Publications

Resource managers are increasingly tasked with developing habitat conservation plans in the face of numerous, sometimes competing, objectives. These plans must often be implemented across dispersed habitat conservation units that may contribute unequally to overall conservation objectives. Using U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service waterfowl production areas (WPA) in western Minnesota as our conservatio

Introduction/Background The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)-Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center (UMESC) was responsible for development of several land cover/land use (LCU) systemic datasets of the Upper Mississippi River System (UMRS). These efforts (1989 and 2000) were funded by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Upper Mississippi River Restoration Program (UMRR) Long Term Resource Monitori

This second edition is extensively revised throughout with expanded discussion of modeling fundamentals and coverage of advances in model calibration and uncertainty analysis that are revolutionizing the science of groundwater modeling. The text is intended for undergraduate and graduate level courses in applied groundwater modeling and as a comprehensive reference for environmental consultants an

Aquaflor® [50% w w−1 florfenicol (FFC)], is approved for use in freshwater‐reared warmwater finfish which include tilapia Oreochromis spp. in the United States to control mortality from Streptococcus iniae. The depletion of florfenicol amine (FFA), the marker residue of FFC, was evaluated after feeding FFC‐medicated feed to deliver a nominal 20 mg FFC kg−1 BW d−1 dose (1.33× the label use of 15 mg

The Mississippi National River and Recreation Area (MISS) vegetation mapping project is an initiative of the National Park Service (NPS) Vegetation Inventory Program (VIP) to classify and map vegetation types of MISS. (Note: “MISS” is also referred to as “park” throughout this report.) The goals of the project are to adequately describe and map vegetation types of the park and to provide the NPS N

Conservation planning can be challenging due to the need to balance biological concerns about population viability with social concerns about the benefits biodiversity provide to society, often while operating under a limited budget. Methods and tools that help prioritize conservation actions are critical for the management of at-risk species. Here, we use a multi-attribute utility function to ass

PESTools is an open-source Python package for processing and visualizing information associated with the parameter estimation software PEST and PEST++. While PEST output can be reformatted for post- processing in spreadsheets or other menu-driven software packages, that approach can be error-prone and time-consuming. Managing information from highly parameterized models with thousands of parameter

An important application of optimization codes such as MODFLOW-GWM is to maximize water supply from unconfined aquifers subject to constraints involving surface-water depletion and drawdown. In optimizing pumping for a fish hatchery in a bedrock aquifer system overlain by glacial deposits in eastern Wisconsin, various features of the GWM-2000 code were used to overcome difficulties associated with

Land cover/land use (LCU) classifications serve as important decision support products for researchers and land managers. The LCU classifications produced by the U.S. Geological Survey’s Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center (UMESC) include canopy height estimates that are assigned through manual aerial photography interpretation techniques. In an effort to improve upon these techniques, thi

Chloride concentrations in northern U.S. included in this study have increased substantially over time with average concentrations approximately doubling from 1990 to 2011, outpacing the rate of urbanization in the northern U.S. Historical data were examined for 30 monitoring sites on 19 streams that had chloride concentration and flow records of 18 to 49 years. Chloride concentrations in most stu

Bats are ecologically and economically important species because they consume insects, transport nutrients, and pollinate flowers.  Many species of bats, including those in the Myotis genus, are facing population decline and increased extinction risk.  Despite these conservation concerns, few models exist for providing insight into the population dynamics of bats in a spatially explicit context. 

Dissolved organic matter (DOM) influences the physical, chemical, and biological properties of aquatic ecosystems. We hypothesized that controls over spatial variation in DOM quantity and composition (measured with DOM optical properties) differ based on the source of DOM to aquatic ecosystems. DOM quantity and composition should be better predicted by land cover in aquatic habitats with allochtho