Post-fire interactions between soil water repellency, soil fertility and plant growth in soil collected from a burned piñon-juniper woodland
Kaitlynn J. Fernelius, Matthew D. Madsen, Bryan Hopkins, Sheel Bansal, Val J. Anderson, Dennis L. Eggett, Bruce A. Roundy
2017, Journal of Arid Environments (144) 98-109
Woody plant encroachment can increase nutrient resources in the plant-mound zone. After a fire, this zone is often found to be water repellent. This study aimed to understand the effects of post-fire water repellency on soil water and inorganic nitrogen and their effects on plant growth of the introduced annual...
Modeling the long-term effects of introduced herbivores on the spread of an invasive tree
Bo Zhang, Donald L. DeAngelis, Min B. Rayamajhi, Daniel B. Botkin
2017, Landscape Ecology (32) 1147-1161
ContextMelaleuca quinquenervia (Cav.) Blake (hereafter melaleuca) is an invasive tree from Australia that has spread over the freshwater ecosystems of southern Florida, displacing native vegetation, thus threatening native biodiversity. Suppression of melaleuca appears to be progressing through the introduction of insect species, the weevil, Oxiops vitiosa,...
Effect of hydraulic hysteresis on the stability of infinite slopes under steady infiltration
Pan Chen, Benjamin B. Mirus, Ning Lu, Jonathan W. Godt
2017, Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering (143)
Hydraulic hysteresis, including capillary soil water retention (SWR), air entrapment SWR, and hydraulic conductivity, is a common phenomenon in unsaturated soils. However, the influence of hydraulic hysteresis on suction stress, and subsequently slope stability, is generally ignored. This paper examines the influence of each of these three...
Five-year external reviews of the eight Department of Interior Climate Science Centers: Southeast Climate Science Center
Kenneth G. Rice, Paul Beier, Tim Breault, Beth A. Middleton, Myron A. Peck, John M. Tirpak, Mary Ratnaswamy
2017, Report
In 2008, the U.S. Congress authorized the establishment of the National Climate Change and Wildlife Science Center (NCCWSC) within the U.S. Department of Interior (DOI). Housed administratively within the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), NCCWSC is part of the DOI’s ongoing mission to meet the challenges of...
Improved supervised classification of accelerometry data to distinguish behaviors of soaring birds
Maitreyi Sur, Tony Suffredini, Stephen M. Wessells, Peter H. Bloom, Michael J. Lanzone, Sheldon Blackshire, Srisarguru Sridhar, Todd E. Katzner
2017, PLoS ONE (12)
Soaring birds can balance the energetic costs of movement by switching between flapping, soaring and gliding flight. Accelerometers can allow quantification of flight behavior and thus a context to interpret these energetic costs. However, models to interpret accelerometry data are still being developed, rarely trained with supervised datasets, and difficult...
Developing approaches for linear mixed modeling in landscape genetics through landscape-directed dispersal simulations
Jeffery R. Row, Steven T. Knick, Sara J. Oyler-McCance, Stephen C. Lougheed, Bradley C. Fedy
2017, Ecology and Evolution (7) 3751-3761
Dispersal can impact population dynamics and geographic variation, and thus, genetic approaches that can establish which landscape factors influence population connectivity have ecological and evolutionary importance. Mixed models that account for the error structure of pairwise datasets are increasingly used to compare models relating genetic differentiation to pairwise measures of...
Created mangrove wetlands store belowground carbon and surface elevation change enables them to adjust to sea-level rise
Ken W. Krauss, Nicole Cormier, Michael J. Osland, Matthew L. Kirwan, Camille L. Stagg, Janet A. Nestlerode, Marc J. Russell, Andrew From, Amanda C. Spivak, Darrin D. Dantin, James E. Harvey, Alejandro E. Almario
2017, Scientific Reports (7)
Mangrove wetlands provide ecosystem services for millions of people, most prominently by providing storm protection, food and fodder. Mangrove wetlands are also valuable ecosystems for promoting carbon (C) sequestration and storage. However, loss of mangrove wetlands and these ecosystem services are a global concern, prompting the restoration and creation of...
Hydrology of the Claiborne aquifer and interconnection with the Upper Floridan aquifer in southwest Georgia
Debbie W. Gordon, Gerard Gonthier
2017, Scientific Investigations Report 2017-5017
The U.S. Geological Survey conducted a study, in cooperation with the Georgia Environmental Protection Division, to define the hydrologic properties of the Claiborne aquifer and evaluate its connection with the Upper Floridan aquifer in southwest Georgia. The effort involved collecting and compiling hydrologic data from the aquifer in subarea 4...
