Potential 2050 distributions of World Terrestrial Ecosystems from projections of changes in World Climate Regions and Global Land Cover
Roger Sayre, Charlie Frye, Sean Breyer, Patrick Roehrdanz, Paul Elsen, Kevin Butler, Clint Brown, Jill Janene Cress, Deniz Karagulle, Madeline T. Martin, Florencia Sangermano, Regan Smyth, Terry Sohl, Nicholas Wolff, Dawn Wright, Zhuoting Wu
2025, Global Ecology and Conservation (57)
The urgency to address ecosystem loss is paramount, as both land use change and climate change will continue to rapidly alter and degrade natural ecosystems and reduce the many services they provide. To support conservation actions that mitigate impacts from these dual threats, we have developed potential World Terrestrial Ecosystem...
Vertebrates in trade that pose high invasion risk to the United States
Wesley Daniel, Helen Sofaer, Catherine S. Jarnevich, Richard A. Erickson, Brett Alexander DeGregorio, Peder Scott Engelstad, Jonathan A. Freedman, Susan Canavan, Emily M. Dean, Michael J Adams, Charmayne L. Anderson, Mindy Barnett, Marybeth K. Brey, Kyle J. Brumm, Matthew S. Bunting, Emily Caffrey, Laura Cardador, Jacoby Carter, Phillip Cassey, Duane Chapman, Natalie M. Claunch, Timothy D. Counihan, Kristin P. Davis, Anant Deshwal, Andrew K. Douglas, Corey Garland Dunn, Chase Ehlo, Katie Everett, Jason M. Gleditsch, Andrew Grosse, Zoey Hendrickson, Steven C. Hess, Jeffrey E. Hill, Nick D. Holmes, Ana V. Longo, Julie L. Lockwood, Doran M. Mason, Ashley McDonald, Matthew Neilson, Kristen M. Reaver, Robert Reed, Caleb Powell Roberts, Jane S. Rogosch, Christina Romagosa, James C. Russell, Annie Simpson, Scott A. Smith, Jinelle Sperry, Quenton M. Tuckett, Kurt VerCauteren, J. Hardin Waddle, Christian Wanamaker, John D. Willson, Arden Williams, Deah Lieurance
2025, Biological Conservation (302)
The United States imports thousands of live vertebrate species annually as part of legal trade. Escapes and releases from captivity are major pathways of invasion, however, the risk posed by the thousands of imported vertebrate species has not been systematically assessed. We conducted a horizon scan that used a data-driven...
Age, growth, and reproductive biology of Achilles tang (Acanthurus achilles) around Hawai'i Island, USA
Timothy B. Grabowski, Richard Massey, Dawn McSwain, Annie Larson, Lillian Joy Tuttle Raz, Eva Schemmel, Danielle E. Bartz, Nikola Rodriguez
2025, Article
A culturally important food fish in Hawai'i, Achilles tang (Acanthurus achilles Shaw), recently experienced sharp declines in biomass, density, and average length in west Hawai'i Island. In December 2022, State resource managers placed a 2-year moratorium on the Achilles tang fishery in west Hawai'i Island so that the cause of the...
Considerations and perspectives on pregnancy and fieldwork
Jennifer L. Jenkins, Beth A. Johnson, Kendall Valentine, Kendra J. Lynn
2025, Nature Reviews Earth and Environment (6) 2-3
Fieldwork is integral to geoscience but can come with risks that increase for fieldworkers who are pregnant. Consultation with medical staff and completion of risk assessments are essential steps, but pregnant individuals also benefit from supportive colleagues, reasonable accommodations, and the freedom to adapt plans as pregnancy progresses....
Identifying lakes critical to the westward spread and establishment of zebra mussels
David A. Creamer, Jane S. Rogosch, Renaldo Patino, Monica E. McGarrity
2025, Biological Conservation (302)
Damaging aquatic invasive species, such as the zebra mussel (Dreissena polymorpha), pose an ongoing concern for potential introduction and establishment in the western United States. Our study applied habitat suitability indices and network analysis to identify lakes critical to the continued westward spread and establishment of zebra mussels from a key...
Practical application of time-lapse camera imagery to develop water-level data for three hydrologic monitoring sites in Wisconsin during water year 2020
Keegan Eland Johnson, Paul Reneau, Matthew J. Komiskey
2025, Journal of Hydrology X (26)
Using camera imagery to measure water level (camera-stage) is a well-researched area of study. Previous camera-stage studies have shown promising results when implementing this technology with tight constraints on test conditions. However, there is a need for a more comprehensive evaluation of the extensibility of camera-stage to practical applications. Therefore,...
