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
Introduction: The Lesser Prairie-Chicken
No abstract available.
Authors
Clint W. Boal, David A. Haukos
Lesser Prairie-Chickens of the sand sagebrush prairie
No abstract available.
Authors
David A. Haukos, Aron A. Flanders, Christian A. Hagen, James C. Pitman
Conservation of avian species
Health of humans, animals, plants, and ecosystems are intertwined. Disturbance tips the balance in favor of weedy species, vectors, and disease agents. Biodiversity is important to prevent imbalance in nature. However, more scholarship is needed, and there is still much more to study, understand, and manage than we currently know.
Authors
Glenn H. Olsen, Lorenzo Crosta, Brett D. Gartrell, Philip M. Marsh, Cynthia E. Stringfield
Mineral deposits and metallogeny of Alaska
Alaska, the largest State within the United States, and mainly located north of latitude 60°, is an important part of the Circum-Arctic region. Alaska is a richly endowed region with a long and complex geologic history. The mining history is short by world standards but nevertheless there are a number of world-class deposits in Alaska, of which Red Dog and Pebble are among the largest of their res
Authors
Richard J. Goldfarb, Corey J. Meighan, Lawrence D. Meinert, Frederic H. Wilson
Research on Golden-winged Warblers: Recent progress and current needs
Considerable advances have been made in knowledge about Golden-winged Warblers (Vermivora chrysoptera) in the past decade. Recent employment of molecular analysis, stable-isotope analysis, telemetry-based monitoring of survival and behavior, and spatially explicit modeling techniques have added to, and revised, an already broad base of published knowledge. Here, we synthesize findings primarily fr
Authors
Henry M. Streby, Roland W. Rohrbaugh, David A. Buehler, David E. Andersen, Rachel Vallender, David I. King, Tom Will
Planning and setting objectives in field studies: Chapter 2
This chapter enumerates the steps required in designing and planning field studies on the ecology and conservation of reptiles, as these involve a high level of uncertainty and risk. To this end, the chapter differentiates between goals (descriptions of what one intends to accomplish) and objectives (the measurable steps required to achieve the established goals). Thus, meeting a specific goal m
Authors
Robert N. Fisher
The Pilot Valley shoreline: An early record of Lake Bonneville dynamics
The Pilot Valley shoreline is named for distinctive gravel beaches on the eastern, northern, and western sides of Pilot Valley playa, Utah. The shoreline has been identified across the Bonneville basin where it is characterized by one to three beach crests between ~ 1305 and 1309 m elevation, all overlain by deep-water marl of Lake Bonneville. It thus represents the lowest and earliest recognized
Authors
David M. Miller, Geoffrey Phelps
Preserving reptiles for research
What are voucher specimens and why do we collect them? Voucher specimens are animals and/or their parts that are deposited in a research museum to document the occurrence of a taxon at a specific location in space and time (Pleijel et al., 2008; Reynolds and McDiarmid, 2012). For field biologists, vouchers are the repeatable element of a field study as they allow other biologists, now and in the f
Authors
Steve W. Gotte, Jeremy F. Jacobs, George R. Zug
Acid mine drainage
Acid mine drainage (AMD) consists of metal-laden solutions produced by the oxidative dissolution of iron sulfide minerals exposed to air, moisture, and acidophilic microbes during the mining of coal and metal deposits. The pH of AMD is usually in the range of 2–6, but mine-impacted waters at circumneutral pH (5–8) are also common. Mine drainage usually contains elevated concentrations of sulfate,
Authors
Jerry M. Bigham, Charles A. Cravotta
Earthquake geology and paleoseismology of major strands of the San Andreas fault system
The San Andreas fault system in California is one of the best-studied faults in the world, both in terms of the long-term geologic history and paleoseismic study of past surface ruptures. In this paper, we focus on the Quaternary to historic data that have been collected from the major strands of the San Andreas fault system, both on the San Andreas Fault itself, and the major subparallel strands
Authors
Thomas Rockwell, Katherine M. Scharer, Timothy E. Dawson
Energy development
Large areas of the desert southwest are currently developed or being evaluated for construction of utility-scale renewable energy projects. These projects include numerous solar and wind energy facilities some of which will be massive. Unfortunately, peer-reviewed scientific publications are not yet available to evaluate the potential effects of solar-based utility-scale renewable energy developme
Authors
Jeffrey E. Lovich