Publications
This list of publications includes peer-review journal articles, official USGS publications series, reports and more authored by scientists in the Ecosystems Mission Area. A database of all USGS publications, with advanced search features, can be accessed at the USGS Publications Warehouse.
Filter Total Items: 41610
Living with wildfire in Santa Fe: 2021 Data Report
The City of Santa Fe is well known for arts, food, and architecture, but it also faces significant risk of wildfire. In 2020, the City of Santa Fe partnered with the Wildfire Research (WiRē) team with the goal of better understanding the needs of residents within the study area and their level of support for wildfire risk mitigation programs. The resulting project centers on two types of property-
Authors
James Meldrum, Julia Goolsby, Colleen Donovan, Porfirio Chavarria, Hannah Brenkert-Smith, Patricia A. Champ, Christopher M. Barth, Carolyn Wagner, Chiara Forrester
Adult green sturgeon (Acipenser medirostris) movements in the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta, California, December 2020–January 2023
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers American River Watershed Common Features project (ACRF) seeks to reduce flood risk for the City of Sacramento, California, and surrounding areas. The project includes levee-remediation measures to address seepage, stability, erosion, and height concerns as well as the widening of the Sacramento Weir and Bypass. The project reach is in the lower extent of the Sacram
Authors
Amy C. Hansen, Summer M. Burdick, Ryan P. Johnson, Robert D. Chase, Michael J. Thomas
Double take: Ingestion of two rats by a juvenile Burmese Python (Python bivittatus) in Big Cypress National Preserve, FL, USA
No abstract available.
Authors
Teah M. Evers, Andrea F. Currylow, Mark Robert Sandfoss, Lisa Marie McBride, Christina M. Romagosa, Wesley W. Boone, Jacquelyn C. Guzy, Gretchen Erika Anderson, Kristen Hart, Matthew McCollister, Amy A. Yackel Adams
Hiding in plain sight: Federally protected Ringed Map Turtles (Graptemys oculifera) found in a new river system
Understanding the geographical range of a species is essential to successful conservation and management, but their ranges are not always fully known. Ringed Map Turtles (Graptemys oculifera) have been federally listed as a Threatened species since 1986, and they have long been considered endemic to the Pearl River system of central Mississippi and southeastern Louisiana, USA. Based on a 2021 ci
Authors
Brad Glorioso, Will Selman, Brian R. Kreiser, Aidan Ford
Challenges creating monarch butterfly management strategies for electric power companies in the United States
Returning monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) to sustainable levels of abundance will require an array of contributors to protect and restore habitat over broad areas. Due to the diversity and scale of land managed by electric power companies across the monarch range, plus an additional 32 million hectares needed for new solar arrays by 2050 to meet renewable energy goals, the industry may have
Authors
Jessica Fox, Kasey Allen, James E. Diffendorfer, Laura Lukens, Wayne E. Thogmartin, Christian Newman
Global mercury concentrations in biota: Their use as a basis for a global biomonitoring framework
An important provision of the Minamata Convention on Mercury is to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of the adopted measures and its implementation. Here, we describe for the first time currently available biotic mercury (Hg) data on a global scale to improve the understanding of global efforts to reduce the impact of Hg pollution on people and the environment. Data from the peer-reviewed lit
Authors
David C. Evers, Josh T. Ackerman, Staffan Åkerblom, Dominique Bally, Niladri Basu, Kevin Bishop, Nathalie Bodin, Hans Fredrik Veitberg Braaten, Mark Burton, Paco Bustamante, Celia Y. Chen, John Chételat, Linroy Christian, Rune Dietz, Paul Drevnick, Collin Eagles-Smith, Luis Fernandez, Neil Hammerschlag, Mireille Harmelin-Vivien, Agustin Harte, Eva Kruemmel, Jose Lailson-Brito, Gabriella Medina, Cesar Rodriguez, Iain Stenhouse, Elsie M. Sunderland, Akinori Takeuchi, Timothy Tear, Claudia Vega, Simon Wilson, Pianpian Wu
Snow avalanches are a primary climate-linked driver of mountain ungulate populations
Snow is a major, climate-sensitive feature of the Earth’s surface and catalyst of fundamentally important ecosystem processes. Understanding how snow influences sentinel species in rapidly changing mountain ecosystems is particularly critical. Whereas effects of snow on food availability, energy expenditure, and predation are well documented, we report how avalanches exert major impacts on an ecol
Authors
Kevin White, Eran Hood, Gabriel Wolken, Erich Peitzsch, Yves Bühler, Katreen Wikstrom Jones, Chris Darimont
Black carp Mylopharyngodon piceus (Richardson, 1846) mouth gape and size preference of a bivalve prey
Black carp Mylopharyngodon piceus (Richardson, 1846) have been widely used as biological control of snails in aquaculture and were imported to the United States in the 1970s and 1980s for this purpose. Prior research emphasizes the species’ propensity to control gastropods, but since subsequent escape and establishment of black carp in portions of the Mississippi River Basin, concerns now focus on
Authors
Patrick Kroboth, Benjamin H. Stahlschmidt, Duane Chapman
Flooding-induced failure of an invasive Burmese Python nest in southern Florida
It is important to understand the factors affecting the reproductive success of an invasive species to estimate population size and develop management plans. There remains much we do not understand about the reproductive biology of invasive Burmese Pythons in both their native and invasive range. Oviposition site selection is an important factor in determining reproductive success as nesting is a
Authors
Mark Robert Sandfoss, Lisa Marie McBride, Gretchen Erika Anderson, Amanda Marie Kissel, Matthew McCollister, Christina M. Romagosa, Amy A. Yackel Adams
Methylmercury effects on birds: A review, meta-analysis, and development of toxicity reference values for injury assessment based on tissue residues and diet
Birds are used as bioindicators of environmental mercury (Hg) contamination, and toxicity reference values are needed for injury assessments. We conducted a comprehensive review, summarized data from 168 studies, performed a series of Bayesian hierarchical meta-analyses, and developed new toxicity reference values for the effects of methylmercury (MeHg) on birds using a benchmark dose analysis fra
Authors
Josh T. Ackerman, Sarah H. Peterson, Mark P. Herzog, Julie L. Yee
Post-fire reference densities for giant sequoia seedlings in a new era of high-severity wildfires
Many forests globally are experiencing increases in large, high-severity wildfires, often with increasingly inadequate post-fire tree regeneration. To identify areas that might need post-fire planting, forest managers have a growing need for seedling reference densities – the natural seedling densities expected to be adequate to regenerate a forest – to compare with observed post-fire seedling den
Authors
Nathan L. Stephenson, Anthony C. Caprio, David Nicolas Bertil Soderberg, Adrian Das, Eva Louisa Lopez, A. Park Williams
Flexible migration and habitat use strategies of an endangered waterbird during hydrological drought
Wildlife species confront threats from climate and land use change, exacerbating the influence of extreme climatic events on populations and biodiversity. Migratory waterbirds are especially vulnerable to hydrological drought via reduced availability of surface water habitats. We assessed how whooping cranes (Grus americana) modified habitat use and migration strategies during drought to evaluate
Authors
Aaron T. Pearse, Andrew J. Caven, David M. Baasch, Mark T. Bidwell, John A Conkin, David A. Brandt