Discovery of a reproducing wild population of the swamp eel Amphipnous cuchia (Hamilton, 1822) in North America
Frank Jordan, Leo Nico, Krystal Huggins, Peter J. Martinat, Dahlia A. Martinez, Victoria L. Rodrigues
2020, BioInvasions Records (9) 367-374
We report discovery of an established population of the Asian swamp eel Amphipnous cuchia (Hamilton, 1822) in Bayou St. John, an urban waterway in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. This fish, commonly referred to as cuchia (kuchia), is a member of the family Synbranchidae and is native to southern and southeastern Asia. Recently-used...
Magnitude and frequency of floods in Alabama, 2015
Brandon T. Anderson
2020, Scientific Investigations Report 2020-5032
To improve flood-frequency estimates at rural streams in Alabama, annual exceedance probability flows at gaged locations and regional regression equations used to estimate annual exceedance probability flows at ungaged locations were developed by using current geospatial data, new analytical methods, and annual peak-flow data through September 2015 at 242 streamgages...
Disturbances drive changes in coral community assemblages and coral calcification capacity
Travis A. Courtney, Brian B. Barnes, Iliana Chollett, Robin Elahi, Kevin Gross, James R. Guest, Ilsa B. Kuffner, Elizabeth A. Lenz, Hanna R Nelson, Caroline Rogers, Lauren Toth, Andreas J Andersson
2020, Ecosphere (11)
Anthropogenic environmental change has increased coral reef disturbance regimes in recent decades, altering the structure and function of many coral reefs globally. In this study, we used coral community survey data collected from 1996 to 2015 to evaluate coral calcification capacity (CCC) dynamics with respect to recorded pulse disturbances for...
The importance of U.S. Geological Survey water-quality super gages
Angela S. Crain
2020, Fact Sheet 2020-3019
Super gages are an important tool providing real-time, continuous water-quality data at streamgages or groundwater wells. They are designed to address specific water-resource threats such as water-related human health issues including harmful algal blooms, floods, droughts, and hazardous substance spills. In addition, super gages improve our understanding of the effects...
Report of the River Master of the Delaware River for the period December 1, 2010–November 30, 2011
Vincent J. DiFrenna, William J. Andrews, Kendra L. Russell, J. Michael Norris, Robert R. Mason, Jr.
2020, Open-File Report 2020-1020
A Decree of the Supreme Court of the United States, entered June 7, 1954, established the position of Delaware River Master within the U.S. Geological Survey. In addition, the Decree authorizes diversion of water from the Delaware River Basin and requires compensating releases from certain reservoirs, owned by New York...
Robust ecological drought projections for drylands in the 21st century
John B. Bradford, Daniel Rodolphe Schlaepfer, William K. Lauenroth, Kyle A. Palmquist
2020, Global Change Biology (26) 3906-3919
(Bradford) Dryland ecosystems may be especially vulnerable to expected 21st century increases in temperatures and aridity because they are tightly controlled by patterns of moisture availability. However, climate impact assessments in drylands are difficult because ecological dynamics are dictated by drought conditions that are difficult to define and complex to...
A novel quantitative framework for riverscape genetics
Shannon L. White, Ephraim M. Hanks, Tyler Wagner
2020, Ecological Applications (30)
Riverscape genetics, which applies concepts in landscape genetics to riverine ecosystems, lack appropriate quantitative methods that address the spatial autocorrelation structure of linear stream networks and account for bidirectional geneflow. To address these challenges, we present a general framework for the design and analysis of riverscape...
High spatial fidelity among foraging trips of Masked Boobies from Pedro Cays, Jamaica
Bradley P. Wilkinson, Ann M. Haynes-Sutton, Llewelyn Meggs, Patrick G.R. Jodice
William David Halliday, editor(s)
2020, PLoS ONE (15) 1-12
In marine environments, tropical and subtropical habitats are considered to be inherently less productive than more temperate systems. As such, foraging site fidelity among vertebrate predators occupying low-latitude marine systems is generally low as a response to an increased unpredictability of resources. We investigated the foraging movements of Masked Boobies...
