Evidence for a climate-induced ecohydrological state shift in wetland ecosystems of the southern Prairie Pothole Region
Owen P. McKenna, David M. Mushet, Donald O. Rosenberry, James W. LaBaugh
2017, Climatic Change (145) 273-287
Changing magnitude, frequency, and timing of precipitation can influence aquatic-system hydrological, geochemical, and biological processes, in some cases resulting in system-wide shifts to an alternate state. Since the early 1990s, the southern Prairie Pothole Region has been subjected to an extended period of increased wetness resulting in marked changes to...
Temporal constraints on the potential role of fry odors as cues of past reproductive success for spawning lake trout
Tyler J. Buchinger, J. Ellen Marsden, Thomas R. Binder, Mar Huertas, Ugo Bussy, Ke Li, James E. Hanson, Charles C. Krueger, Weiming Li, Nicholas S. Johnson
2017, Ecology and Evolution (7) 10196-10206
Deciding where to reproduce is a major challenge for most animals. Many select habitats based upon cues of successful reproduction by conspecifics, such as the presence of offspring from past reproductive events. For example, some fishes select spawning habitat following odors released by juveniles whose rearing habitat overlaps with spawning...
Near-field receiving water monitoring of trace metals and a benthic community near the Palo Alto Regional Water Quality Control Plant in south San Francisco Bay, California; 2016
Daniel J. Cain, Janet K. Thompson, Francis Parchaso, Sarah A. Pearson, A. Robin Stewart, Mathew Turner, David Barasch, Samuel N. Luoma
2017, Open-File Report 2017-1135
Trace-metal concentrations in sediment and in the clam Macoma petalum (formerly reported as Macoma balthica), clam reproductive activity, and benthic macroinvertebrate community structure were investigated in a mudflat 1 kilometer south of the discharge of the Palo Alto Regional Water Quality Control Plant (PARWQCP) in south San Francisco Bay,...
Probing magma reservoirs to improve volcano forecasts
Jacob B. Lowenstern, Thomas W. Sisson, Shaul Hurwitz
2017, Eos, Earth and Space Science News (98)
When it comes to forecasting eruptions, volcano observatories rely mostly on real-time signals from earthquakes, ground deformation, and gas discharge, combined with probabilistic assessments based on past behavior [Sparks and Cashman, 2017]. There is comparatively less reliance on geophysical and petrological understanding of subsurface magma reservoirs....
Was the Mw 7.5 1952 Kern County, California, earthquake induced (or triggered)?
Susan E. Hough, Victor C. Tsai, Robert Walker, Fred Aminzadeh
2017, Journal of Seismology (21) 1613-1621
Several recent studies have presented evidence that significant induced earthquakes occurred in a number of oil-producing regions during the early and mid-twentieth century related to either production or wastewater injection. We consider whether the 21 July 1952 Mw 7.5 Kern County earthquake might have been induced by production in the Wheeler...
Relative performance of three stream bed stability indices as indicators of stream health
Paul C Kusnierz, Christopher M. Holbrook
2017, Environmental Monitoring and Assessment (189) 1-10
Bed stability is an important stream habitat attribute because it affects geomorphology and biotic communities. Natural resource managers desire indices of bed stability that can be used under a wide range of geomorphic conditions, are biologically meaningful, and are easily incorporated into sampling protocols. To eliminate potential bias due to...
Movements and habitat use of White-fronted Geese (Anser albifrons frontalis) during the remigial molt in arctic Alaska, USA
Paul L. Flint, Brandt W. Meixell
2017, Waterbirds (40) 272-281
Proposed oil and gas leasing in the National Petroleum Reserve - Alaska has raised questions about possible impacts of development on molting Greater White-fronted Geese (Anser albifrons frontalis) and their habitats. We used GPS transmitters to record fine-scale location data of molting and post-molt White-fronted Geese to assess patterns of...
Best practices for assessing forage fish fisheries-seabird resource competition
William J. Sydeman, Sarah Ann Thompson, Tycho Anker-Nilssen, Mayumi L. Arimitsu, Ashley Bennison, Sophie Bertrand, Philipp Boersch-Supan, Charlotte Boyd, Nicole C. Bransome, Robert J.M. Crawford, Francis Daunt, Robert W. Furness, Dimas Gianuca, Amanda Gladics, Laura Koehn, Jennifer W. Lang, Elizabeth Loggerwell, Taryn L. Morris, Elizabeth M. Phillips, Jennifer Provencher, Andre E. Punt, Claire Saraux, Lynne Shannon, Richard B. Sherley, Alejandro Simeone, Ross M. Wanless, Sarah Wanless, Stephani Zador
2017, Fisheries Research (194) 209-221
Worldwide, in recent years capture fisheries targeting lower-trophic level forage fish and euphausiid crustaceans have been substantial (∼20 million metric tons [MT] annually). Landings of forage species are projected to increase in the future, and this harvest may affect marine ecosystems and predator-prey interactions by removal or redistribution of biomass...
