Publications

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), created in 1879, is the national geological survey for the United States and the sole science agency within its cabinet-level bureau, the Department of the Interior. The USGS has a broad mission, including: serving the Nation by providing reliable scientific information to describe and understand the Earth; minimize loss of life and property from natural disaster

The Upper Missouri River Headwaters Basin (36,400 km2) depends on its river corridors to support irrigated agriculture and world-class trout fisheries. We evaluated trends (1984-2016) in riparian wetness, an indicator of riparian condition, in peak irrigation months (June, July, August) for 158 km2 of riparian area across the basin using the Landsat Normalized Difference Wetness Index (NDWI). We f

This paper presents a synopsis of the challenges and limitations presented by existing and emerging land use/ land cover (LULC) digital data sets when used to analyze the extent, habitat quality, and LULC changes of the monarch (Danaus plexippus) migratory habitat across the United States of America (US) and Mexico. First, the characteristics, state of the knowledge, and issues related to this hab

Robust, quantitative comparisons of environmental effects across energy sources can support development of energy planning strategies that meet growing demand while managing and minimizing undesirable effects on environmental resources. Multicriteria analyses of energy systems often use a suite of indicators to make such comparisons, but those indicators and their units of measure vary among studi

Ecosystem function and stability are highly affected by internal and external stressors. Utilizing paleobotanical data gives insight into the evolutionary processes an ecosystem undergoes across long periods of time, allowing for a more complete understanding of how plant and insect herbivore communities are affected by ecosystem imbalance. To study how plant and insect herbivore communities chang

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)

The ability to classify habitats and movement pathways as sources or sinks is an important part of the decision making process for the conservation of spatially structured populations. Diverse approaches have been used to quantify the importance of habitats and pathways in a spatial network, however these approaches have been limited by a lack of general applicability across life histories and mov

The New Madrid seismic zone of the central United States is an intraplate seismic zone with blind structures that are not seismically active but may pose seismic hazards. The Joiner Ridge fault is the 35 km long east-bounding fault of the Joiner Ridge blind horst located in eastern Arkansas approximately 50 km northwest of Memphis, Tennessee. Shallow S-wave (SH-mode) seismic reflection profiles, c

Electricity from wind energy is a major contributor to the strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel use and thus reduce the negative impacts of climate change. Wind energy, like all power sources, can have adverse impacts on wildlife. After nearly 25 years of focused research, these impacts are much better understood, although uncertainty remains. In this report, we summarize p

The Rio Grande is the fourth longest river in North America extending over 3,000 km from the Rocky Mountains to the Gulf of Mexico. The Pleistocene evolution of this river from individual subbasins into a coalesced fluvial system has been long debated. Herein, we constrain the middle Pleistocene evolution of the northernmost and largest Rio Grande basin, the San Luis basin, and the timing of incis

In 1979, S. Uyeda and H. Kanamori proposed a tectonic model with two end members of a subduction-boundary continuum: the “Chilean” type (shallow dip of the subducting plate, great thrust events, compression, and uplift of the overriding plate) and a “Mariana” type (steep dip of the subducting plate, no great thrust events, tension, and no uplift). This concept has been used to explain variable rat

We estimated U.S. and Mexican citizens’ willingness to pay (WTP) for protecting habitat for a transborder migratory species, the Mexican free-tailed bat (Tadarida brasiliensis mexicana), using the contingent valuation method. Few contingent valuation surveys have evaluated whether households in one country would pay to protect habitat in another country. This study addresses that gap. In our study