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Publications

USGS research activities relevant to Alaska have yielded more than 9400 historical publications. This page features some of the most recent newsworthy research findings.

Filter Total Items: 2887

Stratigraphy, paleoflora, and tectonic setting of the Paleogene Sheep Creek volcanic field, central Alaska

In this paper, we provide new information on the stratigraphy and paleoflora of the Sheep Creek volcanic field in the Alaska Range that bolsters our understanding of a key interval in the tectonic, paleoclimate, and paleoenvironmental history of the northern Cordillera. Although the distribution and basic stratigraphy of these rocks have been previously reported, here we document the stratigraphic
Authors
Timothy White, David Sunderlin, Dwight Bradley

Testing megathrust rupture models using tsunami deposits

The 26 January 1700 CE Cascadia subduction zone earthquake ruptured much of the plate boundary and generated a tsunami that deposited sand in coastal marshes from northern California to Vancouver Island. Although the depositional record of tsunami inundation is extensive in some of these marshes, few sites have been investigated in enough detail to map the inland extent of sand deposition and depi
Authors
SeanPaul La Selle, Alan R. Nelson, Robert C. Witter, Bruce E. Jaffe, Guy Gelfenbaum, Jason Scott Padgett

The dominance and growth of shallow groundwater resources in continuous permafrost environments

Water is a limited resource in Arctic watersheds with continuous permafrost because freezing conditions in winter and the impermeability of permafrost limit storage and connectivity between surface water and deep groundwater. However, groundwater can still be an important source of surface water in such settings, feeding springs and large aufeis fields that are abundant in cold regions and generat
Authors
Joshua C. Koch, Craig T. Connolly, Carson Baughman, Marisa Repasch, Heather Best, Andrew Hunt

Metal mobilization from thawing permafrost to aquatic ecosystems is driving rusting of Arctic streams

Climate change in the Arctic is altering watershed hydrologic processes and biogeochemistry. Here, we present an emergent threat to Arctic watersheds based on observations from 75 streams in Alaska’s Brooks Range that recently turned orange, reflecting increased loading of iron and toxic metals. Using remote sensing, we constrain the timing of stream discoloration to the last 10 years, a period of
Authors
Jonathan A. O'Donnell, Michael P. Carey, Joshua C. Koch, Carson Baughman, Kenneth Hill, Christian E. Zimmerman, Patrick F. Sullivan, Roman J. Dial, Timothy J. Lyons, David J. Cooper, Brett A. Poulin

A great tsunami earthquake component of the 1957 Aleutian Islands earthquake

The great 1957 Aleutian Islands earthquake ruptured ∼1200 km of the plate boundary along the Aleutian subduction zone and produced a destructive tsunami across Hawaiʻi. Early seismic and tsunami analyses indicated that large megathrust fault slip was concentrated in the western Aleutian Islands, but tsunami waves generated by slip in the west cannot explain the large observed runup in Hawaiʻi far
Authors
Yoshiki Yamazaki, Thorne Lay, Kwok Fai Cheung, Robert C. Witter, SeanPaul La Selle, Bruce E. Jaffe

Deep-water first occurrences of Ediacara biota prior to the Shuram carbon isotope excursion in the Wernecke Mountains, Yukon, Canada

Ediacara-type macrofossils appear as early as ~575 Ma in deep-water facies of the Drook Formation of the Avalon Peninsula, Newfoundland, and the Nadaleen Formation of Yukon and Northwest Territories, Canada. Our ability to assess whether a deep-water origination of the Ediacara biota is a genuine reflection of evolutionary succession, an artifact of an incomplete stratigraphic record, or a bathyme
Authors
Thomas H. Boag, James F. Busch, Jared T. Gooley, Justin Strauss, Erik A Sperling

Annual review 2023: Critical minerals

No abstract available.
Authors
Graham W. Lederer, James V. Jones, Darcy McPhee, Jeffrey L. Mauk, Robert R. Seal, Kate M. Campbell, Jane M. Hammarstrom, Paul A. Bedrosian, Patricia Grace Macqueen, Garth E. Graham, Federico Solano, George N. D. Case, David George Pineault

Drought, fire, and archeology in the Jemez Mountains, New Mexico

In the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico, cultural resources and traditional cultural landscapes are vulnerable to compounded impacts of changing climate and wildfires. Here, we discuss impacts to archeological resources observed in recent, high-severity fires, including at Bandelier National Monument and Valles Caldera National Preserve, and describe an interdisciplinary effort to quantity archeologi
Authors
Anastasia Steffen, Jamie Civitello, Rachel A. Loehman, Robert Parmenter

A high-resolution, daily hindcast (1990-2021) of Alaskan river discharge and temperature from coupled and optimized physical models

Water quality and freshwater ecosystems are affected by river discharge and temperature. Models are frequently used to estimate river temperature on large spatial and temporal scales due to limited observations of discharge and temperature. In this study, we use physically based river routing and temperature models to simulate daily discharge and river temperature for rivers in 138 basins in Alask
Authors
Dylan Blaskey, Michael Gooseff, Yifan Cheng, Andrew Newman, Joshua C. Koch, Keith Musselman

A comparison of contemporary and historical hydrology and water quality in the foothills and coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Arctic Slope, northern Alaska

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is a unique landscape in northern Alaska with limited water resources, substantial biodiversity of rare and threatened species, as well as oil and gas resources. The region has unique hydrology related to perennial springs, and the formation of large aufeis fields—sheets of ice that grow in the river channels where water reaches the surface in the winter and fre
Authors
Joshua C. Koch, Heather Best, Carson Baughman, Charles Couvillion, Michael P. Carey, Jeff Conaway

Seasonal and decadal subsurface thaw dynamics of an Aufeis feature investigated through numerical simulations

Aufeis (also known as icings) are large sheet-like masses of layered ice that form in river channels in arctic environments in the winter as groundwater discharges to the land surface and subsequently freezes. Aufeis are important sources of water for Arctic river ecosystems, bolstering late summer river discharge and providing habitat for caribou escaping insect harassment. The aim of this resear
Authors
Alexi Lainis, Roseanna M. Neupauer, Joshua C. Koch, Michael Gooseff

A systematic review of the effects of climate variability and change on black and brown bear ecology and interactions with humans

Climate change poses a pervasive threat to humans and wildlife by altering resource availability, changing co-occurrences, and directly or indirectly influencing human-wildlife interactions. For many wildlife agencies in North America, managing bears (Ursus spp.) and human-bear interactions is a priority, yet the direct and indirect effects of climate change are exacerbating management challenges.
Authors
Katherine Anne Kurth, Kate Malpeli, Joseph D. Clark, Heather E. Johnson, Frank T. van Manen