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: 41778

USGS geospatial support for unified fishing method

No abstract available.
Authors
Kevin D. Hop, Andrew C. Strassman, Jonathan M. Vallazza, Brent C. Knights

Recovery planning in a dynamic system: Integrating uncertainty into a decision support tool for an endangered songbird

Along the Santa Clara River in California, populations of the federally and state-listed Least Bell's Vireo (Vireo bellii pusillus) are recovering from near extirpation. Habitat protection and restoration, as well as controlling rates of brood parasitism, are thought to be the primary drivers of this recovery. Continuing successful management of this population faces multiple challenges due to the
Authors
Jessica Stanton, Jenny Marek, Linnea S. Hall, Barbara E. Kus, Allison Alvarado, Bruce K. Orr, Eric Morrissette, Laura Riege, Wayne E. Thogmartin

The response of kelp forest organisms to spatial and temporal variation in wave energy in the California Channel Islands

This report describes the spatial and temporal variation in wave height for the study system in the broader context of the Southern California Bight. A new, low-cost pressure sensor was engineered for measuring wave height and period. These sensors were placed for several months at 32 sites around the Channel Islands where long-term kelp forest monitoring occurs. Matching sensor data with CDIP wav
Authors
Kevin D. Lafferty, Andrew Rassweiler, C C Gotschalk, D N Morton, T W Bell, F Henderikx Freitas, Kushner D J, J Sprague, C.G. Johnson, L Washburn

Conservation status of the world’s swan populations, Cygnus sp. and Coscoroba sp.: a review of current trends and gaps in knowledge

Recent estimates of the world’s swan Cygnus sp. populations indicate that there are currently between 1.5–1.6 million birds in 8 species, including the Coscoroba Swan Coscoroba coscoroba as an honorary swan. Monitoring programmes in Europe and North America indicate that most populations increased following the introduction of national and international legislation to protect the species during th
Authors
Eileen Rees, Lei Cao, P. Clausen, J. M. Coleman, J. Cornely, O. Einarsson, Craig R. Ely, R. Kingsford, Ming Ma, C. E. Mitchell, S. Nagy, T. Shimada, Jeffrey Snyder, D. Solovyeva, W. Tijsen, Y. Vilna, R. Wlodarczyk, K. Brides

Asian carp population modeling to support an Adaptive Management framework, USGS Contribution

The Spatially Explicit Asian carp Population (SEAcarP) model was developed to inform management and research decisions with the goal of minimizing the abundance of Bighead Carp and Silver Carp (collectively referred to as “Asian carp” in this document) in the upper Illinois River waterway, thereby reducing risk of population expansion toward the Great Lakes and reducing potential impacts on native
Authors
Richard A. Erickson

Sixty years of White-tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus) yarding in a Gray Wolf (Canis lupus)–deer system

This article synthesizes information from over a six-decade period of studies of White-tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus) use of a winter yard and subject to Gray Wolf (Canis lupus) predation in northeastern Minnesota. It also adds spring migration data from 35 adult female deer and fawns studied there during 1998, 1999, 2001, 2014, and 2017. Twenty-nine of these deer migrated in spring a mean d
Authors
L. David Mech, Shannon Barber-Meyer

Contrasting demographic responses of toad populations to regionally synchronous pathogen (Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis) dynamics

Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), a fungal pathogen that causes amphibian chytridiomycosis, has been implicated in population declines globally. To better understand how Bd affects survival and how threats vary spatially and temporally, we conducted long-term (range: 9–13 yrs) capture-recapture studies of boreal toads (Anaxyrus boreas) from three similar communities in western Montana. We also
Authors
Blake R. Hossack, Robin E. Russell, Rebecca McCaffery

Gopherus agassizii (Cooper 1861) – Agassiz’s Desert Tortoise, Mojave Desert Tortoise

The Mojave Desert Tortoise, Gopherus agassizii (Family Testudinidae), is a large terrestrial species that can reach >370 mm in straight midline carapace length (CL) but most individuals are smaller. Both sexes reach adulthood at 12 to 21 years and ca. 180 mm CL. The species is sexually dimorphic, with males typically larger than females; sexual characteristics of males become more obvious with inc
Authors
Kristin H. Berry, Robert W. Murphy

Genetically-informed seed transfer zones for Pleuraphis jamesii, Sphaeralcea parvifolia, and Sporobolus cryptandrus across the Colorado Plateau and adjacent regions

(Massatti) Introduction: The majority of native plant materials (NPMs) utilized for restoration purposes are developed for widely distributed species that provide a variety of ecosystem services (Wood et al. 2015; Butterfield et al. 2017). Disturbed ecosystems benefit from the use of appropriate NPMs, which are those that display ecological fitness at the restoration site, are compatible with cons
Authors
Robert Massatti

Quantifying changes to infaunal communities associated with several deep-sea coral habitats in the Gulf of Mexico and their potential recovery from the DWH oil spill

Extensive information is available about infaunal soft-sediment communities in the Gulf of Mexico (Gulf) (Pequegnat et al. 1990, Rowe and Kennicutt II 2009, Wei et al. 2010), particularly from the large-scale sampling effort of the Deep Gulf of Mexico Benthos (DGOMB) project in the early 2000s (Rowe and Kennicutt II 2009). Infaunal soft-sediment communities in the northern Gulf differ by geographi
Authors
Jill R. Bourque, Amanda W.J. Demopoulos

Integrating multiple data sources and multi-scale land-cover data to model the distribution of a declining amphibian

Determining the spatial scale at which landscape features influence population persistence is an important task for conservation planning. One challenge is that sampling biases confound factors that influence species occurrence and survey effort. Recent developments in Point Process Models (PPMs) enable researchers to disentangle the sampling process from ecological drivers of species' distributio
Authors
Jonathan P. Rose, Brian J. Halstead, Robert N. Fisher

DNA fingerprinting of Southern Mule Deer (Odocoileus hemionus fuliginatus) in North San Diego County, California (2018-19)

Throughout the western United States, efforts are underway to better understand and preserve migration and movement corridors for mule deer and other big game and to minimize the impacts of development and other land-use change on populations. San Diego County is home to a unique non-migratory subspecies of mule deer, the Southern mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus fuliginatus; herein referred to as “
Authors
Anna Mitelberg, Julia G. Smith, Amy G. Vandergast