Mercury concentrations in water and mercury and selenium concentrations in fish from Brownlee Reservoir and selected sites in the Boise and Snake Rivers, Idaho and Oregon, 2013-17
Dorene E. MacCoy, Christopher A. Mebane
2018, Open-File Report 2018-1122
Mercury (Hg) analyses were conducted on samples of water and sport fish collected from selected sampling sites in the Boise and Snake Rivers and Brownlee Reservoir, in Idaho and Oregon, to meet National Pollution Discharge and Elimination System permit requirements for the City of Boise, Idaho, from 2013 to...
Exploring drivers of regional water-quality change using differential spatially referenced regression – A pilot study in the Chesapeake Bay watershed
Jeffrey G. Chanat, Guoxiang Yang
2018, Water Resources Research (54) 8120-8145
An understanding of riverine water-quality dynamics in regional mixed-land use watersheds is the foundation for advances in landscape biogeochemistry and informed land management. A differential implementation of the statistical/process-based model SPAtially Referenced Regressions on Watershed attributes (SPARROW; Smith et al., https://doi.org/10.1029/97wr02171) is proposed to empirically relate a regional...
Effects of proposed navigation channel improvements on sediment transport in Mobile Harbor, Alabama
Davina Passeri, Joseph W. Long, Robert L. Jenkins III, David M. Thompson
2018, Open-File Report 2018-1123
A Delft3D model was developed to evaluate the potential effects of proposed navigationchannel deepening and widening in Mobile Harbor, Alabama. The model performance wasassessed through comparisons of modeled and observed data of water levels, velocities, and bedlevel changes; the model captured hydrodynamic and sediment transport patterns in the studyarea with...
Effects of early-successional shrubland management on breeding wood thrush populations
Scott Schlossberg, David I. King, Stephen DeStefano, Mitch Hartley
2018, Journal of Wildlife Management (82) 1572-1581
In forested landscapes, creation of habitat for early-successional shrubland birds is controversial because of perceived conflicts with the conservation of mature-forest birds. Nonetheless, many mature-forest birds, especially fledglings, readily use early-successional stands during the post-breeding period. This suggests that for mature-forest birds, creating habitat for early-successional...
Laboratory evaluation of the Sea-Bird Scientific HydroCycle-PO4 phosphate sensor
Teri T. Snazelle
2018, Open-File Report 2018-1120
Sea-Bird Scientific’s HydroCycle-PO4 phosphate sensor is a single-analyte wet-chemistry sensor designed for in situ environmental monitoring. The unit was evaluated at the U.S. Geological Survey Hydrologic Instrumentation Facility to assess the accuracy of the sensor in solutions with known phosphorous concentration and to test the effects of chromophoric (colored) dissolved...
The Hayward Fault—Is it due for a repeat of the powerful 1868 earthquake?
Thomas M. Brocher, Jack Boatwright, James J. Lienkaemper, Carol S. Prentice, David P. Schwartz, Howard Bundock
2018, Fact Sheet 2018-3052
On October 21, 1868, a magnitude 6.8 earthquake struck the San Francisco Bay area. Although the region was sparsely populated, the quake on the Hayward Fault was one of the most destructive in California’s history. U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) studies show that similar Hayward Fault quakes have repeatedly jolted...
Intensities, aftershock sequences, and the location of the 1936 Milton‐Freewater earthquake near the Oregon–Washington border, U.S.A.
Thomas M. Brocher, Brian Sherrod
2018, Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (108) 2594-2613
The epicenter of the 16 July 1936 M">MM 6 Milton‐Freewater earthquake, also known as the State Line earthquake and the largest historical earthquake in northeastern Oregon or southeastern Washington, is uncertain. Various studies place the epicenter of...
Exclusion of small mammals and lagomorphs invasion interact with human-trampling to drive changes in topsoil microbial community structure and function in semiarid Chile
Fernando D. Alfaro, Marlene Manzano, Sebastian Abades, Nicole Trefault, Rodrigo de la Iglesia, Aurora Gaxiola, Pablo A. Marquet, Julio R. Gutierrez, Peter L. Meserve, Douglas A. Kelt, Jayne Belnap, Juan J. Armesto
2018, Soil Biology and Biochemistry (124) 1-10
Species losses and additions can disrupt the relationship between resident species and the structure and functioning of ecosystems. Persistent human-trampling, on the other hand, can have similar effects through the disruption of biocrusts on surface soils of semiarid systems, affecting soil stability and fixation of carbon and nitrogen. Here, we tested the...
Conceptual and numerical models of dissolved solids in the Colorado River, Hoover Dam to Imperial Dam, and Parker Dam to Imperial Dam, Arizona, California, and Nevada
David W. Anning, Alissa L. Coes, Jon P. Mason
2018, Scientific Investigations Report 2018-5108
Conceptual and numerical models were developed to understand and simulate monthly flow-weighted dissolved-solids concentrations in the Colorado River at Imperial Dam. The ability to simulate dissolved-solids concentrations at this location will help the Bureau of Reclamation satisfy the binational agreement on the volume and salinity of Colorado River water delivered...
