Clumped isotopes record a glacial-interglacial shift in seasonality of soil carbonate accumulation in the San Luis Valley, southern Rocky Mountains, USA
Adam M. Hudson, Julia R. Kelson, James B. Paces, Chester A. Ruleman, Katharine W. Huntington, Andrew J. Schauer
2024, Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems (25)
Clumped isotope paleothermometry using pedogenic carbonates is a powerful tool for investigating past climate changes. However, location-specific seasonal patterns of precipitation and soil moisture cause systematic biases in the temperatures they record, hampering comparison of data across large areas or differing climate states. To account for biases, more systematic studies...
Timing and source of recharge to the Columbia River Basalt groundwater system in northeastern Oregon
Henry M. Johnson, Kate E. Ely, Anna-Turi Maher
2024, Groundwater (62) 761-777
Recharge to and flow within the Columbia River Basalt Group (CRBG) groundwater flow system of northeastern Oregon were characterized using isotopic, gas, and age-tracer samples from wells completed in basalt, springs, and stream base flow. Most groundwater samples were late-Pleistocene to early-Holocene; median age of...
Inbuilt age, residence time, and inherited age from radiocarbon dates of modern fires and late Holocene deposits, Western Transverse Ranges, California
Katherine M. Scharer, Devin McPhillips, Jenifer Amy Leidelmeijer, Matthew Kirby
2024, Earth Surface Processes and Landforms (49) 2309-2582
Radiocarbon dates of sedimentary deposits include the elapsed time between formation of the organic material and deposition at the sample site, known as the inherited age. Long inherited ages reduce the accuracy of estimates of the timing of depositional events used to infer paleoclimate change, fire histories, and paleoearthquake...
Evaluation of the characteristics, discharge, and water quality of selected springs at Fort Irwin National Training Center, San Bernardino County, California
Jill N. Densmore, Drew C. Thayer, Meghan C. Dick, Peter W. Swarzenski, Lyndsay B. Ball, Celia Z. Rosecrans, Cordell Johnson
2024, Scientific Investigations Report 2023-5142
Eight springs and seeps at Fort Irwin National Training Center were described and categorized by their general characteristics, discharge, geophysical properties, and water quality between 2015 and 2017. The data collected establish a modern (2017) baseline of hydrologic conditions at the springs. Two types of springs were identified: (1) precipitation-fed...
Genetic Connectivity in the Arizona toad (Anaxyrus microscaphus): implications for conservation of a stream dwelling amphibian in the arid Southwestern U.S.
Sara J. Oyler-McCance, Mason J. Ryan, Brian K. Sullivan, Jennifer A. Fike, Robert S. Cornman, J. T. Giermakowski, Shawna J Zimmerman, R. L. Harrow, S.J. Hedwell, Blake R. Hossack, I. M. Latella, R. E. Lovish, S. Siefken, Brent H. Sigafus, Erin L. Muths
2024, Conservation Genetics (25) 835-848
The Arizona Toad (Anaxyrus microscaphus) is restricted to riverine corridors and adjacent uplands in the arid southwestern United States. As with numerous amphibians worldwide, populations are declining and face various known or suspected threats, from disease to habitat modification resulting from climate change. The Arizona Toad has been petitioned to...
Post-wildfire debris flows
Joseph Gartner, Jason W. Kean, Francis K. Rengers, Scott W. McCoy, Nina S. Oakley, Gary J. Sheridan
2024, Book chapter, Advances in Debris-flow Science and Practice
Post-wildfire debris flows pose severe hazards to communities and infrastructure near and within recently burned mountainous terrain. Intense heat of wildfires changes the runoff characteristics of a watershed by combusting the vegetative canopy, litter, and duff, introducing ash into the soil and creating water repellant soils. Following wildfire, rainfall on...
Lahars: Origins, behavior and hazards
James W. Vallance
Matthias Jakob, Scott McDougall, Paul Santi, editor(s)
2024, Book chapter, Advances in debris-flow science and practice
Volcanic debris flows that originate at potentially active volcanoes are called lahars. Lahars are like debris flows in non-volcanic terrain but can most notably differ in origin and size. Primary lahars occur during eruptions and may have novel origins such as turbulent mixing of hot rock moving across ice- and...
Numerical modeling of debris flows: A conceptual assessment
Richard M. Iverson, David L. George
2024, Book chapter, Advances in Debris-flow Science and Practice
Real-world hazard evaluation poses many challenges for the development and application of numerical models of debris flows. In this chapter we provide a conceptual overview of physically based, depth-averaged models designed to simulate debris-flow motion across three-dimensional terrain. When judiciously formulated and applied, these models can...
