Arsenic, cadmium, lead, and mercury in surface soils, Pueblo, Colorado: Implications for population health risk
D.M. Diawara, J.S. Litt, D. Unis, N. Alfonso, L.A. Martinez, J.G. Crock, D. B. Smith, J. Carsella
2006, Environmental Geochemistry and Health (28) 297-315
Decades of intensive industrial and agricultural practices as well as rapid urbanization have left communities like Pueblo, Colorado facing potential health threats from pollution of its soils, air, water and food supply. To address such concerns about environmental contamination, we conducted an urban geochemical study of the city of Pueblo...
Denitrification in nitrate-rich streams: Application of N2:Ar and 15N-tracer methods in intact cores
Lesley K. Smith, M.A. Voytek, J.K. Böhlke, J. W. Harvey
2006, Ecological Applications (16) 2191-2207
Rates of benthic denitrification were measured using two techniques, membrane inlet mass spectrometry (MIMS) and isotope ratio mass spectrometry (IRMS), applied to sediment cores from two NO3−‐rich streams draining agricultural land in the upper Mississippi River Basin. Denitrification was estimated simultaneously from measurements of N2:Ar (MIMS) and 15N[N2]...
Cross-calibration of MODIS with ETM+ and ALI sensors for long-term monitoring of land surface processes
D. Meyer, G. Chander
2006, Conference Paper, Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering
Increasingly, data from multiple sensors are used to gain a more complete understanding of land surface processes at a variety of scales. Although higher-level products (e.g., vegetation cover, albedo, surface temperature) derived from different sensors can be validated independently, the degree to which these sensors and their products can be...
Relevance of cryptic fishes in biodiversity assessments: A case study at Buck Island Reef National Monument, St. Croix
W. F. Smith-Vaniz, H.L. Jelks, L.A. Rocha
2006, Bulletin of Marine Science (79) 17-48
Because cryptic fishes are difficult to accurately survey, they are undersampled components of coral reef habitats, and their ecological roles have been generally ignored. Fifty-eight enclosed stations were sampled in shoreline, nearshore reef, lagoon, backreef, forereef, and bank/shelf habitats with an ichthyocide (rotenone) at Buck Island Reef National Monument, St....
A search for scale in sea-level studies
C.E. Larsen, I. Clark
2006, Journal of Coastal Research (22) 788-800
Many researchers assume a proportional relationship among the atmospheric CO2 concentration, temperature, and sea level. Thus, the rate of sea-level rise should increase in concert with the documented exponential increase in CO2. Although sea surface temperature has increased in places over the past century and short-term sea level rose abruptly...
A multivariate model of plant species richness in forested systems: Old-growth montane forests with a long history of fire
D.C. Laughlin, J.B. Grace
2006, Oikos (114) 60-70
Recently, efforts to develop multivariate models of plant species richness have been extended to include systems where trees play important roles as overstory elements mediating the influences of environment and disturbance on understory richness. We used structural equation modeling to examine the relationship of understory vascular plant species richness to...
Orientation-independent measures of ground motion
D.M. Boore, Jennie Watson-Lamprey, N. A. Abrahamson
2006, Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (96) 1502-1511
The geometric mean of the response spectra for two orthogonal horizontal components of motion, commonly used as the response variable in predictions of strong ground motion, depends on the orientation of the sensors as installed in the field. This means that the measure of ground-motion intensity could differ for the...
Geophysical evaluation of the Success Dam foundation, Porterville, California
L. E. Hunter, M.H. Powers, S. Haines, T. Asch, B.L. Burton, D.C. Serafini
2006, Conference Paper, Association of State Dam Safety Officials - Dam Safety 2006, Proceedings from the 2006 Annual Conference
Success Dam is a zonedearth fill embankment located near Porterville, CA. Studies of Success Dam by the recent Dam Safety Assurance Program (DSAP) have demonstrated the potential for seismic instability and large deformation of the dam due to relatively low levels of earthquake shaking. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers...
Resolving structural influences on water-retention properties of alluvial deposits
K.A. Winfield, J. R. Nimmo, J. A. Izbicki, P. M. Martin
2006, Vadose Zone Journal (5) 706-719
With the goal of improving property-transfer model (PTM) predictions of unsaturated hydraulic properties, we investigated the influence of sedimentary structure, defined as particle arrangement during deposition, on laboratory-measured water retention (water content vs. potential [θ(ψ)]) of 10 undisturbed core samples from alluvial deposits in the western Mojave Desert, California. The...
