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.
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Beloniformes: Belonidae (Needlefishes) and Hemiramphidae (Halfbeaks)
The order Beloniformes (or Synentognathi) contains two suborders, six families, 37 genera, and about 235 species of atherinomorph fishes (Rosen & Parenti 1981; Collette et al. 1984; Collette 2004). Features common to these fishes include dorsal and anal fins on the rear half of the body, abdominal pelvic fins with six soft rays, no fin spines, lateral line running along the ventral edge of the bod
Authors
Bruce B. Collette, Stephen Walsh
A science business model for answering important questions
Perhaps the biggest question in science is how to do better science. Many ecologists, including this book’s editors and authors, have succeeded under the current science “business model” and, from our perspective, the status quo works well enough. But science business models are under increased scrutiny. For instance, since 2012, at least nine papers have critiqued government-sponsored biomedical
Authors
Kevin D. Lafferty
Quantitative paleoflood hydrology
This chapter reviews the paleohydrologic techniques and approaches used to reconstruct the magnitude and frequency of past floods using geological evidence. Quantitative paleoflood hydrology typically leads to two phases of analysis: (1) documentation and assessment of flood physical evidence (paleostage indicators), and (2) relating identified flood evidence to flood discharge, based on hydraulic
Authors
Gerardo Benito, Jim E. O'Connor
Global islands
A new map of global islands at a high spatial resolution (30 m) has been produced from a semi-automated interpretation of 2014 satellite imagery. The data are available in the public domain. The islands were classified by size into continental mainlands (5), big islands > 1 km2 (21,818), and small islands ≤ 1 km2 (318,868). The new high-resolution islands data are intended to support coastal ecosy
Authors
Madeline Thomas Martin, Roger Sayre, Keith Van Graafeiland, Osgur McDermott-Long, Lauren Weatherdon, David Will, Dena R. Spatz, Nicholas Holmes
Subaqueous mass movements in the context of observations of contemporary slope failure
The consequences of subaqueous landslides have been at the forefront of societal conscience more than ever in the last few years, with devastating and fatal events in the Indonesian Archipelago making global news. The new research presented in this volume demonstrates the breadth of ongoing investigation into subaqueous landslides, and shows that while events like the recent ones can be devastatin
Authors
J.J. Mountjoy, Aggeliki Georgiopoulou, Jason Chaytor, M.A. Clare, D. Gamboa, J. Moernaut
Decision analysis for managing public natural resources
Examples like the Grand Canyon story are becoming more common—agencies and stakeholders are increasingly using decision tools to help navigate complex decisions regarding natural resources. Several books and many papers have made the case for the use of decision analysis in natural resource management settings and have described the tools available (Conroy and Peterson 2013; Gregory et al. 2012; W
Authors
Michael C. Runge, Ellen A Bean
Late Quaternary slip rates on the Sierra Madre fault zone and paleoseismic evidence on the size and frequency of past ruptures
The Sierra Madre fault zone is a south-vergent, active reverse fault that accommodates shortening between basins on the northern margin of the Los Angeles region and the San Gabriel Mountains. The preservation of late Quaternary alluvial fill and fan surfaces in the hanging wall of the fault provides evidence of long-term uplift. Surface rupture from the 1971 Mw 6.6 San Fernando earthquake and evi
Authors
Reed J. Burgette, Katherine Scharer, Scott Lindvall
Decision implementation and the double-loop process in adaptive management of horseshoe crab harvest in Delaware Bay
No abstract available.
Authors
Conor P. McGowan, David Smith, James E. Lyons
Addressing disease risk to develop a health program for bighorn sheep in Montana
No abstract available.
Authors
Sarah N. Sells, Michael S. Mitchell, Justin A. Gude
An adaptive approach to vegetation management in native prairies of the northern Great Plains
No abstract available.
Authors
Clinton T. Moore, Jill J. Gannon, Terry L. Shaffer, Cami Dixon
Introduction to structuring decisions
Decision structuring, also known as decision framing, provides the foundation and roadmap for analyzing a decision. For decisions that warrant a systematic approach, structuring begins with identifying the problem for analysis, which sounds simple but can be deceptively difficult because decision problems are often ill-formed at the start. Many have worked on a problem, alone or with others, onl
Authors
David R. Smith