Publications

The global climate has been changing over the last century due to greenhouse gas emissions and will continue to change over this century, accelerating without effective global efforts to reduce emissions. Ticks and tick-borne diseases (TTBDs) are inherently climate-sensitive due to the sensitivity of tick lifecycles to climate. Key direct climate and weather sensitivities include...

The utilization, preservation, and conservation of the Nation’s resources requires well-informed management decisions. The North Atlantic and Appalachian Region (NAAR) of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) supports science-based decision making for Federal, State, and local policymakers to meet the challenges of today and into the future. The science centers in the NAAR have well-deserved...

Accurate estimates of flood frequency and magnitude on rivers and streams in Maine are a key component of effective flood risk management, flood mitigation, and flood recovery programs for the State. Flood-frequency estimates are published here for 148 streamgages in and adjacent to Maine. Equations are provided for users to compute flood-frequency estimates at any location on a stream...

Seagrass communities are a vital component of estuarine ecosystems, but are threatened by projected sea level rise (SLR) and temperature increases with climate change. To understand these potential effects, we developed a spatially explicit model that represents seagrass (Zostera marina) habitat and estuary-wide productivity for Barnegat Bay-Little Egg Harbor (BB-LEH) in New Jersey...

With the rise of large-scale environmental models comes new challenges for how we best utilize this information in research, management and decision making. Interactive data visualizations can make large and complex datasets easier to access and explore, which can lead to knowledge discovery, hypothesis formation and improved understanding. Here, we present a web-based interactive data...

In this chapter, we describe models of open populations that are subject to change over time due to additions and subtractions. Additions may be in the form of recruitment and immigration, and subtractions may be in the form of mortality, emigration, or both. Conceptually, these models are described by the Birth-Immigration-Death-Emigration (BIDE) model of population dynamics (Conroy and...

Many of the models we are concerned with included explicit descriptions of false negative errors. However, false positive errors can also be commin in practice, especially in citizen science applications where observer skill is highly variable. In addition, new methods which determine detection based on statistical classification or machine learning methods are also prone to false...

No abstract available.

Emerging infectious diseases can result in species declines and hamper recovery efforts for at-risk populations. Generalizing considerations for reducing the risk of pathogen introduction and mitigating the effects of disease remains challenging and inhibits our ability to provide guidance for species recovery planning. Given the growing rates of emerging pathogens globally, we identify...

Seasonal timing is important for many critical life history events of vertebrates, and photoperiod is often used as a reliable seasonal cue. In mammals and birds, it has been established that a photoperiod-driven seasonal clock resides in the brain and pituitary, and is driven by increased levels of pituitary thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) and brain type 2 iodothyronine deiodinase...

Salt marshes are valuable ecosystems that must trap sediments and accrete in order to counteract the deleterious effect of sea‐level rise. Previous studies have shown that the capacity of marshes to build up vertically depends on both autogenous and exogenous processes including eco‐geomorphic feedbacks and sediment supply from in‐land and coastal ocean. There have been numerous efforts...

Anticoagulant rodenticides (ARs) are part of the near billion-dollar rodenticide industry. Numerous studies have documented the presence of ARs in non-target wildlife, with evidence of repeated exposure to second-generation ARs. While birds are generally less sensitive to ARs than target rodent species, in some locations predatory and scavenging birds are exposed by consumption of such...