Management foundations for navigating ecological transformation by resisting, accepting, or directing social-ecological change
Dawn Magness, Linh Hoang, Travis Belote, Jean Brennan, Wylie Carr, F. Stuart Chapin III, Katherine R. Clifford, Wendy Morrison, John Morton, Helen Sofaer
2022, BioScience (72) 30-44
Despite striking global change, management to ensure healthy landscapes and sustained natural resources has tended to set objectives on the basis of the historical range of variability in stationary ecosystems. Many social–ecological systems are moving into novel conditions that can result in ecological transformation. We present four foundations to enable...
Abundance and distribution of sea otters (Enhydra lutris) in the southcentral Alaska stock, 2014, 2017, and 2019
George G. Esslinger, Brian H. Robinson, Daniel H. Monson, Rebecca L. Taylor, Daniel Esler, Ben P. Weitzman, Joel Garlich-Miller
2022, Open-File Report 2021-1122
The Southcentral Alaska (SCAK) sea otter (Enhydra lutris) stock is the northernmost stock of sea otters, a keystone predator known for structuring nearshore marine ecosystems. We conducted aerial surveys within the range of the SCAK sea otter stock to provide recent estimates of sea otter abundance and distribution. We defined...
Oxygen isotopes of land snail shells in high latitude regions
Catherine Nield, Yurena Yanes, Jeffrey S. Pigati, Jason A. Rech, Ted von Proschwitz, Jeffrey C. Nekola
P. Rioual, editor(s)
2022, Quaternary Science Reviews (279) 1-15
The present study investigates the environmental significance of the oxygen isotopic composition of several modern land snail species collected along two north-to-south transects in Alaska and Scandinavia at latitudes between 60 and 70 °N. We tested the hypothesis that land snail...
Alaska Volcano Observatory archive of seismic drum records of eruptions of Augustine Volcano (1986), Redoubt Volcano (1989–90), Mount Spurr (1992), and Pavlof Volcano (1996), and the 1996 earthquake swarm at Akutan Peak
James P. Dixon, John A. Power
2022, Data Report 1146
The advent of continuous digital recording of seismograph stations in Alaska did not occur until the fall of 2002. Continuous records of seismic waveforms prior to 2002 were recorded only in analog form. The Alaska Volcano Observatory (AVO) has a substantial archive of continuous analog records made on helicorders in...
The accuracy and consistency of 3D Elevation Program data: A systematic analysis
Jason M. Stoker, Barry Miller
2022, Remote Sensing (14)
The 3D Elevation Program (3DEP) has created partnership opportunities to increase the collection of high-resolution elevation data across the United States, eventually leading to complete coverage of high-resolution, three-dimensional (3D) information from light detection and ranging (lidar) data across the entire country (interferometric synthetic aperture radar in Alaska). While 3DEP...
Diet analysis using generalized linear models derived from foraging processes using R package mvtweedie
James T. Thorson, Mayumi L. Arimitsu, Taal Levi, Gretchen Roffler
2022, Ecology (103)
Diet analysis integrates a wide variety of visual, chemical, and biological identification of prey. Samples are often treated as compositional data, where each prey is analyzed as a continuous percentage of the total. However, analyzing compositional data results in analytical challenges, for example, highly parameterized models or prior transformation of...
Integrating distance sampling survey data with population indices to separate trends in abundance and temporary immigration
Joshua H. Schmidt, Tammy L. Wilson, William L. Thompson, Buck A. Mangipane
2022, Journal of Wildlife Management (86)
Managers rely on accurate estimators of wildlife abundance and trends for management decisions. Despite the focus of contemporary wildlife science on developing methods to improve inference from wildlife surveys, legacy datasets often rely on index counts that lack information about the detection process. Data integration can be a useful tool...
Alaska North Slope terrestrial gas hydrate systems: Insights from scientific drilling
Timothy S. Collett, Ray M. Boswell, Margarita V. Zyrianova
Jürgen Mienert, Christian Berndt, Anne M. Tréhu, Angelo Camerlenghi, Char-Shine Liu, editor(s)
2022, Book chapter, World atlas of submarine gas hydrates in continental margins
A wealth of information has been accumulated regarding the occurrence of gas hydrates in nature, leading to significant advancements in our understanding of the geologic controls on their occurrence in both the terrestrial and marine settings of the Arctic. Gas hydrate accumulations discovered in the Alaska North Slope...
Use case development for earth monitoring, analysis, and prediction (EarthMAP)—A road map for future integrated predictive science at the U.S. Geological Survey
Tamara Wilson, Mark T. Wiltermuth, Karen E. Jenni, Robert Horton, Randall J. Hunt, Dee M. Williams, Vivian P. Nolan, Nicholas G. Aumen, David S. Brown, Kyle W. Blasch, Peter S. Murdoch
2022, Open-File Report 2021-1108
Executive SummaryThe U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) 21st-century science strategy 2020–30 promotes a bureau-wide strategy to develop and deliver an integrated, predictive science capability that works at the scales and timelines needed to inform societally relevant resource management and protection and public safety and environmental health decisions (U.S. Geological Survey, 2021)....