Improving data analysis in herpetology: Using Akaike's information criterion (AIC) to assess the strength of biological hypotheses
M. J. Mazerolle
2006, Amphibia-Reptilia (27) 169-180
In ecology, researchers frequently use observational studies to explain a given pattern, such as the number of individuals in a habitat patch, with a large number of explanatory (i.e., independent) variables. To elucidate such relationships, ecologists have long relied on hypothesis testing to include or exclude variables in regression models,...
Cross-calibration of A.M. constellation sensors for long term monitoring of land surface processes
D. Meyer, G. Chander
2006, Conference Paper, Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering
Data from multiple sensors must be used together to gain a more complete understanding of land surface processes at a variety of scales. Although higher-level products derived from different sensors (e.g., vegetation cover, albedo, surface temperature) can be validated independently, the degree to which these sensors and their products can...
Modeling decadal timescale interactions between surface water and ground water in the central Everglades, Florida, USA
J. W. Harvey, J.T. Newlin, S.L. Krupa
2006, Journal of Hydrology (320) 400-420
Surface-water and ground-water flow are coupled in the central Everglades, although the remoteness of this system has hindered many previous attempts to quantify interactions between surface water and ground water. We modeled flow through a 43,000 ha basin in the central Everglades called Water Conservation Area 2A. The purpose of...
Evidence of regional subsidence and associated interior wetland loss induced by hydrocarbon production, Gulf Coast region, USA
R.A. Morton, J.C. Bernier, J.A. Barras
2006, Environmental Geology (50) 261-274
Analysis of remote images, elevation surveys, stratigraphic cross-sections, and hydrocarbon production data demonstrates that extensive areas of wetland loss in the northern Gulf Coast region of the United States were associated with large-volume fluid production from mature petroleum fields. Interior wetland losses at many sites in coastal Louisiana and Texas...
Cokriging estimation of daily suspended sediment loads
Z. Li, Y.-K. Zhang, K. Schilling, M. Skopec
2006, Journal of Hydrology (327) 389-398
Daily suspended sediment loads (S) were estimated using cokriging (CK) of S with daily river discharge based on weekly, biweekly, or monthly sampled sediment data. They were also estimated with ordinary kriging (OK) and a rating curve method. The estimated daily loads were compared with the daily measured values over...
Trends of chlorinated organic contaminants in Great Lakes trout and walleye from 1970-1998
J.P. Hickey, S.A. Batterman, S.M. Chernyak
2006, Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology (50) 97-110
Levels of chlorinated organic contaminants in predator fish have been monitored annually in each of the Great Lakes since the 1970s. This article updates earlier reports with data from 1991 to 1998 for lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush) and (Lake Erie only) walleye (Sander vitreus) to provide a record that now...
Global analyses of brachiopod faunas through the Ordovician and Silurian transition: Reducing the role of the Lazarus effect
J.-Y. Rong, A. J. Boucot, D.A.T. Harper, R.-B. Zhan, R. B. Neuman
2006, Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences (43) 23-39
Global analyses of 88 families and 284 genera of brachiopods from middle Ashgill, Late Ordovician, to early-middle Rhuddanian, Early Silurian, indicate that 18.6% and 12.5% of families and 51.0% and 41.3% of genera were eliminated in the first and second phases of the end-Ordovician mass extinction, respectively, with the total...
G-banded karotype and ideogram for the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale (Eubalanea glacialis)
K.C. Pause, R. K. Bonde, P.M. McGuire, Roberto T. Zori, B.A. Gray
2006, Journal of Heredity (97) 303-306
Published cytogenetic data for extant cetacean species remain incomplete. In a review of the literature, we found karyotypic information for 6 of the 13 tentatively recognized species of the suborder Mysticeti (baleen whales). Among those yet to be described is the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale (Eubalaena glacialis). Herein,...
Influence of landscape-scale factors in limiting brook trout populations in Pennsylvania streams
P.M. Kocovsky, R.F. Carline
2006, Transactions of the American Fisheries Society (135) 76-88
Landscapes influence the capacity of streams to produce trout through their effect on water chemistry and other factors at the reach scale. Trout abundance also fluctuates over time; thus, to thoroughly understand how spatial factors at landscape scales affect trout populations, one must assess the changes in populations over time...