Intersection of wildfire and legacy mining poses risk to water quality
Sheila F. Murphy, Johanna Blake, Brian A. Ebel, Deborah A. Martin
2025, Environmental Science and Technology (59) 35-44
Mining and wildfires are both landscape disturbances that pose elevated and substantial hazards to water supplies and ecosystems due to increased erosion and transport of sediment, metals, and debris to downstream waters. The risk to water supplies may be amplified when these disturbances occur in the same watershed. This work...
Evaluating approaches for integrating species distributions in spatial conservation planning
Jason M. Winiarski, Amy A. Shipley, Drew Nathan Fowler, Matthew D. Palumbo, Jacob N. Straub
2025, Conservation Science and Practice (7)
Map-based decision support tools (DSTs) that use species distributions are an important means of identifying priority areas for conservation. The 2020 Wisconsin Waterfowl Habitat Conservation Strategy (WWHCS) uses a DST to identify priority ecological landscapes and watersheds to guide waterfowl habitat projects. The WWHCS DST relies on waterfowl habitat suitability...
A case for occupancy as a state variable for wild bee monitoring
Clint Otto, S. Hollis Woodard, Larissa L. Bailey
2025, Biological Conservation (302)
Reports of widespread pollinator declines, data deficiencies, and inabilities to assess status and trends underscore the need for wild bee monitoring. Chief among the challenges with wild bee monitoring is identifying monitoring objectives and state variables. Here we make the case for considering occupancy, the proportion of area occupied, as...
Examining inter-regional and intra-seasonal differences in wintering waterfowl landscape associations among Pacific and Atlantic flyways
Matthew J. Hardy, Christopher K. Williams, Brian S. Ladman, Maurice E. Pitesky, Cory T. Overton, Michael L. Casazza, Elliott Matchett, Diann Prosser, Jeffrey J. Buler
2025, Journal of Avian Biology (2025)
The Central Valley of California (CVC) and Mid-Atlantic (MA) in the U.S. are both critical sites for nationwide food security, and many waterfowl species annually, especially during the winter, providing feeding and roosting locations for a variety of species. Mapping waterfowl distributions, using NEXRAD, may aid in the adaptive management...
Decision analysis of Integrated Pest Management: A case study on invasive sea lamprey in the Great Lakes Basin
Sean Alois Lewandoski, Kelly Filer Robinson, Travis O. Brenden, Ryan Booth, Peter Hrodey, John B. Hume, Thomas C. Pratt, Anne M Scott, Matthew Symbal, C. Michael Wagner, Nicholas S. Johnson
2025, Journal of Environmental Management (373)
Integrated Pest Management (IPM) provides a powerful framework for addressing threats to human well-being caused by nuisance species including invasives. We examined the hypothesis that adaptive management could erode barriers to IPM implementation by developing a decision-analytic adaptive management framework...
Effects of Mycoplasma ovipneumoniae, abundance, and environmental conditions on bighorn sheep lamb:ewe ratios and adult survival in New Mexico
Colton J. Padilla, Caitlin Q. Ruhl, James W. Cain III, Matthew E. Gompper
2025, Ecosphere (15)
Mycoplasma ovipneumoniae is a primary causative agent responsible for initiating polymicrobial pneumonia in bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis). Infections of bighorn sheep populations are typically characterized by initial all-age epizootics followed by long-term periods of repressed juvenile (lamb) survival. Populations of bighorn sheep in New Mexico, USA, were thought to be free...
SCEC/USGS Community Stress Drop Validation Study: How spectral fitting approaches influence measured source parameters
Elizabeth S. Cochran, Annemarie S. Baltay Sundstrom, Shanna Chu, Rachel E. Abercrombie, Dino Bindi, X. Chen, Grace Alexandra Parker, Colin Pennington, Peter M. Shearer, Daniel T. Trugman
2025, Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (115) 760-776
Spectral source parameters used to estimate an earthquake’s stress drop (Δσ) can vary significantly across measurement approaches. The Statewide California Earthquake Center/U.S. Geological Survey Community Stress-Drop Validation Study was initiated to compare source parameter estimates, focusing initially on a dataset from the 2019 Ridgecrest earthquake sequence. As part of that...
Intra-urban variations in land surface phenology in a semi-arid environment
Ben Crawford, Kathy Kelsey, Peter Christian Ibsen, Amanda Rees, Amanda Charobee
2025, Environmental Research Letters (20)
Urban vegetation is growing in importance as cities use 'green infrastructure' to mitigate the impacts of climate change, reduce extreme heat, and improve human health and comfort. However, due to the heterogeneity of city landscapes, urban vegetation experiences a diverse range of environmental conditions, potentially leading to differences in growing...
