Fluorine-rich mafic lower crust in the southern Rocky Mountains: The role of pre-enrichment in generating fluorine-rich silicic magmas and porphyry Mo deposits
Joshua Mark Rosera, Ryan Edward Frazer, Ryan D. Mills, Kristin Jacob, Sean P. Gaynor, Drew S. Coleman, G. Lang Farmer
2023, American Mineralogist (108) 1573-1596
Fluorine-rich granites and rhyolites occur throughout the southern Rocky Mountains, but the origin of F-enrichment has remained unclear. We test if F-enrichment could be inherited from ancient mafic lower crust by: (1) measuring amphibole compositions, including F and Cl contents, of lower crustal mafic granulite xenoliths from northern Colorado to...
USGS installs 2022 high-water markers to provide flood information
Daniel W. Armstrong
2023, Newsletter
Historic flooding on June 12-13, 2022 occurred in the Gallatin, Absaroka and Beartooth Mountains of Montana and Wyoming, near Yellowstone National Park. The flooding was initiated by rainstorms that produced between 1-5 inches of rain on top of an above-average snowpack, causing the snow to melt faster and rush...
Estimating peak-flow quantiles for selected annual exceedance probabilities in Illinois
Thomas M. Over, Mackenzie K. Marti, Padraic S. O’Shea, Jennifer B. Sharpe
2023, Research Report FHWA-ICT-23-014
This report presents the methods, results, and applications of an updated flood-frequency study for the State of Illinois. This study, which uses data through September 2017, updates two previous studies that used data through 1999 and 2009, respectively. Flood-frequency estimates are used for a variety of land-use planning and infrastructure...
Virtual snow stakes: a new method for snow depth measurement at remote camera stations
Kaitlyn M. Strickfaden, Marnie L. Behan, Adrienne M. Marshall, Leona K. Svancara, David Edward Ausband, Timothy E. Link
2023, Wildlife Society Bulletin (47)
Remote cameras are used to study demographics, ecological processes, and behavior of wildlife populations. Cameras have also been used to measure snow depth with physical snow stakes. However, concerns that physical instruments at camera sites may influence animal behavior limit installation of instruments to facilitate collecting such data. Given that...
Surrogate regression models estimating nitrate concentrations at six springs in Gooding County, south-central Idaho, 2018–22
Kenneth D. Skinner
2023, Scientific Investigations Report 2023-5095
Populations of endangered Banbury Springs limpet (Idaholanx fresti) and threatened Bliss Rapids snail (Taylorconcha serpenticola) are declining in springs north of the Snake River along the southern Gooding County boundary, in south-central Idaho. One hypothesis for the decline is that increased macrophyte growth, associated with elevated nitrate concentrations in the...
Eastern Indigo snake (Drymarchon couperi) shelter site use In peninsular Florida, USA, and implicatIons for habItat conservatIon
M. Rebecca Bolt, Javan Mathias Bauder, Michael L. Legare, Christopher L. Jenkins, Betsie B. Rothermel, David R. Breininger
2023, Herpetological Conservation and Biology (18) 362-373
Shelters are critical for many species as protection from predators and extreme temperatures. Successful conservation of reptiles requires understanding both shelter site requirements and availability. The Eastern Indigo Snake (EIS; Drymarchon couperi) is endemic to the southeastern U.S. and is federally listed. Recovery has focused on maximizing unfragmented landscapes, with...
Restoration of Gavia immer (common loon) in Minnesota—2022 annual report
William S. Beatty, Luke J. Fara, Steven C. Houdek, Robert Rabasco, Spencer Rettler, Elizabeth Rasmussen, Kevin P. Kenow, Brian R. Gray, Steven Yang, Kelly Amoth
2023, Open-File Report 2023-1062
The explosion of the Deepwater Horizon mobile drilling platform on April 20, 2010, caused a massive oil spill and injury to natural resources in the Gulf of Mexico. Gavia immer (common loon) were negatively affected from the spill. The Open Ocean Trustee Implementation Group funded the project “Restoration of Common...
