Publications
Browse more than 160,000 publications authored by our scientists over the past 100+ year history of the USGS. Publications available are: USGS-authored journal articles, series reports, book chapters, other government publications, and more.
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Mission Area Publications
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Global mercury concentrations in biota: Their use as a basis for a global biomonitoring framework
An important provision of the Minamata Convention on Mercury is to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of the adopted measures and its implementation. Here, we describe for the first time currently available biotic mercury (Hg) data on a global scale to improve the understanding of global efforts to reduce the impact of Hg pollution on people and the environment. Data from the peer-reviewed lit
Authors
David C. Evers, Josh T. Ackerman, Staffan Åkerblom, Dominique Bally, Niladri Basu, Kevin Bishop, Nathalie Bodin, Hans Fredrik Veitberg Braaten, Mark Burton, Paco Bustamante, Celia Y. Chen, John Chételat, Linroy Christian, Rune Dietz, Paul Drevnick, Collin Eagles-Smith, Luis Fernandez, Neil Hammerschlag, Mireille Harmelin-Vivien, Agustin Harte, Eva Kruemmel, Jose Lailson-Brito, Gabriella Medina, Cesar Rodriguez, Iain Stenhouse, Elsie M. Sunderland, Akinori Takeuchi, Timothy Tear, Claudia Vega, Simon Wilson, Pianpian Wu
Evaluating an improved systems approach to wetland crediting: Consideration of wetland ecosystem services
The Chesapeake Bay Agreement (CBA) has numerous direct goals for improving habitat, living resources, and water quality, conserving lands, engaging communities and addressing a changing climate. To date, the progress toward the wetlands outcome (creation/ restoration of 85,000 acres and enhancement of 150,000 acres) has been very slow and the outcome is projected to be off course for 2025. Two spe
Authors
Pamela Mason, Gregory B. Noe, Alicia Berlin, Denise Clearwater, Sally Claggett, Dave Goerman, Brooke J. Landry, Alison Santoro
Snow avalanches are a primary climate-linked driver of mountain ungulate populations
Snow is a major, climate-sensitive feature of the Earth’s surface and catalyst of fundamentally important ecosystem processes. Understanding how snow influences sentinel species in rapidly changing mountain ecosystems is particularly critical. Whereas effects of snow on food availability, energy expenditure, and predation are well documented, we report how avalanches exert major impacts on an ecol
Authors
Kevin White, Eran Hood, Gabriel Wolken, Erich Peitzsch, Yves Bühler, Katreen Wikstrom Jones, Chris Darimont
Black carp Mylopharyngodon piceus (Richardson, 1846) mouth gape and size preference of a bivalve prey
Black carp Mylopharyngodon piceus (Richardson, 1846) have been widely used as biological control of snails in aquaculture and were imported to the United States in the 1970s and 1980s for this purpose. Prior research emphasizes the species’ propensity to control gastropods, but since subsequent escape and establishment of black carp in portions of the Mississippi River Basin, concerns now focus on
Authors
Patrick Kroboth, Benjamin H. Stahlschmidt, Duane Chapman
A multi-marker assessment of sewage contamination in streams using human-associated indicator bacteria, human-specific viruses, and pharmaceuticals
Human sewage contaminates waterways, delivering excess nutrients, pathogens, chemicals, and other toxic contaminants. Contaminants and various sewage indicators are measured to monitor and assess water quality, but these analytes vary in their representation of sewage contamination and the inferences about water quality they support. We measured the occurrence and concentration of multiple microbi
Authors
Peter L. Lenaker, Matthew A. Pronschinske, Steven R. Corsi, Joel P. Stokdyk, Hayley Olds, Deborah K. Dila, Sandra L. McLellan
Evaluation of debris-flow building damage forecasts
Reliable forecasts of building damage due to debris flows may provide situational awareness and guide land and emergency management decisions. Application of debris-flow runout models to generate such forecasts requires combining hazard intensity predictions with fragility functions that link hazard intensity with building damage. In this study, we evaluated the performance of building damage fore
Authors
Katherine R. Barnhart, Christopher R. Miller, Francis K. Rengers, Jason W. Kean
Flooding-induced failure of an invasive Burmese Python nest in southern Florida
It is important to understand the factors affecting the reproductive success of an invasive species to estimate population size and develop management plans. There remains much we do not understand about the reproductive biology of invasive Burmese Pythons in both their native and invasive range. Oviposition site selection is an important factor in determining reproductive success as nesting is a
Authors
Mark Robert Sandfoss, Lisa Marie McBride, Gretchen Erika Anderson, Amanda Marie Kissel, Matthew McCollister, Christina M. Romagosa, Amy A. Yackel Adams
Methylmercury effects on birds: A review, meta-analysis, and development of toxicity reference values for injury assessment based on tissue residues and diet
Birds are used as bioindicators of environmental mercury (Hg) contamination, and toxicity reference values are needed for injury assessments. We conducted a comprehensive review, summarized data from 168 studies, performed a series of Bayesian hierarchical meta-analyses, and developed new toxicity reference values for the effects of methylmercury (MeHg) on birds using a benchmark dose analysis fra
Authors
Josh T. Ackerman, Sarah H. Peterson, Mark P. Herzog, Julie L. Yee
Influence of rrganic matter thermal maturity on rare earth element distribution: A study of Middle Devonian black shales from the Appalachian Basin, USA
This study focuses on understanding the association of rare earth elements (REE; lanthanides + yttrium + scandium) with organic matter from the Middle Devonian black shales of the Appalachian Basin. Developing a better understanding of the role of organic matter (OM) and thermal maturity in REE partitioning may help improve current geochemical models of REE enrichment in a wide range of black shal
Authors
Shailee Bhattacharya, Shikha Sharma, Vikas Agrawal, Michael C. Dix, Giovanni Zanoni, Justin E. Birdwell, Albert S. Wylie, Tom Wagner
Special Contributing Area Loading Program user’s manual
The Special Contributing Area Loading Program (SCALP) is a hydrologic routing program that simulates reservoir routing through a linear-reservoir-in-series method. The Java version of SCALP was developed to replicate and replace the functionality of an older version of the program written in Fortran. SCALP models flow through three reservoirs in series using an input runoff depth time series and i
Authors
Henry F. Doyle, Marian M. Domanski
Automatic identification and quantification of volcanic hotspots in Alaska using HotLINK: The hotspot learning and identification network
An increase in volcanic thermal emissions can indicate subsurface and surface processes that precede, or coincide with, volcanic eruptions. Space-borne infrared sensors can detect hotspots—defined here as localized volcanic thermal emissions—in near-real-time. However, automatic hotspot detection systems are needed to efficiently analyze the large quantities of data produced. While hotspots have b
Authors
Pablo Saunders-Shultz, Taryn Lopez, Hannah R. Dietterich, Tarsilo Girona
Post-fire reference densities for giant sequoia seedlings in a new era of high-severity wildfires
Many forests globally are experiencing increases in large, high-severity wildfires, often with increasingly inadequate post-fire tree regeneration. To identify areas that might need post-fire planting, forest managers have a growing need for seedling reference densities – the natural seedling densities expected to be adequate to regenerate a forest – to compare with observed post-fire seedling den
Authors
Nathan L. Stephenson, Anthony C. Caprio, David Nicolas Bertil Soderberg, Adrian Das, Eva Louisa Lopez, A. Park Williams