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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

Caretta caretta (Loggerhead Sea Turtle) nesting exchange

The Northwest Atlantic population of Loggerhead Sea Turtles (Caretta caretta) is one of the largest C. caretta populations in the world and is listed as threatened. This population was divided into five genetically distinct subpopulations, including the Northern Gulf of Mexico (NGoM) subpopulation (Shamblin et al. 2017 Mar. Bio. 164:138). Across the NGoM, the majority of C. caretta nesting occurs
Authors
Margaret Lamont, Jennifer S. Walker, Donna J. Shaver

Salinification of coastal wetlands and freshwater management to support resilience

Climates are rapidly changing in wetland ecosystems around the world and historical land-use change is not always given enough consideration in climate adaptation discussions. Historical changes to hydrology and other key environments can exacerbate vegetation stress; e.g., recent drought and flood episodes are likely more extreme because of climate change. The contributions of global and regional
Authors
Beth Middleton, Jere Boudell

Fisheries research and monitoring activities of the Lake Erie Biological Station, 2022

This report presents biomass-based summaries of fish communities in western Lake Erie derived from USGS bottom trawl surveys conducted from 2013 to 2022 in June and September. The survey design compliments the August ODNR- OMNDMNRF effort by reinforcing stock assessments with more robust data. Analyses herein evaluated trends in total biomass, abundance of dominant predator and forage species, non
Authors
Mark Richard Dufour, Corbin David Hilling, Kevin R. Keretz, Richard Kraus, Richard Cole Oldham, James Roberts, Joseph Schmitt

Water and endangered fish in the Klamath River Basin: Do Upper Klamath Lake surface elevation and water quality affect adult Lost River and Shortnose Sucker survival?

In the western United States, water allocation decisions often incorporate the needs of endangered fish. In the Klamath River basin, an understanding of temporal variation in annual survival rates of Shortnose Suckers Chasmistes brevirostris and Lost River Suckers Deltistes luxatus and their relation to environmental drivers is critical to water management and sucker recovery. Extinction risk is h
Authors
Jacob Richard Krause, Eric C. Janney, Summer M. Burdick, Alta C. Harris, Brian S. Hayes

New indicators of ecological resilience and invasion resistance to support prioritization and management in the sagebrush biome, United States

Ecosystem transformations to altered or novel ecological states are accelerating across the globe. Indicators of ecological resilience to disturbance and resistance to invasion can aid in assessing risks and prioritizing areas for conservation and restoration. The sagebrush biome encompasses parts of 11 western states and is experiencing rapid transformations due to human population growth, invasi
Authors
Jeanne C. Chambers, Jessi L. Brown, John B. Bradford, David I. Board, Steven B. Campbell, Karen J. Clause, Brice Hanberry, Daniel Rodolphe Schlaepfer, Alexandra K. Urza

Characterization of a small population of the orangeblack Hawaiian damselfly (Megalagrion xanthomelas) in anchialine pools at Kaloko-Honokōhau National Historical Park, Hawai‘i Island

The endangered orangeblack Hawaiian damselfly (Megalagrion xanthomelas) is a lowland inhabitant of freshwater and brackish wetland environments. Formerly one of the most widely distributed native insects in Hawai‘i, it now appears restricted to small populations on the islands of O‘ahu, Moloka‘i, Maui, and Hawai‘i. On Hawai‘i island, anchialine pools provide important habitat for M. xanthomelas, a
Authors
Robert W. Peck, Sarah Nash

Breaking up is hard to do: Magmatism during oceanic arc breakup, subduction reversal, and cessation

The formerly continuous Vitiaz Arc broke into its Vanuatu and Fijian portions during a reversal of subduction polarity in the Miocene. Basaltic volcanism in Fiji that accompanied the breakup ranged from shoshonitic to low-K and boninitic with increasing distance from the broken edge of the arc that, presumably, marks the broken edge of the slab. The Sr-Pb-Nd isotope ratios of the slab-derived comp
Authors
James F. Gill, Erin Todd, Kaj Hoernle, Folkmar Hauff, Alison Ann Price, Matthew G. Jackson

VIMTS: Variational-based Imputation for Multi-modal Time Series

Multi-modal time series data in real applications often contain data of different dimensionalities, e.g., high-dimensional modality such as image data series, and low-dimensional univariate time series. Multi-modal time series data with missing high-dimensional modal values are ubiquitous in real-world classification and regression applications. To accurately predict the target labels, it is impor
Authors
Xiaowei Jia, Jennifer Burlingame Hoyle Fair, Benjamin Letcher

Sea otters in a California estuary: Detecting temporal and spatial dynamics with volunteer monitoring

Volunteer monitoring can support conservation of imperiled wildlife, by providing higher resolution data in space and time than those available from professional scientists. However, concerns have been raised that data collected by amateurs are inaccurate or inconsistent and thus do not allow for robust detection of spatial or temporal trends. We evaluated the rigor and value of volunteer monitori
Authors
Ron Eby, Susan Rosso, John Copriviza, Robert Scoles, Yohn Gideon, Joseph Mancino, Karl A. Mayer, Julie L. Yee, Kerstin Wasson

Spatial and temporal variability in lake trout diets in Lake Ontario as revealed by stomach contents and stable isotopes

Lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush) are an ecologically and economically important piscivore with reported differences in diet and feeding behaviour throughout its range. Eleven stomach content and stable isotope-based metrics were used to describe diets of 349 lake trout between two years (2013 and 2018) and among geographic zones (west, central, east, Kingston basin) in Lake Ontario. Using individ
Authors
Brent M. Nawrocki, Brent W. Metcalfe, Jeremy P. Holden, Brian F. Lantry, Timothy B. Johnson

Identifying turbulence features hindering swimming capabilities of grass carp larvae (Ctenopharyngodon idella) through submerged vegetation

Aquatic vegetation can provide habitat and refuge for a variety of species in streams. However, the flow features generated by submerged patches of vegetation can also pose a challenge for fish larvae. We conducted a series of experiments with live grass carp larvae (starting ∼50 h post hatch) in a laboratory racetrack flume, using a submerged array of rigid cylinders to mimic vegetation. We used
Authors
Rafael O. Tinoco, Andres F. Prada, Amy E. George, Benjamin H. Stahlschmidt, P. Ryan Jackson, Duane Chapman

Circumpolar patterns of Arctic freshwater fish biodiversity: A baseline for monitoring

Climate change, biological invasions, and anthropogenic disturbance pose a threat to the biodiversity and function of Arctic freshwater ecosystems. Understanding potential changes in fish species distribution and richness is necessary, given the great importance of fish to the function of freshwater ecosystems and as a resource to humans. However, information gaps limit large-scale studies and our
Authors
Sarah M. Laske, Per-Arne Amundsen, Kirsten Christoffersen, Jaakko Erkinaro, Guðni Guðbergsson, Brian Hayden, Jani Heino, Kerstin Holmgren, Kimmo K. Kahilainen, Jennifer Lento, Panu Orell, Johan Östergren, Michael Power, Ruslan Rafikov, Atso Romakkaniemi, Martin-A. Svenning, Heidi K. Swanson, Matthew Whitman, Christian E. Zimmerman