Reanalysis ignores pertinent data, includes inappropriate observations, and disregards realities of applied ecology: Response to Huso and Dalthorp (2023)
Christopher J.W. McClure, Brian W. Rolek, Leah Dunn, Jennifer D. McCabe, Luke Martinson, Todd E. Katzner
2023, Journal of Applied Ecology (60) 2289-2294
1) We recently demonstrated efficacy of automated curtailment of wind turbines in reducing fatalities of eagles at a study site in Wyoming, USA. Huso and Dalthorp criticize our work, asserting that there are several ‘major errors’ that render our previous work as providing ‘no meaningful support’ for automated...
Influence of human development and predators on patterns of Virginia opossum occupancy, abundance, and activity
John T. Veon, Ellery V. Lassiter, Emily Johansson, Michael Shaw, Leah McTigue, A. Massey, Rylee Gibson, Brett Alexander DeGregorio
2023, Journal of Zoology (321) 278-288
As human development continues to expand, wildlife must relocate or adapt to survive. Many mammalian mesopredators, such as the Virginia opossum (Didelphis virginiana), have adapted to living alongside human development. Furthermore, top-down predation pressure may be altered in nuanced ways within the human environment....
Improvements and evaluation of the agro-hydrologic VegET model for large-area water budget analysis and drought monitoring
Gabriel B. Senay, Stefanie Kagone, Gabriel Edwin Lee Parrish, Kul Bikram Khand, Olena Boiko, Naga Manohar Velpuri
2023, Hydrology (10)
We enhanced the agro-hydrologic VegET model to include snow accumulation and melt processes and the separation of runoff into surface runoff and deep drainage. Driven by global weather datasets and parameterized by land surface phenology (LSP), the enhanced VegET model was implemented in the cloud to simulate daily soil moisture...
Methane pore accessibility, densification, and accommodation by organic matter in the Niobrara Formation at wet-gas thermal maturity conditions
Aaron M. Jubb, Leslie F. Ruppert, Tristan G. A. Youngs, Tom Headen, Justin E. Birdwell, Michael Cheshire, Martha Stokes
2023, International Journal of Coal Geology (277)
Petroleum within unconventional source-rock reservoirs is hosted in organic matter and mineral pore space as well as in voids and microfractures. Recent work has shown that for source-rock reservoirs in the dry gas window, significant portions of methane (CH4), the main component of petroleum at elevated maturities, can be...
Assessing contaminants of emerging concern in the Great Lakes Ecosystem: A decade of method development and practical application
Gerald T. Ankley, Steven R. Corsi, Christine M. Custer, Drew R. Ekman, Stephanie L. Hummel, Kimani L. Kimbrough, Heiko L. Schoenfuss, Daniel L. Villeneuve
2023, Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (42) 2506-2518
Assessing the ecological risk of contaminants in the field typically involves consideration of a complex mixture of compounds which may or may not be detected via instrumental analyses. Further, there are insufficient data to predict the potential biological effects of many detected compounds, leading...
Earth’s mantle composition revealed by mantle plumes
Dominique Weis, Karen Harpp, Lauren N Harrison, Maud Boyet, Catherine Chauvel, Cinzia Farnetani, Val Finlayson, Kanai Lee, Rita Parai, Anat Shahar, Nicole Williamson
2023, Nature Reviews in Earth and Environment (4) 604-625
Mantle plumes originate at depths near the core−mantle boundary (~2,800 km). As such, they provide invaluable information about the composition of the deep mantle and insight into convection, crustal formation, and crustal recycling, as well as global heat and volatile budgets. In this Review, we discuss the effectiveness and challenges...
