Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Publications

This list of publications includes peer-review journal articles, official USGS publications series, reports and more authored by scientists in the Ecosystems Mission Area. A database of all USGS publications, with advanced search features, can be accessed at the USGS Publications Warehouse.  

Filter Total Items: 41763

Historical Structure from Motion (HSfM): Automated processing of historical aerial photographs for long-term topographic change analysis

Precisely measuring the Earth’s changing surface on decadal to centennial time scales is critical for many science and engineering applications, yet long-term records of quantitative landscape change are often temporally and geographically sparse. Archives of scanned historical aerial photographs provide an opportunity to augment these records with accurate elevation measurements that capture the
Authors
Friedrich Knuth, David Shean, Shashank Bhushan, Eli Schwat, Oleg Alexandrov, Christopher J. McNeil, Amaury Dehecq, Caitlyn Florentine, Shad O'Neel

Divergent Serpentoviruses in free-ranging invasive pythons and native colubrids in southern Florida, United States

Burmese python (Python bivittatus) is an invasive snake that has significantly affected ecosystems in southern Florida, United States. Aside from direct predation and competition, invasive species can also introduce nonnative pathogens that can adversely affect native species. The subfamily Serpentovirinae (order Nidovirales) is composed of positive-sense RNA viruses primarily found in reptiles. S
Authors
Steven B Tillis, Jillian M. Josimovich, Melissa A. Miller, Hoon-Hanks Laura L., Arik M. Hartmann, Natalie M. Claunch, Marley E. Iredale, Tracey D. Logan, Amy A. Yackel Adams, Ian A. Bartoszek, John S. Humphrey, Bryan M. Kluever, Mark D. Stenglein, Robert Reed, Christina M. Romagosa, James FX. Wellehan Jr., Robert J. Ossiboff

Estimating reproductive and juvenile survival rates when offspring ages are uncertain: A novel multievent mark-resight model with beluga whale case study

Understanding the survival and reproductive rates of a population is critical to determining its long-term dynamics and viability. Mark-resight models are often used to estimate these demographic rates, but estimation of survival and reproductive rates is challenging, especially for wide-ranging, patchily distributed, or cryptic species. In particular, existing mark-resight models cannot accommoda
Authors
Gina K Himes Boor, Tamara L McGuire, Amanda J. Warlick, Rebecca L. Taylor, Sarah J. Converse, John R McClung, Amber D Stephens

Geochemistry and fluxes of gases from hydrothermal features at Newberry Volcano, Oregon, USA

We present the chemical and isotopic compositions of gases and fluxes of CO2 from the hydrothermal features of Newberry Volcano, a large composite volcano located in Oregon's Cascade Range with a summit caldera that hosts two lakes, Paulina and East Lakes. Gas samples were collected from 1982 to 2021 from Paulina Hot Springs (PHS) on the shore of Paulina Lake, East Lake Hot Springs (ELHS) on the s
Authors
Jennifer L. Lewicki, William C. Evans, Steven E. Ingebritsen, Laura E. Clor, Peter J. Kelly, Sara Peek, Robert A. Jensen, Andrew Hunt

Future direction of fuels management in sagebrush rangelands

Sagebrush ecosystems in the United States have been declining since EuroAmerican settlement, largely due to agricultural and urban development, invasive species, and altered fire regimes, resulting in loss of biodiversity and wildlife habitat. To combat continued conversion to undesirable ecological states and loss of habitat to invasive species fueled by frequent fire, a variety of fuel treatment
Authors
Douglas J. Shinneman, Eva Strand, Mike Pellant, John T. Abatzoglou, Mark W. Brunson, Nancy Glenn, Julie A. Heinrichs, Mojtaba Sadegh, Nicole Vaillant

Maladaptive nest-site selection and reduced nest survival in female sage-grouse following wildfire

Increased wildfire frequency and associated replacement of sagebrush (Artemisia spp.) with invasive annual grasses contribute to declines of greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus; hereafter, sage-grouse) populations across the Great Basin. However, little is known about wildfire effects on sage-grouse nest-site selection and nest survival, which can influence population persistence. The p
Authors
Ian F. Dudley, Peter S. Coates, Brian G. Prochazka, Dawn M. Davis, Scott C. Gardner, David J. Delehanty

Divergent responses of butterflies and bees to burning and grazing management in tallgrass prairies

Butterflies and bees contribute significantly to grassland biodiversity and play important roles as pollinators and herbivores. Grassland conservation and management must be seen through the lens of insect conservation and management if these species are to thrive. In North America, grasslands are a product of climate and natural disturbances such as fire and grazing. These natural disturbances ha
Authors
Julia B. Leone, Nora P. Pennarola, Jennifer Larson, Karen Oberhauser, Diane L. Larson

Provenance, genotype, and flooding influence growth and resource acquisition characteristics in a clonal, riparian shrub

PremiseRiparian plants can exhibit intraspecific phenotypic variability across the landscape related to temperature and flooding gradients. Phenotypes that vary across a climate gradient are often partly genetically determined and may differ in their response to inundation. Changes to inundation patterns across a climate gradient could thus result in site-specific inundation responses. Phenotypic
Authors
Emily C. Palmquist, Kiona Ogle, Thomas G. Whitham, Gerard J. Allan, Patrick B. Shafroth, Bradley J. Butterfield

BIA branch of tribal climate resilience regional assessment report

The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) Branch of Tribal Climate Resilience (TCR) was established in 2011 to enable Tribal and BIA Office of Trust Services Programs to incorporate climate considerations into their programs' planning and decision-making. The TCR’s purpose is to fulfill trust responsibility to Federally recognized Tribal Nations by supporting and building Tribal capacity for climate resi
Authors
Coral Avery, Corwin Carroll, Lannette Marie Rangel

GPS data from 2019 and 2020 campaigns in the Chesapeake Bay region towards quantifying vertical land motions

The Chesapeake Bay is a region along the eastern coast of the United States where sea-level rise is confounded with poorly resolved rates of land subsidence, thus new constraints on vertical land motions (VLM) in the region are warranted. In this paper, we provide a description of two campaign-style Global Positioning System (GPS) datasets, explain the methods used in data collection and validatio
Authors
Gabrielle Troia, Sarah Stamps, R. Russell Lotspeich, James M. Duda, Kurt J. McCoy, William Moore, Philippe Hensel, Ryan Hippenstiel, Thomas McKenna, David C. Andreasen, Charles Geoghegan, Thomas P Ulizo, Madeline Kronebusch, Joel A. Carr, David Walters, Neil Winn

Wetland ecosystem health and biodiversity

• Cropland expansion from 2008 to 2016 was mostly from losses of grassland (88%), with 3% losses from wetlands (a total of nearly 275,000 acres of wetlands, concentrated in the Prairie Pothole Region). Given the lack of national or regional datasets to track changes in RFS acreage, the extent of wetland losses directly attributable to the RFS cannot be more accurately estimated in the RtC3. • Wetl
Authors
Laurie C. Alexander, Whitney S. Beck, James N. Carleton, Christopher M. Clark, Henriette I. Jager, Andrew James, Ken Kriese, Leigh C. Moorhead, David M. Mushet

Supplemental vegetation monitoring plots at Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument to accelerate learning of the Annual Brome Adaptive Management (ABAM) model

The Annual Brome Adaptive Management (ABAM) project is a consortium of seven parks in the Northern Great Plains (NGP) working together to better understand how to control invasive annual grasses (including Bromus species) through an adaptive management approach. This approach is supported by a quantitative model that uses current data from standardized vegetation monitoring plots in all seven park
Authors
Amy Symstad, Steven Bekedam