Indications of a positive feedback between coastal development and beach nourishment
Scott Armstrong, Eli D. Lazarus, Patrick W. Limber, Evan B. Goldstein, Curtis Thorpe, Rhoda Ballinger
2016, Earth's Future (4) 626-635
Beach nourishment, a method for mitigating coastal storm damage or chronic erosion by deliberately replacing sand on an eroded beach, has been the leading form of coastal protection in the U.S. for four decades. However, investment in hazard protection can have the unintended consequence of encouraging development in places especially...
The relative contributions of disease and insects in the decline of a long-lived tree: a stochastic demographic model of whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis)
Erik S Jules, Jenell I. Jackson, Phillip J. van Mantgem, Jennifer S. Beck, Michael P. Murray, E. April Sahara
2016, Forest Ecology and Management (381) 144-156
Pathogens and insect pests have become increasingly important drivers of tree mortality in forested ecosystems. Unfortunately, understanding the relative contributions of multiple mortality agents to the population decline of trees is difficult, because it requires frequent measures of tree survival, growth, and recruitment, as well as the incidence of mortality...
Managing climate change refugia for climate adaptation
Toni L. Morelli, Stephen T. Jackson
2016, PLoS ONE (11)
Refugia have long been studied from paleontological and biogeographical perspectives to understand how populations persisted during past periods of unfavorable climate. Recently, researchers have applied the idea to contemporary landscapes to identify climate change refugia, here defined as areas relatively buffered from contemporary climate change over time that enable persistence...
Climate change and the Delta
Michael D. Dettinger, Jamie Anderson, Michael L. Anderson, Larry R. Brown, Daniel Cayan, Edwin P. Maurer
2016, San Francisco Estuary and Watershed Science (14) 1-26
Anthropogenic climate change amounts to a rapidly approaching, “new” stressor in the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta system. In response to California’s extreme natural hydroclimatic variability, complex water-management systems have been developed, even as the Delta’s natural ecosystems have been largely devastated. Climate change is projected to challenge these management and ecological...
A new strategy for earthquake focal mechanisms using waveform-correlation-derived relative polarities and cluster analysis: Application to the 2014 Long Valley Caldera earthquake swarm
David R. Shelly, Jeanne L. Hardebeck, William L. Ellsworth, David P. Hill
2016, Journal of Geophysical Research B: Solid Earth (121) 8622-8641
In microseismicity analyses, reliable focal mechanisms can typically be obtained for only a small subset of located events. We address this limitation here, presenting a framework for determining robust focal mechanisms for entire populations of very small events. To achieve this, we resolve relative P and S wave polarities between...
Observed and simulated hydrologic response for a first-order catchment during extreme rainfall 3 years after wildfire disturbance
Brian A. Ebel, Francis K. Rengers, Gregory E. Tucker
2016, Water Resources Research (52) 9367-9389
Hydrologic response to extreme rainfall in disturbed landscapes is poorly understood because of the paucity of measurements. A unique opportunity presented itself when extreme rainfall in September 2013 fell on a headwater catchment (i.e., <1 ha) in Colorado, USA that had previously been burned by a wildfire in 2010. We...
The Bonneville Flood—A veritable débâcle
Jim E. O'Connor
2016, Book chapter, Developments in earth surface processes, vol. 20
The Bonneville Flood was one of the largest floods on Earth. First discovered by G.K. Gilbert in the 1870s during his inspection of the outlet at Red Rock Pass, it was rediscovered in the 1950s by Harold Malde and coworkers, leading to mapping and assessment of spectacular flood features along...
Baseline reference range for trace metal concentrations in whole blood of wild and managed West Indian Manatees (Trichechus manatus) in Florida and Belize
Noel Y. Takeuchi, Michael T. Walsh, Robert K. Bonde, James A. Powell, Dean A. Bass, Joseph C. Gaspard, David S. Barber
2016, Aquatic Mammals (42) 440-453
The West Indian manatee (Trichechus manatus) is exposed to a number of anthropogenic influences, including metals, as they inhabit shallow waters with close proximity to shore. While maintaining homeostasis of many metals is crucial for health, there is currently no baseline reference range that can be used to make clinical...
Multi-decadal increases in dissolved organic carbon and alkalinity flux from the Mackenzie drainage basin to the Arctic Ocean
Suzanne E. Tank, Robert G. Striegl, James W. McClelland, Steven V. Kokelj
2016, Environmental Research Letters (11) 1-10
Riverine exports of organic and inorganic carbon (OC, IC) to oceans are intricately linked to processes occurring on land. Across high latitudes, thawing permafrost, alteration of hydrologic flow paths, and changes in vegetation may all affect this flux, with subsequent implications for regional and global carbon (C) budgets. Using a...