Carbon sequestration and subsidence reversal in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and Suisun Bay: Management opportunities for climate mitigation and adaptation
Lisamarie Windham-Myers, Patty Oikawa, Steve Deverel, Dylan Chapple, Judith Z. Drexler, Dylan Stern
2023, San Francisco Estuary and Watershed Science (20)
The aquatic landscapes of the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta (hereafter, the Delta) and Suisun Bay represent both a significant past and future soil carbon stock. Historical alterations of hydrologic flows have led to depletion of soil carbon stocks via emissions of carbon dioxide...
CGS: Coupled growth and survival model with cohort fairness
Erhu He, Yue Wan, Benjamin Letcher, Jennifer H. Fair, Yiquin Xie, Xiaowei Jia
2023, Conference Paper, Proceedings of the Thirty-Second International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence
Fish modeling in complex environments is critical for understanding drivers of population dynamics in aquatic systems. This paper proposes a Bayesian network method for modeling fish survival and growth over multiple connected rivers. Traditional fish survival models capture the effect of multiple environmental drivers (e.g., stream temperature, stream flow)...
Confirmation of significant sea turtle nesting activity on a remote island chain in the Gulf of Mexico
Margaret Lamont, Dianne Ingram, Todd Baker, Matt Weigel, Brian M. Shamblin
2023, Ecology and Evolution (13)
Globally, six of the seven sea turtle species are threatened or endangered and as such, monitoring reproductive activity for these species is necessary for effective population recovery. Remote beaches provide a challenge to conducting these surveys, which often results in data gaps that can hamper management planning. Throughout the summer...
Learnings from rapid response efforts to remotely detect landslides triggered by the August 2021 Nippes earthquake and Tropical Storm Grace in Haiti
Pukar Amatya, Corey Scheip, Aline Deprez, Jean-Philippe Malet, Stephen L. Slaughter, Alexander L. Handwerger, Robert Emberson, Dalia Kirschbaum, Julien Jean-Baptiste, Mong-Han Huang, Marin Clark, Dimitrios Zekkos, Jhih-Rou Huang, Fabrizio Pacini, Enguerran Boissier
2023, Natural Hazards (118) 2337-2375
On August 14, 2021, a Mw 7.2 earthquake struck the Tiburon Peninsula of western Haiti triggering thousands of landslides. Three days after the earthquake on August 17, 2021, Tropical Storm Grace crossed shallow waters offshore of southern Haiti triggering more landslides worsening the situation. In the aftermath of these events, several organizations...
Evolution of Miocene normal and dextral faulting in the lower Colorado River region near Blythe, California, USA
Skyler Pendleton Mavor, Scott E.K. Bennett, Ryan S. Crow, John S. Singleton, Victoria Langenheim, Daniel F. Stockli, Mark E. Stelten, Timothy Brickey, Paul J. Umhoefer, L. Sue Beard
2023, Geosphere (19) 1180-1209
The evolution of strain in nascent continental plate boundaries commonly involves distributed deformation and transitions between different styles of deformation as the plate boundary matures. Distributed NW-striking faults, many with km-scale right-lateral separation, are prevalent near Blythe, California, and have been variably interpreted...
A residual oil zone (ROZ) assessment methodology with application to the central basin platform (Permian Basin, USA) for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) and long-term geologic CO2 storage
C. Ozgen Karacan, Sean T. Brennan, Marc L. Buursink, Philip A. Freeman, Celeste D. Lohr, Matthew D. Merrill, Ricardo A. Olea, Peter D. Warwick
2023, Geoenergy Science and Engineering (230)
Residual oil zones (ROZ) form due to various geologic conditions and are located below the oil/water contact (OWC) of main pay zones (MPZ). Since ROZs usually contain immobile oil, they have not typically been considered commercially attractive for development by conventional primary recovery methods used in the initial phases...
