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
A geographic hot spot of Ichthyophonus infection in the southern Salish Sea, USA
The prevalence of Ichthyophonus infection in Pacific herring Clupea pallasii was spatially heterogeneous in the southern Salish Sea, Washington State, USA. Over the course of 13 mo, 2232 Pacific herring were sampled from 38 midwater trawls throughout the region. Fork length was positively correlated with Ichthyophonus infection at all sites. After controlling for the positive relationship between
Authors
Paul Hershberger, Ashley MacKenzie, Jacob Gregg, A Lindquist, T Sandell, Maya L. Groner, D Lowry
Economic valuation of landsat imagery
Landsat satellites have been operating since 1972, providing a continuous global record of the Earth’s land surface. The imagery is currently available at no cost through the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). A previous USGS study estimated that Landsat imagery provided users an annual benefit of $2.19 billion in 2011, with U.S. users accounting for $1.79 billion of those benefits. That study, publis
Authors
Crista L. Straub, Stephen R. Koontz, John B. Loomis
Detrital zircon geochronology along a structural transect across the Kahiltna assemblage in the western Alaska Range: Implications for emplacement of the Alexander-Wrangellia-Peninsular terrane against North America
The Kahiltna assemblage in the western Alaska Range consists of deformed Upper Jurassic and Cretaceous clastic strata that lie between the Alexander-Wrangellia-Peninsular (AWP) terrane to the south, and the Farewell and other peri-cratonic terranes to the north. Differences in detrital zircon populations and sandstone petrography allow geographic separation of the strata into two different success
Authors
Stephen E. Box, Susan M. Karl, James V. Jones, Dwight Bradley, Peter J. Haeussler, Paul B. O'Sullivan
Urbanization reduces genetic connectivity in bobcats (Lynx rufus) at both intra- and interpopulation spatial scales
Urbanization is a major factor driving habitat fragmentation and connectivity loss in wildlife. However, the impacts of urbanization on connectivity can vary among species and even populations due to differences in local landscape characteristics, and our ability to detect these relationships may depend on the spatial scale at which they are measured. Bobcats (Lynx rufus) are relatively sensitive
Authors
Christpher P. Kozakiewicz, Christopher P. Burridge, W. Chris Funk, Patricia E. Salerno, Daryl R. Trumbo, Roderick B. Gagne, Erin E. Boydston, Robert N. Fisher, Lisa M. Lyren, Megan K. Jennings, Seth P. D. Riley, Laurel E.K. Serieys, Sue VandeWoude, Kevin R. Crooks, Scott Carver
Application of a regional climate model to assess changes in the climatology of the Eastern US and Cuba associated with historic landcover change
We examine the annual, seasonal, monthly, and diurnal climate responses to the land use change (LUC) in eastern United States and Cuba during four epochs (1650, 1850, 1920, and 1992) with ensemble simulations conducted with the RegCM4 regional climate model that includes the Biosphere Atmosphere Transfer Scheme (BATS1e) surface physics package (Dickinson et al., 1993). We derived the land use (LU)
Authors
Steven W. Hostetler, R Reker, Jay R. Alder, Thomas Loveland, Debra A. Willard, Christopher E. Bernhardt, Eric T. Sundquist, Renee L. Thompson
Global ecological predictors of the soil priming effect
Identifying the global drivers of soil priming is essential to understanding C cycling in terrestrial ecosystems. We conducted a survey of soils across 86 globally-distributed locations, spanning a wide range of climates, biotic communities, and soil conditions, and evaluated the apparent soil priming effect using 13C-glucose labeling. Here we show that the magnitude of the positive apparent primi
Authors
