Conference Papers
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The USGS provides unbiased, objective, and impartial scientific information upon which our audiences, including resource managers, planners, and other entities, rely.
Browse almost 5,000 conference papers authored by our scientists and refine search by topic, location, year, and advanced search.
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Depredation of the California Ridgway’s rail: Causes and distribution
We studied the causes of mortality for the California Ridgway’s rail at multiple tidal marshes in the San Francisco Bay Estuary, California. We radio-marked 196 individual rails and examined the evidence from 152 recovered California Ridgway’s rail mortalities from our radio-marked sample and determined plausible cause of death from a wide array of evidence. We also included 10 additional Californ
Authors
Michael L. Casazza, Cory T. Overton, Thuy-Vy D. Bui, John Y. Takekawa, Angela M. Merritt, J.M. Hull
Detection and quantification of hydrocarbons in sediments
A new technology developed by the US Geological Survey now allows for fast, direct detection of hydrocarbon plumes both in rivers and drifting in the deep ocean. Recent experiments show that the method can also detect and quantify hydrocarbons buried in river sediments and estuaries. This approach uses a variant of induced polarization, a surface-sensitive physical property of certain polarizable
Authors
Jeff Wynn, Mike Williamson, Jeff Frank
Simulated effect of topography and soil properties on hydrologic response and landslide potential under variable rainfall conditions in the Oregon Coast Range, USA
No abstract available.
Authors
Benjamin B. Mirus, Joel B. Smith, Jonathan W. Godt, R.L. Baum, Jeffrey A. Coe
Vulnerability of shortgrass prairie bird assemblages to climate change
The habitats and resources needed to support grassland birds endemic to North American prairie ecosystems are seriously threatened by impending climate change. To assess the vulnerability of grassland birds to climate change, we consider various components of vulnerability, including sensitivity, exposure, and adaptive capacity (Glick et al. 2011). Sensitivity encompasses the innate characteristic
Authors
Susan K. Skagen, Victoria Dreitz, Reesa Y. Conrey, Amy Yackel, Arvind O. Panjabi
The Montaguto earth flow: nine years of observation and analysis
This paper summarizes the methods, results, and interpretation of analyses carried out between 2006 and 2015 at the Montaguto earth flow in southern Italy. We conducted a multi-temporal analysis of earth-flow activity to reconstruct the morphological and structural evolution of the flow. Data from field mapping were combined with a geometric reconstruction of the basal slip surface i
Authors
L. Guerriero, R Revellino, G. Grelle, N Diodato, F.M. Guadagno, Jeffrey A. Coe
The Elizabeth Lake paleoseismic site: Rupture pattern constraints for the past ~800 years for the Mojave section of the south-central San Andreas Fault
The southern San Andreas Fault in California has hosted two historic surface-rupturing earthquakes, the ~M7 1812 Wrightwood earthquake and the ~M7.9 1857 Fort Tejon earthquake (e.g., Sieh, 1978; Jacoby et al., 1988). Numerous paleoseismic studies have established chronologies of historic and prehistoric earthquakes at sites along the full length of the 1857 rupture (e.g., Sieh, 1978; Scharer et al
Authors
Sean Bemis, Katherine M. Scharer, James F. Dolan, Ed Rhodes
Changing levels of heavy metal accumulation in birds at Tumacacori National Historic Park along the Upper Santa Cruz River Watershed in southern Arizona
National Parks and other protected areas can be influenced by contamination from outside their boundaries. This is particularly true of smaller parks and those in riparian ecosystems, a habitat that in arid environments provides critical habitat for breeding, migratory, and wintering birds. Animals living in contaminated areas are susceptible to adverse health effects as a result of long-term expo
Authors
Charles van Riper, Michael B. Lester
Best practices in passive remote sensing VNIR hyperspectral system hardware calibrations
Hyperspectral imaging (HSI) is an exciting and rapidly expanding area of instruments and technology in passive remote sensing. Due to quickly changing applications, the instruments are evolving to suit new uses and there is a need for consistent definition, testing, characterization and calibration. This paper seeks to outline a broad prescription and recommendations for basic specification, testi
Authors
Joseph Jablonski, Christopher Durell, E. Terrence Slonecker, Kwok Wong, Blair Simon, Andrew Eichelberger, Jacob Osterberg
10,000 m under the sea: An overview of the HADES expedition to Kermadec Trench
The hadal zone of the world oceans (6000– 11,000 m) occupies <1% of the marine realm and is found almost exclusively in trenches but represents ~40% of the total ocean depth range. Jamison et al. (2010 & Jamison, 2015) have reviewed the current state of knowledge about the hydrology, physical characteristics, food supply, ecology and biodiversity of life in hadal trenches. This review concluded th
Authors
S. Mills, D. Leduc, J.C. Drazen, P. Yancey, A.J. Jamieson, M.R. Clark, A.A. Rowden, D.J. Mayor, S. Piertney, T. Heyl, D. Bartlett, Jill R. Bourque, W. Cho, Amanda W.J. Demopoulos, P. Fryer, M. Gerringer, E. Grammatopoulou, S. Herrera, M. Ichino, B. Lecroq, T.D. Linley, K. Meyer, C. Nunnally, H. Ruhl, G. Wallace, C. Young, T.M. Shank
SToRM: A Model for 2D environmental hydraulics
A two-dimensional (depth-averaged) finite volume Godunov-type shallow water model developed for flow over complex topography is presented. The model, SToRM, is based on an unstructured cell-centered finite volume
formulation and on nonlinear strong stability preserving Runge-Kutta time stepping schemes. The numerical discretization is founded on the classical and well established shallow water eq
Authors
Francisco J. M. Simões
Circumpolar biodiversity monitoring program (CBMP): Coastal expert workshop meeting report
The Coastal Expert Workshop, which took place in Ottawa, Canada from March 1 to 3, 2016, initiated the development of the Arctic Coastal Biodiversity Monitoring Plan (Coastal Plan). Meeting participants, including northern residents, representatives from industry, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), academia, and government regulators and agencies from across the circumpolar Arctic, discussed c
Authors
Rebecca Anderson, Donald McLennan, Laura Thomson, Susse Wegeberg, Maria Pettersvik Arvnes, Liudmila Sergienko, Carolina Behe, Pitseolak Moss-Davies, Stacey Fritz, Thomas K. Christensen, Courtney Price
Are the Columbia River Basalts, Columbia Plateau, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington, USA, a viable geothermal target? A preliminary analysis
The successful development of a geothermal electric power generation facility relies on (1) the identification of sufficiently high temperatures at an economically viable depth and (2) the existence of or potential to create and maintain a permeable zone (permeability >10-14 m2) of sufficient size to allow efficient long-term extraction of heat from the reservoir host rock. If both occur at depth
Authors
Erick R. Burns, Colin F. Williams, Terry Tolan, Joern Ole Kaven