Unexpected hybridization reveals the utility of genetics in native plant restoration
Daniel E. Winkler, Robert Massatti
2020, Restoration Ecology (28) 1047-1052
Native plant materials (NPMs) are increasingly utilized during the restoration of disturbed plant communities. Here, we analyze next‐generation genetic sequencing data for Hilaria jamesii, a dominant graminoid across drylands of the southwestern United States, and document that the species' only commercially‐available NPM, ‘Viva’, is a hybrid between H. jamesii and its sister species, H....
Post-1978 tumescence at Long Valley Caldera, California: A geophysical perspective
David P. Hill, Emily K. Montgomery-Brown, David R. Shelly, Ashton F. Flinders, Stephanie Prejean
2020, Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research (400)
Long Valley Caldera has been restless since at least 1978. Prominent symptoms of this unrest include earthquake swarms and tumescence (inflation) centered on the resurgent dome. Over the years, interpretations of physical processes underlying this unrest have varied considerably. Results from...
Mast seeding patterns are asynchronous at a continental scale
J. M. LaMontagne, Ian Pearse, David A. Greene, W. D. Koenig
2020, Nature Plants (6) 460-465
Resource pulses are short duration, high magnitude, rare events that drive the dynamics of both plant and animal populations and communities1. Mast seeding is perhaps the most common type of resource pulse occurring in terrestrial ecosystems2, is characterized by the synchronous and highly variable production of seed crops by a...
Book review: Proceedings of the First International Snakehead Symposium
Stephen Walsh
2020, Transactions of the American Fisheries Society (149) 364-365
Snakehead fishes (family Channidae) are among the most maligned aquatic invasive species in the USA and some other countries where they have been introduced outside of their native range in Asia and Africa. Nevertheless, snakeheads continue to be widely exploited in the live‐food trade in aquaculture and wild‐capture fisheries, are...
Threshold responses of songbirds to forest loss and fragmentation across the Marcellus-Utica shale gas region
Laura S. Farwell, Petra B. Wood, Randy Dettmers, Margaret C. Brittingham
2020, Landscape Ecology (35) 1353-1370
Context Since 2005, unconventional gas develop[1]ment has rapidly altered forests across the Marcellus[1]Utica shale basin in the central Appalachian region of the eastern United States, an area of high conservation value for biodiversity. Much is still unknown about ecological impacts of associated land cover change. Objectives Our goal was to...
The incubation environment of nests deposited by a genetically distinct group of loggerhead sea turtles in Northwest Florida
Margaret Lamont, Darren Johnson, Raymond Carthy
2020, Global Ecology and Conservation (23)
The warming climate presents a challenge to conservation of all threatened and endangered species but particularly to those that exhibit temperature-dependent sex determination such as sea turtles. Changes in temperature may result in changes in the sex ratio of the population which can directly affect reproductive rate, abundance and population...
Coseismic and post-seismic gravity disturbance induced by seismic sources using a 2.5-D spectral element method
Frederick Pollitz
2020, Geophysical Journal International (122) 827-844
I present a prescription for computing free-air coseismic and post-seismic gravity changes induced by seismic sources in a viscoelastic earth model. I assume a spherical earth geometry and a 2.5-D calculation, that is, 3-D motions that satisfy the equations of quasi-static equilibrium on a 2-D viscoelastic structure. The prescription...
Modelling grass carp egg transport using a 3-D hydrodynamic river model: The role of egg retention in dead zones on spawning success
Tej Heer, Mathew G. Wells, P. Ryan Jackson, Nicholas E. Mandrak
2020, Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences (77) 1379-1392
Invasive grass carp (Ctenopharyngodon idella) are known to spawn in the Sandusky River, Ohio, USA, within the Great Lakes Basin, and are threatening to expand throughout the Great Lakes. Successful spawning is thought to require that eggs remain in suspension until hatching, which depends on river hydrodynamics and temperature-dependent egg...
Lessons from a post-eruption landscape
Jon J. Major, Charles M. Crisafulli, Frederick J. Swanson
2020, Eos, Earth and Space Science News (101) 34-40
From March to May 1980, magma rose high into Mount St. Helens (MSH), swelling and—as it turned out—destabilizing its north flank. Scientists knew the volcano had been highly active at times over the past 40,000 years, but the mountain, located amid the Cascade Range in southwestern Washington, had been mostly...
