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Excessive groundwater seepage can be a common engineering concern with earthen dams. The application of geophysical methods, whether for characterization or for long-term monitoring, to help inform mitigation strategies is becoming a more common addition to these investigations. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has completed geophysical investigations at several earthen...

Distal volcano-tectonic (dVT) seismicity typically precedes eruption at long-dormant volcanoes by days to years. Precursory dVT seismicity may reflect magma-induced fluid-pressure pulses that intersect critically stressed faults. We explored this hypothesis using an open-source magmatic-hydrothermal code that simulates multiphase fluid and heat transport over the temperature range 0 to 1200 °C....

In this article we summarize histories of nonlinear, complex interactions among societal, legal, and ecosystem dynamics in six North American water basins, as they respond to changing climate. These case studies were chosen to explore the conditions for emergence of adaptive governance in heavily regulated and developed social-ecological systems...

Nutritional ecology forms the interface between environmental variability and large herbivore behaviour, life history characteristics, and population dynamics. Forage conditions in arid and semi-arid regions are driven by unpredictable spatial and temporal patterns in rainfall. Diet selection by herbivores should be directed towards overcoming the most pressing nutritional limitation (i.e....

Research focusing on biodiversity responses to the interactions of ecosystem size and anthropogenic stressors are based mainly on correlative gradient studies, and may therefore confound size-stress relationships due to spatial context and differences in local habitat features across ecosystems. We investigated how local factors related to anthropogenic stressors (e.g.,eutrophication) interact...

Sufficient temperatures to generate steam likely exist under most of the dominantly volcanic terrains of southeast Oregon, northeast California, and southeast Idaho, USA, but finding sufficient permeability to allow efficient advective heat exchange is an outstanding challenge. A new thematic interpretation of existing state-level geologic maps provides an updated and...

Populations show spatial-temporal fluctuations in abundance, partly due to random processes and partly due to self-regulatory processes. We evaluated the effects of various external factors on the population numerical abundance of curimba Prochilodus lineatus in the upper Paraná River floodplain, Brazil, over a 19-year period. Panel data analysis was applied to examine...

Understanding the speciation of divalent mercury (Hg(II)) in aquatic systems containing dissolved organic matter (DOM) and sulfide is necessary to predict the conversion of Hg(II) to bioavailable methylmercury. We used X-ray absorption spectroscopy to characterize the structural order of mercury in Hg(II)–DOM–sulfide systems for a range of sulfide concentration (1–100...

Ultra-high-resolution (1 m * 1 m * 0.25 m) bathymetry was acquired with an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) over a sector of the Navy Fan offshore Baja California. The survey specifically targeted an area where the former interpretation of the fan showed a channel–lobe transition; however, the lobe and the...

It is common to use multiple field sampling methods when implementing wildlife surveys to compare method efficacy or cost efficiency, integrate distinct pieces of information provided by separate methods, or evaluate method-specific biases and misclassification error. Existing models that combine information from multiple field methods or sampling devices permit rigorous...

The Mudpuppy (Necturus maculosus) is classified as a Species of Greatest Conservation Need by the state of Vermont. There is concern regarding status of populations in the Lake Champlain basin because of habitat alteration and potential effects of 3-trifluromethyl-4-nitrophenol (TFM), a chemical used to control Sea Lamprey (Petromyzon marinus). The...

We developed a foraging model for young fishes that incorporates handling and digestion rate to estimate daily food consumption. Feeding trials were used to quantify functional feeding response, satiation, and gut evacuation rate. Once parameterized, the foraging model was then applied to evaluate effects of prey type, prey density, water...

The timescales of magma genesis, ascent, storage and degassing at Kīlauea volcano, Hawai‘i are addressed by measuring 238U-series radionuclide abundances in lava and tephra erupted between 1982 and 2008. Most analyzed samples represent lavas erupted by steady effusion from Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō and Kūpahianaha from 1983 to 2008. Also included are samples...

Historically, in situ measurements have been notoriously sparse over the Arctic. As a consequence, the existing gridded data of surface air temperature (SAT) may have large biases in estimating the warming trend in this region. Using data from an expanded monitoring network with 31 stations in the Alaskan Arctic, we...

The term resilience describes stress–response patterns across scientific disciplines. In ecology, advances have been made to clearly define resilience based on underlying mechanistic assumptions. Engineering resilience (rebound) is used to describe the ability of organisms to recover from adverse conditions (disturbances), which is termed the rate of recovery. By contrast,...

Multibeam acoustic backscatter has considerable utility for remote characterization of spatially heterogeneous bed sediment composition over vegetated and unvegetated riverbeds of mixed sand and gravel. However, the use of high-frequency, decimeter-resolution acoustic backscatter for sediment classification in shallow water is hampered by significant topographic contamination of the signal. In mixed...

Quantifying the frequency, duration, and elevation range of fog or cloud immersion is essential to estimate cloud water deposition in water budgets and to understand the ecohydrology of cloud forests. The goal of this study was to develop a low-cost and high spatial-coverage method to detect occurrence of cloud immersion...

Here we explore the potential of spring-related, surface and subsurface carbonates as an archive of paleoenvironmental change at Barrancas Blancas, located in the broadest and driest sector of the Atacama Desert at 24.5°S. From these deposits we present a new stable isotopic record of paleoenvironmental conditions over portions of the...

Infrasonic resonance has previously been measured in terrestrial caves by other researchers, where Helmholtz resonance has been suggested as the plausible mechanism resulting in periodic wind reversals within cave entrances. We extend this reasoning to possible Martian caves, where we examine the characteristics of four atypical pit craters (APCs) on...

Freshwater growth of juvenile sockeye salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka) depends upon the quality and quantity of prey and interactions with potential competitors in the foraging environment. To a large extent, knowledge about the ecology of lake-rearing juvenile sockeye salmon has emerged from studies of commercially important runs returning to deep nursery...

Ceres, the largest body in the asteroid belt (940 km diameter), provides a unique opportunity to study the interior structure of a volatile-rich dwarf planet. Variations in a planetary body's subsurface rheology and density affect the rate of topographic relaxation. Preferential attenuation of long...

Deformed wing virus (DWV) is a major pathogen of concern to apiculture, and recent reports have indicated the local predominance and potential virulence of recombinants between DWV and a related virus, Varroa destructor virus 1 (VDV). However, little is known about the frequency and titer of VDV and recombinants relative...

Earthquake-induced landslide (EQIL) inventories are essential tools to extend our knowledge of the relationship between earthquakes and the landslides they can trigger. Regrettably, such inventories are difficult to generate and therefore scarce, and the available ones differ in terms of their quality and level of completeness. Moreover, access to existing...

Stormwater runoff and associated pollutants from urban areas in the greater Chesapeake Bay Watershed (CBW) impair local streams and downstream ecosystems, despite urbanized land comprising only 7% of the CBW area. More recently, stormwater best management practices (BMPs) have been implemented in a low impact development (LID) manner to treat...

We investigate spatial and temporal relations between an ongoing and prolific seismicity cluster in central Washington, near Entiat, and the 14 December 1872 Entiat earthquake, the largest historic crustal earthquake in Washington. A fault scarp produced by the 1872 earthquake lies within the Entiat cluster; the locations and areas of...