Prioritizing US Geological Survey science on salinization and salinity in candidate and selected priority river basins
Christopher H. Conaway, Nancy T. Baker, Craig J. Brown, Christopher T. Green, Douglas B. Kent
2025, Enviornmental Monitoring and Assessment (197)
The US Geological Survey (USGS) is selecting and prioritizing basins, known as Integrated Water Science basins, for monitoring and intensive study. Previous efforts to aid in this selection process include a scientifically defensible and quantitative assessment of basins facing human-caused water resource challenges (Van Metre et al. in Environmental Monitoring...
Hypothetical CO2 leakage into, and hydrological plume management within, an underground source of drinking water at a proposed CO2 storage facility, Kemper County, Mississippi, USA
Michelle R. Plampin, Matthew D. Merrill
2025, Environmental Geosciences (84)
A large Geologic Carbon Sequestration (GCS) hub has been proposed in Kemper County, Mississippi. The target injection interval consists of numerous Cretaceous-aged deep saline aquifers overlain by a competent and extensive regional sealing layer. Above the seal, the deepest Underground Source of Drinking Water (USDW) at the site is the...
Deformation of Mauna Loa volcano before, during, and after its 2022 eruption
Andria P. Ellis, Ingrid A. Johanson, Michael P. Poland
2025, Bulletin of Volcanology (86)
Mauna Loa on the Island of Hawaiʻi erupted on 27 November 2022, the first eruption since 1984, which marked the culmination of decades-long period of non-eruptive unrest and relative quiescence. We briefly describe the evolution of the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory’s geodetic monitoring network at Mauna Loa and show patterns...
First records distribution models to guide biosurveillance for non-native species
Helen Sofaer, Demetra A. Williams, Catherine S. Jarnevich, Keana S. Shadwell, Caroline Kittle, Ian S. Pearse, Lucas Fortini, Kelsey C. Brock
2025, Ecography (2025)
Quickly locating new populations of non-native species can reduce the ecological and economic costs of species invasions. However, the difficulty of predicting which new non-native species will establish, and where, has limited active post-border biosurveillance efforts. Because pathways of introduction underlie spatial patterns of establishment risk, an intuitive approach is...
Participatory engagement to reduce communication gaps
Legna M. Torres-Garcia, Manuel Valdés Pizzini, Krystalliá Valdés-Calderón, Donya P. Frank-Gilchrist, Dawn Marie Kotowicz, Emmanuel Maldonado, Priscila Vargas-Babilonia
2025, Natural Hazards (121) 6367-6390
Underserved communities, especially those in coastal areas in Puerto Rico, face significant threats from natural hazards such as hurricanes and rising sea levels. Limited funding hinders the investment in costly mitigation measures, increasing exposure to natural disasters. Providing coastal resources and data products through effective communication mechanisms is fundamental to...
Imperiled Great Basin terminal lakes: Synthesizing ecological and hydrological science gaps and research needs for waterbird conservation
Garth Herring, Ashley L. Whipple, Cameron L. Aldridge, Bryce Alan Pulver, Collin A. Eagles-Smith, Rich D. Inman, Elliott Matchett, Adrian P. Monroe, Elizabeth Kari Orning, Benjamin Seward Robb, Jessica E. Shyvers, Bryan C. Tarbox, Nathan D. Van Schmidt, Cassandra Smith, Matthew J. Holloran, Cory T. Overton, David O’Leary, Michael L. Casazza, Rebecca J. Frus
2025, BioScience (75) 112-126
Terminal lakes are declining globally because of human water demands, drought, and climate change. Through literature synthesis and feedback from the resource and conservation community, we review the state of research for terminal lakes in the Great Basin of the United States, which support millions of waterbirds annually, to prioritize...
Neonate morphometrics and lambing season characteristics of desert bighorn sheep
Grace L. Parikh, Rebekah C. Karsch, James W. Cain III, Eric M. Rominger, Elise J. Goldstein
2025, Mammalia (89) 121-130
Desert bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) populations often occur in remote areas at low densities, leading to gaps in knowledge of life history. In November 2011, we translocated 11 female desert bighorn sheep from the Fra Cristobal Mountains and 9 from Red Rock Wildlife Management Area (RRWMA) to the Peloncillo Mountains...