A comparison of contemporary and historical hydrology and water quality in the foothills and coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Arctic Slope, northern Alaska
Joshua C. Koch, Heather Best, Carson Baughman, Charles Couvillion, Michael P. Carey, Jeff Conaway
2024, Scientific Investigations Report 2024-5008
The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is a unique landscape in northern Alaska with limited water resources, substantial biodiversity of rare and threatened species, as well as oil and gas resources. The region has unique hydrology related to perennial springs, and the formation of large aufeis fields—sheets of ice that grow...
Evaluation of an impulse-response emulator for groundwater contaminant transport modeling
Brent Porter Heerspink, Michael N. Fienen, Howard W. Reeves
2024, Groundwater (62) 945-956
There is a significant need to develop decision support tools capable of delivering accurate representations of environmental conditions, such as ground and surface water solute concentrations, in a timely and computationally efficient manner. Such tools can be leveraged to assess a large number of potential management strategies for mitigating non-point...
Performance-based earthquake early warning for tall buildings
S. Farid Ghahari, Khachik Sargsyan, Grace Alexandra Parker, Dan Swensen, Mehmet Celebi, Hamid Haddadi, Ertugrul Taciroglu
2024, Earthquake Spectra (40) 1425-1451
The ShakeAlert Earthquake Early Warning (EEW) system aims to issue an advance warning to residents on the West Coast of the United States seconds before the ground shaking arrives, if the expected ground shaking exceeds a certain threshold. However, residents in tall buildings may experience much greater...
Integrated distance sampling models for simple point counts
Marc Kery, Andy Royle, Tyler Hallman, Doug Robinson, Nicolas Strebel, Kenneth F. Kellner
2024, Ecology (105)
Point counts (PCs) are widely used in biodiversity surveys but, despite numerous advantages, simple PCs suffer from several problems: detectability, and therefore abundance, is unknown; systematic spatiotemporal variation in detectability yields biased inferences, and unknown survey area prevents formal density estimation and scaling-up to the landscape level. We introduce integrated...
Evaluation of sensors for continuous monitoring of harmful algal blooms in the Finger Lakes region, New York, 2019 and 2020
Brett D. Johnston, Kaitlyn M. Finkelstein, Sabina R. Gifford, Michael D.W. Stouder, Elizabeth A. Nystrom, Philip Savoy, Joshua J. Rosen, Matthew B. Jennings
2024, Scientific Investigations Report 2024-5010
In response to the increasing frequency of cyanobacterial harmful algal blooms (CyanoHABs) in the Finger Lakes region of New York State, a pilot study by the U.S. Geological Survey, in collaboration with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, was conducted to enhance CyanoHAB monitoring and understanding. High-frequency sensors...
Controls on in-stream nitrogen loss in western Lake Erie tributaries
Rebecca M. Kreiling, Lynn A. Bartsch, Patrik Mathis Perner, Kenna Jean Breckner, Tanja N. Williamson, James M. Hood, Nathan F. Manning, Laura T. Johnson
2024, Journal of Great Lakes Research (50)
Management efforts to reduce cyanobacterial harmful algal blooms (cHABs) in the Great Lakes have focused on decreasing tributary inputs of phosphorus (P). Recent research has indicated that reduction of both P and nitrogen (N) can lessen cHABs severity. Microbially mediated N cycling in streambed sediment may reduce N riverine loads,...
A conceptual site model of contaminant transport pathways from the Bremerton Naval Complex to Sinclair Inlet, Washington, 2011–21
Kathleen E. Conn, Sarah E. Janssen, Chad C. Opatz, Valerie A.L. Bright
2024, Scientific Investigations Report 2024-5011
Historical activities on the Bremerton Naval Complex (BNC) in Puget Sound, Washington, have resulted in Sinclair Inlet sediments with elevated concentrations of contaminants, including organic contaminants such as polychlorinated biphenyls and trace elements including mercury. Six U.S. Geological Survey–U.S. Navy datasets have been collected since the last major assessment, in...
Evaluation of groundwater resources in the Upper White River Basin within Mount Rainier National Park, Washington State, 2020
Leland T. Fuhrig, Andrew J. Long, Alexander O. Headman
2024, Scientific Investigations Report 2024-5015
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in cooperation with the National Park Service, investigated groundwater gains and losses on the upper White River within Mount Rainier National Park in Washington. This investigation was conducted using stream discharge measurements at 14 locations within 7 reaches over a 6.5-mile river length from near...
Noise constraints on global body‐wave measurement thresholds
Adam T. Ringler, David C. Wilson, Paul S. Earle, William L. Yeck, David B. Mason, Justin T. Wilgus
2024, Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (114) 1765-1776
Intermediate sized earthquakes (≈M4–6.5) are often measured using the teleseismic body‐wave magnitude (𝑚b). 𝑚b measurements are especially critical at the lower end of this range when teleseismic waveform modeling techniques (i.e., moment tensor analysis) are difficult. The U.S. Geological Survey National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC) determines the location...
