Feeding ecology of the walleye (Percidae, Sander vitreus), a resurgent piscivore in Lake Huron (Laurentian Great Lakes) after shifts in the prey community
Steven A. Pothoven, Charles P. Madenjian, Tomas O. Hook
2017, Ecology of Freshwater Fish (26) 676-685
Recovering populations of piscivores can challenge understanding of ecosystem function due to impacts on prey and to potentially altered food webs supporting their production. Stocks of walleye (Percidae, Sander vitreus), an apex predator in the Laurentian Great Lakes, crashed in the mid‐1900s. Management efforts led to recovery by...
Rafinesque's Sicilian whale, Balena gastrytis
Neal Woodman, James G. Mead
2017, Archives of Natural History (44) 229-240
In 1815, the naturalist Constantine S. Rafinesque described a new species of cetacean, Balena gastrytis, from Sicily, based on a whale that stranded on Carini beach near Palermo. In comparing the characteristics of his new whale with known species, Rafinesque also took the opportunity to name a new genus, Cetoptera,...
Projected atoll shoreline and run-up changes in response to sea-level rise and varying large wave conditions at Wake and Midway Atolls, Northwestern Hawaiian Islands
James B. Shope, Curt D. Storlazzi, Ron Hoeke
2017, Geomorphology (295) 537-550
Atoll islands are dynamic features that respond to seasonal alterations in wave conditions and sea level. It is unclear how shoreline wave run-up and erosion patterns along these low elevation islands will respond to projected sea-level rise (SLR) and changes in wave climate over the next century, hindering communities' preparation...
UAS-SfM for coastal research: Geomorphic feature extraction and land cover classification from high-resolution elevation and optical imagery
Emily J. Sturdivant, Erika E. Lentz, E. Robert Thieler, Amy S. Farris, Kathryn M. Weber, David P. Remsen, Simon Miner, Rachel E. Henderson
2017, Remote Sensing (9) 1-20
The vulnerability of coastal systems to hazards such as storms and sea-level rise is typically characterized using a combination of ground and manned airborne systems that have limited spatial or temporal scales. Structure-from-motion (SfM) photogrammetry applied to imagery acquired by unmanned aerial systems (UAS) offers a rapid and inexpensive means...
Program MAMO: Models for avian management optimization-user guide
Alban Guillaumet, Eben H. Paxton
2017, Technical Report TR-HCSU-077
The following chapters describe the structure and code of MAMO, and walk the reader through running the different components of the program with sample data. This manual should be used alongside a computer running R, so that the reader can copy and paste code into R, observe the output,...
Science advancements key to increasing management value of life stage monitoring networks for endangered Sacramento River winter-run Chinook salmon in California
Rachel C. Johnson, Sean Windell, Patricia L. Brandes, J. Louise Conrad, John Ferguson, Pascale A. L. Goertler, Brett N. Harvey, Joseph Heublein, Joshua A. Isreal, Daniel W. Kratville, Joseph E. Kirsch, Russell W. Perry, Joseph Pisciotto, William R. Poytress, Kevin Reece, Brycen G. Swart
2017, San Francisco Estuary and Watershed Science (15) 1-41
A robust monitoring network that provides quantitative information about the status of imperiled species at key life stages and geographic locations over time is fundamental for sustainable management of fisheries resources. For anadromous species, management actions in one geographic domain can substantially affect abundance of subsequent life stages that span...
Assessment of undiscovered oil and gas resources in the Ventura Basin Province, California, 2016
Marilyn E. Tennyson, Christopher J. Schenk, Janet K. Pitman, Paul G. Lillis, Timothy R. Klett, Michael E. Brownfield, Thomas M. Finn, Stephanie B. Gaswirth, Sarah J. Hawkins, Kristen R. Marra, Tracey J. Mercier, Phuong A. Le, Heidi M. Leathers-Miller
2017, Fact Sheet 2017-3050
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) completed a geology-based assessment of undiscovered, technically recoverable conventional and continuous oil and gas resources in the part of the Ventura Basin Province that lies onshore or within State waters (within 3 miles of the shoreline) of California (fig. 1). Conventional oil and gas resources...
Water-quality data from an earthen dam site in southern Westchester County, New York, 2015
Anthony Chu, Michael L. Noll
2017, Data Series 1057
The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, sampled 37 sites in the reservoir area for nutrients, major ions, metals, pesticides and their degradates, volatile organic compounds, temperature, pH, and specific conductance during fall 2015. Data collection was done to characterize the local...