Methods for converting continuous shrubland ecosystem component values to thematic National Land Cover Database classes
Matthew B. Rigge, Leila Gass, Collin G. Homer, George Z. Xian
2017, Open-File Report 2017-1119
The National Land Cover Database (NLCD) provides thematic land cover and land cover change data at 30-meter spatial resolution for the United States. Although the NLCD is considered to be the leading thematic land cover/land use product and overall classification accuracy across the NLCD is high, performance and consistency in...
Organizing the pantry: cache management improves quality of overwinter food stores in a montane mammal
Rhiannon P. Jakopak, L. Embere Hall, Anna D. Chalfoun
2017, Journal of Mammalogy (98) 1674-1681
Many mammals create food stores to enhance overwinter survival in seasonal environments. Strategic arrangement of food within caches may facilitate the physical integrity of the cache or improve access to high-quality food to ensure that cached resources meet future nutritional demands. We used the American pika (Ochotona princeps), a food-caching...
Hydrogeology and water quality of sand and gravel aquifers in McHenry County, Illinois, 2009–14, and comparison to conditions in 1979
Amy M. Gahala
2017, Scientific Investigations Report 2017-5112
Baseline conditions for the sand and gravel aquifers (groundwater) in McHenry County, Illinois, were assessed using data from a countywide network of 44 monitoring wells collecting continuous water-level data from 2009–14. In 2010, water-quality data were collected from 41 of the monitoring wells, along with five additional monitoring wells...
Monitoring eradication of European mouflon sheep from the Kahuku Unit of Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park
Seth Judge, Steven C. Hess, Jonathan K. Faford, Dexter Pacheco, Christina Leopold
2017, Pacific Science (71) 425-436
European mouflon (Ovis gmelini musimon), the world's smallest wild sheep, have proliferated and degraded fragile native ecosystems in the Hawaiian Islands through browsing, bark stripping, and trampling, including native forests within Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park (HAVO). HAVO resource managers initiated ungulate control efforts in the 469 km2 Kahuku Unit after it...
Where can wolves live and how can we live with them?
L. David Mech
2017, Biological Conservation (210) 310-317
In the contiguous 48 United States, southern Canada, and in Europe, wolves (Canis lupus) have greatly increased and expanded their range during the past few decades.They are prolific, disperse long distances, readily recolonize new areas where humans allow them, and are difficult to control when populations become established.Because wolves originally...
Spatially explicit population estimates for black bears based on cluster sampling
J. Humm, J. Walter McCown, B.K. Scheick, Joseph D. Clark
2017, Journal of Wildlife Management (81) 1187-1201
We estimated abundance and density of the 5 major black bear (Ursus americanus) subpopulations (i.e., Eglin, Apalachicola, Osceola, Ocala-St. Johns, Big Cypress) in Florida, USA with spatially explicit capture-mark-recapture (SCR) by extracting DNA from hair samples collected at barbed-wire hair sampling sites. We employed a clustered sampling configuration with sampling...
Groundwater-level trends in the U.S. glacial aquifer system, 1964-2013
Glenn A. Hodgkins, Robert W. Dudley, Martha G. Nielsen, Benjamin Renard, Sharon L. Qi
2017, Journal of Hydrology (553) 289-303
The glacial aquifer system in the United States is a major source of water supply but previous work on historical groundwater trends across the system is lacking. Trends in annual minimum, mean, and maximum groundwater levels for 205 monitoring wells were analyzed across three regions of the system (East, Central,...
Applying citizen-science data and mark-recapture models to estimate numbers of migrant golden eagles in an important bird area in eastern North America
Andrew J. Dennhardt, Adam E. Duerr, David Brandes, Todd E. Katzner
2017, The Condor (119) 817-831
Estimates of population abundance are important to wildlife management and conservation. However, it can be difficult to characterize the numbers of broadly distributed, low-density, and elusive bird species. Although Golden Eagles (Aquila chrysaetos) are rare, difficult to detect, and broadly distributed, they are concentrated during their autumn migration at monitoring...
Statistical design and analysis for plant cover studies with multiple sources of observation errors
Wilson J. Wright, Kathryn M. Irvine, Jeffrey M . Warren, Jenny K. Barnett
2017, Methods in Ecology and Evolution (8) 1832-1841
Effective wildlife habitat management and conservation requires understanding the factors influencing distribution and abundance of plant species. Field studies, however, have documented observation errors in visually estimated plant cover including measurements which differ from the true value (measurement error) and not observing a species that is present within...
