Viral, bacterial, and protozoan pathogens and fecal markers in wells supplying groundwater to public water systems in Minnesota, USA
Joel P. Stokdyk, Aaron D. Firnstahl, James F. Walsh, Susan K. Spencer, Jane R. de Lambert, Anita C. Anderson, Lih-in W. Rezania, Burney A Kieke, Mark A. Borchardt
2020, Water Research (178)
Drinking water supply wells can be contaminated by a broad range of waterborne pathogens. However, groundwater assessments frequently measure microbial indicators or a single pathogen type, which provides a limited characterization of potential health risk. This study assessed contamination of wells by testing for viral, bacterial, and protozoan pathogens and...
Combined effects of biological control of an invasive shrub and fluvial processes on riparian vegetation dynamics
Eduardo Gonzalez, Patrick B. Shafroth, Steven R. Lee, Steven M. Ostoja, Matthew L. Brooks
2020, Biological Invasions (22) 2339-2356
Plant community responses to biocontrol of invasive plants are understudied, despite the strong influence of the composition of replacement vegetation on ecosystem functions and services. We studied the vegetation response to a folivore beetle (Diorhabda genus, Coleoptera) that has been introduced along southwestern US river valleys to control the invasion of...
The relation of geogenic contaminants to groundwater age, aquifer hydrologic position, water type, and redox conditions in Atlantic and Gulf Coastal Plain aquifers, eastern and south-central USA
James R. Degnan, Bruce D. Lindsey, Joseph Patrick Levitt, Zoltan Szabo
2020, Science of the Total Environment (723)
Groundwater age distributions developed from carbon-14 (14C), tritium (3H), and helium-4 (4He) concentrations, along with aquifer hydrologic position, water type, and redox conditions, were compared to geogenic contaminants of concern (GCOC) from 252 public-supply wells in six Atlantic and Gulf Coastal Plain unconsolidated-sediment aquifers. Concentrations of one or more...
Seismic and geodetic progression of the 2018 summit caldera collapse of Kīlauea Volcano
Gabrielle Tepp, Alicia J. Hotovec-Ellis, Brian Shiro, Ingrid A. Johanson, Weston Thelen, Matthew M. Haney
2020, Earth and Planetary Science Letters (540)
The 2018 eruption of Kīlauea volcano, Hawaiʻi, resulted in a major collapse of the summit caldera along with an effusive eruption in the lower East Rift Zone. The caldera collapse comprised 62 highly similar collapse cycles of strong ground deformation and earthquake swarms that ended with a magnitude 5 collapse...
Describing historical habitat use of a native fish-Cisco (Coregonus artedi)-In Lake Michigan between 1930 and 1932
Yu-Chun Kao, David Bunnell, Randy L. Eshenroder, Devin N. Murray
2020, PLoS ONE (15)
With the global-scale loss of biodiversity, current restoration programs have been often required as part of conservation plans for species richness and ecosystem integrity. The restoration of pelagic-oriented cisco (Coregonus artedi) has been an interest of Lake Michigan managers because it may increase the diversity and resilience of the fish...
The impact is in the details: Evaluating a standardized protocol and scale for determining non-native insect impact
Ashley N. Schulz, Angela M. Mech, Craig Allen, Matthew P. Ayres, Kamal J.K. Gandhi, Jessica Gurevitch, Nathan P. Havill, Daniel A. Herms, Ruth A. Hufbauer, Andrew M. Liebhold, Kenneth F. Raffa, Michael J. Raupp, Kathryn A. Thomas, Patrick C. Tobin, Travis D. Marsico
2020, NeoBiota (55) 61-83
Assessing the ecological and economic impacts of non-native species is crucial to providing managers and policymakers with the information necessary to respond effectively. Most non-native species have minimal impacts on the environment in which they are introduced, but a small fraction are highly deleterious. The definition of ‘damaging’ or ‘high-impact’...
Runoff-initiated post-fire debris flow Western Cascades, Oregon
Sara Wall, J.J. Roering, Francis K. Rengers
2020, Landslides (17) 1649-1661
Wildfires dramatically alter the hydraulics and root reinforcement of soil on forested hillslopes, which can promote the generation of debris flows. In the Pacific Northwest, post-fire shallow landsliding has been well documented and studied, but the potential role of runoff-initiated debris flows is not well understood and only one previous...