US Fish and Wildlife Service and the USA National Phenology Network
Jake F. Weltzin, Theresa Crimmins, Erin E. Posthumus, Alyssa H. Rosemartin
2017, Report
Understanding the seasonal cycles of plants and animals, how they are changing, and how these changes can inform management, operations, and interpretation is critical to the mission of the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS): to work with others to conserve, protect, and enhance fish, wildlife, plants, and their habitats...
Shaken and stirred: Seismic evidence of Chicxulub impact effects on the West Florida carbonate platform, Gulf of Mexico
Claude (Wylie) Poag
2017, Geology (45) 1011-1014
A grid of 33 seismic reflection profiles collected on the West Florida Shelf (Gulf of Mexico) reveals evidence of impact-induced seismic shaking and subsequent erosion of the Upper Cretaceous Selma–Pine Key depositional sequence across a wide region (∼102.3 × 103 km2) of the buried Cretaceous carbonate platform. These attributes can be...
Have mummichog (Fundulus heteroclitus) from the lower Penobscot River, Maine, developed tolerance to the toxic effects of mercury?
Adria Elskus, Rebecca Van Beneden
2017, Report, Report to the Joint Standing Committee on Environment and Natural Resources
Fish populations that are chronically exposed to mercury (Hg) can develop resistance to the toxic effects of this metal, including mummichog (Fundulus heteroclitus; Weis 2002). Such resistance allows them to potentially accumulate very high levels of this contaminant (Stefansson et al. 2013). Mercury is a neurotoxin that affects behavior...
Influence of the megathrust earthquake cycle on upper-plate deformation in the Cascadia forearc of Washington State, USA
Jaime E. Delano, Colin B. Amos, John P. Loveless, Tammy M. Rittenour, Brian Sherrod, Lynch M. Emerson
2017, Geology (45) 1051-1054
The influence of subduction zone earthquake cycle processes on permanent forearc deformation is poorly understood. In the Cascadia subduction zone forearc of Washington State, USA, deformed and incised fluvial terraces serve as archives of longer-term (103–104 yr) strain manifest as both fluvial incision and...
Landscape movements by two species of migratory nectar-feeding bats (Leptonycteris) in a northern area of seasonal sympatry
Michael A. Bogan, Paul M. Cryan, Christa D. Weise, Ernest W. Valdez
2017, Western North American Naturalist (77) 317-330
Animals often migrate to exploit seasonally ephemeral food. Three species of nectar-feeding phyllostomid bats migrate north from Mexico into deserts of the United States each spring and summer to feed on blooms of columnar cactus and century plants (Agave spp.). However, the habitat needs of these important desert pollinators are poorly...
The Conservation Efforts Database: Improving our knowledge of landscape conservation actions
Matthew M. Heller, Justin L. Welty, Lief A. Wiechman
2017, Report
The Conservation Efforts Database (CED) is a secure, cloud-based tool that can be used to document and track conservation actions across landscapes. A recently released factsheet describes this tool ahead of the rollout of CED version 2.0. The CED was developed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the USGS,...
The concurrent use of novel soil surface microclimate measurements to evaluate CO2 pulses in biocrusted interspaces in a cool desert ecosystem
Colin Tucker, Theresa A. McHugh, Armin J. Howell, Richard Gill, Bettina Weber, Jayne Belnap, Edmund E. Grote, Sasha C. Reed
2017, Biogeochemistry (135) 239-249
Carbon cycling associated with biological soil crusts, which occupy interspaces between vascular plants in drylands globally, may be an important part of the coupled climate-carbon cycle of the Earth system. A major challenge to understanding CO2 fluxes in these systems is that much of the biotic and biogeochemical activity occurs in...
Identification of Chelonid herpesvirus 5 (ChHV5) in endangered green turtles (Chelonia mydas) with fibropapillomatosis in Asia
Tsung-Hsien Li, Wei-Li Hsu, Yu-Ching Lan, George H. Balazs, Thierry M. Work, Cheng-Tsung Tseng, Chao-Chin Chang
2017, Bulletin of Marine Science (93) 1011-1022
Fibropapillomatosis (FP), a debilitating tumor disease of sea turtles, was first identified in green turtles [Chelonia mydas (Linnaeus, 1758)] in Florida in 1938. In recent decades, FP has been observed globally and is an emerging panzootic disease in sea turtles. However, few reports of FP in Asia exist. Here, we provide...
