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Recreational fisheries represent a socially, ecologically, and economically significant component of global fisheries. The U.S. Inland Creel and Angler Survey Catalog (CreelCat) database includes inland recreational fisheries survey data across the United States to facilitate large-scale analyses. However, because survey methods differ, a statistical method...

The deposits of the upper Neoproterozoic Zerrissene Group of central-western Namibia represent a large siliciclastic deep-water depositional system that showcases the intricacies of facies and architectural relationships from bed-scale to fan-system-scale. The lack of vegetation in the Namib Desert and regular east–west repetition of folded stratigraphy (reflecting ca 50% tectonic shortening) provides...

BackgroundChronic exposure to inorganic arsenic (As) and uranium (U) in the United States (US) occurs from unregulated private wells and federally regulated community water systems (CWSs). The contribution of water to total exposure is assumed to be low when water As and U concentrations are low.ObjectiveWe...

Flooding is a dominant physical process that drives the form and function of river-floodplain ecosystems. Efficiently characterizing flooding dynamics can be challenging, especially over geographically broad areas or at spatial and temporal scales relevant for ecosystem management activities. Here, we empirically evaluated a low-complexity geospatial...

Understanding interactions between environmental stress and genetic variation is crucial to predict the adaptive capacity of species to climate change. Leaf temperature is both a driver and a responsive indicator of plant physiological response to thermal stress, and methods to monitor it are needed. Foliar temperatures vary across leaf to...

Grassland birds in North America have experienced sharp declines over the last 60 years driven by the widespread loss and degradation of grassland habitats. In recent decades, modern climate change has amplified these pressures. Climate change is occurring more rapidly in grasslands relative to some other ecosystems, and exposure to...

The concept of ecosystem services provides a useful framework for understanding how people are affected by changes to the natural environment, such as when a contaminant is introduced (e.g., oil spills, hazardous substance releases) or, conversely, when contaminated lands are remediated and restored. Pollination...

Demand for food and water are increasing while the extent of arable land and accessible fresh water are decreasing. This poses global challenges as economies continue to develop and the population grows. With agriculture as the leading consumer of water, better understanding how water is used to produce food...

Despite advances in toxicity testing and development of new approach methodologies (NAMs) for hazard assessment, the ecological risk assessment (ERA) framework for terrestrial wildlife (i.e., air-breathing amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals) has remained unchanged for decades. While survival, growth, and reproductive endpoints derived from...

Despite growing support for ecosystem-based approaches, conservation is mostly implemented at the species level. However, genetic differentiation exists within this taxonomic level, putting genetically distinct populations at risk of local extinction. In the diablotin black-capped petrel Pterodroma hasitata, an endangered gadfly petrel endemic to the Caribbean, 2 phenotypes have been described:...

Context: Sea turtle hatchlings generally emerge at night from nests on sand beaches and immediately orient using visual cues, which are believed to entail the difference in brightness between the light seen in the seaward direction and that seen in the duneward direction.Aim: The aim of this study was to understand how...

Effective groundwater management is critical to future environmental, ecological, and social sustainability and requires accurate estimates of groundwater withdrawals. Unfortunately, these estimates are not readily available in most areas due to physical, regulatory, and social challenges. Here, we compare four different approaches for estimating groundwater withdrawals for agricultural irrigation. We...

Model species (e.g., granivorous gamebirds, waterfowl, passerines, domesticated rodents) have been used for decades in guideline laboratory tests to generate survival, growth and reproductive data for prospective Ecological Risk Assessments (ERAs) for birds and mammals, while officially adopted risk assessment schemes for amphibians and reptiles do not exist. There are...

FloPy is a popular Python package for creating, running, and post-processing MODFLOW-based groundwater flow and transport models. FloPy functionality has expanded to support the latest version of MODFLOW (MODFLOW 6) including support for unstructured grids. FloPy can be used to download MODFLOW-based and other executables for Linux, MacOS, and Windows...

Growth of the Tibetan Plateau, Earth’s broadest and highest elevation collisional system, shapes orographic barriers, reorganizes drainage networks, and influences surface erosion and sediment delivery, whose changes in space and provenance feed back to intracontinental tectonic processes. Studies of interior basins within the...

Habitat suitability models for freshwater mussels can inform conservation of these imperiled animals. Riverscape-scale hydrogeomorphic variables were previously used to predict suitable mussel habitat in the Meramec River basin, Missouri. We evaluated transferability of the Meramec River habitat suitability model to the Gasconade and Little Black rivers, in the Ozark...

Species assemblages composed of non-native and native fishes are found in freshwater systems throughout the world, and interactions such as interspecific competition that may negatively affect native species are expected when non-native species are present. In the Smith River watershed, Montana, rainbow trout were introduced by 1930. Native mountain whitefish...

Denil fishways have been used with varying success to help fish pass impediments to upstream passage such as low head dams or irrigation diversion structures. They have been tested for hydraulic and fish passage performance in laboratory and field settings, usually with only minor modifications to the fishway geometry or...

While fire is a necessary ecological driver for grassland systems, Great Plains grasslands have undergone extensive land use change following European settlement (conversion, fragmentation, fire suppression, intensive grazing, etc.). Recent studies have documented the benefits of re-introducing fire to grasslands, but work has largely focused on small-scale, low-intensity fire, often at...

Bonneville Cutthroat Trout (BCT) Oncorhynchus clarkii utah in Bear Lake, Idaho–Utah, is an important endemic and recreational species and plays a vital ecological role in systems throughout the basin. Although the distribution and abundance of BCT have declined due to anthropogenic disturbances, production of wild BCT in Bear Lake has increased over...

Successful species reintroduction requires restoration of receiving habitats to support growth, survival, and reproduction that reverse the initial causes of decline. Little is known about whether present habitat conditions can support all life stages of reintroduced southern Lake Sturgeon populations that were possibly extirpated by the mid-1900s due to overharvest...

Lakes and bogs in northeastern North America preserve tephra deposits sourced from multiple volcanic systems in the Northern Hemisphere. However, most studies of these deposits focus on specific Holocene intervals and the latest Pleistocene, providing snapshots rather than a full picture. We combine new data with previous work, supplemented by...

The deposits from volcanic eruptions represent the record of activity at a volcano. Identification, classification, and interpretation of these deposits are crucial to the understanding of volcanic processes and assessing hazards. However, deposits often cover large areas and can be difficult or dangerous to access, making field mapping dangerous and...

Mormon Lake, elevation 2166 m with maximum historic surface area of 31.4 km2, lies in a forested endorheic basin covering 103 km2. It is the largest unaltered freshwater body on the 337,000 km2 Colorado Plateau. Prehistorical (before AD 1878) highstands were ca. 9 and 24 m relative to depocenter datum....

Makushin stratovolcano, Alaska, produced three, highly explosive, andesitic eruptions between ~ 9292 and 6215 yBP. Those eruptions are informally named the CFE (“crater-forming eruption”), Nateekin, and Driftwood Pumice, and they deposited significant tephra fallout in the present-day port of Dutch Harbor and City of Unalaska area. The focus of this study is to examine...