Remote sensing of soil moisture using airborne hyperspectral data
M. Finn, M. Lewis, D. Bosch, Mario Giraldo, K. Yamamoto, D. Sullivan, R. Kincaid, R. Luna, G. Allam, Craig Kvien, Murray Williams
2011, GIScience and Remote Sensing (48) 522-540
Landscape assessment of soil moisture is critical to understanding the hydrological cycle at the regional scale and in broad-scale studies of biophysical processes affected by global climate changes in temperature and precipitation. Traditional efforts to measure soil moisture have been principally restricted to in situ measurements, so remote sensing techniques...
A Web-Based Decision Support System for Assessing Regional Water-Quality Conditions and Management Actions
N.L. Booth, E.J. Everman, I.-L. Kuo, L. Sprague, L. Murphy
2011, Journal of the American Water Resources Association (47) 1136-1150
The U.S. Geological Survey National Water Quality Assessment Program has completed a number of water-quality prediction models for nitrogen and phosphorus for the conterminous United States as well as for regional areas of the nation. In addition to estimating water-quality conditions at unmonitored streams, the calibrated SPAtially Referenced Regressions On...
Peat Formation Processes Through the Millennia in Tidal Marshes of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, California, USA
J.Z. Drexler
2011, Estuaries and Coasts (34) 900-911
The purpose of this study was to determine peat formation processes throughout the millennia in four tidal marshes in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Peat cores collected at each site were analyzed for bulk density, loss on ignition, and percent organic carbon. Core data and spline fit age-depth models were used...
Constraints on Lake Agassiz discharge through the late-glacial Champlain Sea (St. Lawrence Lowlands, Canada) using salinity proxies and an estuarine circulation model
Brian Katz, R.G. Najjar, T. Cronin, J. Rayburn, M. E. Mann
2011, Quaternary Science Reviews (30) 3248-3257
During the last deglaciation, abrupt freshwater discharge events from proglacial lakes in North America, such as glacial Lake Agassiz, are believed to have drained into the North Atlantic Ocean, causing large shifts in climate by weakening the formation of North Atlantic Deep Water and decreasing ocean heat transport to high...
Estimating Hydraulic Parameters When Poroelastic Effects Are Significant
S.J. Berg, P. A. Hsieh, W.A. Illman
2011, Ground Water (49) 815-829
For almost 80 years, deformation-induced head changes caused by poroelastic effects have been observed during pumping tests in multilayered aquifer-aquitard systems. As water in the aquifer is released from compressive storage during pumping, the aquifer is deformed both in the horizontal and vertical directions. This deformation in the pumped aquifer...
Evaluation of the Global Multi-Resolution Terrain Elevation Data 2010 (GMTED2010) using ICESat geodetic control
C.C. Carabajal, D.J. Harding, J.-P. Boy, Jeffrey J. Danielson, D.B. Gesch, V.P. Suchdeo
2011, Conference Paper, Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering
Supported by NASA's Earth Surface and Interior (ESI) Program, we are producing a global set of Ground Control Points (GCPs) derived from the Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) altimetry data. From February of 2003, to October of 2009, ICESat obtained nearly global measurements of land topography (+/- 86deg...
Coulomb stress change sensitivity due to variability in mainshock source models and receiving fault parameters: A case study of the 2010-2011 Christchurch, New Zealand, earthquakes
Zhongwen Zhan, Bikai Jin, Shengji Wei, Robert W. Graves
2011, Seismological Research Letters (82) 800-814
Strong aftershocks following major earthquakes present significant challenges for infrastructure recovery as well as for emergency rescue efforts. A tragic instance of this is the 22 February 2011 Mw 6.3 Christchurch aftershock in New Zealand, which caused more than 100 deaths while the 2010 Mw 7.1 Canterbury mainshock did not...
Modeling the height of young forests regenerating from recent disturbances in Mississippi using Landsat and ICESat data
Ainong Li, Chengquan Huang, Guoqing Sun, Hua Shi, Chris Toney, Zhiliang Zhu, Matthew G. Rollins, Samuel N. Goward, Jeffery G. Masek
2011, Remote Sensing of Environment (115) 1837-1849
Many forestry and earth science applications require spatially detailed forest height data sets. Among the various remote sensing technologies, lidar offers the most potential for obtaining reliable height measurement. However, existing and planned spaceborne lidar systems do not have the capability to produce spatially contiguous, fine resolution forest height maps...
