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: 41764
How well do existing surveys track fish community performance measures in the St. Clair-Detroit River System?
The St. Clair-Detroit River System (SCDRS) connects Lake Huron to Lake Erie and provides important habitats for many fishes of economic and ecological importance. Portions of the SCDRS are designated as Great Lakes Areas of Concern and fish production and conservation may be compromised. Efforts to address beneficial use impairments have focused on restoring habitat for native fishes and improving
Authors
Corbin David Hilling, M. L. Belore, J. Boase, Justin A. Chiotti, Robin L. DeBruyne, Susan E. Doka, Richard Drouin, Christine M. Mayer, Jeff T. Tyson, T. Wills, Edward F. Roseman
Flash drought: A state of the science review
In the two decades, since the advent of the term “flash drought,” considerable research has been directed toward the topic. Within the scientific community, we have actively forged a new paradigm that has avoided a chaotic evolution of conventional drought but instead recognizes that flash droughts have distinct dynamics and, particularly, impacts. We have moved beyond the initial debate over the
Authors
Jordan Christian, Mike Hobbins, Andrew Hoell, Jason Otkin, Trenton W. Ford, Amanda E. Cravens, Kathryn Powlen, Hailan Wang, Vimal Mishra
Evaluating conservation units using network analysis: A sea duck case study
Conserving migratory wildlife requires understanding how groups of individuals interact across seasons and landscapes. Telemetry reveals individual movements at large spatiotemporal scales; however, using movement data to define conservation units requires scaling up from individual movements to species- and community-level patterns. We developed a framework to define flyways and identify importan
Authors
Juliet S. Lamb, Clara Cooper-Mullin, Scott Gilliland, Alicia Berlin, Timothy D. Bowman, Sean Boyd, Susan E. W. De La Cruz, Daniel Esler, Joseph R. Evenson, Paul L. Flint, Christine Lepage, Dustin Meattey, Jason Osenkowski, Peter WC Patton, Matthew Perry, Daniel H. Rosenberg, Jean-Pierre L. Savard, Lucas Savoy, Jason Schamber, David Ward, John Takekawa, Scott R. McWilliams
Extreme drought impacts have been underestimated in grasslands and shrublands globally
Drought has well-documented societal and economic consequences. Climate change is expected to intensify drought to even more extreme levels, but because such droughts have been historically rare, their impact on ecosystem functioning is not well known. We experimentally imposed the most frequent type of intensified drought—one that is ~1 y in duration—at 100 grassland and shrubland sites distribut
Authors