Plastic ingestion by Black-footed Albatross Phoebastria nigripes from Kure Atoll, Hawai'i: Linking chick diet remains and parental at-sea foraging distributions
K. David Hyrenbach, Michelle M. Hester, Josh Adams, Andrew J. Titmus, Pam Michael, Travis Wahl, Chih-Wei Chang, Amarisa Marie, Cynthia Vanderlip
2017, Marine Ornithology: Journal of Seabird Research and Conservation (45) 225-236
We quantified the incidence (percentage of samples with plastic) and loads (mass, volume) of four plastic types (fragments, line, sheet, foam) ingested by Black-footed Albatross Phoebastria nigripes chicks raised on Kure Atoll, the westernmost Hawaiian colony. All 25 samples contained plastic, mostly in the form of foam and line. On...
The nexus of fun and nutrition: Recreational fishing is also about food
Steven J. Cooke, William M. Twardek, Robert J. Lennox, Aaron J. Zolderdo, Shannon D. Bower, Lee F. G. Gutowsky, Andy J. Danylchuk, Robert Arlinghaus, Beard Jr.
2017, Fish and Fisheries (19) 2012-224
Recreational fishing is a popular activity in aquatic ecosystems around the globe using a variety of gears including rod and line and to a lesser extent handlines, spears, bow and arrow, traps and nets. Similar to the propensity to engage in voluntary catch-and-release, the propensity to harvest fishes strongly varies...
Buried shallow fault slip from the South Napa earthquake revealed by near-field geodesy
Benjamin A. Brooks, Sarah E. Minson, Craig L. Glennie, Johanna Nevitt, Timothy E. Dawson, Ron S. Rubin, Todd Ericksen, David A. Lockner, Kenneth W. Hudnut, Victoria E. Langenheim, Andrew Lutz, Jessica R. Murray, David P. Schwartz, Dana Zaccone
2017, Science Advances (3)
Earthquake-related fault slip in the upper hundreds of meters of Earth’s surface has remained largely unstudied because of challenges measuring deformation in the near field of a fault rupture. We analyze centimeter-scale accuracy mobile laser scanning (MLS) data of deformed vine rows within ±300 m of the principal surface expression...
Potential paths for male-mediated gene flow to and from an isolated grizzly bear population
Christopher P. Peck, Frank T. van Manen, Cecily M. Costello, Mark A. Haroldson, Lisa Landenburger, Lori L. Roberts, Daniel D. Bjornlie, Richard D. Mace
2017, Ecosphere (8) 1-19
For several decades, grizzly bear populations in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) and the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem (NCDE) have increased in numbers and range extent. The GYE population remains isolated and although effective population size has increased since the early 1980s, genetic connectivity between these populations remains a long-term...
Delayed seismicity rate changes controlled by static stress transfer
Kayla A. Kroll, Keith B. Richards-Dinger, James H. Dieterich, Elizabeth S. Cochran
2017, Journal of Geophysical Research B: Solid Earth (122) 7951-7965
On 15 June 2010, a Mw5.7 earthquake occurred near Ocotillo, California, in the Yuha Desert. This event was the largest aftershock of the 4 April 2010 Mw7.2 El Mayor-Cucapah (EMC) earthquake in this region. The EMC mainshock and subsequent Ocotillo aftershock provide an opportunity to test the Coulomb failure hypothesis (CFS). We...
Characterizing sources of uncertainty from global climate models and downscaling techniques
Adrienne Wootten, Adam Terando, Brian J. Reich, Ryan P. Boyles, Fred Semazzi
2017, Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology (56) 3245-3262
In recent years climate model experiments have been increasingly oriented towards providing information that can support local and regional adaptation to the expected impacts of anthropogenic climate change. This shift has magnified the importance of downscaling as a means to translate coarse-scale global climate model (GCM) output to a finer...
Strong SH-to-Love wave scattering off the Southern California Continental Borderland
Chunquan Yu, Zhongwen Zhan, Egill Hauksson, Elizabeth S. Cochran
2017, Geophysical Research Letters (44) 10208-10215
Seismic scattering is commonly observed and results from wave propagation in heterogeneous medium. Yet, deterministic characterization of scatterers associated with lateral heterogeneities remains challenging. In this study, we analyze broadband waveforms recorded by the Southern California Seismic Network and observe strongly scattered Love waves following the arrival of teleseismic SH...
Partial polygon pruning of hydrographic features in automated generalization
Alexander K. Stum, Barbara P. Buttenfield, Larry V. Stanislawski
2017, Transactions in GIS (21) 1061-1078
This paper demonstrates a working method to automatically detect and prune portions of waterbody polygons to support creation of a multi-scale hydrographic database. Water features are known to be sensitive to scale change; and thus multiple representations are required to maintain visual and geographic logic at smaller scales. Partial pruning...