Mountain sentinels in a changing world: Review and conservation implications of weather and climate effects on mountain goats (Oreamnos americanus)
Kevin White, Becky Cadsand, Steeve D. Cote, Tabitha A. Graves, Sandra Hamel, Richard B. Harris, Forest Hayes, Eran Hood, Kevin Hurley, Tyler Jessen, Bill Jex, Erich Peitzsch, Wesley Sarmento, Helen M. Schwantje, Joel Berger
2025, Global Ecology and Conservation (57)
Climate change is occurring at an accelerated rate in high-elevation alpine and mountain ecosystems. Cold-adapted, mountain species are at risk due to forecasted change and knowledge is needed to respond to current and future conservation challenges. Mountain goats (Oreamnos americanus) are an iconic species of North American mountain cultures and...
Intrinsic and environmental drivers of pairwise cohesion in wild Canis social groups
John F. Benson, David A. Keiter, Peter J. Mahoney, Benjamin L. Allen, Lee R. Allen, Francisco Álvares, Morgan L. Anderson, Shannon M. Barber-Meyer, Adi Barocas, James C Beasley, Linda Behrendorff, Jerrold L. Belant, Dean Beyer Jr., Luigi Boitani, Bridget L Borg, Stan Boutin, Erin E. Boydston, Justin L. Brown, Joseph K. Bump, Jonathon D. Cepek, Michael J Chamberlain, Yvette M. Chenaux-Ibrahim, Seth G. Cherry, Duško Ćirović, Paolo Ciucci, H. Dean Cluff, Susan M Cooper, Kevin R. Crooks, Daniel L.J. Dupont, Robert N. Fisher, Daniel Fortin, Thomas D. Gable, Emilio Garcia, Eli Geffen, Stanley D. Gehrt, Michael Gillingham, Douglas C. Heard, Mark Hebblewhite, Joseph W Hinton, Austin T. Homkes, Chris G. Howden, Djuro Huber, Pat J. Jackson, Kyle Joly, Allicia P Kelly, Marcella J. Kelly, Katrien A. Kingdon, Abhijeet Kulkarni, Josip Kusak, Gerald W. Kuzyk, Bryce C. Lake, Luis Llaneza, Jose Vicente Lopez-Bao, Daniel R. MacNulty, Ashley A.D. McLaren, Philip D. McLoughlin, Evelyn H. Merrill, Kenneth J. Mills, Numi Mitchell, Seth A. Moore, Matthew Mumma, Maureen H. Murray, Marco Musiani, Mónia Nakamura, Eric W. Neilson, Lalenia M. Neufeld, Thomas M Newsome, John K. Oakleaf, Vincente Palacios, Marlo M. Perdicas, Thomas Perry, Tyler R. Petroelje, Cyrenea B. Piper, Christina M. Prokopenko, Laura R. Prugh, Seth P.D. Riley, Helena Rio-Maior, Gretchen H. Roffler, Dale Rollins, Håkan Sand, Fiona K A Schmiegelow, Dale R. Seip, Mathew S Sorum, Colleen C. St. Clair, Robin Steenweg, Michael W. Strohbach, Jack Tatler, Maria Thaker, Connor A. Thompson, Julia W. Turner, Abi Tamim Vanak, Eric Vander Wal, Petter Wabakken, Scott E Walter, Sarah C Webster, Tyler J. Wheeldon, Camilla Wikenros, Steve K. Windels, Julie K. Young, Sana Zabihi-Seissan, Barbara Zimmermann, Brent R. Patterson
2025, Ecology (106)
Animals within social groups respond to costs and benefits of sociality by adjusting the proportion of time they spend in close proximity to other individuals in the group (cohesion). Variation in cohesion between individuals, in turn, shapes important group-level processes such as subgroup formation and fission–fusion dynamics. Although critical to...
Late Amazonian ice near Athabasca Valles, Mars: Recent megaflood or climate change?
Colin M. Dundas, Laszlo P. Keszthelyi, Kaj E. Williams
2025, Icarus (429)
The Athabasca Valles outflow channel system is among the youngest such channels on Mars, with the Athabasca Valles flood lava (AVFL) covering the channel floor and reaching far beyond. Volcanic rootless cones on the AVFL indicate the presence of H2O in the shallow subsurface at the time of lava emplacement....
Great Lakes mallard population dynamics
Benjamin Z. Luukkonen, Scott R. Winterstein, Daniel B. Hayes, Drew Nathan Fowler, Gregory J. Soulliere, John M. Coluccy, Amy A. Shipley, John Simpson, Brendan Shirkey, Jason M. Winiarski, Benjamin J. O’Neal, Barbara A. Avers, Gerald R. Urquhart, Philip Lavretsky
2025, Journal of Wildlife Management (89)
Breeding mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) populations in the Great Lakes region (Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, USA) declined by >40% between 2000–2022 based on abundance data collected during spring aerial surveys. Mallards are an important waterfowl species in this region, where an estimated 60–80% of the mallard harvest is composed of locally banded...