Modules based on the geochemical model PHREEQC for use in scripting and programming languages
S.R. Charlton, D.L. Parkhurst
2011, Computers & Geosciences (37) 1653-1663
The geochemical model PHREEQC is capable of simulating a wide range of equilibrium reactions between water and minerals, ion exchangers, surface complexes, solid solutions, and gases. It also has a general kinetic formulation that allows modeling of nonequilibrium mineral dissolution and precipitation,...
Multilevel empirical bayes modeling for improved estimation of toxicant formulations to suppress parasitic sea lamprey in the upper Great Lakes
L.A. Hatfield, S. Gutreuter, M.A. Boogaard, B.P. Carlin
2011, Biometrics (67) 1153-1162
Estimation of extreme quantal‐response statistics, such as the concentration required to kill 99.9% of test subjects (LC99.9), remains a challenge in the presence of multiple covariates and complex study designs. Accurate and precise estimates of the LC99.9 for mixtures of toxicants are critical to ongoing control of a parasitic invasive...
Calibration of Nu-Instruments Noblesse multicollector mass spectrometers for argon isotopic measurements using a newly developed reference gas
M.A. Coble, M. Grove, A.T. Calvert
2011, Chemical Geology (290) 75-87
The greatest challenge limiting 40Ar/39Ar multicollection measurements is the availability of appropriate standard gasses to intercalibrate detectors. In particular, use of zoom lens ion-optics to steer and focus ion beams into a fixed detector array (i.e., Nu Instruments Noblesse) makes intercalibration of multiple detectors challenging because different ion-optic tuning conditions are...
Modeled sources, transport, and accumulation of dissolved solids in water resources of the southwestern United States
D.W. Anning
2011, Journal of the American Water Resources Association (47) 1087-1109
Information on important source areas for dissolved solids in streams of the southwestern United States, the relative share of deliveries of dissolved solids to streams from natural and human sources, and the potential for salt accumulation in soil or groundwater was developed using a SPAtially Referenced Regressions On Watershed attributes...
Wave characteristic and morphologic effects on the onshore hydrodynamic response of tsunamis
A. Apotsos, B. Jaffe, G. Gelfenbaum
2011, Coastal Engineering (58) 1034-1048
While the destruction caused by a tsunami can vary significantly owing to near- and onshore controls, we have only a limited quantitative understanding of how different local parameters influence the onshore response of tsunamis. Here, a numerical model based on the non-linear shallow water equations is first shown to agree...
Bedform response to flow variability
J. M. Nelson, B.L. Logan, P.J. Kinzel, Y. Shimizu, S. Giri, R.L. Shreve, S.R. McLean
2011, Earth Surface Processes and Landforms (36) 1938-1947
Laboratory observations and computational results for the response of bedform fields to rapid variations in discharge are compared and discussed. The simple case considered here begins with a relatively low discharge over a flat bed on which bedforms are initiated, followed by a short high‐flow period with double the original...
Natural and human dimensions of a quasi-wild species: The case of kudzu
Z. Li, Q. Dong, Thomas P. Albright, Q. Guo
2011, Biological Invasions (13) 2167-2179
The human dimensions of biotic invasion are generally poorly understood, even among the most familiar invasive species. Kudzu (Pueraria montana (Lour.) Merr.) is a prominent invasive plant and an example of quasi-wild species, which has experienced repeated introduction, cultivation, and escape back to the wild. Here, we review a large body...
Predicting breeding habitat for amphibians: A spatiotemporal analysis across Yellowstone National Park
Paul E. Bartelt, Alisa L. Gallant, Robert W. Klaver, C.K. Wright, Debra A. Patla, Charles R. Peterson
2011, Ecological Applications (21) 2530-2547
The ability to predict amphibian breeding across landscapes is important for informing land management decisions and helping biologists better understand and remediate factors contributing to declines in amphibian populations. We built geospatial models of likely breeding habitats for each of four amphibian species that breed in Yellowstone National Park (YNP)....
Mars: the evolutionary history of the northern lowlands based on crater counting and geologic mapping
S.C. Werner, K. L. Tanaka, J.A. Skinner Jr.
2011, Planetary and Space Science (59) 1143-1165
The geologic history of planetary surfaces is most effectively determined by joining geologic mapping and crater counting which provides an iterative, qualitative and quantitative method for defining relative ages and absolute model ages. Based on this approach, we present spatial and temporal details regarding the evolution of the Martian northern...
