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Publications

Below is a list of available NOROCK peer reviewed and published science. If you are in search of a specific publication and cannot find it below or through a search, please contact twojtowicz@usgs.gov.

Filter Total Items: 1211

Application of snow models to snow removal operations on the Going-to-the-Sun Road, Glacier National Park

Snow removal, and the attendant avalanche risk for road crews, is a major issue on mountain highways worldwide. The Going-to-the-Sun Road is the only road that crosses Glacier National Park, Montana. This 80-km highway ascends over 1200m along the wall of a glaciated basin and crosses the continental divide. The annual opening of the road is critical to the regional economy and there is public pre
Authors
Daniel B. Fagre, Frederick L. Klasner

Growth and diet of fish in Waldo Lake, Oregon

Waldo Lake, located in the Oregon Cascades, is considered to be one of the most dilute lakes in the world. Even with low nutrient concentrations and sparse populations of zooplankton, introduced fish in the lake are large in size and in good condition when compared to fish from other lakes. This apparent anomaly is due to the availability of benthic macroinvertebrates. Taxa found in the stomach co
Authors
Nicola L. Swanson, W.J. Liss, Jeffrey S. Ziller, M. Wade, R. E. Gresswell

Fish stocking in protected areas: Summary of a workshop

Native and nonnative sport fish have been introduced into the majority of historically fishless lakes in wilderness, generating conflicts between managing wilderness as natural ecosystems and providing opportunities for recreation. Managers faced with controversial and difficult decisions about how to manage wilderness lakes may not always have ready access to research relevant to these decisions.
Authors
Paul Stephen Corn, Roland A. Knapp

Obsidian hydration dating of Quaternary events

Abstract has not been submitted
Authors
K. L. Pierce, Irving Friedman

Effect of hibernation and reproductive status on body mass and condition of coastal brown bears

We investigated the effect of hibernation and reproductive status on changes in body mass and composition of adult female brown bears (Ursus arctos) on the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska. This information is fundamental to understanding nutritional ecology of wild brown bear populations. Six adult females handled in the fall and following spring (paired samples) lost 73 ± 22 kg (x̄ ± SD; 32 ± 10%) of fal
Authors
Grant V. Hilderbrand, C. C. Schwartz, C.T. Robbins, Thomas A. Hanley

Effects of food limitation and emigration on self-thinning in experimental minnow cohorts

1. The theory of food-regulated self-thinning (FST) for mobile animals predicts population density (N) to be an inverse function of mean body mass (W) scaled to an exponent (b), such that N = k W−b, where k is a constant. FST also predicts energy requirements (or energy flow) to remain constant over time (termed energetic equivalence) as losses to cohorts (e.g. emigration and mortality) are balanc
Authors
J. B. Dunham, B. R. Dickerson, E. Beever, R. D. Duncan, G.L. Vinyard

Abiotic and biotic controls of spatial pattern at alpine treeline

At alpine treeline, trees and krummholz forms affect the environment in ways that increase their growth and reproduction. We assess the way in which these positive feedbacks combine in spatial patterns to alter the environment in the neighborhood of existing plants. The research is significant because areas of alpine tundra are susceptible to encroachment by woody species as climate changes. Moreo
Authors
George P. Malanson, Ningchuan Xiao, K.J. Alftine, Mathew Bekker, David R. Butler, Daniel G. Brown, David M. Cairns, Daniel Fagre, Stephen J. Walsh

Elk, beaver, and the persistence of willows in national parks: comment on Singer et al. (1998).

Singer et al. (1998) propose that the decline in populations of beaver (Castor canadensis) in Yellowstone National Park (YNP) has caused willow to be more vulnerable to browsing by clk (Alces alces). I do not believe that their scenario correctly characterizes the relationship between elk and willow in YNP The authors developed their hypothesis based on 2 sets of observations. One was an experimen
Authors
R.B. Keigley

The phenology of space: Spatial aspects of bison density dependence in Yellowstone National Park

The Yellowstone bison represent the only bison population in the United States that survived in the wild the near-extermination of the late 1800's. This paper capitalizes on a unique opportunity provided by the record of the bison population of Yellowstone National Park (YNP). This population has been intensely monitored for almost four decades. The analysis of long-term spatio-temporal data from
Authors
M.L. Taper, M. Meagher, C.L. Jerde

Phylogeography of mitochondrial DNA variation in brown bears and polar bears

We analyzed 286 nucleotides of the middle portion of the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene of 61 brown bears from three locations in Alaska and 55 polar bears from Arctic Canada and Arctic Siberia to test our earlier observations of paraphyly between polar bears and brown bears as well as to test the extreme uniqueness of mitochondrial DNA types of brown bears on Admiralty, Baranof, and Chichagof (A
Authors
Gerald F. Shields, Deborah Adams, Gerald W. Garner, Martine Labelle, Jacy Pietsch, Malcolm Ramsay, Charles Schwartz, Kimberly Titus, Scott Williamson