Hydrology of prairie wetlands: Understanding the integrated surface-water and groundwater processes
Masaki Hayashi, Garth van der Kamp, Donald O. Rosenberry
2016, Wetlands (36) 237-254
Wetland managers and policy makers need to make decisions based on a sound scientific understanding of hydrological and ecological functions of wetlands. This article presents an overview of the hydrology of prairie wetlands intended for managers, policy makers, and researchers new to this field (e.g., graduate students), and a quantitative...
Modeling the effects of land cover and use on landscape capability for urban ungulate populations
H. Brian Underwood, Chellby R. Kilheffer
Robert A. Francis, James D. A. Millington, Michael A. Chadwick, editor(s)
2016, Book chapter
Expanding ungulate populations are causing concerns for wildlife professionals and residents in many urban areas worldwide. Nowhere is the phenomenon more apparent than in the eastern US, where urban white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) populations are increasing. Most habitat suitability models for deer have been developed in rural areas...
Modeling and simulation of storm surge on Staten Island to understand inundation mitigation strategies
Michael E. Kress, Alan I. Benimoff, William J. Fritz, Cindy A. Thatcher, Brian O. Blanton, Eugene Dzedzits
2016, Journal of Coastal Research (Special Issue 76) 149-161
Hurricane Sandy made landfall on October 29, 2012, near Brigantine, New Jersey, and had a transformative impact on Staten Island and the New York Metropolitan area. Of the 43 New York City fatalities, 23 occurred on Staten Island. The borough, with a population of approximately 500,000, experienced some of the...
Habitat selection by Forster's Terns (Sterna forsteri) at multiple spatial scales in an urbanized estuary: The importance of salt ponds
Jill Bluso-Demers, Joshua T. Ackerman, John Y. Takekawa, Sarah H. Peterson
2016, Waterbirds (39) 375-387
The highly urbanized San Francisco Bay Estuary, California, USA, is currently undergoing large-scale habitat restoration, and several thousand hectares of former salt evaporation ponds are being converted to tidal marsh. To identify potential effects of this habitat restoration on breeding waterbirds, habitat selection of radiotagged Forster's Terns (Sterna forsteri) was...
Nitrapyrin in streams: The first study documenting off-field transport of a nitrogen stabilizer compound
Emily Woodward, Michelle Hladik, Dana W. Kolpin
2016, Environmental Science & Technology Letters (3) 387-392
Nitrapyrin is a bactericide that is co-applied with fertilizer to prevent nitrification and enhance corn yields. While there have been studies of the environmental fate of nitrapyrin, there is no documentation of its off-field transport to streams. In 2016, 59 water samples from 11 streams across Iowa were analyzed for...
Marine ecoregion and Deepwater Horizon oil spill affect recruitment and population structure of a salt marsh snail
Steven C. Pennings, Scott Zengel, Jacob Oehrig, Merryl Alber, T. Dale Bishop, Donald R. Deis, Donna Devlin, A. Randall Hughes, John J. Hutchens Jr., Whitney M. Kiehn, Caroline R. McFarlin, Clay L. Montague, Sean P. Powers, C. Edward Proffitt, Nicolle Rutherford, Camille L. Stagg, Keith Walters
2016, Ecosphere (7)
Marine species with planktonic larvae often have high spatial and temporal variation in recruitment that leads to subsequent variation in the ecology of benthic adults. Using a combination of published and unpublished data, we compared the population structure of the salt marsh snail, Littoraria irrorata, between the South Atlantic Bight...
Perspectives on bay-delta science and policy
Michael Healey, Michael D. Dettinger, Richard Norgaard
2016, San Francisco Estuary and Watershed Science (14) 1-25
The State of Bay–Delta Science 2008 highlighted seven emerging perspectives on science and management of the Delta. These perspectives had important effects on policy and legislation concerning management of the Delta ecosystem and water exports. From the collection of papers that make up the State of Bay–Delta Science 2016, we...
Oxygen, hydrogen, sulfur, and carbon isotopes in the Pea Ridge magnetite-apatite deposit, southeast Missouri, and sulfur isotope comparisons to other iron deposits in the region
Craig A. Johnson, Warren C. Day, Robert O. Rye
2016, Economic Geology (111) 2017-2032
Oxygen, hydrogen, sulfur, and carbon isotopes have been analyzed in the Pea Ridge magnetite-apatite deposit, the largest historic producer among the known iron deposits in the southeast Missouri portion of the 1.5 to 1.3 Ga eastern granite-rhyolite province. The data were collected to investigate the sources of ore fluids,...