Melinda D. Smith, Kate D Wilkins, Martin C. Holdrege, Peter A. Wilfahrt, Scott L. Collins, Alan K. Knapp, Osvaldo E. Sala, Jeffrey S. Dukes, Richard P. Phillips, Laura Yahdjian, Laureano A. Gherardi, Timothy Ohlert, Claus Beier, Lauchlan H. Fraser, Anke Jentsch, Michael E. Loik, Fernando T. Maestre, Sally A. Power, Qiang Yu, Andrew J. Felton, Seth M. Munson, Yiqi Luo, Hamed Abdoli, Mehdi Abedi, Concepción L. Alados, Juan Alberti, Moshe Alon, Hui An, Brian Anacker, Maggie Anderson, Harald Auge, Seton Bachle, Khadijeh Bahalkeh, Michael Bahn, Amgaa Batbaatar, Taryn Bauerle, Karen H. Beard, Kai Behn, Ilka Beil, Lucio Biancari, Irmgard Blindow, Viviana Florencia Bondaruk, Elizabeth T. Borer, Edward W. Bork, Carlos Martin Bruschetti, Kerry M. Byrne, James F. Cahill Jr., Dianela A. Calvo, Michele Carbognani, Augusto Cardoni, Cameron N. Carlyle, Miguel Castillo-Garcia, Scott X. Chang, Jeff Chieppa, Marcus V. Cianciaruso, Ofer Cohen, Amanda L. Cordeiro, Daniela F. Cusack, Sven Dahlke, Pedro Daleo, Carla M. D'Antonio, Lee H. Dietterich, Tim S. Doherty, Maren Dubbert, Anne Ebling, Nico Eisenhauer, Felícia M. Fischer, T'ai G. W. Forte, Tobias Gebauer, Beatriz Gozalo, Aaron C. Greenville, Karlo G. Guidoni-Martins, Heather J. Hannusch, Siri Vatsø Haugum, Yann Hautier, Mariet Hefting, Hugh A. L. Henry, Daniela Hoss, Johannes Ingrisch, Oscar Iribarne, Forest Isbell, Yari Johnson, Samuel E. Jordan, Eugene F. Kelly, Kaitlin Kimmel, Juergen Kreyling, György Kröel-Dulay, Alicia Kröpfl, Angelika Kübert, Andrew Kulmatiski, Eric G. Lamb, Klaus Steenberg Larsen, Julie Larson, Jason Lawson, Cintia V. Leder, Anja Linstädter, Jielin Liu, Shirong Liu, Alexandra G. Lodge, Grisel Longo, Alejandro Loydi, Junwei Luan, Frederick Curtis Lubbe, Craig Macfarlane, Kathleen Mackie-Haas, Andrey V. Malyshev, Adrián Maturano-Ruiz, Thomas Merchant, Daniel B. Metcalfe, Akira S. Mori, Edwin Mudongo, Gregory S. Newman, Uffe N. Nielsen, Dale Nimmo, Yujie Niu, Paola Nobre, Rory C. O'Connor, Romà Ogaya, Gastón R. Oñatibia, Ildikó Orbán, Brooke B. Osborne, Rafael Otfinowski, Meelis Pärtel, Josep Penuelas, Pablo L. Peri, Guadalupe Peter, Alessandro Petraglia, Catherine Picon-Cochard, Valério D. Pillar, Juan Manuel Piñeiro-Guerra, Laura W. Ploughe, Robert M. Plowes, Cristy Portales-Reyes, Suzanne M. Prober, Yolanda Pueyo, Sasha C. Reed, Euan G. Ritchie, Dana Aylén Rodríguez, William E. Rogers, Christiane Roscher, Ana M. Sánchez, Bráulio A. Santos, María Cecilia Scarfó, Eric W. Seabloom, Baoku Shu, Lara Souza, Andreas Stampfli, Rachel J. Standish, Marcelo Sternberg, Wei Sun, Marie Sünnemann, Michelle Tedder, Pål Thorvaldsen, Dashuan Tian, Katja Tielbörger, Alejandro Valdecantos, Liesbeth van den Brink, Vigdis Vandvik, Mathew R. Vankoughnett, Liv Guri Velle, Changhui Wang, Yi Wang, Glenda M. Wardle, Christiane Werner, Cunzheng Wei, Georg Wiehl, Jennifer L. Williams, Amelia A. Wolf, Michaela Zeiter, Fawei Zhang, Juntao Zhu, Ning Zong, Xiaoan Zuo
Comparing maximum likelihood and Bayesian methods for fitting hidden Markov models to multi-state capture-recapture data of invasive carp in the Illinois River
BackgroundHidden Markov Models (HMMs) are often used to model multi-state capture-recapture data in ecology. However, a variety of HMM modeling approaches and software exist, including both maximum likelihood and Bayesian methods. The diversity of these methods obscures the underlying HMM and can exaggerate minor differences in parameterization.MethodsIn this paper, we describe a general framework
Authors
Charles J. Labuzzetta, Alison A. Coulter, Richard A. Erickson
Can the planetary health concept save freshwater biodiversity and ecosystems?
