Book Chapters
Science Quality and Integrity
The USGS provides unbiased, objective, and impartial scientific information upon which our audiences, including resource managers, planners, and other entities, rely.
The USGS provides unbiased, objective, and impartial scientific information upon which our audiences, including resource managers, planners, and other entities, rely.
Browse more than 5,500 book chapters authored by our scientists over the past 100+ year history of the USGS and refine search by topic, location, year, and advanced search.
Filter Total Items: 6071
Data services in ocean science with a focus on the biology
Biological ocean science has a long history; it goes back millennia, whereas the related data services have emerged in the recent digital era of the past decades. To understand where we come from—and why data services are so important—we will start by taking you back to the rise in the study of marine biology—marine biodiversity—and its key players, before immersing ourselves in the data life cycl
Authors
Joana Beja, Leen Vandepitte, Abigail Benson, Anton Van de Putte, Dan Lear, Daphnis De Pooter, Gwenaëlle Moncoiffé, John Nicholls, Nina Wambiji, Patricia Miloslavich, Vasilis Gerovasileiou
Fire and forests in the 21st century: Managing resilience under changing climates and fire regimes in USA forests
Higher temperatures, lower snowpacks, drought, and extended dry periods have contributed to increased wildfire activity in recent decades. Climate change is expected to increase the frequency of large fires, the cumulative area burned, and fire suppression costs and risks in many areas of the USA. Fire regimes are likely to change due to interactions among climate, fire, and other stressors and di
Authors
James M. Vose, David L. Peterson, Christopher J. Fettig, Jessica E. Halofsky, J. Kevin Hiers, Robert E. Keane, Rachel A. Loehman, Michael C. Stambaugh
The Mount Hood fault zone, active faulting at the crest of the dynamic Cascade Range, north-central Oregon, USA
The Mount Hood fault zone is a N-trending, ~55-km-long zone of active faulting along the western margin of the Hood River graben in north-central Oregon. The Mount Hood fault zone occurs along the crest of the Cascade Range and consists of multiple active fault segments. It is presently unclear how much Hood River graben extension is actively accommodated on the fault zone, and how Cascade intra-a
Authors
Ian Madin, Ashley R. Streig, Scott E. K. Bennett
Arc versus river: The geology of the Columbia River Gorge
The Columbia River Gorge is the Columbia River’s long-held yet evolving passage through the volcanic arc of the Cascade Range. The globally unique setting of a continental-scale river bisecting an active volcanic arc at the leading edge of a major plate boundary creates a remarkable setting where dynamic volcanic and tectonic processes interact with diverse and energetic fluvial processes. This th
Authors
Jim E. O'Connor, Ray Wells, Scott E. K. Bennett, Charles M. Cannon, Lydia M. Staisch, James L Anderson, Anthony Francis Pivarunas, Gabriel Wells Gordon, Richard J. Blakely, Mark E. Stelten, Russell C. Evarts
Paleozoic and Mesozoic tectonic events west of the Waterbury Dome: Results of new mapping in the western Connecticut Highlands
This field trip highlights the results of recent U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) bedrock geologic mapping in four 7.5 min quadrangles in the western Connecticut highlands near Southbury, Connecticut, USA. The rocks are broadly within what Rodgers (1985) called the Hartland and Gneiss Dome belts of the Connecticut Valley Synclinorium (Rodgers, 1985; Fig. 1), the latter of which is now known as the Co
Authors
William C. Burton, William J. Devlin
Developing landslide chronologies using landslide-dammed lakes in the Oregon Coast Range
The Oregon Coast Range is a dynamic landscape that is continually shaped by shallow and deep-seated landslides that can have disastrous consequences to infrastructure and human lives. Searching for evidence of potentially coseismic mass wasting is incredibly difficult, particularly when historical observations are limited. Landslide-dammed lakes with submerged “ghost forests” in the Oregon Coast R
Authors
Logan Wetherell, William Struble, Sean Richard LaHusen
Hypogenic karst of the Great Basin
Discoveries in the 1980s greatly expanded speleologists’ understanding of the role that hypogenic groundwater flow can play in developing caves at depth. Ascending groundwater charged with carbon dioxide and, especially, hydrogen sulfide can readily dissolve carbonate bedrock just below and above the water table. Sulfuric acid speleogenesis, in which anoxic, rising, sulfidic groundwater mixes with
Authors
Louise D. Hose, Harvey R. DuChene, Daniel Jones, Gretchen M. Baker, Zoe Havlena, Donald S. Sweetkind, Doug Powell
Frequency distribution
Given a numerical dataset, a frequency distribution is a summary displaying fluctuations of an attribute within the range of values. In contrast to an analytical probability distribution, a frequency distribution always deals with empirically observed values (Everitt and Skondall 2010). In general, the larger the number of values, the more useful is the frequency distribution relative to listing a
Authors
Ricardo A. Olea
Impacts of climate changes and amplified natural disturbance on global ecosystems
Natural disturbances maintain biological diversity and landscape heterogeneity and initiate ecosystem renewal and reorganization. However, the severity, frequency, and extent of many disturbances have increased substantially in recent decades as the result of anthropogenic climate change. Disturbances can be discrete, short-duration events, such as wildfires or hurricanes, or can exert persistent,
Authors
Rachel A. Loehman, Megan Friggens, Rosemary L. Sherriff, Alisa R. Keyser, Karin L. Riley
Geologic framework of Mount Diablo, California
The basic stratigraphic and structural framework of Mount Diablo is described using a revised geologic map, gravity data, and aeromagnetic data. The mountain is made up of two distinct stratigraphic assemblages representing different depocenters that were juxtaposed by ~20 km of late Pliocene and Quaternary right-lateral offset on the Greenville-Diablo-Concord fault. Both assemblages are composed
Authors
Russell Graymer, Victoria Langenheim
The evolution of geospatial reasoning, analytics, and modeling
The field of geospatial analytics and modeling has a long history coinciding with the physical and cultural evolution of humans. This history is analyzed relative to the four scientific paradigms: (1) empirical analysis through description, (2) theoretical explorations using models and generalizations, (3) simulating complex phenomena and (4) data exploration. Correlations among developments in ge
Authors
Samantha Arundel, Wenwen Li
Random variable
A random variable is a function that assigns a value in a sample space to an element of an arbitrary set (James 1992; Pawlowsky-Glahn et al. 2015). It is a model for a random experiment: the arbitrary set is an abstraction of the experimental conditions, the values taken by the random variable are in the sample space, and the function itself models the assignment of outcomes, thus also describing
Authors
Ricardo A. Olea