan D. Gold, Richard W. Briggs, Robert Williams, William J. Stephenson, Jaime E. Delano, Anjana K. Shah, Burke J. Minsley
2020, Tectonics (39)
The New Madrid seismic zone has been the source of multiple major (M ~7.0–7.5) earthquakes in the past 2 ka, yet the surface expression of recent deformation remains ambiguous. Crowleys Ridge, a linear ridge trending north‐south for 300+ km through the Mississippi Embayment, has been interpreted as either a fault‐bounded...
Parasites in marine food webs
John P. McLaughlin, Dana N. Morton, Kevin D. Lafferty
2020, Book chapter, Marine disease ecology
Parasites have important and unique impacts on marine food webs. By infecting taxa across all trophic levels, parasites affect both bottom-up and top-down processes in marine systems. When host densities are high enough, parasites can regulate or even decimate their populations, causing regime shifts in marine systems. As consumers and...
Soil biogeochemical responses of a tropical forest to warming and hurricane disturbance
Sasha C. Reed, Robin H. Reibold, Molly A. Cavaleri, Aura M. Alonso-Rodriguez, Megan E. Berberich, Tana E. Wood
2020, Book chapter, Advances in Ecological Research
Tropical forests represent 50% of the planets species and play a disproportionately large role in determining climate due to the vast amounts of carbon they store and exchange with the atmosphere. Currently, disturbance patterns in tropical ecosystems are changing due to factors such...
Storm impacts on phytoplankton community dynamics in lakes
Jason D. Stockwell, Jonathan P. Doubek, Rita Adrian, Orlane Anneville, Cayelan C. Carey, Laurence Carvalho, Marieke A. Frassl, Lisette N. De Senerpont Domis, Gael Dur, Bas W Ibelings, Hans-Peter Grossart, Marc J. Lajeunesse, Aleksandra M. Lewandowska, Maria E. Llames, Shin-Ichiro S. Matsuzaki, Emily Nodine, Peeter Noges, Vijay P. Patil, Francesco Pomati, Karsten Rinke, Lars G. Rudstam, James A. Rusak, Nico Salmaso, Christian T. Seltmann, Dietmar Straile, Stephen J. Thackeray, Wim Thiery, Pablo Urrutia-Cordero, Patrick Venail, Piet Verburg, R. Iestyn Woolway, Tamar Zohary, Mikkel R. Andersen, Ruchi Bhattacharya, J. Hejzlar, Nasime Janatian, Alfred T. N. K. Kpodonu, Tanner J. Williamson, Harriet Wilson
2020, Global Change Biology (26) 2756-2784
In many regions across the globe, extreme weather events such as storms have increased in frequency, intensity, and duration due to climate change. Ecological theory predicts that such extreme events should have large impacts on ecosystem structure and function. High winds and precipitation associated with storms can affect lakes via...
Geodetic measurements of slow slip events southeast of Parkfield, CA
Brent G. Delbridge, Joshua D. Carmichael, Robert M. Nadeau, David R. Shelly, Roland Burgmann
2020, Journal of Geophysical Research (125)
Tremor and low-frequency earthquakes are presumed to be indicative of surrounding slow, aseismic slip that is often below geodetic detection thresholds. This study uses data from borehole seismometers and long-baseline laser strainmeters to observe both the seismic and geodetic signatures of episodic tremor and slip on the Parkfield region of...
Standard operating procedures for wild horse and burro double-observer aerial surveys
Paul C. Griffin, L. Stefan Ekernas, Kathryn A. Schoenecker, Bruce C. Lubow
2020, Techniques and Methods 2-A16
The U.S. Geological Survey has been collaborating with the Bureau of Land Management to develop statistically reliable methods for wild horse and burro aerial survey data collection and analysis for more than a decade. In cooperation with Colorado State University, the U.S. Geological Survey tested several methods in herds with...
Removal of chronic Mycoplasma ovipneumoniae carrier ewes eliminates pneumonia in a bighorn sheep population
Tyler Garwood, Chadwick P. Lehman, Daniel P. Walsh, E. Frances Cassirer, Thomas E. Besser, Jonathan A. Jenks
2020, Ecology and Evolution (10) 3491-3502
Chronic pathogen carriage is one mechanism that allows diseases to persist in populations. We hypothesized that persistent or recurrent pneumonia in bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis ) populations may be caused by chronic carriers of Mycoplasma ovipneumoniae (Mo ). Our experimental approach allowed us to address a conservation need while investigating the role of...
Monitoring nearshore ecosystem health using Pacific razor clams (Siliqua patula) as an indicator species
Lizabeth Bowen, Katrina Counihan, Brenda E. Ballachey, Heather A Colletti, Tuula E. Hollmen, Benjamin Pister, Tammy L Wilson
2020, PeerJ (8)
An emerging approach to ecosystem monitoring involves the use of physiological biomarker analyses in combination with gene transcription assays. For the first time, we employed these tools to evaluate the Pacific razor clam (Siliqua patula), which is important both economically and ecologically, as a bioindicator species in the northeast Pacific....
Groundwater characterization and effects of pumping in the Death Valley regional groundwater flow system, Nevada and California, with special reference to Devils Hole
Keith J. Halford, Tracie R. Jackson
2020, Professional Paper 1863
Groundwater flow and development were characterized in four groundwater basins of the Death Valley regional flow system in Nevada and California with calibrated, groundwater-flow models. Natural groundwater discharges in the Furnace Creek, Lower Amargosa, and Saratoga Spring areas were defined and distributed consistently with a revised hydrogeologic...
Biogeography of fire regimes in western US conifer forests: A trait-based approach
Jens Stevens, Matthew M. Kling, Dylan W. Schwilk, J. Morgan Varner, Jeffrey M. Kane
2020, Global Ecology and Biogeography (29) 944-955
Aim Functional traits are a critical link between species distributions and the ecosystem processes that structure those species’ niches. Concurrent increases in the availability of functional trait data and our ability to model species distributions present an opportunity to develop functional trait biogeography, i.e. the mapping of functional traits across space....
Fundamental hydraulics of cross sections in natural rivers: Preliminary analysis of a large data set of acoustic doppler flow measurements
David M. Bjerklie, John W, Fulton, S. Lawrence Dingman, Michael G. Canova, J. Toby Minear, Tommaso Moramarco
2020, Water Resource Research (56)
We have assembled a comprehensive and publicly accessible U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) streamflow measurement data set, called HYDRoSWOT, from a USGS National Water Information System archive of acoustic Doppler current profiler river discharge measurements collected from a wide range of rivers throughout the United States. The data...
