Publications
Browse more than 160,000 publications authored by our scientists over the past 100+ year history of the USGS. Publications available are: USGS-authored journal articles, series reports, book chapters, other government publications, and more.
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Science Quality and Integrity
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Mission Area Publications
Mission Area Publications
We are focused on some of the most significant issues society faces, and our science is making a substantial contribution to the well-being of the Nation and the world. Learn more about the major topics our research covers and the programs focused on those topics.
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Scenario-Based Decision Analysis: Integrated scenario planning and structured decision making for resource management under climate change
Managing resources under climate change is a high-stakes and daunting task, especially because climate change and associated complex biophysical responses engender sustained directional changes as well as abrupt transformations. This environmental non-stationarity challenges assumptions and expectations among scientists, managers, rights holders, and stakeholders. These challenges are anything but
Authors
Brian W. Miller, Mitchell Eaton, Amy Symstad, Gregor W. Schuurman, Imtiaz Rangwala, William R. Travis
A novel approach to assessing natural resource injury with Bayesian networks
Quantifying the effects of environmental stressors on natural resources is problematic because of complex interactions among environmental factors that influence endpoints of interest. This complexity, coupled with data limitations, propagates uncertainty that can make it difficult to causally associate specific environmental stressors with injury endpoints. The Natural Resource Damage Assessment
Authors
Freya Elizabeth Rowland, Christopher James Kotalik, Bruce G. Marcot, Jo Ellen Hinck, David Walters
Long-term changes in concentrations and yield of riverine dissolved silicon from the poles to the tropics
Riverine exports of silicon (Si) influence global carbon cycling through the growth of marine diatoms, which account for ∼25% of global primary production. Climate change will likely alter river Si exports in biome-specific ways due to interacting shifts in chemical weathering rates, hydrologic connectivity, and metabolic processes in aquatic and terrestrial systems. Nonetheless, factors driving l
Authors
Kathi Jo Jankowski, Keira Johnson, Lienne R. Sethna, Paul Julian, Adam S. Wymore, Arial J. Shogren, Patrick Thomas, Pamela L. Sullivan, Diane M. McKnight, William H. McDowell, Ruth C. Heindel, Jeremy B. Jones, Wilfred M. Wollheim, Benjamin Abbott, Linda A. Deegan, Joanna C. Carey
High-frequency variability of carbon dioxide fluxes in tidal water over a temperate salt marsh
Existing analyses of salt marsh carbon budgets rarely quantify carbon loss as CO2 through the air–water interface in inundated marshes. This study estimates the variability of partial pressure of CO2 (pCO2) and air–water CO2 fluxes over summer and fall of 2014 and 2015 using high-frequency measurements of tidal water pCO2 in a salt marsh of the U.S. northeast region. Monthly mean CO2 effluxes vari
Authors
Shuzhen Song, Zhaohui Aleck Wang, Kevin D. Kroeger, Meagan J. Eagle, Sophie N. Chu, Jianzhong Ge
Bathymetric contour maps, surface area and capacity tables, and bathymetric change maps for selected water-supply lakes in northeastern Missouri, 2021
Bathymetric data were collected at 12 water-supply lakes in northeastern Missouri by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in cooperation with the Missouri Department of Natural Resources (MoDNR) and various local agencies, as part of a multiyear effort to establish or update the surface area and capacity tables for the surveyed lakes. The lakes were surveyed in March through May 2021. Ten of the lake
Authors
Benjamin C. Rivers, Richard J. Huizinga, Joseph M. Richards, Garett J. Waite
Mapping methane reduction potential of tidal wetland restoration in the United States
Coastal wetlands can emit excess methane in cases where they are impounded and artificially freshened by structures that impede tidal exchange. We provide a new assessment of coastal methane reduction opportunities for the contiguous United States by combining multiple publicly available map layers, reassessing greenhouse gas emissions datasets, and applying scenarios informed by geospatial inform