Identifying drivers of population dynamics for a stream breeding amphibian using time series of egg mass counts
Jonathan P. Rose, Sarah J. Kupferberg, Ryan A. Peek, Don Ashton, James B. Bettaso, Steven Bobzien, Ryan M. Bourque, Koen G.H. Breedveld, Alessandro Catenazzi, Joseph E. Drennan, Earl Gonsolin, Marcia Grefsrud, Andrea E. Herman, Matthew R. House, Matt R. Kluber, Amy J. Lind, Karla R. Marlow, Alan Striegle, Michael van Hattem, Clara A. Wheeler, Jeffery T. Wilcox, Kevin D. Wiseman, Brian J. Halstead
2023, Ecosphere (14)
The decline in amphibian populations is one of the starkest examples of the biodiversity crisis. For stream breeding amphibians, alterations to natural flow regimes by dams, water diversions, and climate change have been implicated in declines and extirpations. Identifying drivers of amphibian declines requires long time series of abundance data...
Complex styles of phreatomagmatic explosions at Kīlauea Volcano, Hawaii, controlled by magma structure
Jo Schmith, Donald A. Swanson
2023, Frontiers in Earth Science - Volcanology (11)
Explosive eruptions at basaltic volcanoes remain poorly understood. Kīlauea Volcano is a type locality for basaltic eruptions and is well-known for effusive activity. However, more than 7 m of phreatomagmatic Keanakākoʻi Tephra unit D deposits from explosive eruptions crown the southern rim of the summit caldera and provide...
Evaluating a prospective fault-based stress-transfer forecast for the M7.9 Wenchuan earthquake region 15 years later
Thomas E. Parsons, Chen Ji, Eric Kirby
2023, The Seismic Record (3) 218-227
Four days after the 12 May 2008 M 7.9 Wenchuan earthquake struck the Sichuan region of China, we submitted a prospective earthquake forecast based on transfer of stress from the mainshock onto significant faults crossing through populated areas. We identified where the largest aftershocks were...
Parameter estimation at the conterminous United States scale and streamflow routing enhancements for the National Hydrologic Model infrastructure application of the Precipitation-Runoff Modeling System (NHM-PRMS)
Lauren E. Hay, Jacob H. LaFontaine, Ashley E. Van Beusekom, Parker A. Norton, William H. Farmer, R. Steve Regan, Steven L. Markstrom, Jesse E. Dickinson
2023, Techniques and Methods 6-B10
This report documents a three-part continental-scale calibration procedure and a new streamflow routing algorithm using the U.S. Geological Survey National Hydrologic Model (NHM) infrastructure along with an application of the Precipitation-Runoff Modeling System (PRMS). The traditional approach to hydrologic model calibration and evaluation, which relies on comparing observed and simulated...
Calibration and validation for the Surface Biology and Geology (SBG) mission concept: Recommendations for a multi-sensor system for imaging spectroscopy and thermal imagery
Kevin R. Turpie, Kimberly Ann Casey, Christopher J. Crawford, Liane S Guild, Hugh H. Kieffer, Guoqing Lin, Raymond F. Kokaly, Alok Shrestha, Cody Anderson, Shankar N. Ramaseri Chandra, Robert O. Green, Simon Hook, Constantine Lukashin, Kurt Thome
2023, JGR Biogeosciences (128)
The primary objective of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Surface Biology and Geology (SBG) mission is to measure biological, physical, chemical, and mineralogical features of the Earth's surface, realizing a key conceptual component of the envisioned NASA Earth System Observatory (ESO). SBG is planned to launch as a...
Fluid migration pathways to groundwater in mature oil fields: Exploring the roles of water injection/production and oil-well integrity in California, USA
Peter B. McMahon, Matthew K. Landon, Michael J. Stephens, Kimberly A. Taylor, Janice M. Gillespie, Tracy Davis, David H. Shimabukuro
2023, Science of the Total Environment (900)
Mature oil fields potentially contain multiple fluid migration pathways toward protected groundwater (total dissolved solids, TDS, in nonexempted aquifer <10,000 mg/L) because of their extensive development histories. Time-series data for water use, fluid pressures, oil-well construction, and geochemistry from the South Belridge and Lost Hills mature oil...