Drivers, dynamics and impacts of changing Arctic coasts
Anna M. Irrgang, Mette Bendixen, Louise M. Farquharson, Alisa V. Baranskaya, Li H. Erikson, Ann E. Gibbs, Stanislav A. Ogorodov, Pier Paul Overduin, Hugues Lantuit, Mikhail N. Grigoriev, Benjamin M. Jones
2022, Nature Reviews Earth & Environment (3) 39-54
Arctic coasts are vulnerable to the effects of climate change, including rising sea levels and the loss of permafrost, sea ice and glaciers. Assessing the influence of anthropogenic warming on Arctic coastal dynamics, however, is challenged by the limited availability of observational, oceanographic and environmental data. Yet, with the majority...
Multi-year, spatially extensive, watershed-scale synoptic stream chemistry and water quality conditions for six permafrost-underlain Arctic watersheds
Arial Shogren, Jay P. Zarnetske, Benjamin Abbott, Samuel P. Bratsman, Brian C. Brown, Michael P. Carey, Randy Fulweiber, Heather Greaves, Emma Haines, Frances Iannucci, Joshua C. Koch, Alex Medvedeff, Jonathan A. O'Donnell, Leika Patch, Brett Poulin, Tanner J. Williamson, William B. Bowden
2022, Earth System Science Data (14) 95-116
Repeated sampling of spatially distributed river chemistry can be used to assess the location, scale, and persistence of carbon and nutrient contributions to watershed exports. Here, we provide a comprehensive set of water chemistry measurements and ecohydrological metrics describing the biogeochemical conditions of permafrost-affected Arctic watersheds. These data were collected...
Distinct gut microbiomes in two polar bear subpopulations inhabiting different sea ice ecoregions
Megan Franz, Lyle White, Todd C. Atwood, Kristin L. Laidre, Denis Roy, Sophie Watson, Esteban Gongora, Melissa McKinney
2022, Scientific Reports (12)
Gut microbiomes were analyzed by 16S rRNA gene metabarcoding for polar bears (Ursus maritimus) from the southern Beaufort Sea (SB), where sea ice loss has led to increased use of land-based food resources by bears, and from East Greenland (EG), where persistent sea ice has allowed hunting of ice-associated prey...
Highly pathogenic avian influenza is an emerging disease threat to wild birds in North America
Andrew M. Ramey, Nichola J. Hill, Thomas J. DeLiberto, Samantha E. J. Gibbs, M. Camille Hopkins, Andrew S. Lang, Rebecca L. Poulson, Diann Prosser, Jonathan M. Sleeman, David E. Stallknecht, Xiu-Feng Wan
2022, Journal of Wildlife Management (86)
Prior to the emergence of the A/goose/Guangdong/1/1996 (Gs/GD) H5N1 influenza A virus, the long-held and well-supported paradigm was that highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) outbreaks were restricted to poultry, the result of cross-species transmission of precursor viruses from wild aquatic birds that subsequently gained pathogenicity in...
Species-specific responses to landscape features shaped genomic structure within Alaska galliformes
Sarah A. Sonsthagen, Robert E. Wilson, Sandra L. Talbot
2022, Journal of Biogeography (49) 261-273
AimConnectivity is vital to the resiliency of populations to environmental change and stochastic events, especially for cold-adapted species as Arctic and alpine tundra habitats retract as the climate warms. We examined the influence of past and current landscapes on genomic connectivity in cold-adapted galliformes as a critical...
Gas hydrates on Alaskan marine margins
Carolyn D. Ruppel, Patrick E. Hart
2022, Book chapter, World atlas of submarine gas hydrates in continental margins
Gas hydrate distributions on the marine margins of the U.S. state of Alaska are more poorly known than those on other U.S. margins, where bottom simulating reflections have been systematically mapped on marine seismic data to support modern, quantitative assessments of gas-in-place in gas hydrates. The extent of bottom simulating...
Arctic geese in North America
John M. Pearce, Josh Dooley, Vijay P. Patil, Todd L. Sformo, Bryan Daniels, Andy Greene, Jim Leafloor
2022, Technical Report OAR ARC 22-12
Multiple species of geese spend part of their annual cycle in the circumpolar Arctic and serve as a source of nutrition and cultural affirmation for many peoples. Arctic geese function as important indicators of environmental changes and some species also have the potential to alter ecosystem processes when they become...