Hydrogeology and shallow groundwater quality in the tidal Anacostia River watershed, Washington, D.C.
Scott W. Ator, Judith M. Denver, Cheryl A. Dieter
2020, Scientific Investigations Report 2019-5128
Groundwater hydrology and geochemistry within the tidal Anacostia River watershed of Washington, D.C. are related to natural and human influences. The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the District Department of Energy & Environment, began investigating the hydrogeology and groundwater quality of the watershed in 2002. Lithologic coring, groundwater-level and...
Through thick and thin: Sexing Bristle-thighed Curlews Numenius tahitiensis using measures of bill depth
Daniel R. Ruthrauff, Colleen M. Handel, T. Lee Tibbitts, Robert E. Gill Jr.
2020, Wader Study (127) 31-36
Birds often exhibit diagnostic traits that differ among individuals of the same species with regard to factors like sex, age, or breeding status. Shorebirds exhibit a wide diversity of colors, shapes, and sizes of their bills, and these traits are commonly used to determine the sex of individuals. In curlews...
Flea parasitism and host survival in a plague-relevant system: Theoretical and conservation implications
David A. Eads, Rachel C. Abbott, Dean E. Biggins, Tonie E. Rocke
2020, Journal of Wildlife Diseases (56) 378-387
Plague is a bacterial zoonosis of mammalian hosts and flea vectors. The disease is capable of ravaging rodent populations and transforming ecosystems. Because plague mortality is likely to be predicted by flea parasitism, it is critical to understand vector dynamics. It has been hypothesized that paltry precipitation and reduced vegetative...
Multiple mechanisms determine the effect of warming on plant litter decomposition in a dryland
Peter F. Chuckran, Robin H. Reibold, Heather L. Throop, Sasha C. Reed
2020, Soil Biology and Biochemistry (145)
In drylands, where soil fertility is typically low, plant litter decomposition provides particularly critical carbon and nitrogen inputs into soil. Although climate change is projected to increase the already large global extent of drylands, it is unknown how warmer temperatures will affect core ecosystem processes, such as plant litter decomposition,...
Operational global actual evapotranspiration: Development, evaluation, and dissemination
Gabriel Senay, Stefanie Kagone, Naga M. Velpuri
2020, Article
Satellite-based actual evapotranspiration (ETa) is becoming increasingly reliable and available for various water management and agricultural applications from water budget studies to crop performance monitoring. The Operational Simplified Surface Energy Balance (SSEBop) model is currently used by the US Geological Survey (USGS) Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS NET) to...
Hillslope groundwater discharges provide localized ecosystem buffers from regional PFAS contamination in a gaining coastal stream
Martin A. Briggs, Andrea K. Tokranov, Robert B. Hull, Denis R. LeBlanc, A. Haynes, John W. Lane Jr.
2020, Hydrological Processes (34) 2281-2291
Emerging groundwater contaminants such as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) may impact surface-water quality and groundwater-dependent ecosystems of gaining streams. Although complex near-surface hydrogeology of stream corridors challenges sampling efforts, recent advances in heat tracing of discharge zones enable efficient and informed data collection. For this study we used a...
Intraspecific and biogeographical variation in foliar fungal communities and pathogen damage of native and invasive Phragmites australis
Warwick J. Allen, Aaron Devries, Nicholas J. Bologna, Wesley A. Bickford, Kurt P. Kowalski, Laura A. Meyerson, James T. Cronin
2020, Global Ecology and Biogeography (29) 1199-1211
AimRecent research has highlighted that the relationship between species interactions and latitude can differ between native and invasive plant taxa, generating biogeographical heterogeneity in community resistance to plant invasions. In the first study with foliar pathogens, we tested whether co‐occurring native and invasive lineages of common reed...
Quantifying background nitrate removal mechanisms in an agricultural watershed with contrasting subcatchment baseflow concentrations
Wesley O. Zell, Teresa B Culver, Ward E. Sanford, Jonathan L Goodall
2020, Journal of Environmental Quality (49) 392-403
Numerous studies have documented the linkages between agricultural nitrogen loads and surface water degradation. In contrast, potential water quality improvements due to agricultural best management practices are difficult to detect because of the confounding effect of background nitrate removal rates, as well as the groundwater-driven delay between land surface action...
