Publications

Executive SummaryThe U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) developed and released a survey to assess the terrestrial analog needs of the planetary science community. The goal was to assess the current state of terrestrial analog studies and determine community needs related to the use of field sites for training and research, data dissemination and archiving, and sample collections.The survey was designed

Effective waterfowl management relies on the collection of relevant demographic data to inform land management decisions; however, some types of data are difficult to obtain. For waterfowl, brood surveys are difficult to conduct because wetland habitats often obscure ducklings from being visually assessed. Here, we used Unoccupied Aerial Systems (UAS) to assess what wetland habitat characteristics

Flooding rice (Oryza sativa) agricultural fields during winter to facilitate rice straw decomposition has mitigated the loss of some of the natural wetlands in California’s Central Valley. We conducted bird surveys in 253 rice checks (2,158 ha) within 177 rice fields in the Sacramento Valley during the fall and winter of 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 to evaluate factors influencing bird use of winter-fl

Quaternary ammonium compounds (QAC) are high production chemicals used in many commercial and household disinfection products. During the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic, QACs were included on lists of COVID-19 disinfectants. Increased QAC use could lead to higher levels of QACs in wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) effluents, which could subsequently be released into the environment. To evaluate QA

Pesticide formulations containing the active ingredient antimycin–a (ANT–A) have been used by fisheries and aquaculture managers for several decades to remove nuisance fish species. Analytical methods for measuring ANT–A during pesticide treatments have been done using high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) paired with multiple detection methods (for example, electrochemical, ultraviolet, f

The Decompartmentalization Physical Model (DPM) was an experimental facility in the central Everglades operated between 2010 and 2022 to release high flows through a levee-enclosed area of degraded ridge and slough wetland that had been isolated from flow for sixty years. The purpose of DPM experimental program was to make measurements before, during, and after seasonal high-flow releases that cou

This paper assesses trending AI foundation models, especially emerging computer vision foundation models and their performance in natural landscape feature segmentation. While the term foundation model has quickly garnered interest from the geospatial domain, its definition remains vague. Hence, this paper will first introduce AI foundation models and their defining characteristics. Built upon the

Rare bedrock exposures of the eastern Denali fault zone in southwestern Yukon allow for the measurement, sampling, and analyses of brittle regime fault slip data and deformation mechanisms to explore relations to far field, oblique plate motions. Host rock lithologies and associated slip surfaces show episodic damage zone‐related deformation and calcite ± hematite ± chlorite related hydrothermal f

Layered intrusions are plutonic bodies of cumulates that form by the crystallization of mantle-derived melts. These intrusions are characterized by igneous layering distinguishable by shifts in mineralogy, texture, or composition. Layered intrusions have been fundamental to our understanding of igneous petrology; however, it is their status as important repositories of critical metals – such as pl

As part of U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS) efforts to identify and assess geothermal energy resources of the US, a three-dimensional (3D) geologic and thermal model has been constructed for the Williston Basin, USA. The geologic model consists of all sedimentary units above the Proterozoic and Archean crystalline rock (called basement herein), with a total sedimentary thickness of up to 5 km near

We investigate a shallow lake basin for evidence of a large historic intraplate earthquake in western North America. Henrys Lake, Idaho is an atypical candidate for a lacustrine paleoseismic study given its shallow depth (~7 m) and low relief (≤2° slopes). Here, we test the earthquake-recording capacity of this basin type by showing sedimentological evidence of the 1959 M7.3 Hebgen Lake earthquake

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Water Quality Network for surface water (NWQN-SW) was established in 2013 to develop long-term, comparable assessments of surface-water quality in support of national, regional, state, and local needs related to water-quality management and policy. Waterquality samples are collected at each site and measured for a variety of parameters. In 2023, the NWQN-