Authors
James Holmquist, Meagan J. Eagle, Rebecca Molinari, Sydney K. Nick, Liana Stachowicz, Kevin D. Kroeger
Long-term trends in Arctic riverine chemistry signal multi-faceted northern change
Rivers integrate processes occurring throughout their watersheds and are therefore sentinels of change across broad spatial scales. River chemistry also regulates ecosystem function across Earth’s land–ocean continuum, exerting control from the micro- (for example, local food web) to the macro- (for example, global carbon cycle) scale. In the rapidly warming Arctic, a wide range of processes—from
Authors
Suzanne E. Tank, James W. McClelland, Robert G. M. Spencer, Alexander I. Shiklomanov, Anya Suslova, Florentina Moatar, Rainer Amon, Lee W. Cooper, Greg Elias, Vyacheslav Gordeev, Christopher Guay, Tatiana Gurtovaya, Lyudmila Kosmenko, Edda A. Mutter, Bruce Peterson, Bernhard Peucker-Ehrenbrink, Peter Raymond, Paul Schuster, Lindsay Scott, Robin Staples, Robert G. Striegl, Mikhail Tretiakov, Alexander V. Zhulidov, Nikita Zimov, Sergey Zimov, Robert M. Holmes
Predation of invasive silver carp by native largemouth bass is size-selective in the Illinois River
Silver carp (Hypophthalmichthys molitrix) are a nonnative, planktivorous, and highly invasive species of cyprinid located throughout the Mississippi River Basin. Although they co-occur with largemouth bass (Micropterus nigricans), an abundant native predatory fish, their predator–prey relationship is poorly understood. This potential relationship warrants investigation as largemouth bass are large
Authors
Eli G. Lampo, Jonathan M. Vallazza, Cory A. Anderson, Levi E. Solomon, Richard M. Pendleton, Toby J. Holda, James T. Lamer
Identifying demographic and environmental drivers of population dynamics and viability in an endangered top predator using an integrated model
Knowledge about the demographic and environmental factors underlying population dynamics is fundamental to designing effective conservation measures to recover depleted wildlife populations. However, sparse monitoring data or persistent knowledge gaps about threats make it difficult to identify the drivers of population dynamics. In situations where small, declining, or depleted populations show c
Authors
Amanda J. Warlick, Gina K Himes Boor, Tamara L McGuire, Kim E. W. Shelden, Eiren K. Jacobson, Charlotte Boyd, Paul Wade, André E. Punt, Sarah J. Converse
Scale-dependent tradeoffs between habitat and time in explaining Alligator Gar (Atractosteus spatula) movement
Ecological theory predicts that movement by riverine fishes at the population level is characterized by both stationary and mobile individuals together creating a leptokurtic distribution of movement distances. However, studies testing this theory typically ignore spatial heterogeneity in riverscapes, and the theory has not been tested using Alligator Gar (Atractosteus spatula), a species of growi
Authors
Johnathan K. Ellard, Hayden C. Roberts, Daniel J. Daugherty, Paul B. Fleming, Matthew Ross Acre, Joshuah S. Perkin
Independent age estimates resolve the controversy of ancient human footprints at White Sands
Human footprints at White Sands National Park, New Mexico, USA, reportedly date to between ~23,000 and 21,000 years ago according to radiocarbon dating of seeds from the aquatic plant Ruppia cirrhosa. These ages remain controversial because of potential old carbon reservoir effects that could compromise their accuracy. We present new calibrated 14C ages of terrestrial pollen collected from the sam
Authors
Jeffrey S. Pigati, Kathleen B. Springer, Jeffrey S. Honke, David Wahl, Marie Rhondelle Champagne, Susan R.H. Zimmerman, Harrison J. Gray, Vincent L. Santucci, Daniel Odess, David Bustos, Matthew R. Bennett
Flood damage costs beyond buildings—A Lake Champlain case study
IntroductionFloods account for more than 75 percent of Federal disaster declarations and lead other natural disasters in economic costs. Early-warning systems have lowered flood-related fatalities, but costs continue to rise as flood-prone areas continue to be urbanized (U.S. Geological Survey, 2006). A Lake Champlain case study shows that at moderate flood heights, the economic costs of non-struc
Authors
Charles Rhodes