Biodiversity on public lands: How community science can help
Amanda Katzer, Erin Boydston, Michael E. Akresh, Jennifer S. Briggs, Kelsey Cooper, Vijay Barve, Lena Lee, Toni Lyn Morelli
2025, Conservation Science and Practice (7)
Species inventories are crucial for conservation but are difficult to assemble and maintain. Bioblitzes, which encourage the public to document biodiversity in a particular area and timeframe, may offer useful information but their integration with other datasets poses challenges. We investigated the potential contribution of bioblitzes to natural resource management...
Modeling wetland resources for spring migratory waterbirds under different agricultural management scenarios in the Iowa portion of the Prairie Pothole Region, USA
M.E. Mitchell, Michael J. Anteau, Aaron T. Pearse, Tammy Newcomer-Johnson, Jay R. Christensen, William R. Crumpton, Brian Dyson, Timothy J. Canfield, Matthew Helmers, David Green, Kenneth J. Forshay
2025, Wetlands (45)
Constructed water quality wetlands, designed to accept tile drainage and surface runoff, are a promising solution for reducing surface water nutrient loading from agricultural systems. In addition to their water quality benefits, these systems may also offset losses of migratory waterbird stopover sites resulting from historical and future agricultural drainage...
Keystone interdependence: Sea otter responses to a prey surplus following the collapse of a rocky intertidal predator
Joshua G. Smith, Jessica A. Fujii, Rani Gaddam, Leilani Konrad, Sophia Lyon, Teri E. Nicholson, Peter T. Raimondi, April D. Ridlon, Michelle M. Staedler, Joseph A. Tomoleoni, Julie L Yee, M. Tim Tinker
2025, Science Advances (11)
The sea star Pisaster ochraceus and sea otters (Enhydra lutris) are two predators capable of shaping rocky intertidal and kelp forest community structure and functioning. In 2013, a sea star wasting event decimated populations of Pisaster along the west coast of North America. The collapse of this species in the rocky intertidal revealed an...
Reservoir and riverine sources of cyanotoxins in Oregon’s Cascade Range rivers tapped for municipal drinking water supply
Kurt D. Carpenter, Barry H. Rosen, David Donahue, Kari Duncan, Brandin Hilbrandt, Christopher Lewis, Kim Swan, Tracy Triplett, Elijah Welch
2025, Phycology (5)
Reservoirs and downstream rivers draining Oregon’s Cascade Range provide critical water supplies for over 1.5 million residents in dozens of communities. These waters also support planktonic and benthic cyanobacteria that produce cyanotoxins that may degrade water quality for drinking, recreation, aquatic life, and other beneficial uses. This 2016–2020 survey examined...
Experimental evaluation of Eastern box turtle (Terrapene carolina carolina) detectability in visual search surveys
William Heinle, Noelle Beswick, Emily Wapman, J. Andrew Royle
2025, Herpetological Conservation and Biology (20) 82-93
Understanding how detection probability varies over time, space, or in response to measurable covariates is important to inform the monitoring and assessment of many species. A standard model to understand detectability, the availability/perception model, admits that detection probability is the composite of two components: availability and ability of surveyors to...
Coastal fine-grained sediment plumes from beach nourishment near Santa Barbara, California
Jonathan A. Warrick, Andrew W. Stevens, Babak Tehranirad
2025, Coastal Engineering Journal (67) 558-582
Terrestrial sediments captured by flood control facilities such as dams, debris basins, and engineered stream channels can reduce sediment fluxes to littoral cells. The beneficial use of these sediments for beach nourishment may induce negative environmental effects from turbidity or sedimentation caused by the source material. Here, we examine the...
Two-stage models improve machine learning classifiers in wildlife research: A case study in identifying false positive detections of Ruffed Grouse
Laurence A. Clarfeld, Katherina D. Gieder, Robert Abrams, Christopher Bernier, Joseph Cahill, Susan Staats, Scott Wixsom, Therese M. Donovan
2025, Ecological Informatics (89)
Autonomous recording units are increasingly being used to monitor wildlife on large geographic and temporal scales, paired with machine learning (ML) to automate detection of wildlife. However, false positive detections from ML classifiers can result in erroneous ecological models that can lead to misguided management and conservation actions. We used...