Radiative transfer modeling of dust-coated Pancam calibration target materials: Laboratory visible/near-infrared spectrogoniometry
J. R. Johnson, J. Sohl-Dickstein, W.M. Grundy, R. E. Arvidson, J.F. Bell III, P. R. Christensen, T. Graff, E.A. Guinness, K. Kinch, Robert Morris, M.K. Shepard
2006, Journal of Geophysical Research E: Planets (111)
Laboratory visible/near-infrared multispectral observations of Mars Exploration Rover Pancam calibration target materials coated with different thicknesses of Mars spectral analog dust were acquired under variable illumination geometries using the Bloomsburg University Goniometer. The data were fit with a two-layer radiative transfer model that combines a Hapke formulation for the dust...
Submarine landslides in the Santa Barbara Channel as potential tsunami sources
H. Gary Greene, L.Y. Murai, P. Watts, N.A. Maher, M. A. Fisher, C.E. Paull, P. Eichhubl
2006, Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences (6) 63-88
Recent investigations using the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institutes (MBARI) Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) "Ventana" and "Tiburon" and interpretation of MBARI's EM 300 30 kHz multibeam bathymetric data show that the northern flank of the Santa Barbara Basin has experienced massive slope failures. Of particular concern is the large (130...
Sulfate deposition in subsurface regolith in Gusev crater, Mars
A. Wang, L.A. Haskin, S. W. Squyres, B.L. Jolliff, L. Crumpler, Ralf Gellert, C. Schroder, Kenneth E. Herkenhoff, J. Hurowitz, N.J. Tosca, W. H. Farrand, R. Anderson, A.T. Knudson
2006, Journal of Geophysical Research E: Planets (111)
Excavating into the shallow Martian subsurface has the potential to expose stratigraphic layers and mature regolith, which may hold a record of more ancient aqueous interactions than those expected under current Martian surface conditions. During the Spirit rover's exploration of Gusev crater, rover wheels were used to dig three trenches...
Evaluation of the factors controlling the time-dependent inactivation rate coefficients of bacteriophage MS2 and PRD1
R. Anders, C.V. Chrysikopoulos
2006, Environmental Science & Technology (40) 3237-3242
Static and dynamic batch experiments were conducted to study the effects of temperature and the presence of sand on the inactivation of bacteriophage MS2 and PRD1. The experimental data suggested that the inactivation process can be satisfactorily represented by a pseudo-first-order expression with time-dependent rate coefficients. The time-dependent rate coefficients...
Murre eggs (Uria aalge and Uria lomvia) as indicators of mercury contamination in the Alaskan marine environment
Russel D. Day, Stacy S. Vander Pol, Steven J. Christopher, W.C. Davis, Rebecca S. Pugh, Kristin S. Simac, David G. Roseneau, P.R. Becker
2006, Environmental Science & Technology (40) 659-665
Sixty common murre (Uria aalge) and 27 thick-billed murre (Uria lomvia) eggs collected by the Seabird Tissue Archival and Monitoring Project (STAMP) in 1999−2001 from two Gulf of Alaska and three Bering Sea nesting colonies were analyzed for total mercury (Hg) using isotope dilution cold vapor inductively coupled mass spectrometry....
Differential estimates of southern flying squirrel (Glaucomys volans) population structure based on capture method
K. S. Laves, S.C. Loeb
2006, American Midland Naturalist (155) 237-243
It is commonly assumed that population estimates derived from trapping small mammals are accurate and unbiased or that estimates derived from different capture methods are comparable. We captured southern flying squirrels (Glaucomys volans) using two methods to study their effect on red-cockaded woodpecker (Picoides borealis) reproductive success. Southern flying squirrels...
Cosmogenic 3He production rates revisited from evidences of grain size dependent release of matrix-sited helium
P.-H. Blard, R. Pik, J. Lave, D. Bourles, P.G. Burnard, R. Yokochi, B. Marty, F. Trusdell
2006, Earth and Planetary Science Letters (247) 222-234
Measurements of the cosmogenic 3He (3Hec) content of various size aliquots of exposed olivines show that the fine fraction (<140 μm) has 3Hec concentrations between 14 and 100% lower than that of the coarse fractions (0.14–1 mm). Such differences attest to a grain size dependent partial release...