Model parameters for representative wetland plant functional groups
Amber S. Williams, James R. Kiniry, David M. Mushet, Loren M. Smith, Scott T. McMurry, Kelly Attebury, Megan Lang, Gregory W. McCarty, Jill A. Shaffer, William R. Effland, Mari-Vaughn V. Johnson
2017, Ecosphere (8) 1-14
Wetlands provide a wide variety of ecosystem services including water quality remediation, biodiversity refugia, groundwater recharge, and floodwater storage. Realistic estimation of ecosystem service benefits associated with wetlands requires reasonable simulation of the hydrology of each site and realistic simulation of the upland and wetland plant growth cycles. Objectives of...
Detection and characterization of pulses in broadband seismometers
David C. Wilson, Adam T. Ringler, Charles R. Hutt
2017, Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (107) 1173-1180
Pulsing - caused either by mechanical or electrical glitches, or by microtilt local to a seismometer - can significantly compromise the long‐period noise performance of broadband seismometers. High‐fidelity long‐period recordings are needed for accurate calculation of quantities such as moment tensors, fault‐slip models, and normal‐mode measurements. Such pulses have long...
Increased pheromone signaling by small male sea lamprey has distinct effects on female mate search and courtship
Tyler J. Buchinger, Ugo Bussy, Ethan G. Buchinger, Skye D. Fissette, Weiming Li, Nicholas S. Johnson
2017, Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology (71)
Male body size affects access to mates in many animals. Attributes of sexual signals often correlate with body size due to physiological constraints on signal production. Larger males generally produce larger signals, but costs of being large or compensation by small males can result in smaller males producing signals of...
Application of paleoecology to ecosystem restoration: A case study from south Florida’s estuaries
G. Lynn Wingard
Kaarina Weckstrom, Krystyna M. Saunders, Peter A. Gell, C. Gregory Skilbeck, editor(s)
2017, Book chapter, Applications of paleoenvironmental techniques in estuarine studies. Part of the Developments in Paleoenvironmental Research book series.
Paleoecological analyses of biotic assemblages from cores collected throughout south Florida’s estuaries indicate gradually increasing salinities over approximately the last 2000 years, consistent with rising sea level. Around the beginning of the twentieth century these gradual patterns of change began to shift, corresponding to the beginning of human alteration of...
Vertical distribution of alewife in the Lake Ontario offshore: Implications for resource use
Milan Riha, Maureen Walsh, Michael J. Connerton, Jeremy Holden, Brian Weidel, Patrick J. Sullivan, Toby J. Holda, Lars G. Rudstam
2017, Journal of Great Lakes Research (43) 823-837
Oligotrophication of Lake Ontario has led to increased water clarity and an increased proportion of zooplankton residing in the metalimnion during the day, which may affect the utilization of different depth regions for planktivorous fish. We investigated day and night distributions of fish using hydroacoustics and suspended vertical gillnets during the summer of 2013 when a...
How similar are forest disturbance maps derived from different Landsat time series algorithms?
Warren B. Cohen, Sean P. Healey, Zhiqiang Yang, Stephen V. Stehman, C. Kenneth Brewer, Evan B. Brooks, Noel Gorelick, Chengquan Huang, M. Joseph Hughes, Robert E. Kennedy, Thomas Loveland, Gretchen G. Moisen, Todd A. Schroeder, James Vogelmann, Curtis E. Woodcock, Limin Yang, Zhe Zhu
2017, Forests (8)
Disturbance is a critical ecological process in forested systems, and disturbance maps are important for understanding forest dynamics. Landsat data are a key remote sensing dataset for monitoring forest disturbance and there recently has been major growth in the development of disturbance mapping algorithms. Many of these algorithms take advantage...
Irrigation as a fuel pump to freshwater ecosystems
Sandrine Matiasek, Brian A. Pellerin, Robert G.M. Spencer, Brian A. Bergamaschi, Peter J. Hernes
2017, Biogeochemistry (136) 71-90
We generated a detailed time series of total dissolved hydrolyzable amino acids (DHAA) in a watershed dominated by irrigated agriculture in northern California, USA to investigate the roles of hydrologic and seasonal changes on the composition of dissolved organic matter (DOM). DHAA are sensitive indicators of the degradation state and...
Hydrogeophysical investigations of earthen dams – Two California case studies
Bethany L. Burton, Paul A. Bedrosian, Burke J. Minsley, Scott Ikard, Michael H. Powers
2017, Canadian Society of Exploration Geophysicists Recorder (42) 20-27
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...
Relative abundance of deformed wing virus, Varroa destructor virus 1, and their recombinants in honey bees (Apis mellifera) assessed by kmer analysis of public RNA-Seq data
Robert S. Cornman
2017, Journal of Invertebrate Pathology (149) 44-50
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...
