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Filter Total Items: 171126

Optimizing surveys of fall-staging geese using aerial imagery and automated counting

Ocular aerial surveys allow efficient coverage of large areas and can be used to monitor abundance and distribution of wild populations. However, uncertainty around resulting population estimates can be large due to difficulty in visually identifying and counting animals from aircraft, as well as logistical challenges in estimating detection probabilities. Photographic aerial surveys can mitigate
Authors
Emily L. Weiser, Paul L. Flint, Dennis K Marks, Brad S Shults, Heather M. Wilson, Sarah J. Thompson, Julian B. Fischer

Estimates of k0 and effects on ground motions in the San Francisco Bay area

Ground‐motion studies are a key component of seismic hazard analyses and often rely on information of the source, path, and site. Extensive research has been done on each of these parameters; however, site‐specific studies are of particular interest to seismic hazard studies, especially in the field of earthquake engineering, as near‐site conditions can have a significant impact on the resulting g
Authors
Tara Nye, Valerie J. Sahakian, Elias King, Annemarie S. Baltay, Alexis Klimasewski

A regionally varying habitat model to inform management for greater sage-grouse persistence across their range

Identifying habitat needs for species with large distributions is challenging because species-habitat associations may vary across scales and regions (spatial nonstationarity). Furthermore, management efforts often cross jurisdictional boundaries, complicating the development of cohesive conservation strategies among management entities. The greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) is a rap
Authors
Gregory T. Wann, Nathan D. Van Schmidt, Jessica E. Shyvers, Bryan C. Tarbox, Megan M. McLachlan, Michael O'Donnell, Anthony J Titolo, Peter S. Coates, David R. Edmunds, Julie A. Heinrichs, Adrian P. Monroe, Cameron L. Aldridge

Water-quality trends in the Delaware River Basin calculated using multisource data and two methods for trend periods ending in 2018

Many organizations in the Delaware River Basin (DRB) monitor surface-water quality for regulatory, scientific, and decision-making purposes. In support of these purposes, over 260,000 water-quality records provided by 8 different organizations were compiled, screened, and used to generate water-quality trends in the DRB. These trends, for periods of record that end in 2018, were generated for 124
Authors
Megan E. Shoda, Jennifer C. Murphy

The Seamless Integrated Geologic Mapping (SIGMa) extension to the Geologic Map Schema (GeMS)

Geologic maps are the fundamental building blocks of surface and subsurface three-dimensional geologic framework models of the Earth’s crust. However, as the production and availability of geologic map databases continues to increase, inconsistent data models and the lack of synthesized, national geologic map data at scales appropriate for informed decision making negatively affect the functional
Authors
Kenzie J. Turner, Jeremiah B. Workman, Joseph Colgan, Amy K. Gilmer, Margaret E. Berry, Samuel Johnstone, Kathleen F. Warrell, Marieke Dechesne, D. Paco VanSistine, Ren A. Thompson, Adam M. Hudson, Kristine L. Zellman, Donald S. Sweetkind, Chester A. Ruleman

Flood-inundation maps for Schoharie Creek in North Blenheim, New York

Digital flood-inundation maps for a 2.4-mile reach of the Schoharie Creek in North Blenheim, New York, were created by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in cooperation with the New York Power Authority. The flood-inundation maps, which can be accessed through the USGS Flood Inundation Mapping Science website at https://fim.wim.usgs.gov/fim/, depict estimates of the areal extent and depth of floodi
Authors
Elizabeth A. Nystrom

Harnessing island–ocean connections to maximize marine benefits of island conservation

Islands support unique plants, animals, and human societies found nowhere else on the Earth. Local and global stressors threaten the persistence of island ecosystems, with invasive species being among the most damaging, yet solvable, stressors. While the threat of invasive terrestrial mammals on island flora and fauna is well recognized, recent studies have begun to illustrate their extended and d
Authors
Stuart A. Sandin, Penny A. Becker, Ceiba Becker, Kate Brown, Natalia G. Erazo, Cielo Figuerola, Robert N. Fisher, Alan M. Friedlander, Tadashi Fukami, Nicholas A. J. Graham, Daniel S. Gruner, Nick D. Holmes, Wieteke A. Holthuijzen, Holly P. Jones, Mariela Rios, Araceli Samaniego, Wes Sechrest, Brice X. Semmens, Hazel E. Thornton, Rebecca Vega Thurber, Christy Wails, Coral A. Wolf, Brian J. Zgliczynski

A channel sampling strategy for measurement of mineral modal and chemical composition of drill cores: Application to lower oceanic crustal rocks from IODP Expedition 345 to the Hess Deep rift

We report a new sampling strategy for collecting representative samples of drill core. By splitting the core with a diamond saw into working and archive halves, the saw cuttings constitute a “channel” sample, the best subsample from which to obtain an average mineralogical and geochemical composition of a core. We apply this procedure to sampling core of the lower oceanic crust in the Hess Deep ob
Authors
Robert P. Wintsch, Romain Meyer, David Bish, Ryan Thomas Deasy, Toshio Nozaka, Carley Johnson

Precaldera mafic magmatism at Long Valley, California: Magma-tectonic siting and incubation of the Great Rhyolite System

The iconic volcanic center at Long Valley has released ∼820 km3 of rhyolite in at least 110 eruptions. From 2.2 Ma until 0.23 Ma, products were exclusively rhyolitic, and ∼ 700 km3 were high-silica rhyolite severely depleted in Sr, Ba, and Eu. The rhyolitic interval was preceded by an interval from 3.9 to 2.6 Ma with numerous basalt-andesite-dacite eruptions accompanied by no rhyolite at all. We h
Authors
Edward Hildreth, Judith E. Fierstein, Andrew T. Calvert

Magma storage and transport timescales for the 1959 Kīlauea Iki eruption and implications for diffusion chronometry studies using time-series samples versus tephra deposits

Complex crystal cargo in basaltic eruptions has the potential to yield diverse insights on pre- and syn-eruptive timescales of magma storage and transport. Research on eruption products from the 1959 eruption from Kīlauea Iki Crater at Kīlauea volcano (Hawai‘i) demonstrates that time-series samples collected during an eruption can yield a wealth of information not accessible by studying the fall d
Authors
Kendra J. Lynn, Rosalind L. Helz

Evaluating the sensitivity of multi-dimensional model predictions of salmon habitat to the source of remotely sensed river bathymetry

Multi-dimensional numerical models are fundamental tools for investigating biophysical processes in aquatic ecosystems. Remote sensing techniques increase the feasibility of applying such models at riverscape scales, but tests of model performance on large rivers have been limited. We evaluated the potential to develop two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) hydrodynamic models for a 1.6-k
Authors
Lee R. Harrison, Carl J. Legleiter, Vamsi K Sridharana, Peter Dudley, Miles E. Daniels

Environmental monitoring for invasive fungal pathogens of ʽŌhiʽa (Metrosideros polymorpha) on the Island of Hawaiʽi

The invasive rust Austropuccina psidii was detected in the Hawaiian Islands in 2005 and has become widely established throughout the archipelago in both native and introduced species of Myrtaceae. Initial predictions about the impacts of the fungus on native ʽōhiʽa lehua (Metrosideros polymorpha), a keystone native tree, have not materialized, but there is ongoing concern that introductions of new
Authors
Carter T. Atkinson, Kylle Roy