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 R. 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...
Disease can shape marine ecosystems
Joseph P Morton, Brian R Silliman, Kevin D. Lafferty
2020, Book chapter, Marine disease ecology
This chapter reviews how marine ecosystems respond to parasites. Evidence from several marine ecosystems shows that parasites can wield control over ecosystem structure, function, and dynamics by regulating host density and phenotype. Like predators, parasites can generate or modify trophic cascades, regulate important foundational species and ecosystem engineers, and mediate...
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...
Effect of stressors on the carrying capacity of spatially distributed metapopulations
Bo Zhang, Don DeAngelis, Wei-Ming Ni, Yuanshi Wang, Lu Zhai, Alex Kula, Shuang Xu, J. David Van Dyken
2020, The American Naturalist (196) E46-E60
Stressors such as antibiotics, herbicides, and pollutants are becoming increasingly common in the environment. The effects of stressors on populations are typically studied in homogeneous, nonspatial settings. However, most populations in nature are spatially distributed over environmentally heterogeneous landscapes with spatially restricted dispersal. Little is known about the effects of...
Climate dipoles as continental drivers of plant and animal populations
Benjamin Zuckerberg, Courtenay Strong, Jalene M. LaMontagne, Scott St. George, Julio L. Betancourt, Walter D. Koenig
2020, Trends in Ecology and Evolution (35) 440-453
Ecological processes, such as migration and phenology, are strongly influenced by climate variability. Studying these processes often relies on associating observations of animals and plants with climate variability indices, such as the El Niño–Southern Oscillation. A characteristic of climate indices is the simultaneous emergence of opposite extremes of temperature and...
Causal effect of impervious cover on annual flood magnitude for the United States
Annalise G. Blum, Paul J. Ferraro, Stacey A. Archfield, Karen R. Ryberg
2020, Geophysical Research Letters (47)
Despite consensus that impervious surfaces increase flooding, the magnitude of the increase remains uncertain. This uncertainty largely stems from the challenge of isolating the effect of changes in impervious cover separate from other factors that also affect flooding. To control for these factors, prior study designs...
Digging into the geologic record of environmentally driven changes in coral-reef development
Philip M. Gravinese, Richard B. Aronson, Lauren T. Toth
2020, Oceanography (1) 85-91
This lesson uses data based on real-world geological archives to guide students toward understanding how climate and oceanography have impacted coral-reef growth over the last 5000 years. The objective of the lesson is for students to determine the relationship between environmental variability and coral-reef development over millennial timescales. In this...