Felipe Bastida, Carlos M. Garcia, Noah Fierer, David J. Eldridge, Matthew A. Bowker, Sebastián R. Abades, Fernando D. Alfaro, Asmeret Asefaw Berhe, Nick A. Cutler, Antonio Gallardo, Laura Garcia-Velazquez, Stephen C. Hart, Patrick E. Hayes, Teresa Hernández, Zeng-Yei Hseu, Nico Jehmlich, Martin Kirchmair, Hans Lambers, Sigrid Neuhauser, Victor M. Peña-Ramírez, Cecilia A. Pérez, Sasha C. Reed, Fernanda Santos, Christina Siebe, Benjamin W. Sullivan, Pankaj Trivedi, Alfonso Vera, Mark A. Williams, Jose M. Moreno, Manuel Delgado-Baquerizo
Remote sensing of dryland ecosystem structure and function: Progress, challenges, and opportunities
Drylands make up roughly 40% of the Earth's land surface, and billions of people depend on services provided by these critically important ecosystems. Despite their relatively sparse vegetation, dryland ecosystems are structurally and functionally diverse, and emerging evidence suggests that these ecosystems play a dominant role in the trend and variability of the terrestrial carbon sink. More, dr
Authors
William K. Smith, Matthew P. Dannenberg, Dong Yan, Stephanie Herrmann, Mallory L. Barnes, Greg A. Barron-Gafford, Joel A. Biederman, Scott Ferrenberg, Andrew M. Fox, Amy R. Hudson, John F. Knowles, Natasha MacBean, David J.P. Moore, Pamela L. Nagler, Sasha C. Reed, William A. Rutherford, Russell L. Scott, Xianfeng Wang, Julia Yang
Climate teleconnections synchronize Picea glauca masting and fire disturbance: Evidence for a fire‐related form of environmental prediction
Synchronous pulses of seed masting and natural disturbance have positive feedbacks on the reproduction of masting species in disturbance‐prone ecosystems. We test the hypotheses that disturbances and proximate causes of masting are correlated, and that their large‐scale synchrony is driven by similar climate teleconnection patterns at both inter‐annual and decadal time scales.Hypotheses were teste
Authors
Davide Ascoli, Andrew Hacket-Pain, Jalene M. LaMontagne, Adrian Cardil, Marco Conedera, Janet Maringer, Renzo Motta, Ian Pearse, Giorgio Vacchiano
Tropical cyclones and the organization of mangrove forests: A review
Background
Many mangrove ecosystems are periodically exposed to high velocity winds and surge from tropical cyclones and often recover with time and continue to provide numerous societal benefits in the wake of storm events.
Scope
This review focuses on the drivers and disturbance mechanisms (visible and functional) that tropical cyclones of various intensities have on mangrove ecosystem properti
Authors
Ken Krauss, Michael Osland
Drought in the U.S. Caribbean: Impacts to freshwater ecosystems
Healthy and functioning freshwater ecosystems are needed for successful conservation and management of native fish and invertebrate species, and the services they provide to human communities, across the U.S. Caribbean. Yet streams, rivers, and reservoirs are vulnerable to the effects of extreme weather events, urbanization, energy and water development, and other environmental and human-caused di
Authors
Bonnie Myers
Catalog of microscopic organisms of the Everglades, part 2—The desmids of the Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge
The Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge (refuge), Boynton Beach, Florida, contains approximately 147,000 acres southeast of Lake Okeechobee. Water quality in the interior portion of the refuge is strongly influenced by rainfall, resulting in slightly acidic waters with low dissolved ions. Desmids, a unique, ornate group of green algae loosely associated with submerged vascular
Authors
Barry H. Rosen, Katherine N. Stahlhut, John D. Hall
Characteristics of feeding sites of California Condors (Gymnogyps californianus) in the human-dominated landscape of Southern California
Wildlife conservation is often improved by understanding the movement ecology of species and adapting management strategies to dynamic conditions associated with movement. Despite a remarkable recovery over the past 30 year, the establishment of self-sustaining populations of California Condors (Gymnogyps californianus) has been challenging in the human-dominated landscapes of southern California.
Authors
Jonathan C. Hall, Melissa A. Braham, Lee Ann Nolan, Jamison Conley, Joseph Brandt, Laura C. Mendenhall, Michael J. Lanzone, Andrew J. McGann, Todd E. Katzner