Fire, flood, and drought: Extreme climate events alter flow paths and stream chemistry
Sheila F. Murphy, R. Blaine McCleskey, Deborah A. Martin, Jeffrey H. Writer, Brian A. Ebel
2018, Journal of Geophysical Research G: Biogeosciences (123) 2513-2526
Extreme climate events—such as hurricanes, droughts, extreme precipitation, and wildfires—have the potential to alter watershed processes and stream response. Yet due to the destructive and hazardous nature and unpredictability of such events, capturing their hydrochemical signal is challenging. A 5‐year postwildfire study of stream chemistry in the Fourmile Creek watershed,...
Before the storm: Antecedent conditions as regulators of hydrologic and biogeochemical response to extreme climate events
Sara K. McMillan, Henry F. Wilson, Christina L. Tague, Daniel M. Hanes, Shreeram Inamdar, Diana L. Karwan, Terry Loecke, Jonathan Morrison, Sheila F. Murphy, Philippe Vidon
2018, Biogeochemistry (141) 487-501
While the influence of antecedent conditions on watershed function is widely recognized under typical hydrologic regimes, gaps remain in the context of extreme climate events (ECEs). ECEs are those events that far exceed seasonal norms of intensity, duration, or impact upon the physical environment or ecosystem. In this synthesis, we...
Input data processing tools for the integrated hydrologic model GSFLOW
Murphy A. Gardner, Charles G. Morton, Justin L. Huntington, Richard G. Niswonger, Wesley R. Henson
2018, Environmental Modelling and Software (109) 41-53
Integrated hydrologic modeling (IHM) encompasses a vast number of processes and specifications, variable in time and space, and development of models can be arduous. Model input construction techniques have not been formalized or made easily reproducible. Creating the input files for integrated hydrologic models requires complex GIS processing of raster and vector datasets from...
Twelve questions for the participatory modeling community
Rebecca Jordan, Steven Gray, Moira Zellner, Pierre D. Glynn, Alexey Voinov, Beatrice Hedelin, Eleanor J. Sterling, Kirsten Leong, Laura Schmitt Olabisi, Klaus Hubacek, Pierre Bommel, Todd K. BenDor, Antonie J. Jetter, Bethany Laursen, Alison Singer, Philippe J. Giabbanelli, Nagesh Kolagani, Laura Basco Carrera, Karen Jenni, Christina Prell, National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center Participatory Modeling Pursuit Working Group
2018, Earth's Future (6) 1046-1057
Participatory modeling engages the implicit and explicit knowledge of stakeholders to create formalized and shared representations of reality and has evolved into a field of study as well as a practice. Participatory modeling researchers and practitioners who focus specifically on environmental resources met at the National Socio‐Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC)...
Designing a protected area to safeguard imperiled species from urbanization
Stephanie S. Romanach, Bradley Stith, Fred A. Johnson
2018, Journal of Fish and Wildlife Management (9) 446-458
Reserve design is a process that can address ecological, social, and political factors to identify parcels of land needed to sustain wildlife populations and other natural resources. Acquisition of parcels for a large terrestrial reserve is difficult because it typically occurs over a long timeframe and thus invokes consideration of...
Hierarchical patch delineation in fragmented landscapes
Chellby R. Kilheffer, H. Brian Underwood
2018, Landscape Ecology (33) 1533-1541
PurposeWe developed a tool, FragPatch (FP), to delineate habitat patches for highly fragmented landscapes from a user-defined suitability map and two landscape perception values for a species of interest.MethodsWe wrote a Python script in ArcGIS to delineate habitat patch networks...
Life history characteristics may be as important as climate projections for defining range shifts: An example for common tree species in the intermountain western US
Stella M. Copeland, John B. Bradford, Michael C. Duniway, Bradley J. Butterfield
2018, Diversity and Distributions (24) 1844-1859
AimPredictions of future suitable habitat for plant species with climate change are known to be affected by uncertainty associated with statistical approaches, climate models and occurrence records. However, life history characteristics related to dispersal and establishment processes as well as sensitivity to barriers created by land‐use...
STEPWAT2: An individual‐based model for exploring the impact of climate and disturbance on dryland plant communities
Kyle A. Palmquist, John B. Bradford, Trace E. Martin, Daniel R. Schlaepfer, William K. Lauenroth
2018, Ecosphere (9) 1-23
The combination of climate change and altered disturbance regimes is directly and indirectly affecting plant communities by mediating competitive interactions, resulting in shifts in species composition and abundance. Dryland plant communities, defined by low soil water availability and highly variable climatic regimes, are particularly vulnerable to climatic changes that exceed...