Oligocene–Miocene development and evolution of the south Dome Rock Mountains basin, lower Colorado River corridor, Arizona, USA
Timothy A. Brickey, Paul J. Umhoefer, Scott E.K. Bennett, Christine Regalla, Nancy R. Riggs, Skyler Pendleton Mavor
2025, Geosphere (21) 352-389
Sedimentary basins in the Colorado River extensional corridor record large-magnitude Basin and Range extension and younger dextral shear deformation in the evolving Pacific−North America plate boundary. The south Dome Rock Mountains basin is located in west-central Arizona (USA), where the history of basin evolution, style of deformation, and timing of...
Exposure to ultraviolet radiation induces escape hatching of Cisco (Coregonus artedi) embryos
Nicole Lynn Berry, David Bunnell, Erin P. Overholt, Jennifer A. Schumacher, Addison Z. Almeda, Casey W. Schoenebeck, Peter C. Jacobson, Kristopher Dey, Jason B. Smith, Andrew Tucker, Thomas J. Fisher, Elizabeth M. Mette, Bradley N. Carlson, Gretchen J.A. Hansen, Tyler D. Ahrenstorff, Derek L. Bahr, Kevin Keeler, Brian Weidel, Abigail Lynch, Craig E. Williamson
2025, Freshwater Biology (70)
Cisco (Otoonapii in Ojibwe; Coregonus artedi Lesueur, 1818), is a widely distributed stenothermic freshwater fish whose embryos typically incubate under ice and in the dark. We used Cisco as a model organism for testing the potential of UV-induced escape hatching behaviour. Owing to reduced ice cover and increased water transparency in...
Assessing shifting technology in genetic monitoring of the North American plains bison Federal conservation herds
Shawna J Zimmerman, Rachael Marie Giglio, Chris Geremia, Lee C. Jones, Blake McCann, Timothy J Smyser, Brendan J Moynahan, Sara J. Oyler-McCance
2025, Conservation Genetics (26) 657-675
Human expansion is a major driver of both declining wildlife abundance and the contraction of species’ distributions, increasing the risk of genetic erosion and the need for genetic monitoring. Rapidly advancing technology has expanded the types of genetic data that are available for wildlife conservation. However, inferences from different genetic...
The tortoise and the antilocaprid: Adapting GPS tracking and terrain data to model wildlife walking functions
Samuel Norton Chambers, Joshua W. Von Nonn, Matthew Alexander Burgess, Lance R. Brady, Jeffrey Bracewell, Daniel A. Guerra, Miguel L. Villarreal
2025, Landscape Ecology (42)
Context The relationship between slope and terrestrial animal locomotion is key to landscape ecology but underexplored across species. This is partly due to a lack of scalable methodology that applies to a diversity of wildlife. Objectives This study investigates the slope-speed relationship for two species, Texas tortoise (Gopherus berlandieri) and...
System characterization report on Resourcesat-2A Advanced Wide Field Sensor
Mahesh Shrestha, Minsu Kim, Aparajithan Sampath, Jeffrey Clauson
2025, Open-File Report 2021-1030-V
Executive Summary This report documents the system characterization of the Indian Space Research Organisation Resourcesat-2A Advanced Wide Field Sensor (AWiFS) and is part of a series of system characterization reports produced by the U.S. Geological Survey Earth Resources Observation and Science Cal/Val Center of Excellence. These reports describe the methodology and...
A framework tool that applies weight-of-evidence integration to the analysis of existing datasets to guide freshwater conservation
Olivia Rode, Martha E. Mather, Devon Oliver, Katherine Nelson, Victoria Reed, Trisha Moore, Suyash Pratap
2025, Frontiers in Freshwater Science (3)
The overarching issue we address here is how to extract clear and actionable ecological and management insights from real-world field data that often do not satisfy traditional statistical assumptions. Toward this goal, we developed a general 12+6 step adaptive management framework tool. We applied this framework tool...