The HayWired earthquake scenario—Earthquake hazards
Shane T. Detweiler, Anne M. Wein, editor(s)
2017, Scientific Investigations Report 2017-5013-A–H
The HayWired scenario is a hypothetical earthquake sequence that is being used to better understand hazards for the San Francisco Bay region during and after an earthquake of magnitude 7 on the Hayward Fault. The 2014 Working Group on California Earthquake Probabilities calculated that there is a 33-percent likelihood of...
When mechanism matters: Bayesian forecasting using models of ecological diffusion
Trevor J. Hefley, Mevin Hooten, Robin E. Russell, Daniel P. Walsh, James A. Powell
2017, Ecology Letters (20) 640-650
Ecological diffusion is a theory that can be used to understand and forecast spatio-temporal processes such as dispersal, invasion, and the spread of disease. Hierarchical Bayesian modelling provides a framework to make statistical inference and probabilistic forecasts, using mechanistic ecological models. To illustrate, we show how hierarchical Bayesian models of...
Lyme disease ecology in a changing world: Consensus, uncertainty and critical gaps for improving control
A. Marm Kilpatrick, Andrew D.M. Dobson, Taal Levi, Daniel J. Salkeld, Andrea Swei, Howard S. Ginsberg, Anne Kjemtrup, Kerry A. Padgett, Per A. Jensen, Durland Fish, Nick H. Ogden, Maria A. Diuk-Wasser
2017, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (372)
Lyme disease is the most common tick-borne disease in temperate regions of North America, Europe and Asia, and the number of reported cases has increased in many regions as landscapes have been altered. Although there has been extensive work on the ecology and epidemiology of this disease in both Europe...
Clearing the waters: Evaluating the need for site-specific field fluorescence corrections based on turbidity measurements
John Franco Saraceno, James B. Shanley, Bryan D. Downing, Brian A. Pellerin
2017, Limnology and Oceanography: Methods (15) 408-416
In situ fluorescent dissolved organic matter (fDOM) measurements have gained increasing popularity as a proxy for dissolved organic carbon (DOC) concentrations in streams. One challenge to accurate fDOM measurements in many streams is light attenuation due to suspended particles. Downing et al. (2012) evaluated the need for corrections to compensate...
Planting richness affects the recovery of vegetation and soil processes in constructed wetlands following disturbance
Mary M. Means, Changwoo Ahn, Gregory E. Noe
2017, Science of the Total Environment (579) 1366-1378
The resilience of constructed wetland ecosystems to severe disturbance, such as a mass herbivory eat-out or soil disturbance, remains poorly understood. In this study, we use a controlled mesocosm experiment to examine how original planting diversity affects the ability of constructed freshwater wetlands to recover structurally and functionally after a...
Confirmation of cisco spawning in Chaumont Bay, Lake Ontario using an egg pumping device
Ellen M. George, Wendylee Stott, Brian Young, Curtis T. Karboski, Darran L. Crabtree, Edward F. Roseman, Lars G. Rudstam
2017, Journal of Great Lakes Research (43) 204-208
Cisco Coregonus artedi, a historically abundant and commercially important fish in the Great Lakes, have declined drastically in the last century due to the impacts of invasive species, overfishing, and habitat degradation. Chaumont Bay, New York is believed to contain one of the last remaining spawning populations of cisco in...
Spatial dependence of reduced sulfur in Everglades dissolved organic matter controlled by sulfate enrichment
Brett A. Poulin, Joseph N. Ryan, Kathryn L. Nagy, Aron Stubbins, Thorsten Dittmar, William H. Orem, David P. Krabbenhoft, George R. Aiken
2017, Environmental Science & Technology (51) 3630-3639
Sulfate inputs to the Florida Everglades stimulate sulfidic conditions in freshwater wetland sediments that affect ecological and biogeochemical processes. An unexplored implication of sulfate enrichment is alteration of the content and speciation of sulfur in dissolved organic matter (DOM), which influences the reactivity of DOM with trace metals. Here, we...
Host-dependent differences in resource use associated with Anilocra spp. parasitism in two coral reef fishes, as revealed by stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analyses
Rachel Welicky, Amanda W.J. Demopoulos, Paul C. Sikkel
2017, Marine Ecology (38)
The role of parasites in trophic ecology is poorly understood in marine ecosystems. Stable isotope analyses (SIA) have been widely used in studies of trophic ecology, but have rarely been applied to study the role of parasites. Considering that some parasites are associated with altered host foraging patterns, SIA can...
Density-driven free-convection model for isotopically fractionated geogenic nitrate in sabkha brine
Warren W. Wood, J.K. Bohlke
2017, Groundwater (55) 199-207
Subsurface brines with high nitrate (NO3−) concentration are common in desert environments as atmospheric nitrogen is concentrated by the evaporation of precipitation and little nitrogen uptake. However, in addition to having an elevated mean concentration of ∼525 mg/L (as N), NO3− in the coastal sabkhas of Abu Dhabi is enriched...
Digitized analog boomer seismic-reflection data collected during U.S. Geological Survey cruises Erda 90-1_HC, Erda 90-1_PBP, and Erda 91-3 in Mississippi Sound, June 1990 and September 1991
Stephen T. Bosse, James G. Flocks, Arnell S. Forde
2017, Data Series 1047
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Coastal and Marine Geology Program has actively collected geophysical and sedimentological data in the northern Gulf of Mexico for several decades, including shallow subsurface data in the form of high-resolution seismic-reflection profiles (HRSP). Prior to the mid-1990s most HRSP data were collected in analog format...
Feasibility study for the quantitative assessment of mineral resources in asteroids
Laszlo P. Keszthelyi, Justin Hagerty, Amanda Bowers, Karl J. Ellefsen, Trude King, Ian Ridley, David Trilling, Nicholas Moskovitz, Will Grundy
2017, Open-File Report 2017-1041
This study was undertaken to determine if the U.S. Geological Survey’s process for conducting mineral resource assessments on Earth can be applied to asteroids. Successful completion of the assessment, using water and iron resources to test the workflow, has resulted in identification of the minimal adjustments required to conduct...
Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Units - A model partnership program
Donald E. Dennerline, Dawn E. Childs
2017, Fact Sheet 2017-3022
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Units (CRU) program is a unique model of cooperative partnership among the USGS, other U.S. Department of the Interior and Federal agencies, universities, State fish and wildlife agencies, and the Wildlife Management Institute. These partnerships are maintained as one of...
U.S. Geological Survey Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Units Program—2016–2017 Research Abstracts
Donald E. Dennerline, Dawn E. Childs, editor(s)
2017, Circular 1427
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has several strategic goals that focus its efforts on serving the American people. The USGS Ecosystems Mission Area has responsibility for the following objectives under the strategic goal of “Science to Manage and Sustain Resources for Thriving Economies and Healthy Ecosystems”:Understand, model, and predict change...
Longshore water-current velocity and the potential for transport of contaminants—A pilot study in Lake Erie from Walnut Creek to Presque Isle State Park beaches, Erie, Pennsylvania, June and August 2015
Elizabeth A. Hittle
2017, Open-File Report 2016-1206
Bacteria-driven restrictions and (or) advisories on swimming at beaches in Presque Isle State Park (PISP), Erie, Pennsylvania, can occur during the summer months. One of the suspected sources of bacteria is sediment. A terrestrial sediment source to the west of PISP is Walnut Creek, which discharges to Lake Erie about...
Volcanic air pollution hazards in Hawaii
Tamar Elias, A. Jeff Sutton
2017, Fact Sheet 2017-3017
Noxious sulfur dioxide gas and other air pollutants emitted from Kīlauea Volcano on the Island of Hawai‘i react with oxygen, atmospheric moisture, and sunlight to produce volcanic smog (vog) and acid rain. Vog can negatively affect human health and agriculture, and acid rain can contaminate household water supplies by...
Migratory connectivity of american woodcock using band return data
Joseph D. Moore, David G. Krementz
2017, Journal of Wildlife Management (81) 1063-1072
American woodcock (Scolopax minor) are managed as a Central and an Eastern population in the United States and Canada based on band return data showing little crossover between populations or management regions. The observed proportion of crossover between management regions, however, depends on the criteria used to subset the band...
Variable effects of climate on forest growth in relation to climate extremes, disturbance, and forest dynamics
Malcolm S. Itter, Andrew O. Finley, Anthony W. D’Amato, Jane R. Foster, John B. Bradford
2017, Ecological Applications (27) 1082-1095
Changes in the frequency, duration, and severity of climate extremes are forecast to occur under global climate change. The impacts of climate extremes on forest productivity and health remain difficult to predict due to potential interactions with disturbance events and forest dynamics—changes in forest stand composition, density, size and age...