Limited evidence of late Quaternary tectonic surface deformation in the eastern Tennessee seismic zone, USA
Jessica Ann Thompson Jobe, Richard W. Briggs, Ryan D. Gold, Laurel Bauer, Camille Collett
2024, Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (114) 1920-1940
The ~300-km-long eastern Tennessee seismic zone (ETSZ), USA, is the second-most seismically active region east of the Rocky Mountains. Seismicity generally occurs below the Paleozoic fold-and-thrust belt within the Mesoproterozoic basement, at depths of 5–26 km, and earthquake magnitudes during the instrumental record have been moment magnitude (Mw)≤4.8. Evidence of...
Fair graph learning using constraint-aware priority adjustment and graph masking in river networks
Erhu He, Yiqun Xie, Alexander Y. Sun, Jacob Aaron Zwart, Jie Yang, Zhenong Jin, Yang Wang, Hassan Ali Karimi, Xiaowei Jia
2024, Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (38) 22087-22095
Accurate prediction of water quality and quantity is crucial for sustainable development and human well-being. However, existing data-driven methods often suffer from spatial biases in model performance due to heterogeneous data, limited observations, and noisy sensor data. To overcome these challenges, we propose Fair-Graph, a novel graph-based recurrent neural network...
Association of water arsenic with incident diabetes in U.S. adults: The Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis and The Strong Heart Study
Maya Spaur, Marta Galvez-Fernandez, Qixuan Chen, Melissa A. Lombard, Benjamin Bostick, Pam Factor-Litvak, Amanda Fretts, Steven Shea, Ana Navas-Acien, Anne E Nigra
2024, Diabetes Care (47) 1143-1151
OBJECTIVEWe examined the association of arsenic in federally regulated community water systems (CWSs) and unregulated private wells with type 2 diabetes (T2D) incidence in the Strong Heart Family Study (SHFS), a prospective study of American Indian communities, and the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA), a prospective study of...
Plant-derived products selectively suppress growth of the harmful alga Prymnesium parvum
Mousumi A. Mary, Shisbeth Tabora-Sarmiento, Sarah Nash, Gregory D. Mayer, Jordan Crago, Reynaldo Patino
2024, Water (16)
Prymnesium parvum is a harmful alga found in brackish waters worldwide whose toxins can be lethal to aquatic organisms. Established field methods to control blooms of this species, however, are unavailable. Earlier studies showed that various extracts of giant reed (Arundo donax) can suppress P. parvum growth and that ellipticine,...
Exploring and integrating differences in niche characteristics across regional and global scales to better understand plant invasions in Hawaiʻi
Lucas Fortini, Lauren R. Kaiser, Curtis Daehler, James D. Jacobi, Monica Dimson, Thomas W Gillespie
2024, Biological Invasions (26) 1827-1843
The spread of ecosystem modifying invasive plant (EMIP) species is one of the largest threats to native ecosystems in Hawaiʻi. However, differences in niche characteristics between Hawaiʻi’s isolated insular environment and the wider global distribution of these species have not been carefully examined. We used species distribution modeling (SDM) methods...
Greater sage-grouse habitat of Nevada and northeastern California—Integrating space use, habitat selection, and survival indices to guide areas for habitat management
Megan C. Milligan, Peter S. Coates, Shawn T. O’Neil, Brianne E. Brussee, Michael P. Chenaille, Derek Friend, Kathleen Steele, Justin R. Small, Timothy S. Bowden, Arlene D. Kosic, Katherine Miller
2024, Open-File Report 2024-1018
Executive SummaryGreater sage-grouse populations (Centrocercus urophasianus; hereafter sage-grouse) are threatened by a suite of disturbances and anthropogenic factors that have contributed to a net loss of sagebrush-dominant shrub cover in recent decades. Declines in sage-grouse populations are largely linked to habitat loss across their range. A key component of conservation...
Seismic attenuation and stress on the San Andreas Fault at Parkfield: Are we critical yet?
Luca Malagnini, Robert M. Nadeau, Thomas E. Parsons
2024, Frontiers in Earth Science (12)
The Parkfield transitional segment of the San Andreas Fault (SAF) is characterized by the production of frequent quasi-periodical M6 events that break the very same asperity. The last Parkfield mainshock occurred on 28 September 2004, 38 years after the 1966 earthquake, and after the segment showed a ∼22 years average...
Improved efficient physics-based computational modeling of regional wave-driven coastal flooding for reef-lined coastlines
Camila Gaido-Lassarre, Kees Nederhoff, Curt D. Storlazzi, Borja Reguero, Michael W. Beck
2024, Journal of Marine Science & Engineering (198)
Coastal flooding affects low-lying communities worldwide and is expected to increase with climate change, especially along reef-lined coasts, where wave-driven flooding is particularly prevalent. However, current regional modeling approaches are either insufficient or too computationally expensive to accurately assess risks in...