Potential effects of alpha-recoil on uranium-series dating of calcrete
L.A. Neymark
2011, Chemical Geology (282) 98-112
Evaluation of paleosol ages in the vicinity of Yucca Mountain, Nevada, at the time the site of a proposed high-level nuclear waste repository, is important for fault-displacement hazard assessment. Uranium-series isotope data were obtained for surface and subsurface calcrete samples from trenches and boreholes in Midway Valley, Nevada, adjacent to...
Macroscopic biofilms in fracture-dominated sediment that anaerobically oxidize methane
B.R. Briggs, J. W. Pohlman, M. Torres, M. Riedel, E.L. Brodie, F.S. Colwell
2011, Applied and Environmental Microbiology (77) 6780-6787
Methane release from seafloor sediments is moderated, in part, by the anaerobic oxidation of methane (AOM) performed by consortia of archaea and bacteria. These consortia occur as isolated cells and aggregates within the sulfate-methane transition (SMT) of diffusion and seep-dominant environments. Here we report on a new SMT setting where...
Characteristics of foraging sites and protein status in wintering muskoxen: insights from isotopes of nitrogen
David D. Gustine, Perry S. Barboza, James P. Lawler, Stephen M. Arthur, Brad S. Shults, Kate Persons, Layne G. Adams
2011, Oikos (120) 1546-1556
Identifying links between nutritional condition of individuals and population trajectories greatly enhances our understanding of the ecology, conservation, and management of wildlife. For northern ungulates, the potential impacts of a changing climate to populations are predicted to be nutritionally mediated through an increase in the severity and variance in winter...
Occupancy and abundance of wintering birds in a dynamic agricultural landscape
M.W. Miller, E.V. Pearlstine, Robert Dorazio, F.J. Mazzotti
2011, Journal of Wildlife Management (75) 751-761
Effective monitoring programs are designed to track changes in the distribution, occurrence, and abundance of species. We developed an extension of Royle and Kéry's (2007) single species model to estimate simultaneously temporal changes in probabilities of detection, occupancy, colonization, extinction, and species turnover using data on calling anuran amphibians, collected...
Rapid assessment of rice seed availability for wildlife in harvested fields
B.J. Halstead, M. R. Miller, Michael L. Casazza, P.S. Coates, M.A. Farinha, K. Benjamin Gustafson, J.L. Yee, J. P. Fleskes
2011, Wildlife Society Bulletin (35) 377-393
Rice seed remaining in commercial fields after harvest (waste rice) is a critical food resource for wintering waterfowl in rice-growing regions of North America. Accurate and precise estimates of the seed mass density of waste rice are essential for planning waterfowl wintering habitat extents and management. In the Sacramento Valley...
Flow regime, temperature, and biotic interactions drive differential declines of trout species under climate change
S.J. Wenger, D.J. Isaak, C.H. Luce, H.M. Neville, K.D. Fausch, J. B. Dunham, D.C. Dauwalter, M.K. Young, M.M. Elsner, B.E. Rieman, A.F. Hamlet, J.E. Williams
2011, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (108) 14175-14180
Broad-scale studies of climate change effects on freshwater species have focused mainly on temperature, ignoring critical drivers such as flow regime and biotic interactions. We use downscaled outputs from general circulation models coupled with a hydrologic model to forecast the effects of altered flows and increased temperatures on four interacting...
Population viability analysis to identify management priorities for reintroduced elk in the Cumberland Mountains, Tennessee
J.L. Kindall, L.I. Muller, J. D. Clark, J.L. Lupardus, J.L. Murrow
2011, Journal of Wildlife Management (75) 1745-1752
We used an individual-based population model to perform a viability analysis to simulate population growth (λ) of 167 elk (Cervus elaphus manitobensis; 71 male and 96 female) released in the Cumberland Mountains, Tennessee, to estimate sustainability (i.e., λ > 1.0) and identify the most appropriate options for managing elk restoration. We transported...
Where the wild things are: Predicting hotspots of seabird aggregations in the California Current System
N. Nur, J. Jahncke, M.P. Herzog, J. Howar, K.D. Hyrenbach, J.E. Zamon, D. G. Ainley, J. A. Wiens, K. Morgan, L.T. Balance, D. Stralberg
2011, Ecological Applications (21) 2241-2257
Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) provide an important tool for conservation of marine ecosystems. To be most effective, these areas should be strategically located in a manner that supports ecosystem function. To inform marine spatial planning and support strategic establishment of MPAs within the California Current System, we identified areas predicted...
