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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Key observations of flexed-leg urination in the free-ranging Gray Wolf (Canis lupus)
Flexed-leg urination (FLU) in female Gray Wolves (Canis lupus) has been little studied in the wild. Captive females in packs do not exhibit FLU unless they are both mature and dominant to an associate female, but these characteristics have not been confirmed in free-ranging wolves. We present observations of wolves in Yellowstone National Park that accord with those of wolves in captivity, extend
Authors
L. David Mech, Rick McIntyre
Spatiotemporal changes in influenza A virus prevalence among wild waterfowl inhabiting the continental United States throughout the annual cycle
Avian influenza viruses can pose serious risks to agricultural production, human health, and wildlife. An understanding of viruses in wild reservoir species across time and space is important to informing surveillance programs, risk models, and potential population impacts for vulnerable species. Although it is recognized that influenza A virus prevalence peaks in reservoir waterfowl in late summe
Authors
Cody M. Kent, Andrew M. Ramey, Josh T. Ackerman, Justin Bahl, Sarah N. Bevins, Andrew S. Bowman, Walter Boyce, Carol Cardona, Michael L. Casazza, Troy D. Cline, Susan E. W. De La Cruz, Jeffrey S. Hall, Nichola J. Hill, Hon S. Ip, Scott Krauss, Jennifer M. Mullinax, Jacqueline M. Nolting, Magdalena Plancarte, Rebecca L. Poulson, Jonathan A. Runstadler, Richard D. Slemons, David E. Stallknecht, Jeffery D. Sullivan, John Y. Takekawa, Richard J. Webby, Robert G. Webster, Diann J. Prosser
Interspecific and local variation in Tern chick diets across nesting colonies in the Gulf of Maine
The Gulf of Maine, USA is home to four colonial co-nesting tern species: Least Tern (Sternula antillarum), Common Tern (Sterna hirundo), Arctic Tern (Sterna paradisaea), and the federally endangered Roseate Tern (Sterna dougallii). Over three decades of visual observations of chick provisioning were compiled for a comparative dietary study in the region, including the first detailed descriptions o
Authors
Keenan Yakola, Adrian Jordaan, Stephen Kress, Paula Shannon, Michelle Staudinger
Nutrient restoration of a large, impounded, ultra-oligotrophic western river to recover declining native fishes
Declines in many fish populations in large, western rivers have been primarily attributed to the anthropogenic reduction of nutrient inputs and subsequent impacts to the food web. The largest known river fertilization program was implemented starting in 2005 on the Kootenai River in northern Idaho to restore resident fisheries. Annual electrofishing surveys were conducted at multiple sites in Idah
Authors
Ryan S. Hardy, Tyler J. Ross, Kevin McDonnell, Michael Quist, Charlie Holderman, Bryan S. Stevens
Constraints on the adjustment of tidal marshes to accelerating sea level rise
Much uncertainty exists about the vulnerability of valuable tidal marsh ecosystems to relative sea level rise. Previous assessments of resilience to sea level rise, to which marshes can adjust by sediment accretion and elevation gain, revealed contrasting results, depending on contemporary or Holocene geological data. By analyzing globally distributed contemporary data, we found that marsh sedimen
Authors
Neil Saintilan, Katya E. Kovalenko, Glenn R. Guntenspergen, Kerrylee Rogers, James C. Lynch, Donald Cahoon, Catherine E. Lovelock, Daniel A. Friess, Erica Ashe, Ken Krauss, Nicole Cormier, Tom Spencer, Janine Adams, Jacqueline Raw, Carles Ibanez, Francesco Scarton, Stijn Temmerman, Patrick Meire, Tom Maris, Karen M. Thorne, John Brazner, Gail L. Chmura, Tony Bowron, Vishmie Palepitiya Gamage, Kimberly Cressman, Charlie Endris, Christina Marconi, Pamela Marcum, Kari St. Laurent, William G. Reay, Kenneth B. Raposa, Jason A. Garwood, Nicole Kahn
Real-time earthquake detection and alerting behavior of PLUM ground-motion-based early warning in the United States
We examine the real‐time earthquake detection and alerting behavior of the Propagation of Local Undamped Motion (PLUM) earthquake early warning (EEW) algorithm and compare PLUM’s performance with the real‐time performance of the current source‐characterization‐based ShakeAlert System. In the United States (U.S.), PLUM uses a two‐station approach to detect earthquakes. Once a detection is confirmed
Authors
Jessie Kate Saunders, Sarah E. Minson, Annemarie S. Baltay, Julian J Bunn, Elizabeth S. Cochran, Deborah L. Kilb, Colin T O'Rourke, Mitsuyuki Hoshiba, Yuki Kodera
Proceedings of the Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza and Wild Birds Webinar Series, August 2–5, 2021
In light of ongoing and geographically widespread highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) outbreaks in wild birds throughout much of Eurasia during 2020–21, the Interagency Steering Committee for Avian Influenza Surveillance in Wild Migratory Birds disseminated an informational memorandum in January 2021 to highlight the need for enhanced surveillance and heightened awareness in North America. Th
Authors
M. Camille Hopkins, J. Russ Mason, Giavanna Haddock, Andrew M. Ramey
Fifty years of Landsat science and impacts
Since 1972, the Landsat program has been continually monitoring the Earth, to now provide 50 years of digital, multispectral, medium spatial resolution observations. Over this time, Landsat data were crucial for many scientific and technical advances. Prior to the Landsat program, detailed, synoptic depictions of the Earth's surface were rare, and the ability to acquire and work with large dataset
Authors
Michael A. Wulder, David P. Roy, Volker C. Radeloff, Thomas Loveland, Martha C. Anderson, David M. Johnson, Sean Healey, Zhe Zhu, Theodore A. Scambos, Nima Pahlevan, Matthew Hansen, Noel Gorelick, Christopher J. Crawford, Jeffery G. Masek, Txomin Hermosilla, JoAnn C. White, Alan S. Belward, Crystal Schaaf, Curtis E. Woodcock, Justin L. Huntington, Leo Lymburner, Patrick Hostert, Feng Gao, Alexi Lyapustin, Jean-Francois Pekel, Peter Strobl, Eric Vermote, Bruce D. Cook
Comparisons of the NGA-Subduction ground motion models
In this article, ground-motion models (GMMs) for subduction earthquakes recently developed as part of the Next Generation Attenuation-Subduction (NGA-Sub) project are compared. The four models presented in this comparison study are documented in their respective articles submitted along with this article. Each of these four models is based on the analysis of the large NGA-Sub database. Three of th
Authors
Nick Gregor, Kofi O. Addo, Norman A. Abrahamson, Linda Al Atik, Gail M. