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Forecasting future activity and performing hazard assessments during the reactivation of volcanoes remain great challenges for the volcanological community. On August 14, 2015 Cotopaxi volcano erupted for the first time in 73 years after approximately four months of precursory activity, which included an increase in seismicity, gas emissions, and minor ground...

Mistletoes are parasitic or hemi-parasitic flowering plants that parasitize woody plants around the globe. Important food and cover resources provided by mistletoes have been related to strong patterns of positive association between wildlife diversity and mistletoe density. Mistletoes also create microhabitat features known to be important to wildlife by causing...

Many wildlife populations are declining at rates higher than can be explained by known threats to biodiversity. Recently, thiamine (vitamin B1) deficiency has emerged as a possible contributing cause. Here, thiamine status was systematically investigated in three animal classes: bivalves, ray-finned fishes, and birds. Thiamine diphosphate is required as a...

The long-lived radionuclide 129I (half-life: 15.7 × 106 yr) is well-known as a useful environmental tracer. At present, the global 129I in surface water is about 1–2 orders of magnitude higher than pre-1960 levels. Since the 1990s, anthropogenic 129I produced from industrial nuclear fuels reprocessing plants has been the primary source of 129I...

Groundwater provides nearly 50 percent of the Nation’s drinking water. To help protect this vital resource, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Water-Quality Assessment (NAWQA) Project assesses groundwater quality in aquifers that are important sources of drinking water. The Coastal Lowlands aquifer system constitutes one of the important areas being...

Groundwater provides nearly 50 percent of the Nation’s drinking water. To help protect this vital resource, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Water-Quality Assessment (NAWQA) Project assesses groundwater quality in aquifers that are important sources of drinking water. The Southeastern Coastal Plain aquifer system constitutes one of the important areas being evaluated. One or...

Groundwater provides nearly 50 percent of the Nation’s drinking water. To help protect this vital resource, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Water-Quality Assessment (NAWQA) Project assesses groundwater quality in aquifers that are important sources of drinking water. The Northern Atlantic Coastal Plain aquifer system constitutes one of the important...

Groundwater provides nearly 50 percent of the Nation’s drinking water. To help protect this vital resource, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Water-Quality Assessment (NAWQA) Project assesses groundwater quality in aquifers that are important sources of drinking water. The Basin and Range basin-fill aquifers constitute one of the important areas...

Groundwater provides nearly 50 percent of the Nation’s drinking water. To help protect this vital resource, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Water-Quality Assessment (NAWQA) Project assesses groundwater quality in aquifers that are important sources of drinking water. The Valley and Ridge and Piedmont and Blue Ridge carbonate-rock aquifers constitute two of the...

This report, based on a symposium held on October 13, 2011, at the National Wildlife Visitor Center at the Patuxent Research Refuge in Laurel, MD, documents the history of the Patuxent Research Refuge and the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, collectively known as Patuxent. The symposium was one of the many...

Wind energy generation holds the potential to adversely affect wildlife populations. Species-wide effects are difficult to study and few, if any, studies examine effects of wind energy generation on any species across its entire range. One species that may be affected by wind energy generation is the endangered Indiana bat...

This paper, part of the collection of research comprising the State of Bay–Delta Science 2016, describes advances during the past decade in understanding flow dynamics and how water-quality constituents move within California’s Sacramento– San Joaquin River Delta (Delta). Water-quality constituents include salinity, heat, oxygen, nutrients, contaminants, organic particles, and inorganic particles. These constituents are affected by water diversions and...

Pharmaceutical pollution in surface waters poses risks to human and ecosystem health. Wastewater treatment facilities are primary sources of pharmaceutical pollutants, but little is known about the factors that affect drugs entering the wastewater stream. This paper investigates the effects of student pharmaceutical use and disposal behaviors and an...

Multiple pathways exist for species to respond to changing climates. However, responses of dispersal-limited species will be more strongly tied to ability to adapt within existing populations as rates of environmental change will likely exceed movement rates. Here, we assess adaptive capacity in Plethodon cinereus, a dispersal-limited woodland salamander. We...

The cryptic behavior and ecology of herpetofauna make estimating the impacts of environmental change on demography difficult; yet, the ability to measure demographic relationships is essential for elucidating mechanisms leading to the population declines reported for herpetofauna worldwide. Recently developed spatial capture–recapture (SCR) methods are well suited to standard herpetofauna...

Recent soils research has shown that important chemical soil characteristics can change in less than a decade, often the result of broad environmental changes. Repeated sampling to monitor these changes in forest soils is a relatively new practice that is not well documented in the literature and has only recently...

Northern peatlands are an important source for greenhouse gases, but their capacity to produce methane remains uncertain under changing climatic conditions. We therefore analyzed a 43 year time series of the pore-water chemistry to determine if long-term shifts in precipitation altered the vertical transport of solutes within a large peat basin...

Florida's communities are largely dependent on freshwater from groundwater aquifers. Existing saltwater in the aquifers, or seawater that intrudes parts of the aquifers that were fresh, can make the water unusable without additional processing. The quality of Florida's saltwater intrusion monitoring networks varies. In Miami-Dade and Broward Counties, for example,...

This report provides an overview of current (2016) U.S. Geological Survey policies and practices related to publishing data on ScienceBase, and an example interactive mapping application to display those data. ScienceBase is an integrated data sharing platform managed by the U.S. Geological Survey. This report describes resources that U.S. Geological...

Bithynia tentaculata is believed to have been extirpated from North America during the last glacial maximum. It was reintroduced into North America via the Great Lakes basin in the 1800’s and has recently been expanding its geographic range. This snail serves as intermediate host for three trematodes that cause extensive...

We simulate the 1950–2010 water balance for the conterminous U.S. (CONUS) with a monthly water balance model (MWBM) using the 800 m Parameter-elevation Regression on Independent Slopes Model (PRISM) data set as model input. We employed observed snow and streamflow data sets to guide modification of the snow and potential...

Eight Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) nestlings heavily infested with larval ticks were found in or under a nest near the confluence of the Verde and Salt rivers in Arizona in 2009-11. The 8-12-wk-old nestlings were slow to respond to stimuli and exhibited generalized muscle weakness or paresis of the pelvic...

Despite elevated summer insolation forcing during the early Holocene, global ice sheets retained nearly half of their volume from the Last Glacial Maximum, as indicated by deglacial records of global mean sea level (GMSL). Partitioning the GMSL rise among potential sources requires accurate dating of ice-sheet extent to estimate ice-sheet...

The original National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Experimental Advanced Airborne Research Lidar (EAARL), was extensively modified to increase the spatial sampling density and improve performance in water ranging from 3–44 m. The new (EAARL-B) sensor features a 300% increase in spatial density, which was achieved by optically splitting each laser pulse into...

Underlying mutation rates and other evolutionary forces shape the population structure of bacteria in nature. Although easily overlooked, similar forces are at work in the laboratory and may influence observed mutations. Here, we investigated tissue samples and Yersinia pestis isolates from a rodent laboratory challenge with strain CO92 using whole...