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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: 41868

Evaluating density-weighted connectivity of black bears (Ursus americanus) in Glacier National Park with spatial capture–recapture models

BackgroundImproved understanding of wildlife population connectivity among protected area networks can support effective planning for the persistence of wildlife populations in the face of land use and climate change. Common approaches to estimating connectivity often rely on small samples of individuals without considering the spatial structure of populations, leading to limited understanding of
Authors
Sarah L Carroll, Greta M Schmidt, John S. Waller, Tabitha Graves

Sicklefin Chub (Macrhybopsis meeki) and Sturgeon Chub (M. gelida) temporal and spatial patterns from extant population monitoring and habitat data spanning 23 Years

Sicklefin (Macrhybopsis meeki) and sturgeon chub (M. gelida) historically occurred throughout the Missouri River (MR), in some tributaries, and Mississippi River downstream of the MR. They have been species of U.S. state-level conservation concern and U.S. Endangered Species Act listing candidates since the 1990s. We applied analytical approaches from occupancy modeling to correlation to monitorin
Authors
Mark L. Wildhaber, Benjamin M West, Kendell Ray Bennett, Jack Howard May, Janice L. Albers, Nicholas S. Green

Resurvey of cross sections on the Yampa and Little Snake Rivers in Lily and Deerlodge Parks, Colorado

Resurveys of seven geomorphologic cross sections located in the Lily Park and Deerlodge Park, Colorado, reaches of the Yampa and Little Snake Rivers were conducted in October 2017. These cross sections extend from Lily Park, at the confluence of the two rivers, to Deerlodge Park within Dinosaur National Monument. Four cross sections were first surveyed in 1983 and then resurveyed in 1997. The rema
Authors
Ronald E. Griffiths, David J. Topping, Christina Leonard, Joel A. Unema

Evaluating spatial coverage of the greater sage-grouse umbrella to conserve sagebrush-dependent species biodiversity within the Wyoming basins

Biodiversity is threatened due to land-use change, overexploitation, pollution, and anthropogenic climate change, altering ecosystem functioning around the globe. Protecting areas rich in biodiversity is often difficult without fully understanding and mapping species’ ecological niche requirements. As a result, the umbrella species concept is often applied, whereby conservation of a surrogate spec
Authors
Cameron L. Aldridge, D. Joanne Saher, Julie A. Heinrichs, Adrian P. Monroe, Matthias Leu, Steve E. Hanser

Recent increases in annual, seasonal, and extreme methane fluxes driven by changes in climate and vegetation in boreal and temperate wetland ecosystems

Climate warming is expected to increase global methane (CH4) emissions from wetland ecosystems. Although in situ eddy covariance (EC) measurements at ecosystem scales can potentially detect CH4 flux changes, most EC systems have only a few years of data collected, so temporal trends in CH4 remain uncertain. Here, we use established drivers to hindcast changes in CH4 fluxes (FCH4) since the early 1
Authors
Sarah Feron, Avni Malhotra, Sheel Bansal, Etienne Fluet-Chouinard, Gavin McNicol, Sarah Knox, Kyle Delwiche, Raul Cordero, Zutao Ouyang, Zhen Zhang, Benjamin Poulter, Robert B. Jackson

Modeling the response of an endangered rabbit population to RHDV2 and vaccination

Rabbit hemorrhagic disease virus 2 (RHDV2), recently detected in the western United States, has the potential to cause mass mortality events in wild rabbit and hare populations. Currently, few management strategies exist other than vaccination. We developed a spatially explicit model of RHDV2 for a population of riparian brush rabbits (Sylvilagus bachmani riparius), a subspecies of brush rabbit cl
Authors
Robin Russell, Robert J. Dusek, Stephanie Prevost, Deana L. Clifford, Megan Moriarty, Fumika Takahashi

Mixture effects of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances on embryonic and larval Sheepshead Minnows (Cyprinodon variegatus)

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are ubiquitous and persistent environmental contaminants originating from many everyday products. Perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) are two PFAS that are commonly found at high concentrations in aquatic environments. Both chemicals have previously been shown to be toxic to fish, as well as having complex and largely un
Authors
Philip Tanabe, Peter B. Key, Katy W. Chung, Emily C. Pisarski, Jessica L. Reiner, Rodowa. Alix E., Jason Tyler Magnuson, Marie E. DeLorenzo

Scattered tree death contributes to substantial forest loss in California

In recent years, large-scale tree mortality events linked to global change have occurred around the world. Current forest monitoring methods are crucial for identifying mortality hotspots, but systematic assessments of isolated or scattered dead trees over large areas are needed to reduce uncertainty on the actual extent of tree mortality. Here, we mapped individual dead trees in California using
Authors
Yang Cheng, Stefan Oehmcke, Martin Brandt, Lisa Micaela Rosenthal, Adrian Das, Anton Vrieling, Sassan Saatchi, Fabien Wagner, Maurice Mugabowindekwe, Wim Verbruggen, Claus Beier, Stephanie Horion

Facilitating comparable research in seedling functional ecology

Ecologists have worked to ascribe function to the variation found in plant populations, communities and ecosystems across environments for at least the past century. The vast body of research in functional ecology has drastically improved understanding of how individuals respond to their environment, communities are assembled and ecosystems function. However, with limited exceptions, few studies h
Authors
Daniel E. Winkler, Magda Garbowski, Kevin Kožić, Emma Ladouceur, Julie Larson, Sarah Martin, Christoph Rosche, Christiane Roscher, Mandy L. Slate, Lotte Korell

Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) culture manual

The primary objective of the Atlantic Salmon Research Program established at the U.S. Geological Survey Tunison Laboratory of Aquatic Science as mandated by the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative is to restore Atlantic salmon (Linnaeus, 1758; Salmo salar) into Lake Ontario. This objective focuses on evaluating the survival of stocked Atlantic salmon in current Lake Ontario conditions to create a g

Authors
Marc A. Chalupnicki, Rich Chiavelli, James E. McKenna

Cisco (Coregonus artedi) and bloater (Coregonus hoyi) culture manual

The primary objective of the Coregonine Research Program established at the U.S. Geological Survey, Great Lakes Science Center, Tunison Laboratory of Aquatic Science as mandated by the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative is to restore native coregonines, specifically Coregonus artedi (Lesueur, 1818; ciscoes) and Coregonus hoyi (Milner, 1874; bloaters) into Lake Ontario. This objective focuses on pr

Authors
Marc A. Chalupnicki, Gregg E. Mackey, James E. McKenna

Intrinsic and extrinsic regulation of water clarity in a large, floodplain-river ecosystem

Ecosystem processes in rivers are thought to be controlled more by extrinsic than intrinsic factors, that is, the result of processes that occur upstream or within their watersheds. However, large floodplain rivers have a diverse assemblage of aquatic areas spanning gradients of connectivity with the main channel and internal controls may at times regulate long-term dynamics. When and where intern
Authors
Alicia Carhart, Deanne C. Drake, James R. Fischer, Jeffrey N. Houser, Kathi Jo Jankowski, John E. Kalas, Eric M. Lund