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
Modeling the impacts of hydrology and management on carbon balance at the Great Dismal Swamp, Virginia and North Carolina, USA
The impact of drainage on the stability of peatland carbon sinks is well known; however, much less is understood regarding the way active management of the water-table affects carbon balance. In this study, we determined the carbon balance in the Great Dismal Swamp, a large, forested peatland in the southeastern USA, which has been drained for over two hundred years and is now being restored throu
Authors
Rachel Sleeter
Summary of wetland carbon and environmental management: Path forward
Wetlands around the world are under pressure from both anthropogenic sources such as land-use change and accelerating climate change (Erwin, 2009; Moomaw et al., 2018). Storage of carbon resources is a key ecosystem service of wetlands and offer natural solutions to climate change mitigation; policies and management actions could determine the fate of these resources and their contributions to cli
Authors
Zhiliang Zhu, Ken Krauss, Camille Stagg, Eric Ward, Victoria Woltz
Joint effects of climate, tree size, and year on annual tree growth derived using tree-ring records of ten globally distributed forests
Tree rings provide an invaluable long-term record for understanding how climate and other drivers shape tree growth and forest productivity. However, conventional tree-ring analysis methods were not designed to simultaneously account for the effects of climate, tree size, and other drivers on individual growth, which has limited the potential to use tree rings to understand forest productivity, it
Authors
Kristina J. Anderson-Teixeira, Valentine Herrmann, Christy Rollinson, Bianca Gonzales, Erika B. Gonzalez-Akre, Neil Pederson, M. Ross Alexander, Craig D. Allen, Raquel Alfaro-Sánchez, Tala Awada, Jennifer L. Baltzer, Patrick J. Baker, Joseph D. Birch, Sarayudh Bunyavejchewin, Paolo Cherubini, Stewart J. Davies, Cameron Dow, Ryan Helcoski, Jakub Kašpar, James A. Lutz, Ellis Margolis, Justin Maxwell, Sean M. McMahon, Camille Piponiot, Sabrina E. Russo, Pavel Šamonil, Anastasia E. Sniderhan, Alan J. Tepley, Ivana Vašíčková, Mart Vlam, Pieter A. Zuidema
The importance of wetland carbon dynamics to society: Insight from the Second State of the Carbon Cycle Science Report
The Second State of the Carbon Cycle Report (SOCCR2) culminated in 19 chapters that spanned all North American sectors – from Energy Systems to Agriculture and Land Use – known to be important for understanding carbon (C) cycling and accounting. Wetlands, both inland and coastal, were found to be significant components of C fluxes along the terrestrial to aquatic hydrologic continuum. In this cha
Authors
Randall Kolka, Carl Trettin, Lisamarie Windham-Myers
Carbon flux, storage, and wildlife co-benefits in a restoring estuary
Tidal marsh restorations may result in transitional mudflat habitats depending on hydrological and geomorphological conditions. Compared to tidal marsh, mudflats are thought to have limited value for carbon sequestration, carbon storage, and foraging benefits for salmon. We evaluated greenhouse gas exchange, sediment carbon storage, and invertebrate production at restoration and reference tidal ma
Authors
Isa Woo, Melanie J. Davis, Susan E. W. De La Cruz, Lisamarie Windham-Myers, Judith Z. Drexler, Kristin B. Byrd, Ellen Stuart-Haëntjens, Frank E Anderson, Brian A. Bergamaschi, Glynnis Nakai, Christopher S. Ellings, Sayre Hodgson
Ecosystem service co-benefits provided through wetland carbon management
What is the role of wetland carbon management in providing ecosystem services? Ecosystem services are the benefits that nature provides to people, and they are often categorized as: provisioning (e.g., food and water), regulating (e.g., climate mitigation and flood protection), cultural (e.g., cultural and recreational), and supporting (e.g., nutrient cycling) services ( www.millenniumassessment.o
Authors
Emily J. Pindilli
Landscape- and local- level variables affect monarchs in Midwest grasslands
ContextIt is estimated that over one billion milkweed stems need to be restored to sustain the eastern North American migratory population of monarch butterflies; where and in what context the stems should be placed on the landscape is key to addressing habitat deficits.ObjectivesWe assessed how the amount of appropriate habitat surrounding a particular patch of monarch habitat affects monarch pre
Authors
Anna Skye Bruce, Wayne E. Thogmartin, Chris Trosen, Karen Oberhauser, Claudio Gratton
Quantifying status and trends from monitoring surveys: Application to Pygmy Whitefish (Prosopium coulterii) in Lake Superior
Population assessments of fish species often rely on data from surveys with different objectives, such as measuring biodiversity or community dynamics. These surveys often contain spatial–temporal dependencies that can greatly influence conclusions drawn from analyses. Pygmy whitefish (PWF, Prosopium coulterii) populations in Lake Superior were recently assessed as Threatened by the Committee on t
Authors
Adam S van der Lee, Mark Vinson, Marten A. Koops
A common garden super-experiment: An impossible dream to inspire possible synthesis
Global change threatens plant diversity and disrupts its interrelationship with ecosystem structure and function. This disruption in turn undermines confidence in the knowledge ecologists produce, and whether it will translate into multidisciplinary research settings or guide the effective management of natural lands.To address this challenge, ecology needs to consider the interactions between dif
Authors
Travis E. Huxman, Daniel E. Winkler, Kailen A. Mooney
Land management strategies influence soil organic carbon stocks of prairie potholes of North America
Soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks of Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) wetlands in the central plains of Canada and the United States are highly variable due to natural variation in biota, soils, climate, hydrology, and topography. Land-use history (cropland, grassland) and land-management practices (drainage, restoration) also affect SOC stocks. We conducted a region-wide assessment of wetland SOC stoc
Authors
Sheel Bansal, Brian Tangen, Robert A. Gleason, Pascal Badiou, Irena F. Creed
Aquatic foods to nourish nations
Despite contributing to healthy diets for billions of people, aquatic foods are often undervalued as a nutritional solution because their diversity is often reduced to the protein and energy value of a single food type (‘seafood’ or ‘fish’)1,2,3,4. Here we create a cohesive model that unites terrestrial foods with nearly 3,000 taxa of aquatic foods to understand the future impact of aquatic foods
Authors
Christopher D. Golden, J. Zachary Koehn, Alon Shepon, Simone Passarelli, Christopher M. Free, Daniel Viana, Holger Matthey, Jacob G. Eurich, Jessica A. Gephart, Etienne Fluet-Chouinard, Elizabeth A. Nyboer, Abigail Lynch, Marian Kjellevold, Sabri Bromage, Pierre Charlebois, Manuel Barange, Stefania Vannuccini, Ling Cao, Kristin Kleisner, Eric Rimm, Goodarz Danaei, Camille DeDisto, Heather Kelahan, Kathryn J. Fiorella, David C. Little, Edward H. Allison, Jessica Fanzo, Shakuntala H. Thilsted
Lethal impacts of selenium counterbalance the potential reduction in mercury bioaccumulation for freshwater organisms☆
Mercury (Hg), a potent neurotoxic element, can biomagnify through food webs once converted into methylmercury (MeHg). Some studies have found that selenium (Se) exposure may reduce MeHg bioaccumulation and toxicity, though this pattern is not universal. Se itself can also be toxic at elevated levels. We experimentally manipulated the relative concentrations of dietary MeHg and Se (as selenomethion
Authors
Jacqueline R. Gerson, Rebecca A. Consbrock, Collin Eagles-Smith, Emily S. Bernhardt, David Walters