Li and Ca enrichment in the Bristol Dry Lake brine compared to brines from Cadiz and Danby Dry Lakes, Barstow-Bristol Trough, California, USA
Michael R. Rosen, Lisa L. Stillings, Tyler Kane, Kate M. Campbell, Matthew Vitale, Ray Spanjers
2020, Minerals (10)
Relatively few discharging playas in western United States extensional basins have high concentrations of lithium (Li) and calcium (Ca) in the basin-center brines. However, the source of both these ions is not well understood, and it is not clear why basins in close proximity within the same...
Thermal diversity of salmon streams in the Matanuska-Susitna Basin, Alaska
Rebecca Shaftel, Sue Mauger, Jeffrey A. Falke, Daniel Rinella, Jeff Davis, Leslie Jones
2020, JAWRA (56) 630-646
We present the first description of summer stream thermal regimes in Alaska using metrics that represent the magnitude, variability, frequency, duration, and timing of temperature events related to salmon life histories. We used cluster analysis to characterize thermal regimes present in the Matanuska-Susitna (Mat-Su) Basin based...
A within-season approach for detecting early crop stage of corn and soybean using high temporal and spatial resolution imagery
Feng Gao, Martha Anderson, Craig S. T. Daughtry, Arnon Karnieli, W. Dean Hively, William P. Kustas
2020, Remote Sensing of Environment (242)
Crop emergence is a critical stage for crop development and crop growth modeling. Mapping crop emergence using remote sensing data is challenging. Previous remote sensing phenology algorithms showed that crop stages could be detected around the V3-V4 (3 to 4 established leaves) vegetative stage. Traditional approaches have a strong assumption...
Consequences of ignoring group association in spatial capture-recapture analysis
Richard Bischof, Pierre Dupont, Cyril Milleret, Joseph Chipperfield, J. Andrew Royle
2020, Wildlife Biology (2020)
Many models in population ecology, including spatial capture–recapture (SCR) models, assume that individuals are distributed and detected independently of one another. In reality, this is rarely the case – both antagonistic and gregarious relationships lead to non-independent spatial configurations, with territorial exclusion at one end of the spectrum and group-living...
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...
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....
Dynamic rupture simulations of the M6.4 and M7.1 July 2019 Ridgecrest, California earthquakes
Julian C. Lozos, Ruth A. Harris
2020, Geophysical Research Letters (47)
The largest earthquakes of the 2019 Ridgecrest, California, sequence were a M 6.4 left‐lateral rupture followed 34 hr later by a M 7.1 on a perpendicular right‐lateral fault. We use dynamic rupture modeling to address the questions of why the first earthquake did not propagate through the right‐lateral fault in...
Ecological prediction at macroscales using big data: Does sampling design matter?
Patricia A. Soranno, Kendra Spence Cheruvelil, Boyang Liu, Qi Wang, Pang-Ning Tan, Jiayu Zhou, Katelyn B.S. King, Ian M. McCullough, Joseph Stachelek, Meridith Bartley, Christopher T. Filstrup, Ephraim M. Hanks, Jean-Francois Lapierre, Noah R. Lottig, Erin M. Schliep, Tyler Wagner, Katherine E. Webster
2020, Ecological Applications (30)
Although ecosystems respond to global change at regional to continental scales (i.e., macroscales), model predictions of ecosystem responses often rely on data from targeted monitoring of a small proportion of sampled ecosystems within a particular geographic area. In this study, we examined how the sampling strategy used to collect data...
Antibiotic resistance in marine microbial communities proximal to a Florida sewage outfall system
Dale W. Griffin, Kenneth Banks, Kurtis Gregg, Sarah Shedler, Brian Walker
2020, Antibiotics (9)
Water samples were collected at several wastewater treatment plants in southeast Florida, and water and sediment samples were collected along and around one outfall pipe, as well as along several transects extending both north and south of the respective outfall outlet. Two sets of samples were collected to address potential...
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...
