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: 41763
Climate change hotspots and implications for the global subsea telecommunications network
A global network of subsea telecommunications cables underpins our daily lives, enabling >95% of global digital data transfer, $trillions/day in financial trading, and providing critical communications links, particularly to remote, low-income countries. Despite their importance, subsea cables and their landing stations are vulnerable to damage by natural hazards, including storm surges, waves, cy
Authors
M.A. Clare, I.A. Yeo, L. Bricheno, Y Askenov, J. Browning, I.D. Haigh, T. Wahl, J. A. Hunter, C. Sams, Jason Chaytor, B.J. Bett, L. Carter
Plant community predictions support the potential for big sagebrush range expansion adjacent to the leading edge
Big sagebrush ecosystems are widespread across drylands of western North America and provide numerous services, but the abundance of these ecosystems has declined substantially and the future of these ecosystems is uncertain. As a result, characterizing potential areas for expansion of these ecosystems is important. Species distribution models of the big sagebrush suggest areas of increasing clima
Authors
T. Martyn, K. Palmquist, John B. Bradford, Daniel Rodolphe Schlaepfer, W.K. Lauenroth
Addressing a potential weakness in indices of predation, herbivory, and parasitism
Quantification of predation, herbivory, and parasitism is critical to understanding the dynamics and trophic interactions of populations in an ecosystem. Such quantification can be challenging if the availability or consumption of the taxa are difficult to assess. Sometimes the consumption of a single prey, forage, or host is used as an overall index of the predation, herbivory, or parasitism for
Authors
Jean V. Adams
Drivers of survival of translocated tortoises
Translocation of animals, especially for threatened and endangered species, is a currently popular but very challenging activity. We translocated 158 adult Agassiz's desert tortoises (Gopherus agassizii), a threatened species, from the National Training Center, Fort Irwin, in the central Mojave Desert in California, USA, to 4 plots as part of a long-distance, hard-release, mitigation-driven transl
Authors
Jeremy S Mack, Kristin H. Berry
A field test of R package GPSeqClus: For establishing animal location clusters
The ability to track animals with Global Positioning System (GPS) collars opened an enormous potential for studying animal movements and behaviour in their natural environment. One such endeavour is to identify clusters of GPS locations as a way to estimate predator kill rate. Clapp et al. (2021) developed an R package (GPSeqClus) to assess a location dataset based on user-defined parameters to id
Authors
H. Dean Cluff, L. David Mech
Comparison of traditional and geometric morphometrics using Lake Huron ciscoes of the Coregonus artedi complex
Here we determine how traditional morphometrics (TM) compares with geometric morphometrics (GM) in discriminating among morphologies of four forms of ciscoes of the Coregonus artedi complex collected from Lake Huron. One of the forms comprised two groups of the same deepwater cisco separated by capture depth, whereas the other three forms were shallow-water ciscoes. Our three groups of shallow-wat
Authors
Benjamin E Martin, Brian O'Malley, Randy E Eshenroder, Yu-Chun Kao, Chris Olds, Timothy P. O'Brien, Chris L. Davis
Structured decision making to prioritize regional bird monitoring needs
Conservation planning for large ecosystems has multiple benefits but is often challenging to implement because of the multiple jurisdictions, species, and habitats involved. In addition, decision making at large spatial scales can be hampered because many approaches do not explicitly incorporate potentially competing values and concerns of stakeholders. After the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, estab
Authors
Auriel M. V. Fournier, R. Randy Wilson, Jeffrey S. Gleason, Evan M. Adams, Janell M. Brush, Robert J. Cooper, Stephen J. DeMaso, Melanie J. L. Driscoll, Peter C. Frederick, Patrick Jodice, Mary Ann Ottinger, David B. Reeves, Michael A. Seymour, Stephanie M. Sharuga, John M. Tirpak, William G. Vermillion, Theodore J. Zenzal, James E. Lyons, Mark S. Woodrey
Beyond presence mapping: Predicting fractional cover of non-native vegetation in Sentinel-2 imagery using an ensemble of MaxEnt models
Non-native species maps are important tools for understanding and managing biological invasions. We demonstrate a novel approach to extend presence modeling to map fractional cover (FC) of non-native yellow sweet clover Melilotus officinalis in the Northern Great Plains, USA. We used ensembles of MaxEnt models to map FC across landscapes from satellite imagery trained from regional aerial imagery
Authors
Todd M. Preston, Aaron N. Johnston, Kyle Gregory Ebenhoch, Robert H. Diehl
Green turtle movements in the Gulf of Mexico: Tracking reveals new migration corridor and habitat use suggestive of MPA expansion
Globally, Marine Protected Areas are an important tool in the conservation of large marine vertebrates. Recent studies have highlighted the use of protected areas by imperiled green turtles (Chelonia mydas) in the southern Gulf of Mexico. To identify and characterize inter-nesting, migratory, and foraging areas for green turtles that nest in the northern Gulf of Mexico, we deployed 14 satellite ta
Authors
Margaret Lamont, Allison Benscoter, Kristen Hart
Enhancements to population monitoring of Yellowstone grizzly bears
In the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, counts of female grizzly bears (Ursus arctos) with cubs-of-the-year (females with cubs) from systematic aerial surveys and opportunistic ground sightings are combined with demographic data to derive annual population estimates. We addressed 2 limitations to the monitoring approach. As part of a rule set, a conservative distance of >30 km currently is used as a
Authors
Frank T. van Manen, Michael Ebinger, Cecily M. Costello, Daniel D. Bjornlie, Justin Clapp, Daniel Thompson, Mark A. Haroldson, Kevin L. Frey, Curtis Hendricks, Jeremy M. Nicholson, Kerry A. Gunther, Katharine R. Wilmot, Hilary Cooley, Jennifer Fortin-Noreus, Pat Hnilicka, Daniel B. Tyers
Genetic diversity goals and targets have improved, but remain insufficient for clear implementation of the post-2020 global biodiversity framework
Genetic diversity among and within populations of all species is necessary for people and nature to survive and thrive in a changing world. Over the past three years, commitments for conserving genetic diversity have become more ambitious and specific under the Convention on Biological Diversity’s (CBD) draft post-2020 global biodiversity framework (GBF). This Perspective article comments on how g
Authors
Sean M. Hoban, Michael W. Bruford, Jessica M. da Silva, W. Chris Funk, Richard Frankham, Michael J. Gill, Catherine E. Grueber, Myriam Heuertz, Maggie Hunter, Francine Kershaw, Robert C. Lacy, Caroline Lees, Margarida Lopes-Fernandes, Anna J. MacDonald, Alicia Mastretta-Yanes, Philip J. K. McGowan, Mariah H. Meek, Joachim Mergeay, Katie L. Millette, Cinnamon S. Mittan-Moreau, Laetitia M. Navarro, David O'Brien, Rob Ogden, Gernot Segelbacher, Ivan Paz-Vinas, Cristiano Vernesi, Linda Laikre
Watershed- and reach-scale drivers of phosphorus retention and release by streambed sediment in a western Lake Erie watershed during summer
Reducing phosphorus (P) concentrations in aquatic ecosystems, is necessary to improve water quality and reduce the occurrence of harmful cyanobacterial algal blooms. Managing P reduction requires information on the role rivers play in P transport from land to downstream water bodies, but we have a poor understanding of when and where river systems are P sources or sinks. During the summers of 2019
Authors
Rebecca Kreiling, Patrik Mathis Perner, Kenna Jean Breckner, Tanja N. Williamson, Lynn A. Bartsch, James M. Hood, Nathan F. Manning, Laura T. Johnson