Publications
These publications showcase the significant science conducted in our Science Centers.
Filter Total Items: 16780
Efficient wetland surface water detection and monitoring via Landsat: Comparison with in situ data from the Everglades Depth Estimation Network
The U.S. Geological Survey is developing new Landsat science products. One, named Dynamic Surface Water Extent (DSWE), is focused on the representation of ground surface inundation as detected in cloud-/shadow-/snow-free pixels for scenes collected over the U.S. and its territories. Characterization of DSWE uncertainty to facilitate its appropriate use in science and resource management is a prima
Authors
John Jones
Decision analysis to support development of the Glen Canyon Dam long-term experimental and management plan
The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the Bureau of Reclamation, National Park Service, and Argonne National Laboratory, completed a decision analysis to use in the evaluation of alternatives in the Environmental Impact Statement concerning the long-term management of water releases from Glen Canyon Dam and associated management activities. Two primary decision analysis methods, multicri
Authors
Michael C. Runge, Kirk E. LaGory, Kendra Russell, Janet R. Balsom, R. Alan Butler, Lewis G. Coggins,, Katrina A. Grantz, John Hayse, Ihor Hlohowskyj, Josh Korman, James E. May, Daniel J. O'Rourke, Leslie A. Poch, James R. Prairie, Jack C. VanKuiken, Robert A. Van Lonkhuyzen, David R. Varyu, Bruce T. Verhaaren, Thomas D. Veselka, Nicholas T. Williams, Kelsey K. Wuthrich, Charles B. Yackulic, Robert P. Billerbeck, Glen W. Knowles
Karst of the Mid-Atlantic region in Maryland, West Virginia, and Virginia
The Mid-Atlantic region hosts some of the most mature karst landscapes in North America, developed in highly deformed rocks within the Piedmont and Valley and Ridge physiographic provinces. This guide describes a three-day excursion to examine karst development in various carbonate rocks by following Interstate 70 west from Baltimore across the eastern Piedmont, across the Frederick Valley, and in
Authors
Daniel H. Doctor, David J. Weary, David K. Brezinski, Randall C. Orndorff, Lawrence E. Spangler
Hydrologic and geochemical dynamics of vadose zone recharge in a mantled karst aquifer: Results of monitoring drip waters in Mystery Cave, Minnesota
Caves provide direct access to flows through the vadose zone that recharge karst aquifers. Although many recent studies have documented the highly dynamic processes associated with vadose zone flows in karst settings, few have been conducted in mantled karst settings, such as that of southeastern Minnesota. Here we present some results of a long-term program of cave drip monitoring conducted withi
Authors
Daniel H. Doctor, E. Calvin Alexander, Roy A. Jameson, Scott C. Alexander
A semi-automated tool for reducing the creation of false closed depressions from a filled LIDAR-derived digital elevation model
Closed depressions on the land surface can be identified by ‘filling’ a digital elevation model (DEM) and subtracting the filled model from the original DEM. However, automated methods suffer from artificial ‘dams’ where surface streams cross under bridges and through culverts. Removal of these false depressions from an elevation model is difficult due to the lack of bridge and culvert inventories
Authors
John Wall, Daniel H. Doctor, Silvia Terziotti
Flight feather molt in Yellow-headed Blackbirds (Xanthocephalus xanthocephalus) in North Dakota
Yellow-headed Blackbirds (Xanthocephalus xanthocephalus) in central North Dakota undergo prebasic molt or prejuvenile molt during late summer. Nestling Yellow-headed Blackbirds initiate a complete prejuvenile molt, grow their primary and secondary regimes in about 40 days, completing molt after they leave the nest by the first week in August. Remiges are not replaced during the subsequent preforma
Authors
Daniel J. Twedt, George M. Linz
Bees: An up-close look at pollinators around the world
While we eat, work, and sleep, bees are busy around the world. More than 20,000 species are in constant motion! They pollinate plants of all types and keep our natural world intact. In Bees, you'll find a new way to appreciate these tiny wonders. Sam Droege and Laurence Packer present more than 100 of the most eye-catching bees from around the world as you've never seen them: up-close and with stu
Authors
Sam Droege, Laurence Packer
Geomorphology, active tectonics, and landscape evolution in the Mid-Atlantic region
In 2014, the geomorphology community marked the 125th birthday of one of its most influential papers, “The Rivers and Valleys of Pennsylvania” by William Morris Davis. Inspired by Davis’s work, the Appalachian landscape rapidly became fertile ground for the development and testing of several grand landscape evolution paradigms, culminating with John Hack’s dynamic equilibrium in 1960. As part of t
Authors
Frank J. Pazzaglia, Mark W. Carter, Claudio Berti, Ronald C. Counts, Gregory S. Hancock, David Harbor, Richard W. Harrison, Matthew J. Heller, Shannon A. Mahan, Helen Malenda, Ryan McKeon, Michelle S. Nelson, Phillip Prince, Tammy M. Rittenour, James Spotilla, G. Richard Whittecar
Trade-offs in osmoregulation and parallel shifts in molecular function follow ecological transitions to freshwater in the Alewife
Adaptation to freshwater may be expected to reduce performance in seawater because these environments represent opposing selective regimes. We tested for such a trade-off in populations of the Alewife (Alosa pseudoharengus). Alewives are ancestrally anadromous, and multiple populations have been independently restricted to freshwater (landlocked). We conducted salinity challenge experiments, where
Authors
Jonathan P. Velotta, Stephen D. McCormick, Eric T. Schultz
Climate change in the Northeast and Midwest United States
The climate is changing rapidly in ways that have already impacted wildlife and their habitats. Here, we present a summary of the observed past and projected future climate changes in the region that are relevant to wildlife and ecosystems, as well as what we know and don’t know in order to raise managers’ confidence in their planning. A number of large-scale regional changes affect the overall te
Authors
Alexander Bryan, Ambarish Karmalkar, Ethan Coffel, Liang Ning, Radley M. Horton, Eleonora Demaria, Fanxing Fan, Raymond S. Bradley, Richard Palmer
Ordovician of Germany Valley, West Virginia
This trip will consist of stops at five locations (Fig. 1) that provide a detailed look at the strata in a major part of the Ordovician section in Germany Valley,
Pendleton County, West Virginia. At these stops, we will highlight a varied sequence of
carbonate and siliciclastic strata that accumulated during the Middle to Late Ordovician, and
which record changes in depositional environments assoc
Authors
John T. Haynes, Keith E. Goggin, Randall C. Orndorff, Lisa R. Goggin
Field trip guidebook for the post-meeting field trip: The Central Appalachians
The lower Paleozoic rocks to be examined on this trip through the central Appalachians represent an extreme range of depositional environments. The lithofacies we will examine range from pelagic radiolarian chert and interbedded mudstone that originated on the deep floor of the Iapetus Ocean, through mud cracked supratidal dolomitic laminites that formed during episodes of emergence of the long-li
Authors
John F. Taylor, James D. Loch, G. Robert Ganis, John E. Repetski, Charles E. Mitchell, Gale C. Blackmer, David K. Brezinski, Daniel Goldman, Randall C. Orndorff, Bryan K. Sell