Updated atomic weights: Time to review our table
Tyler B. Coplen, Fabienne Meyers, Norman E. Holden
2016, ChemistryViews Magazine (05 April 2016)
Despite common belief, atomic weights are not necessarily constants of nature. Scientists’ ability to measure these values is regularly improving, so one would expect that the accuracy of these values should be improving with time. It is the task of the IUPAC (International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry) Commission...
Using large-scale flow experiments to rehabilitate Colorado River ecosystem function in Grand Canyon: Basis for an adaptive climate-resilient strategy
Theodore S. Melis, William E. Pine III, Josh Korman, Michael D. Yard, Shaleen Jain, Roger S. Pulwarty
Kathleen Miller, Alan F. Hamlet, Douglas S. Kenney, Kelly T. Redmond, editor(s)
2016, Book chapter, Water policy and planning in a variable and changing climate
Adaptive management of Glen Canyon Dam is improving downstream resources of the Colorado River in Glen Canyon National Recreation Area and Grand Canyon National Park. The Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Program (AMP), a federal advisory committee of 25 members with diverse special interests tasked to advise the U.S. Department...
Enabling science support for better decision-making when responding to chemical spills
Jennifer L. Weidhass, Andrea M. Dietrich, Nathan J. DeYonker, R. Ryan Dupont, William T. Foreman, Daniel Gallagher, Jennifer E. G. Gallagher, Andrew J. Whelton, William Alexander
2016, Journal of Environmental Quality (45) 1490-1500
Chemical spills and accidents contaminate the environment and disrupt societies and economies around the globe. In the United States there were approximately 172,000 chemical spills that affected US waterbodies from 2004 to 2014. More than 8000 of these spills involved non–petroleum-related chemicals. Traditional emergency responses or incident command structures (ICSs)...
Response of fish assemblages to decreasing acid deposition in Adirondack Mountain lakes
Barry P. Baldigo, Karen Roy, Charles T. Driscoll
2016, NYSERDA Report 17-01
The CAA and other federal regulations have clearly reduced emissions of NOx and SOx, acidic deposition, and the acidity and toxicity of waters in the ALTM lakes, but these changes have not triggered widespread recovery of brook trout populations or fish communities. The lack of detectable biological recovery appears to...
Shallow and deep controls on lava lake surface motion at Kīlauea Volcano
Matthew R. Patrick, Tim R. Orr, Don Swanson, Einat Lev
2016, Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research (328) 247-261
Lava lakes provide a rare window into magmatic behavior, and lake surface motion has been used to infer deeper properties of the magmatic system. At Halema'uma'u Crater, at the summit of Kīlauea Volcano, multidisciplinary observations for the past several years indicate that lava lake surface motion can be broadly divided...
Survival and metamorphosis of larval sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus) residing in Lakes Michigan and Huron near river mouths
Nicholas S. Johnson, Travis O. Brenden, William D. Swink, Mathew A. Lipps
2016, Journal of Great Lakes Research (42) 1461-1469
Although population demographics of larval lampreys in streams have been studied extensively, demographics in lake environments have not. Here, we estimated survival and rates of metamorphosis for larval sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus) populations residing in the Great Lakes near river mouths (hereafter termed lentic areas). Tagged larvae were stocked and...
Complete genome sequence of a novel aquareovirus that infects the endangered fountain darter, Etheostoma fonticola
Luke R. Iwanowicz, Deborah D. Iwanowicz, Cynthia R. Adams, Teresa D. Lewis, Thomas M. Brandt, Robert S. Cornman, Lakyn R. Sanders
2016, Genome Announcements (4)
Here, we report the complete genome of a novel aquareovirus isolated from clinically normal fountain darters, Etheostoma fonticola, inhabiting the San Marcos River, Texas, USA. The complete genome consists of 23,958 bp consisting of 11 segments that range from 783 bp (S11) to 3,866 bp (S1)....
Eastern Whip-poor-wills (Antrostomus vociferus) are positively associated with low elevation forest In the central Appalachians
Christina L. Slover, Todd E. Katzner
2016, Wilson Journal of Ornithology (128) 846-856
Populations of the Eastern Whip-poor-will (Antrostomus vociferus) are thought to be declining because of a range of potential factors including habitat loss, pesticide use, and predation. However, this species is nocturnal and, as a consequence, it is poorly studied, and its population status is not well assessed by traditional diurnal...