Bridging social and ecological science to create spatially-explicit models of human-caused mortality of carnivores
Jeremy T. Bruskotter, Neil H. Carter, Richard Eugene Waggaman Berl, Joseph W. Hinton, Jazmin Murphy, L. Mark Elbroch, John A. Vucetich
2025, Ambio (54) 1479-1490
Research indicates that human-caused mortality (HCM) is a key factor limiting numerous large carnivore populations. However, efforts to represent HCM in spatially explicit models have generally been limited in scope—often relying on proxies, such as road or human density. Yet such efforts fail to distinguish different sources of HCM, which...
Integrating marine historical ecology into management of Alaska’s Pacific cod fishery for climate readiness
Catherine F. West, Loren McClenachan, Steven J. Barbeaux, Ingrid B. Spies, Jason A. Addison, Bruce T. Anderson, Courtney A. Hofman, Katherine L. Reedy, Emma A. Elliott Smith, Michael A. Etnier, Thomas E. Helser, Bruce P. Finney
2025, ICES Journal of Marine Science (82)
The Pacific cod (Gadus macrocephalus) fishery was closed in 2020 after a rapid decline in biomass caused by the marine heat waves of 2014–2019. Pacific cod are exceptionally thermally sensitive and management of this fishery is now challenged by increasingly unpredictable climate conditions. Fisheries monitoring is critical for climate readiness,...
Comparison of two benthic assemblage sampling gears for use on intertidal oyster reefs in Louisiana
Finella M. Campanino, Stephanie K. Archer, Jillian C. Tuptiza, Cassandra N. Glaspie, Megan La Peyre
2025, Aquatic Biology (13)
Background Estuarine biodiversity plays a vital role in supporting ecosystem functions yet remains threatened by climate change and anthropogenic activity. Tracking and identifying estuarine biodiversity trends helps management ensure long-term provisions of human and environmental benefits by contributing to the estimation of habitat loss and the monitoring of restoration and...
International gas hydrate research and development
Timothy Collett
2025, Conference Paper
Gas hydrates are increasingly acknowledged as a potential future natural gas resource, sparking extensive global research into their geological characteristics and the technology needed for production. This paper offers a comprehensive review of gas hydrate-related research initiatives and production testing activities, including those in the Alaska North Slope (USA), Mackenzie...
Increased flood exposure in the Pacific Northwest following earthquake-driven subsidence and sea-level rise
Tina Dura, William Chilton, David Small, Andra Garner, Andrea D. Hawkes, Diego Melgar, Simon E. Engelhart, Lydia M. Staisch, Robert C. Witter, Alan Nelson, Harvey Kelsey, Jonathan Allan, David S. Bruce, Jessica DePaolis, Mike Priddy, Richard W. Briggs, Robert Weiss, SeanPaul La Selle, Michael J. Willis, Benjamin P. Horton
2025, PNAS (122)
Climate-driven sea-level rise is increasing the frequency of coastal flooding worldwide, exacerbated locally by factors like land subsidence from groundwater and resource extraction. However, a process rarely considered in future sea-level rise scenarios is sudden (over minutes) land subsidence associated with great (>M8) earthquakes, which can exceed 1 m. Along...
Mapping predicted ecological states at landscape scales using remote sensing data and machine learning
Nathan J. Kleist, Christopher T. Domschke, Anna C. Knight, Travis W. Nauman, Michael C. Duniway, Sarah K. Carter
2025, Ecosphere (16)
Dryland ecosystems, covering 45% of the Earth's land and supporting over one-third of the global population, face significant threats from land degradation and ecological state change. Managing these ecosystems is complex, and science-based frameworks like Ecological Site Descriptions and state-and-transition models are essential tools for guiding decisions to support ecological...