People clearly need and benefit from healthy freshwater ecosystems; Given the precarious state of these important systems and services, current efforts to address the freshwater biodiversity crisis remain insufficient. Planetary health is an emerging framework that aims to secure the state of natural systems within environmental limits that ensure humanity can flourish. The planetary health concep
Authors
Steven J. Cooke, Abigail Lynch, David Tickner, Robin Abell, Tatenda Dalu, Kathryn J. Fiorella, Rajeev Raghavan, Ian J. Harrison, Sonja C. Jähnig, Derek Vollmer, Steve Carpenter
Subsurface redox interactions regulate ebullitive methane flux in heterogeneous Mississippi River deltaic wetland
As interfaces connecting terrestrial and ocean ecosystems, coastal wetlands develop temporally and spatially complex redox conditions, which drive uncertainties in greenhouse gas emission as well as the total carbon budget of the coastal ecosystem. To evaluate the role of complex redox reactions in methane emission from coastal wetlands, a coupled reactive-transport model was configured to represe
Authors
Jiaze Wang, Theresa O'Meara, Sophie LaFond-Hudson, Songjie He, Kanchan Maiti, Eric Ward, Benjamin N. Sulman
Environmental and geographical factors influence the occurrence and abundance of the southern house mosquito, Culex quinquefasciatus, in Hawai‘i
Hawaiian honeycreepers, a group of endemic Hawaiian forest birds, are being threatened by avian malaria, a non-native disease that is driving honeycreepers populations to extinction. Avian malaria is caused by the parasite Plasmodium relictum, which is transmitted by the invasive mosquito Culex quinquefasciatus. Environmental and geographical factors play an important role in shaping mosquito-born
Authors
Oswaldo Villena, Katherine Maria McClure, Richard J. Camp, Dennis Lapointe, Carter T. Atkinson, Helen Sofaer, Lucas Fortini
The geographic extent of bird populations affected by renewable-energy development
Bird populations are declining globally. Wind and solar energy can reduce emissions of fossil fuels that drive anthropogenic climate change, yet renewable-energy production represents a potential threat to bird species. Surveys to assess potential effects at renewable-energy facilities are exclusively local, and the geographic extent encompassed by birds killed at these facilities is largely unkno
Authors
Hannah Vander Zander, David H. Nelson, Tara Conkling, Taber Allison, James E. Diffendorfer, Thomas Dietsch, Amy L Fesnock, Scott Loss, Patricia Ortiz, Robin Paulmann, Krysta Rodgers, Peter M. Sanzenbacher, Todd E. Katzner
Limitations of invasive snake control tools in the context of a new invasion on an island with abundant prey
In October 2020, a new population of invasive brown treesnakes (Boiga irregularis) was discovered on the 33-ha Cocos Island, 2.5 km off the south coast of Guam. Cocos Island is a unique conservation resource, providing refuge for many lizards and birds, including endangered species, which were extirpated from mainland Guam by invasive predators including brown treesnakes. We sought to evaluate the
Authors
Shane R. Siers, Melia Gail Nafus, Jaried E. Calaor, Rachel M. Volsteadt, Matthew S. Grassi, Megan Volsteadt, Aaron F. Collins, Patrick D Barnhart, Logan Tanner Huse, Amy A. Yackel Adams, Diane L. Vice
Spawning habitat selection and egg deposition by reintroduced Lake Sturgeon in a tributary to Cayuga Lake, NY
In June 2017, we documented the first observed spawning event by a reintroduced population of Lake Sturgeon (Acipenser fulvescens) in Fall Creek, a tributary to Cayuga Lake, New York, USA. This is the first observed spawning encounter of adult Lake Sturgeon since the beginning of the multi-agency Lake Sturgeon restoration effort in Cayuga Lake initiated in 1995 by the New York State Department of
Authors
Dawn E. Dittman, Marc Chalupnicki, Phyllis Randall, Emily C. Zollweg‐Horan
Contrasting demographic responses under future climate for two populations of a montane amphibian
For species with complex life histories, climate change can have contrasting effects for different life stages within locally adapted populations and may result in responses counter to general climate change predictions. Using data from two, 14-year demographic studies for a North American montane amphibian, Cascades frog (Rana cascadae), we quantified how aspects of current climate influenced ann
Authors
Amanda M. Kissel, Wendy J. Palen, Michael J. Adams, Justin M Garwood