Exposure of cultural resources to 21st-century climate change: Towards a risk management plan
Jorie Clark, Jeremy Littell, Jay R. Alder, Nathan Teats
2022, Climate Risk Management (35)
Anthropogenic climate change during the 21st century presents a significant challenge to the protection of cultural resources (CRs) on federal lands that encompass ∼ 28% of the U.S. In particular, CRs on this...
Genetic variation in sea otters (Enhydra lutris) from the North Pacific with relevance to the threatened Southwest Alaska Distinct Population Segment
Blair G. Flannery, Ora L. Russ, Michelle St. Martin, William S. Beatty, Kristen Worman, Joel Garlich-Miller, Verena A. Gill, Patrick R. Lemons, Daniel Monson, Kimberly A. Kloecker, Daniel Esler, John Wenburg
2022, Marine Mammal Science (38) 858-880
For the sea otter (Enhydra lutris), genetic population structure is an area of research that has not received significant attention, especially in Southwest Alaska where that distinct population segment has been listed as threatened since 2005 pursuant to the U.S. Endangered Species Act. In this study,...
Ergodic site response model for subduction zone regions
Grace Alexandra Parker, Jonathan P. Stewart
2022, Earthquake Spectra (38) 841-864
We present an ergodic site response model with regional adjustments for use with subduction zone ground-motion models. The model predicts site amplification of peak ground acceleration, peak ground velocity, and 5% damped pseudo-spectral accelerations of the orientation-independent horizonal component for oscillator periods from 0.01 to 10 s. The...
Mismatch-induced growth reductions in a clade of Arctic-breeding shorebirds are rarely mitigated by increasing temperatures
Thomas Lameris, Pavel S. Tomkovich, James A. Johnson, R.I. Guy Morrison, Lucas Decicco, Maksim N. Dementyev, Ingrid Tulp, Robert E. Gill Jr., Simeon Lisovski, Job ten Horn, Theunis Piersma, Z. Pohlen, Hans Schekkerman, Mikhail Soloviev, E. Syroechkovsky, Jan A. van Gils, Mikhail Zhemchuzhnikov
2022, Global Change Biology (28) 829-847
In seasonal environments subject to climate change, organisms typically show phenological changes. As these changes are usually stronger in organisms at lower trophic levels than those at higher trophic levels, mismatches between consumers and their prey may occur during the consumers’ reproduction period. While in some species a trophic mismatch...
Data resources for NGA-subduction project
V. Contreras, S. Mazzoni, T. Kishida, S.K. Ahdi, Robert B. Darragh, R.R. Youngs, B.S.J. Chiou, N. Kuehn, Kathryn Wooddell, Y. Bozorgnia, Jonathan P. Stewart
2022, Extramural-Authored Publication Paper
A relational database was developed over a five-year period to support ground motion model (GMM) development for the Next Generation Attenuation-Subduction (NGA-Sub) project. The relational database has components that interact according to a database schema, including a source and path component used to describe attributes of seismic sources in global...
Bedrock gorge incision via anthropogenic meander cutoff
Adrian Bender
2022, Geology (50) 321-325
Bedrock river-gorge incision represents a fundamental landscape-shaping process, but a dearth of observational data at >10 yr timescales impedes understanding of gorge formation. I quantify 102 yr rates and processes of gorge incision using historical records, field observations, and topographic and image analysis of a human-caused...
Seasonality of solute flux and water source chemistry in a coastal glacierized watershed undergoing rapid change: Wolverine Glacier watershed, Alaska
Anna Bergstrom, Joshua C. Koch, Shad O'Neel, Emily Baker
2022, Water Resources Research (57)
As glaciers around the world rapidly lose mass, the tight coupling between glaciers and downstream ecosystems is resulting in widespread impacts on global hydrologic and biogeochemical cycling. However, a range of challenges make it difficult to conduct research in glacierized systems and our knowledge of seasonally changing hydrologic processes and...
Recursive Bayesian computation facilitates adaptive optimal design in ecological studies
Clinton B. Leach, William J. Perry, Joseph M. Eisaguirre, Jamie N. Womble, Michael R. Bower, Mevin Hooten
2022, Ecology (103)
Optimal design procedures provide a framework to leverage the learning generated by ecological models to flexibly and efficiently deploy future monitoring efforts. At the same time, Bayesian hierarchical models have become widespread in ecology and offer a rich set of tools for ecological learning and...
The role of preexisting upper plate strike-slip faults during long-lived (ca. 30 Myr) oblique flat slab subduction, southern Alaska
Trevor Waldien, Richard O. Lease, Sarah Roeske, Jeff Benowitz, Paul O'Sullivan
2022, Earth and Planetary Science Letters (557)
Upper plates of subduction zones commonly respond to flat slab subduction by structural reactivation, magmatic arc disruption, and foreland basin inversion. However, the role of active strike-slip faults in focusing convergent deformation and magmatism in response to oblique flat slab subduction remains...