Slow rupture, long rise times, and multi-fault geometry: The 2020 M6.4 southwestern Puerto Rico mainshock
Margarita M. Solares-Colón, Dara Elyse Goldberg, Diego Melgar, Elizabeth A. Vanacore, Valerie J. Sahakian, William L. Yeck, Francisco Hernández, Alberto Lopez-Venegas
2025, Geophysical Research Letters (52)
The M6.4 mainshock of the southwestern Puerto Rico seismic sequence on 7 January 2020, was one of the most impactful modern earthquakes in the northeastern Caribbean. Due to its offshore location and complex aftershock distribution, its source kinematics remain poorly constrained. This active sequence illuminated a complex set of previously unrecognized...
Advancing broadscale spatial evapotranspiration modelling by incorporating sun-induced chlorophyll fluorescence measurements
Sicong Gao, Pamela L. Nagler, William Woodgate, Alfredo Huete, Tanya M. Doody
2025, Journal of Hydrology (660)
Evapotranspiration (ET) describes the sum of water transfer from the ground surface through soil evaporation and water loss from leaf stomata into the atmosphere − critical factors linking the global water and carbon cycles. Myriad ET models based on remote sensing data provide spatially continuous estimates of ET; however, leaf...
A psychologically wise intervention to inform relational organizing in the face of climate and ocean change
Jennifer L. Waldo, Thomas C. Swearingen, Megan Siobhan Jones
2025, npj Ocean Sustainability (4)
Widespread climate action is broadly recognized as necessary to reduce climate change impacts on oceans (“ocean change”), but threats to ocean ecosystems are commonly perceived as distant, irrelevant, and unchangeable. Communicating about ocean change, therefore, requires message framing strategies targeting evidence-based psychological precursors to behavior. In a pre-registered case study...
Machine learning provides reconnaissance-type estimates of carbon dioxide storage resources in oil and gas reservoirs
Emil Attanasi, Philip A. Freeman, Timothy C. Coburn
2025, Frontiers in Enviornmental Science (13)
Oil and gas reservoirs represent suitable containers to sequester carbon dioxide (CO2) in a supercritical state because they are accessible, reservoir properties are known, and they previously contained stored buoyant fluids. However, planners must quantify the relative magnitude of the CO2 storage resource in these reservoirs to formulate a comprehensive strategy...
Bølling-Allerød productivity in the subarctic Pacific driven by seasonal upwelling
Kimberly A. deLong, Terrence Blackburn, Beth Elaine Caissie, Jason A. Addison, Zuzanna Stroynowski, Maria R. Sipala, Franco Marcantonio, Ana Christina Ravelo
2025, Geophysical Research Letters (52)
The Bølling-Allerød deglacial event is marked by high diatom productivity and opal deposition throughout the subarctic Pacific. This opal could either constitute a strengthened biological pump and thus carbon sequestration, or a weakened biological pump and release of marine-sequestered CO2 to the atmosphere. We quantify silicic acid supply at IODP Site...
Evaluation of SARS-CoV-2 antibody detection methods for wild Cervidae
Joshua Hewitt, Grete Wilson-Henjum, Jeffrey C. Chandler, Aaron T. Phillips, Diego G. Diel, W. David Walter, Alec Baker, Jennifer Høy-Petersen, Guillaume Bastille-Rousseau, Tadao Kishimoto, George Wittemyer, Jeremy Alder, Sara Hathaway, Kezia R. Manlove, Travis Gallo, Jennifer Mullinax, Carson Coriell, Matthew Payne, Meggan E. Craft, Tyler J. Garwood, Tiffany M. Wolf, Maria A. Diuk-Wasser, Meredith C. VanAcker, Laura Dudley Plimpton, Mark Q. Wilber, Daniel Grove, Justin Koseiwska, Lisa I. Muller, Kim M. Pepin
2025, Preventive Veterinary Medicine (241)
Wildlife surveillance programs often use serological data to monitor exposure to pathogens. Diagnostic sensitivity and specificity of a serological assay quantify the true positive and negative rates of the diagnostic assay, respectively. However, an assay’s accuracy can be affected by wild animals’ pathogen exposure history and quality of the sample...
