Saltwater intrusion monitoring in Florida
Scott T. Prinos
2016, Florida Scientist (79) 269-278
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,...
Sharing our data—An overview of current (2016) USGS policies and practices for publishing data on ScienceBase and an example interactive mapping application
Katherine J. Chase, Andrew R. Bock, Roy Sando
2016, Open-File Report 2016-1202
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...
Depth calibration and validation of the Experimental Advanced Airborne Research Lidar, EAARL-B
C. Wayne Wright, Christine J. Kranenburg, Timothy A. Battista, Christopher Parrish
2016, Journal of Coastal Research (Special Issue 76) 4-17
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...
Genetic structure of faucet snail, Bithynia tentaculata populations in North Americal based on microsattelite markers
Kathryn E. Perez, Rebecca L. Werren, Christopher A. Lynum, Levi A. Hartman, Gabor Majoros, Rebecca A. Cole
2016, Freshwater Mollusk Biology and Conservation (19) 56-68
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...
Implementation and evaluation of a monthly water balance model over the US on an 800 m grid
Steven W. Hostetler, Jay R. Alder
2016, Water Resources Research (52) 9600-9620
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...
Bald Eagle nestling mortality associated with Argas radiatus and Argas ricei tick infestation and successful management with nest removal in Arizona, USA
Anne Justice-Allen, Kathy Orr, Krysten L. Schuler, Kyle McCarty, Kenneth Jacobson, Carol U. Meteyer
2016, Journal of Wildlife Diseases (52) 940-944
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...
Final Laurentide ice-sheet deglaciation and Holocene climate-sea level change
David J. Ullman, Anders E. Carlson, Steven W. Hostetler, Peter U. Clark, Joshua Cuzzone, Glenn A. Milne, Kelsey Winsor, Marc A. Caffee
2016, Quaternary Science Reviews (152) 49-59
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...
VNTR diversity in Yersinia pestis isolates from an animal challenge study reveals the potential for in vitro mutations during laboratory cultivation
Amy J. Vogler, Roxanne Nottingham, Joseph D. Busch, Jason W. Sahl, Megan M. Shuey, Jeffrey T. Foster, James M. Schupp, Susan Smith, Tonie E. Rocke, Paul Klein, David M. Wagner
2016, Infection, Genetics and Evolution (45) 297-302
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...
Geography and host species shape the evolutionary dynamics of U genogroup infectious hematopoietic necrosis virus
Allison Black, Rachel Breyta, Trevor Bedford, Gael Kurath
2016, Virus Evolution (2)
Infectious hematopoietic necrosis virus (IHNV) is a negative-sense RNA virus that infects wild and cultured salmonids throughout the Pacific Coastal United States and Canada, from California to Alaska. Although infection of adult fish is usually asymptomatic, juvenile infections can result in high mortality events that impact salmon hatchery programs and...
Dissolved organic matter composition of Arctic rivers: Linking permafrost and parent material to riverine carbon
Jonathan A. O’Donnell, George R. Aiken, David K. Swanson, Panda Santosh, Kenna D. Butler, Andrew P. Baltensperger
2016, Global Biogeochemical Cycles (30) 1811-1826
Recent climate change in the Arctic is driving permafrost thaw, which has important implications for regional hydrology and global carbon dynamics. Permafrost is an important control on groundwater dynamics and the amount and chemical composition of dissolved organic matter (DOM) transported by high-latitude rivers. The consequences of permafrost thaw for...
Protecting national parks from air pollution effects: Making sausage from science and policy
Jill S. Baron, Tamara Blett, William C. Malm, Ruth Alexander, Holly Doremus
2016, Book chapter
The story of air pollution research, policy development, and management in national parks is a fascinating blend of cultural change, vision, interdisciplinary and interagency collaboration, and science-policy-management-stakeholder collaborations. Unable to ignore the loss of iconic vistas from regional haze and loss of fish from acid rain in the 1980s, the...
Memorial to Robert Leland Smith 1920-2016
Charles R. Bacon
2016, Geological Society of America Memorials (45) 19-25
Robert L. Smith, renowned volcanologist and distinguished scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), was a world authority on ash-flow tuffs, silicic volcanism, and caldera structures. Bob died peacefully in Sacramento, California, June 17, 2016, a few days short of his ninety-sixth birthday. His publications on ash flows and their...
Defining resilience: A preliminary integrative literature review
Bonnie Wilt, Suzanna K. Long, Thomas G. Shoberg
2016, Conference Paper, Proceedings of the American Society for Engineering Management 2016
The term “resilience” is ubiquitous in technical literature; it appears in numerous forms, such as resilience, resiliency, or resilient, and each use may have a different definition depending on the interpretation of the writer. This creates difficulties in understanding what is meant by ‘resilience’ in any given use case, especially...
A novel, non-removal method for closing drainage tile for ecological restorations
Raymond Finocchiaro, Dave A. Azure, Michael A. Vargo
2016, Ecological Restoration (34) 273-276
This article discussing the use of a new method and approach for closing tile for hydrological restorations without removal of the tile pipe and allows for more flexibility in restoration design....
Alternative source models of very low frequency events
Joan S. Gomberg, D.C. Agnew, S.Y. Schwartz
2016, Journal of Geophysical Research B: Solid Earth (121) 6722-6740
We present alternative source models for very low frequency (VLF) events, previously inferred to be radiation from individual slow earthquakes that partly fill the period range between slow slip events lasting thousands of seconds and low-frequency earthquakes (LFE) with durations of tenths of a second. We show that VLF events...