A two-stage step-wise framework for fast optimization of well placement in coalbed methane reservoirs
Jiyuan Zhang, Qihong Feng, Xianmin Zhang, Jia Bai, C. Ozgen Karacan, Derek Elsworth
2020, International Journal of Coal Geology (225)
Coalbed methane (CBM) has emerged as a clean energy resource in the global energy mix, especially in countries such as Australia, China, India and the USA. The economical and successful development of CBM requires a thorough evaluation and optimization of well placement prior to field-scale exploitation. This paper presents a...
The role of seismic and slow slip events in triggering the 2018 M7.1 Anchorage earthquake in the Southcentral Alaska subduction zone
Margarita Segou, Thomas E. Parsons
2020, Geophysical Research Letters (47)
The M 7.1 2018 Anchorage earthquake occurred in the bending part of the subducting North Pacific plate near the geometrical barrier formed by the underthrusting Yakutat terrane. We calculate the triggering potential related with stress redistribution from deformation sources including the M 9.2 1964 earthquake coseismic slip, postseismic deformation, slip from...
Salt flushing, salt storage, and controls on selenium: A 31-year mass-balance analysis of an irrigated, semiarid valley
Carleton R. Bern, Michael J. Holmberg, Zachary D. Kisfalusi
2020, Journal of the American Water Resources Association (56) 647-668
Salinity, selenium, and uranium pose water‐quality challenges for the Arkansas River in southeastern Colorado and other rivers that support irrigation in semiarid regions. This study used 31 years of continuous discharge and specific conductance (SC) monitoring data to assess interannual patterns in water quality using mass balance on a 120‐km reach...
Model selection for the North American Breeding Bird Survey
William A. Link, John R. Sauer, Daniel K Niven
2020, Ecological Applications (30)
The North American Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) provides data that can be used in complex, multiscale analyses of population change, while controlling for scale‐specific nuisance factors. Many alternative models can be fit to the data, but most model selection procedures are not appropriate for hierarchical models. Leave‐one‐out cross‐validation (LOOCV), in...
Variable prey consumption leads to distinct regional differences in Chinook salmon growth during the early marine critical period
Melanie J Davis, Joshua W. Chamberlin, Jennifer R. Gardner, Kristin A. Connelly, Madilyn M. Gamble, Brian R. Beckman, David Beauchamp
2020, Marine Ecology Progress Series (640) 147-169
Growth during the early marine critical period is positively associated with survival and recruitment for Pacific salmon Oncorhynchus spp., so it is important to understand how certain foraging strategies may bolster growth in estuarine and marine environments. To elucidate how spatiotemporal and demographic differences in diet contribute to growth rate variability, we...
Comparing environmental flow implementation options with structured decision making: Case study from the Willamette River, Oregon
J. Tyrell DeWeber, James Peterson
2020, Journal of the American Water Resources Association (56) 599-614
Many frameworks have been used to identify environmental flows for sustaining river ecosystems or specific taxa in the face of widespread flow alteration for human use. However, these methods mostly focus on identifying suitable flows and largely ignore the important links between management actions, resulting flows, flow variability, and ecosystem...
Spatiotemporal seismic structure variations associated with the 2018 Kīlauea eruption based on temporary dense geophone arrays
Sin-Mei Wu, Fan-Chi Lin, Jamie Farrell, Brian Shiro, Leif Karlstrom, Paul G. Okubo, Keith D. Koper
2020, Geophysical Research Letters (47)
During the 2018 Kīlauea volcanic eruption, lava erupted from a series of new fissures in the lower East Rift Zone more than 30 km away from the summit through a dike intrusion. Between late May and early August, variations in the effusion rate at the persistent eruptive vent (Fissure 8)...
Climate change causes river network contraction and disconnection in the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest, Oregon, USA
Adam S Ward, Steven M Wondzell, Noah Schmadel, Skuyler P Herzog
2020, Frontiers in Water (2)
Headwater streams account for more than 89% of global river networks and provide numerous ecosystem services that benefit downstream ecosystems and human water uses. It has been established that changes in climate have shifted the timing and magnitude of observed precipitation, which, at specific gages, have been directly linked...
