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Book Chapters

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

Lahars at Cotopaxi and Tungurahua Volcanoes, Ecuador: Highlights from stratigraphy and observational records and related downstream hazards

Lahars are volcanic debris flows that are dubbed primary when triggered by eruptive activity or secondary when triggered by other factors such as heavy rainfall after eruptive activity has waned. Variation in time and space of the proportion of sediment to water within a lahar dictates lahar flow phase and the resultant sedimentary character of deposits. Characteristics of source material and of d
Authors
Patricia A Mothes, James W. Vallance

Lake formation, characteristics and evolution in retroarc deposystems: A synthesis of data from the modern Andean orogen and its associated basins

Lake deposystems are commonly associated with retroarc mountain belts in the geological record. These deposystems are poorly characterized in modern retroarcs, placing limits on our ability to interpret environmental signals from ancient deposits. To address this problem, we have synthesized our existing knowledge about the distribution, morphometrics, and sedimentary geochemical characteristics o
Authors
Andrew S. Cohen, Michael M. McGlue, Geoffrey S. Ellis, Hiran Zani, Peter W. Swarzenski, Mario L. Assine, Aguinaldo Silva

Map projections and reference systems

No abstract available.
Authors
Miljenko Lapaine, E. Lynn Usery

Ocean minerals

Nearly 71 percent of the Earth is covered by ocean, yet during the entire history of societies, the mineral resources essential for nation building have been acquired solely from the continents. Deep-ocean minerals were discovered over a century ago during the Challenger expedition of 1873—1876, but only relatively recently did programs develop to determine their origin, distribution, and resource
Authors
James R. Hein, Kira L. Mizell

Onset of a basaltic explosive eruption from Kīlauea’s summit in 2008

The onset of a basaltic eruption at the summit of Kīlauea volcano in 2008 is recorded in the products generated during the first three weeks of the eruption and suggests an evolution of both the physical properties of the magma and also lava lake levels and vent wall stability. Ash componentry and the microtextures of the early erupted lapilli products reveal that the magma was largely outgassed,
Authors
Rebecca J. Carey, Lauren Swavely, Don Swanson, Bruce F. Houghton, Tim R. Orr, Tamar Elias, Andrew Sutton

Optimization and resilience in natural resources management

We consider the putative tradeoff between optimization and resilience in the management of natural resources, using a framework that incorporates different sources of uncertainty that are common in natural resources management. We address one-time decisions, and then expand the decision context to the more complex problem of iterative decision making. For both cases we focus on two key sources of
Authors
Byron K. Williams, Fred A. Johnson

Pollen and spores of terrestrial plants

Pollen and spores are valuable tools in reconstructing past sea level and climate because of their ubiquity, abundance, and durability as well as their reciprocity with source vegetation to environmental change (Cronin, 1999; Traverse, 2007; Willard and Bernhardt, 2011). Pollan is found in many sedimentary environments, from freshwater to saltwater, terrestrial to marine. It can be abundant in a m
Authors
Christopher E. Bernhardt, Debra A. Willard

Remote Sensing of Actual Evapotranspiration from Cropland: Chapter 3

No abstract available.
Authors
Trent Biggs, George P. Petropoulos, Naga Manohar Velpuri, Michael Marshall, Edward P. Glenn, Pamela L. Nagler, Alex Messina

Reticulite‐producing fountains from ring fractures in Kīlauea Caldera ca. 1500 CE

A widely dispersed reticulite bed occurs close to the base of the Keanakākoʻi Tephra at Kīlauea Volcano. It can be divided into six subunits in the northern sector of the volcano; the reticulite also occurs in the southern sector, but outcrops are sparse owing to penecontemporaneous erosion and burial. Multilobate isopachs for each subunit and the total deposit suggest that multiple fountaining ve
Authors
Michael May, Rebecca J. Carey, Don Swanson, Bruce F. Houghton

Species conservation profile of the smallmouth bass micropterus dolomieu

No abstract available
Authors
Shannon K. Brewer

Study 8: Prevalence and load of Nanophyetus salmincola infection in outmigrating steelhead trout from five Puget Sound rivers

Nanophyetus salmincola is a parasitic trematode, or flatworm, that infects salmonid fishes in the Pacific Northwest, including Washington, Oregon, and portions of California. The adult worm lives in the intestine of fish-eating birds and mammals. Eggs shed into the water hatch into miracidia which penetrate the first intermediate host, one of two species of snail Juga plicifera or J. silicula. Ase
Authors
M.F. Chen, B.A. Stewart, Kevin Senkvik, Paul Hershberger