A new biogeographically disjunct giant gecko (Gehyra: Gekkonidae: Reptilia) from the East Melanesian Islands
Paul M. Oliver, Jonathan R. Clegg, Robert N. Fisher, Stephen J. Richards, Peter N. Taylor, Merlijn M. T. Jocque
2016, Zootaxa (4208) 61-76
The East Melanesian Islands have been a focal area for research into island biogeography and community ecology. However, previously undescribed and biogeographically significant new species endemic to this region continue to be discovered. Here we describe a phylogenetically distinct (~20% divergence at the mitochondrial ND2 gene) and biogeographically disjunct new...
Large-scale recovery of an endangered amphibian despite ongoing exposure to multiple stressors
Roland A. Knapp, Gary M. Fellers, Patrick M. Kleeman, David A. W. Miller, Vance T. Vrendenburg, Erica Bree Rosenblum, Cheryl J. Briggs
2016, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (113) 11889-11894
Amphibians are one of the most threatened animal groups, with 32% of species at risk for extinction. Given this imperiled status, is the disappearance of a large fraction of the Earth’s amphibians inevitable, or are some declining species more resilient than is generally assumed? We address this question in a...
Novel picornavirus associated with avian keratin disorder in Alaskan birds
Maxine Zylberberg, Caroline R. Van Hemert, John P. Dumbacher, Colleen M. Handel, Tarik Tihan, Joseph L. DeRisi
2016, mBio (7) 1-10
Avian keratin disorder (AKD), characterized by debilitating overgrowth of the avian beak, was first documented in black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapillus) in Alaska. Subsequently, similar deformities have appeared in numerous species across continents. Despite the widespread distribution of this emerging pathology, the cause of AKD remains elusive. As a result, it...
A cytosolic carbonic anhydrase molecular switch occurs in the gills of metamorphic sea lamprey
D. Ferreira-Martins, Stephen D. McCormick, A. Campos, M. Lopes-Marques, H. Osorio, J. Coimbra, L.F.C. Castro, Jonthan M Wilson
2016, Scientific Reports (6) 1-11
Carbonic anhydrase plays a key role in CO2 transport, acid-base and ion regulation and metabolic processes in vertebrates. While several carbonic anhydrase isoforms have been identified in numerous vertebrate species, basal lineages such as the cyclostomes have remained largely unexamined. Here we investigate the repertoire of cytoplasmic carbonic anhydrases in...
Environmental variability and population dynamics: Do European and North American ducks play by the same rules?
Hannu Poysa, Jukka Rintala, Douglas H. Johnson, Jukka Kauppinen, Esa Lammi, Thomas D. Nudds, Veli-Matti Vaananen
2016, Ecology and Evolution (6) 7004-7014
Density dependence, population regulation, and variability in population size are fundamental population processes, the manifestation and interrelationships of which are affected by environmental variability. However, there are surprisingly few empirical studies that distinguish the effect of environmental variability from the effects of population processes. We took advantage of a unique...
Whitebark pine mortality related to white pine blister rust, mountain pine beetle outbreak, and water availability
Erin Shanahan, Kathryn M. Irvine, David P. Thoma, Siri K. Wilmoth, Andrew Ray, Kristin Legg, Henry Shovic
2016, Ecosphere (7)
Whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis) forests in the western United States have been adversely affected by an exotic pathogen (Cronartium ribicola, causal agent of white pine blister rust), insect outbreaks (Dendroctonus ponderosae, mountain pine beetle), and drought. We monitored individual trees from 2004 to 2013 and characterized stand-level biophysical conditions through...
Aging and sexing guide to the forest birds of Hawai‘i Island
Eben H. Paxton, Rachelle McLaughlin, Stephanie Levins, Eric VanderWerf, Nolan Lancaster
2016, Technical Report HCSU-079
We banded birds in Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge from 2012 to 2016, collecting photographs of birds and making detailed observations on coloration, morphology, and molting patterns. While we believe the criteria in this guide are applicable to forest birds across Hawai’i Island, as well as on other Hawaiian islands...
Status of scientific knowledge, recovery progress, and future research directions for the Gulf Sturgeon, Acipenser oxyrinchus desotoi Vladykov, 1955
Kenneth J. Sulak, F Parauka, W. Todd Slack, T Ruth, Michael T. Randall, K Luke, M. F Mette, M. E Price
2016, Journal of Applied Ichthyology (32) 87-161
The Gulf Sturgeon, Acipenser oxyrinchus desotoi, is an anadromous species of Acipenseridae and native to North America. It currently inhabits and spawns in the upper reaches of seven natal rivers along the northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico from the Suwannee River, Florida, to the Pearl River, Louisiana, during...
Landslide hazards and climate change: A perspective from the United States
Jeffrey A. Coe
2016, Book chapter, Slope safety preparedness for impact of climate change
No abstract available. ...
Prospects and limitations of citizen science in invasive species management: A case study with Burmese pythons in Everglades National Park
Bryan Falk, Raymond W. Snow, Robert Reed
2016, Southeastern Naturalist (15) 89-102
Citizen-science programs have the potential to contribute to the management of invasive species, including Python molurus bivittatus (Burmese Python) in Florida. We characterized citizen-science–generated Burmese Python information from Everglades National Park (ENP) to explore how citizen science may be useful in this effort. As an initial step, we compiled and...
