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Influence of surface- and ground-water hydrology on riparian tree growth and mortality in the Limitrophe segment of the Colorado River
Branch sections and cores of cottonwood and willow trees were collected from two sites in the Limitrophe. Tree-ring analyses may reveal the relationships among tree growth, streamflow and groundwater.
Authors
Patrick B. Shafroth
Vegetation monitoring
Sonoran Institute, Pronatura Noroeste, and University of Arizona conducted vegetation monitoring in riparian restoration sites and control sites along the Colorado River corridor in Mexico during the fall (end of the growing season) of 2018. The overall goal of the vegetation monitoring program was to quantify impacts of restoration actions on the extent, composition, and structure of riparian hab
Authors
Karen Schlatter, Martha Gomez-Sapiens, Helen Salazar, Alejandra Calvo-Fonseca, Patrick B. Shafroth, Eduardo Gonzalez
Living with wildfire in Grand County, Colorado: 2021 data report
Wildfire affects hundreds of wildland-urban interface communities each year, and yet most communities lack data reflecting the conditions before an event. This study was conducted before the devastating 2020 East Troublesome Fire1, which spread across 193,812 acres and resulted in two lives lost and 366 homes and 214 other structures burned. The fire’s dramatic run threatened over 7,000 structures
Authors
Hannah Brenkert-Smith, Abby Elizabeth McConnell, Schelly K. Olson, Adam C. Gosey, James Meldrum, Patricia A. Champ, Jamie Gomez, Christopher M. Barth, Colleen Donovan, Carolyn Wagner, Julia Goolsby
Crowd-sourced SfM: Best practices for high resolution monitoring of coastal cliffs and bluffs
Structure from motion (SfM) photogrammetry is an increasingly common technique for measuring landscape change over time by deriving 3D point clouds and surface models from overlapping photographs. Traditional change detection approaches require photos that are geotagged with a differential GPS (DGPS) location, which requires expensive equipment that can limit the ability of communities and researc
Authors
Phillipe Alan Wernette, Ian M. Miller, Andrew C. Ritchie, Jonathan Warrick
Section 5: Remote sensing of vegetation in the riparian corridor of the Colorado River’s delta 2013-2018
This remote sensing section is based on Nagler et al. (in preparation for the journal Hydrological Processes) and is a summary of the USGS preliminary findings to date. This report documents the changes in green foliage density (greenness) as measured by satellite vegetation index (VI) data and corresponding evapotranspiration (ET) in the riparian corridor of the Colorado River delta associated wi
Authors
Pamela L. Nagler, Armando Barreto-Munoz, Christopher J. Jarchow, Kamel Didan
Editorial: Fire regimes in desert ecosystems: Drivers, impacts and changes
Although not commonly associated with fire, many desert ecosystems across the globe do occasionally burn, and there is evidence that fire incidences are increasing, leading to altered fire regimes in this biome. The increased prevalence of megafires (wildfires >10,000 ha in size and typically damaging) in most global biomes is linked to climate change, although those occurring in deserts have rece
Authors
Eddie J. B. van Etten, Matthew L. Brooks, Aaron C. Greenville, Glenda M. Wardel
Defining fine-scaled population structure among continuously distributed populations
Understanding wildlife population structure and connectivity can help managers identify conservation strategies, as structure can facilitate the study of population changes and habitat connectivity can provide information on dispersal and biodiversity. To facilitate the use of wildlife monitoring data for improved adaptive management, we developed a novel approach to define hierarchical tiers (mul
Authors
Michael O'Donnell, David R. Edmunds, Cameron L. Aldridge, Julie A. Heinrichs, Adrian P. Monroe, Peter S. Coates, Brian G. Prochazka, Steve E. Hanser, Lief A. Wiechman
Analysis of provisioning ecosystem services and perceptions of climate change for indigenous communities in the Western Himalayan Gurez Valley, Pakistan
Climate change is a significant threat to people living in mountainous regions. It is essential to understand how montane communities currently depend especially on the provisioning ecosystem services (ES) and the ways in which climate change will impact these services, so that people can develop relevant adaptation strategies. The ES in the Gurez Valley, in the Western Himalayas of Pakistan, prov
Authors
Uzma Saeed, Muhammad Arshad, Shakeel Hayat, Toni Lyn Morelli, Muhammad Ali Nawaz
Volcano, earthquake, and tsunami hazards of the Cascadia Subduction Zone
Subduction zones produce some of Earth’s most devastating geological events. Recent eruptions of Mount St. Helens and great earthquakes and tsunamis in Japan and Sumatra provide stark examples of the destructive power of subduction-related hazards. In the Cascadia subduction zone, large earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions have occurred in the past and geologic records imply that these ev
Authors
Elizabeth G. Westby, Andrew J Meigs, Chris Goldfinger
Rural turtles: Estimating the occupancy of Northwestern Pond Turtles and non-native red-eared sliders in agricultural habitats in California's Sacramento Valley and Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta
The Northwestern Pond Turtle (Actinemys marmorata; WPT) was once widespread throughout the Sacramento Valley and the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Much of its historical range has been converted into agricultural land, reducing and altering aquatic habitat and surrounding uplands. Red-eared Sliders (Trachemys scripta elegans; RES) have been introduced throughout much of the existing WPT rang
Authors
Jonathan P. Rose, Brian J. Halstead, Alexandria M. Fulton
Mississippian sedimentary facies patterns in east-central California and implications for development of the Permian last chance thrust
Mississippian sedimentary facies belts in east-central California, occurring primarily in the autochthon (lower plate) of the Last Chance Thrust, are consistently oriented in a northeast–southwest direction. The boundary of one belt is marked by the depositional limit of the Osagean to Meramecian Santa Rosa Hills Limestone; a second belt farther to the northwest is bordered by the erosional trunca
Authors
Calvin H. Stevens, Paul Stone