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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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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Peak streamflow trends in Michigan and their relation to changes in climate, water years 1921–2020
This study characterizes hydroclimatic variability and change in peak streamflow and daily streamflow in Michigan from water years 1921 through 2020. Four analysis periods were examined: the 100-year period from water year 1921 through 2020, the 75-year period from water year 1946 through 2020, the 50-year period from water year 1971 through 2020, and the 30-year period from water year 1991 throug
Authors
Sara B. Levin
Multinational evaluation of genetic diversity indicators for the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework
Under the recently adopted Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, 196 Parties committed to reporting the status of genetic diversity for all species. To facilitate reporting, three genetic diversity indicators were developed, two of which focus on processes contributing to genetic diversity conservation: maintaining genetically distinct populations and ensuring populations are large enoug
Authors
Alicia Mastretta-Yanes, Jessica M. da Silva, Catherine E. Grueber, Luis Castillo-Reina, Viktoria Köppä, Brenna R. Forester, W. Chris Funk, Myriam Heuertz, Fumiko Ishihama, Rebecca Jordan, Joachim Mergeay, Ivan Paz-Vinas, Victor Julio Rincon-Parra, Maria Alejandra Rodriguez-Morales, Libertad Arredondo-Amezcua, Gaëlle Brahy, Matt DeSaix, Lily Durkee, Ashley Hamilton, Margaret E. Hunter, Austin Koontz, Iris Lang, María Camila Latorre-Cárdenas, Tanya Latty, Alexander Llanes-Quevedo, Anna J. MacDonald, Meg Mahoney, Caitlin Miller, Juan Francisco Ornelas, Santiago Ramírez-Barahona, Erica Robertson, Isa-Rita M. Russo, Metztli Arcila Santiago, Robyn E. Shaw, Glenn M. Shea, Per Sjögren-Gulve, Emma Suzuki Spence, Taylor Stack, Sofia Suarez, Akio Takenaka, Henrik Thurfjell, Sheela P. Turbek, Marlien van der Merwe, Fleur Visser, Ana Wegier, Georgina Wood, Eugenia Zarza, Linda Laikre, Sean M. Hoban
Declining groundwater storage expected to amplify mountain streamflow reductions in a warmer world
Groundwater interactions with mountain streams are often simplified in model projections, potentially leading to inaccurate estimates of streamflow response to climate change. Here, using a high-resolution, integrated hydrological model extending 400 m into the subsurface, we find groundwater an important and stable source of historical streamflow in a mountainous watershed of the Colorado River.
Authors
Rosemary W.H. Carroll, Richard G. Niswonger, Craig Ulrich, Charuleka Varadharajan, Erica Siirila-Woodburn, Kenneth H. Williams
Browsing the literature
For this edition of Browsing the Literature, we have two new papers from Rangeland Ecology & Management, a series of basic ecology papers with an international scope from journals such as the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA), Science, and Nature, and several papers advancing our understanding of drought and carbon at global scales. Additionally, several papers on sagebrush-st
Authors
Matthew Germino
Does the extent of glacial cover across watersheds and discharge periods affect dietary resource use of nearshore fishes in the Northern Gulf of Alaska?
Northern high-latitude glaciers impact nearshore marine ecosystems through the discharge of cold and fresh waters, including nutrients and organic matter. Fishes are important integrators of ecosystem processes and hold key positions in the transfer of energy to higher trophic positions in such systems. This study used a natural gradient in space and time, including watershed glacial cover (0–60%)
Authors
Lindsey Stadler, Kristen Gorman, Vanessa R. von Biela, Andrew C. Seitz, Katrin Iken
How to select an objective function using information theory
In machine learning or scientific computing, model performance is measured with an objective function. But why choose one objective over another? According to the information-theoretic paradigm, the “best” objective function is whichever minimizes information loss. To evaluate different objectives, transform them into likelihoods. The ratios of these likelihoods represent how strongly we should pr
Authors
Timothy O. Hodson, Thomas M. Over, Smith Tyler, Lucy A. Marshall
Genome-wide association analysis of the resistance to infectious hematopoietic necrosis virus in two rainbow trout aquaculture lines confirms oligogenic architecture with several moderate effect quantitative trait loci
Infectious hematopoietic necrosis (IHN) is a disease of salmonid fish that is caused by the IHN virus (IHNV), which can cause substantial mortality and economic losses in rainbow trout aquaculture and fisheries enhancement hatchery programs. In a previous study on a commercial rainbow trout breeding line that has undergone selection, we found that genetic resistance to IHNV is controlled by the ol
Authors
Yniv Palti, Roger L. Vallejo, Maureen K. Purcell, Guangtu Gao, Kristy L. Shewbridge, Roseanna L. Long, Christopher Setzke, Breno O. Fragomeni, Hao Cheng, Kyle E. Martin, Kerrry A. Naish
Magnitude and frequency of floods in the Coastal Plain region of Louisiana, 2016
To improve flood-frequency estimates for rural streams in the Coastal Plain region of Louisiana, generalized least-squares regression techniques were used to relate corresponding annual exceedance probability streamflows for 211 streamgages in the region to a suite of explanatory variables that include physical, climatic, pedologic, and land-use characteristics of the streamgage drainage area. The
Authors
Paul A. Ensminger, Daniel M. Wagner, Amanda Whaling
Biodiversity loss reduces global terrestrial carbon storage
Natural ecosystems store large amounts of carbon globally, as organisms absorb carbon from the atmosphere to build large, long-lasting, or slow-decaying structures such as tree bark or root systems. An ecosystem’s carbon sequestration potential is tightly linked to its biological diversity. Yet when considering future projections, many carbon sequestration models fail to account for the role biodi
Authors
Sarah R. Weiskopf, Forest Isbell, Maria Isabel Arce-Plata, Moreno Di Marco, Mike Harfoot, Justin A. Johnson, Susannah B. Lerman, Brian W. Miller, Toni Lyn Morelli, Akira S. Mori, Ensheng Weng, Simon Ferrier
The SCEC/USGS community stress drop validation study using the 2019 Ridgecrest earthquake sequence
We introduce a community stress drop validation study using the 2019 Ridgecrest, California, earthquake sequence, in which researchers are invited to use a common dataset to independently estimate comparable measurements using a variety of methods. Stress drop is the change in average shear stress on a fault during earthquake rupture, and as such is a key parameter in many ground motion, rupture s
Authors
Annemarie S. Baltay, Rachel E Abercrombie, Shanna Xianhui Chu, Taka'aki Taira
Illegal shooting of protected nongame birds along power lines coincides with places and times of peak legal recreational shooting
Illegal killing of protected nongame birds is pervasive and can be demographically relevant.
In 2021 and 2022, we evaluated spatial and temporal patterns in illegal killing of birds along
69.7 km of power lines in the Morley Nelson Snake River Birds of Prey National
Conservation Area in Idaho, USA, to provide insight into potential drivers behind the activity
and key information to manage this
Authors
Eve C. Thomason, James R. Belthoff, Sharon Poessel, Todd E. Katzner
Earthquake relocations delineate discrete a fault network and deformation corridor throughout Southeast Alaska and Southwest Yukon
Deformation in southeastern Alaska and southwest Yukon is governed by the subduction and translation of the Pacific-Yakutat plates relative to the North American plate in the St. Elias region. Despite notable historical seismicity and major regional faults, studies of the region between the Fairweather and Denali faults are complicated by glacial coverage and the remote setting. In the last decade
Authors
Katherine M. Biegel, Jeremy M. Gosselin, Jan Dettmer, Maurice Colpron, Eva Enkelmann, Jonathan Caine