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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: 41764

Minimal shift of eastern wild turkey nesting phenology associated with projected climate change

Climate change may induce mismatches between wildlife reproductive phenology and temporal occurrence of resources necessary for reproductive success. Verifying and elucidating the causal mechanisms behind potential mismatches requires large-scale, longer-duration data. We used eastern wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo silvestris) nesting data collected across the southeastern U.S. over eight years
Authors
Wesley W. Boone, Christopher E. Moorman, Adam Terando, David J. Moscicki, Bret A. Collier, Michael J. Chamberlain, Krishna Pacifici

Combining expert knowledge of a threatened trout distribution with sparse occupancy data for climate-related projection

ObjectiveTo evaluate the vulnerability of Bull Trout Salvelinus confluentus to potential climate changes across its range in Oregon, we compiled disparate expert knowledge of the distribution of spawning and rearing and combined these probabilistic statements as data along with documented records of breeding and rearing in a joint occupancy model.MethodsThe joint expert knowledge–occupancy model,
Authors
Nathan Chelgren, Jason B. Dunham, Stephanie L Gunckel, David P Hockman-Wert, Chris S Allen

A prioritization protocol for coastal wetland restoration on Molokaʻi, Hawaiʻi

Hawaiian coastal wetlands provide important habitat for federally endangered waterbirds and socio-cultural resources for Native Hawaiians. Currently, Hawaiian coastal wetlands are degraded by development, sedimentation, and invasive species and, thus, require restoration. Little is known about their original structure and function due to the large-scale alteration of the lowland landscape since Eu
Authors
Judith Z. Drexler, Helen Raine, James D. Jacobi, Sally House, Pūlama Lima, William Haase, Arleone Dibben-Young, Brett T. Wolfe

User engagement to improve coastal data access and delivery

Executive SummaryA priority of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program focus on coastal change hazards is to provide accessible and actionable science that meets user needs. To understand these needs, 10 virtual Coastal Data Delivery Listening Sessions were completed with 5 coastal data user types that coastal change hazards data are intended to serve: re
Authors
Amanda D. Stoltz, Amanda E. Cravens, Erika Lentz, Emily A. Himmelstoss

White-Nose Syndrome Diagnostic Laboratory Network handbook

When responding to a wildlife disease outbreak, managers depend on consistent and clear data to make decisions. However, diagnostic methods for detecting pathogens of wildlife often lack the level of procedural and interpretational standardization that occurs in the investigation of human and domestic animal diseases. This lack of standardization can hamper diagnostic reliability in two ways. Firs
Authors
Katrina E. Alger

Cross-continental evaluation of landscape-scale drivers and their impacts to fluvial fishes: Understanding frequency and severity to improve fish conservation in Europe and the United States

Fluvial fishes are threatened globally from intensive human landscape stressors degrading aquatic ecosystems. However, impacts vary regionally, as stressors and natural environmental factors differ between ecoregions and continents. To date, a comparison of fish responses to landscape stressors over continents is lacking, limiting understanding of consistency of impacts and hampering efficiencies
Authors
Maria M. Üblacker, Dana M. Infante, Arthur R. Cooper, Wesley M. Daniel, Stefan Schmutz, Rafaela Schinegger

Thermography captures the differential sensitivity of dryland functional types to changes in rainfall event timing and magnitude

Drylands of the southwestern United States are rapidly warming, and rainfall is becoming less frequent and more intense, with major yet poorly understood implications for ecosystem structure and function. Thermography-based estimates of plant temperature can be integrated with air temperature to infer changes in plant physiology and response to climate change. However, very few studies have evalua
Authors
Mostafa Javadian, Russell L. Scott, Joel A. Biederman, Fangyue Zhang, Joshua B. Fisher, Sasha C. Reed, Daniel L. Potts, Miguel L. Villarreal, Andrew F. Feldman, William K. Smith

Stakeholder attitudes and perspectives on wildlife disease surveillance as a component of a One Health approach in Thailand

Coordinated wildlife disease surveillance (WDS) can help professionals across disciplines effectively safeguard human, animal, and environmental health. The aims of this study were to understand how WDS in Thailand is utilized, valued, and can be improved within a One Health framework. An online questionnaire was distributed to 183 professionals (55.7% response rate) across Thailand working in wil
Authors
Serena Elise George, Moniek Smink, Nareerat Sangkachai, Anuwat Wiratsudakul, Walasinee Sakcamduang, Sarin Suwanpakdee, Jonathan M. Sleeman

Dissolved organic carbon dynamics and fluxes in Mississippi-Atchafalaya deltaic system impacted by an extreme flood event and hurricanes: A multi-satellite approach using Sentinel-2/3 and Landsat-8/9 data

Transport of riverine and wetland-derived dissolved organic carbon (DOC) spanning tidal wetlands, estuaries, and continental shelf waters functionally connects terrestrial and aquatic carbon reservoirs, yet the magnitude and ecological significance of this variable and its spatiotemporal linkage remains uncertain for coastal deltaic regions, such as Mississippi River Delta Plain, which includes Mi
Authors
Bingqing Liu, Eurico J. D'Sa, Francesca Messina, Melissa Millman Baustian, Kanchan Maiti, Victor H. Rivera-Monroy, Wei Huang, Ioannis Y. Georgiou

BioLake: A first assessment of lake temperature-derived bioclimatic predictors for aquatic invasive species

Aquatic invasive species (AIS) present major ecological and economic challenges globally, endangering ecosystems and human livelihoods. Managers and policy makers thus need tools to predict invasion risk and prioritize species and areas of concern, and they often use native range climate matching to determine whether a species could persist in a new location. However, climate matching for AIS ofte
Authors
Ryan C. Burner, Wesley Daniel, Peder S. Engelstad, Christopher J. Churchill, Richard A. Erickson

Sensitivity of North American grassland birds to weather and climate variability

Grassland birds in North America have experienced sharp declines over the last 60 years driven by the widespread loss and degradation of grassland habitats. In recent decades, modern climate change has amplified these pressures. Climate change is occurring more rapidly in grasslands relative to some other ecosystems, and exposure to extreme and novel climate conditions may affect grassland bird ec
Authors
Scott Maresh Nelson, Christine Ribic, Neal D. Niemuth, Jacy Bernath-Plaisted, Benjamin Zuckerberg

Successful eradication of invasive American bullfrogs leads to coextirpation of emerging pathogens

Interventions of the host–pathogen dynamics provide strong tests of relationships, yet they are still rarely applied across multiple populations. After American bullfrogs (Rana catesbeiana) invaded a wildlife refuge where federally threatened Chiricahua leopard frogs (R. chiricahuensis) were reintroduced 12 years prior, managers launched a landscape-scale eradication effort to help ensure continue
Authors
Blake R. Hossack, David L. Hall, Catherine L. Crawford, Caren S. Goldberg, Erin L. Muths, Brent H. Sigafus, Thierry Chambert