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U.S. Geological Survey monitoring programs extensively used two analytical methods, gas chromatography/mass spectrometry and liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry, to measure pesticides in filtered water samples during 1992–2012. In October 2012, the monitoring programs began using direct aqueous-injection liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry as a new analytical method for pesticides. The change...

During 2015-2016, we completed development of a new analytical framework for landbird population monitoring data from the National Park Service (NPS) North Coast and Cascades Inventory and Monitoring Network (NCCN). This new tool for analysis combines several recent advances in modeling population status and trends using point-count data and is...

The area burned annually by wildfires is expected to increase worldwide due to climate change. Burned areas increase soil erosion rates within watersheds, which can increase sedimentation in downstream rivers and reservoirs. However, which watersheds will be impacted by future wildfires is largely unknown. Using an ensemble of climate, fire,...

In this study, we measured the concentrations of 65 flame retardants in water samples from five Lake Michigan tributaries. These flame retardants included organophosphate esters (OPEs), brominated flame retardants (BFRs), and Dechlorane-related compounds. A total of 59 samples, including both the particulate and the dissolved phases, were collected from the...

We investigated how visitor-use affects water quality in wilderness in Yosemite National Park. During the summers of 2012–2014, we collected and analyzed surface-water samples for water-quality indicators, including fecal indicator bacteria Escherichia coli, nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus, carbon), suspended sediment concentration, pharmaceuticals, and hormones. Samples were collected upstream and downstream...

In the Basin and Range extensional province of the western United States, coseismic offsets, under the influence of gravity, display predominantly subsidence of the basin side (fault hanging wall), with comparatively little or no uplift of the mountainside (fault footwall). A few decades later, geodetic measurements [GPS and interferometric synthetic...

Annual survivorship in migratory birds is a product of survival across the different periods of the annual cycle (i.e. breeding, wintering, and migration), and may vary substantially among these periods. Determining which periods have the highest mortality, and thus are potentially limiting a population, is important especially for species of...

Major floods adversely affect water quality through surface runoff, groundwater discharge, and damage to municipal water infrastructure. Despite their importance, it can be difficult to assess the effects of floods on streamwater chemistry because of challenges collecting samples and the absence of baseline data. This study documents water quality during...

The NASA Curiosity rover Mast Camera (Mastcam) system is a pair of fixed-focal length, multispectral, color CCD imagers mounted ~2 m above the surface on the rover's remote sensing mast, along with associated electronics and an onboard calibration target. The left Mastcam (M-34) has a 34 mm focal length, an instantaneous field...

Significant increases in outdoor recreation participants are projected over the next 50 years for national forests across the United States, with even larger increases possible for forests located in the Southern Rocky Mountains. Forest managers will be challenged to balance increasing demand for outdoor recreation with other ecosystem services. Future management needs could...

Water levels during 2003 through 2013 were less than mean water levels for the period 1925–2013 for several lakes in the northeast Twin Cities Metropolitan Area in Minnesota. Previous periods of low lake-water levels generally were correlated with periods with less than mean precipitation. Increases in groundwater withdrawals and land-use...

Measurement of crater depths in Ganymede’s dark terrain have revealed substantial numbers of unusually shallow craters indicative of viscous relaxation [see companion paper: Singer, K.N., Schenk, P. M., Bland, M.T., McKinnon, W.B., (2017). Relaxed impact craters on Ganymede: Regional variations and high heat flow. Icarus, submitted]. These viscously relaxed craters...

Interest in the field of environmental DNA (eDNA) is growing rapidly and eDNA surveys are becoming an important consideration for aquatic resource managers dealing with invasive species. However, in order for eDNA monitoring to mature as a research and management tool, there are several critical knowledge gaps that must be...

Mountain lions, desert bighorn sheep, mule deer, and a variety of other wildlife live on and pass through the Nevada National Security Site each day. It is a highly restricted area that is free of hunting and has surprisingly pristine areas. This 22-minute program highlights an extraordinary study on how...

Tropical weathering has important linkages to global biogeochemistry and landscape evolution in the East African rift. We disentangle the influences of climate and terrestrial vegetation on chemical weathering intensity and erosion at Lake Malawi using a long sediment record. Fossil pollen, microcharcoal, particle size, and mineralogy data affirm that the...

Size structure within populations of invasive species may have consequences for relative risk at all stages of the invasion process, with implications for management interventions such as interdiction, suppression, and eradication. To assess relative distributions of invasive Brown Treesnakes among demographic categories of management interest, we undertook the most comprehensive...

From 2007 through 2015, the U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with Colorado Springs City Engineering, conducted a study in the Fountain and Monument Creek watersheds, Colorado, to characterize surface-water quality and suspended-sediment conditions for three different streamflow regimes with an emphasis on characterizing water quality during storm runoff. Data collected...

“Whiting” in oceanography is a term used to describe a sharply defined patch of water that contains high levels of suspended, fine-grained calcium carbonate (CaCO3). Whitings have been reported in many oceanic and lake environments, and recently have been reported in southwest Florida coastal waters. Here, field and laboratory measurements were used to study...

Landsat time series data were used to characterize forest degradation in Lam Dong Province, Vietnam. We conducted three types of image change analyses using Landsat time series data to characterize the land cover changes. Our analyses concentrated on the timeframe of 1973–2014, with much emphasis on the latter part of...

Conventional characterization and monitoring of hydrocarbon (HC) pollution is often expensive and time-consuming. Magnetic susceptibility (MS) has been proposed as an inexpensive, long-term monitoring proxy of the degradation of HC. We acquired repeated down hole MS logging data in boreholes at a HC-contaminated field research site in Bemidji, MN, USA....

A whole-genome duplication (WGD) doubles the entire genomic content of a species and is thought to have catalysed adaptive radiation in some polyploid-origin lineages. However, little is known about general consequences of a WGD because gene duplicates (i.e., paralogs) are commonly filtered in genomic studies; such filtering may remove substantial...

Understanding both contact and probability of transmission given contact are key to managing wildlife disease. However, wildlife disease research tends to focus on contact heterogeneity, in part because the probability of transmission given contact is notoriously difficult to measure. Here, we present a first step towards empirically...

Telemetry can inform many scientific and research questions if a context exists for integrating individual studies into the larger body of literature. Creating cumulative distributions of post-tagging evaluation metrics would allow individual researchers to relate their telemetry data to other studies. Widespread reporting of standard metrics is a precursor to...

Recent decades have seen a marked increase in the number of dams removed in the United States. Investigations following a number of removals are beginning to inform how, and how fast, rivers and their ecosystems respond to released sediment. Though only a few tens of studies detail physical responses to...

There is substantial literature on the importance of bridging across disciplinary and science–management boundaries. One of the ways commonly suggested to cross boundaries is for participants from both sides of the boundary to jointly produce information (i.e., knowledge co-production). But simply providing tools or bringing people together in the same...