Priority questions in multidisciplinary drought research
Miroslav Trnka, Michael Hayes, Frantisek Jurecka, Lenka Bartosova, Martha Anderson, Rudolf Brazdil, Jesslyn F. Brown, Jesus J. Camarero, Pavel Cudlin, Petr Dobrovolny, Josef Eitzinger, Song Feng, Taryn Finnessey, Gregor Gregoric, Petr Havlik, Christopher Hain, Ian Holman, David Johnson, Kurt Christian Kersebaum, Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist, Jurg Luterbacher, Fabio Micale, Claudia Hartl-Meier, Martin Mozny, Pavol Nejedlik, Jorgen Eivind Olesen, Margarita Ruiz-Ramos, Reimund P. Rotter, Gabriel Senay, Sergio M. Vicente-Serrano, Mark Svoboda, Andreja Susnik, Tsegaye Tadesse, Adam Vizina, Brian D. Wardlow, Zdenek Zalud, Ulf Buntgen
2018, Climate Research (75) 241-260
Addressing timely and relevant questions across a multitude of spatio-temporal scales, state-of-the-art interdisciplinary drought research will likely increase in importance under projected climate change. Given the complexity of the various direct and indirect causes and consequences of a drier world, scientific tasks need to be coordinated efficiently. Drought-related research endeavors...
Increasing connectivity between metapopulation ecology and landscape ecology
Paige E. Howell, Erin L. Muths, Blake Hossack, Brent Sigafus, Richard Chandler
2018, Ecology (99) 1119-1128
Metapopulation ecology and landscape ecology aim to understand how spatial structure influences ecological processes, yet these disciplines address the problem using fundamentally different modeling approaches. Metapopulation models describe how the spatial distribution of patches affects colonization and extinction, but often do not account for the heterogeneity in the landscape between...
Biocrusts: The living skin of the Earth
Matthew A. Bowker, Sasha C. Reed, Fernando T. Maestre, David J. Eldridge
2018, Plant and Soil (429) 1-7
Biological soil crusts (biocrusts) form a “living skin” at the soil surface in many low productivity ecosystems around the world including water- and cold-limited environments, and early successional seres (Belnap et al. 2003). They may be composed of any configuration of soil surface-dwelling cyanobacteria, eukaryotic algae, lichens, mosses or liverworts,...
Divisions of geologic time—Major chronostratigraphic and geochronologic units
U.S. Geological Survey Geologic Names Committee
2018, Fact Sheet 2018-3054
IntroductionEffective communication in the geosciences requires a consistent nomenclature for stratigraphic units and, especially, for divisions of geologic time. A geologic time scale is composed of standard stratigraphic divisions based on rock sequences and is calibrated in years.Geologists from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), State geological surveys, academia, and other...
Beyond traditional ecological restoration on the Colorado Plateau
Daniel E. Winkler, Dana M. Backer, Jayne Belnap, John B. Bradford, Bradley J. Butterfield, Stella M. Copeland, Michael C. Duniway, Akasha M. Faist, Stephen E. Fick, Scott L. Jensen, Andrea T. Kramer, Rebecca Mann, Robert Massatti, Molly L. McCormick, Seth M. Munson, Peggy Olwell, Steve D. Parr, Alix Pfennigwerth, Adrienne M. Pilmanis, Bryce A. Richardson, Ella Samuel, Kathy See, Kristina E. Young, Sasha C. Reed
2018, Restoration Ecology (26) 1055-1060
The Colorado Plateau is one of North America's five major deserts, encompassing 340,000 km2 of the western U.S., and offering many opportunities for restoration relevant to researchers and land managers in drylands around the globe. The Colorado Plateau is comprised of vast tracts of public land managed by local, state, and...
Effects of urbanization, and habitat composition on site occupancy of two snake species using regional monitoring data from southern California
Milan J. Mitrovich, James E. Diffendorfer, Cheryl S. Brehme, Robert N. Fisher
2018, Global Ecology and Conservation (15) 1-10
Detection data from a regional, reptile-monitoring program conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey were analyzed to understand the effects of urbanization and habitat composition on site occupancy of the coachwhip (Masticophis flagellum) and striped racer (M. lateralis) in coastal southern California. Likelihood-based occupancy models indicated striped racers responded to habitat...
Quantifying functional connectivity: The role of breeding habitat, abundance, and landscape features on range‐wide gene flow in sage‐grouse
Jeffery R. Row, Kevin E. Doherty, Todd B. Cross, Michael K. Schwartz, Sara J. Oyler-McCance, Dave E. Naugle, Steven T. Knick, Bradley C. Fedy
2018, Evolutionary Applications (11) 1305-1321
Functional connectivity, quantified using landscape genetics, can inform conservation through the identification of factors linking genetic structure to landscape mechanisms. We used breeding habitat metrics, landscape attributes, and indices of grouse abundance, to compare fit between structural connectivity and genetic differentiation within five long‐established Sage‐Grouse Management Zones (MZ) I‐V using...
Ratio of mercury concentration to PCB concentration varies with sex of white sucker (Catostomus commersonii)
Charles P. Madenjian, Andrew L. Stevens, Martin A. Stapanian, David P. Krabbenhoft, John F. DeWild, Jacob M. Ogorek, William H. Edwards, Lynn M. Ogilvie, Peter B. McIntyre
2018, Environments (5)
The whole-fish total mercury (Hg) concentrations were determined in 25 mature female and 26 mature male white suckers (Catostomus commersonii) caught during their spawning run in the Kewaunee River, a tributary to Lake Michigan. The age of each fish was estimated using thin-sectioned otoliths, and total length (TL) and weight...
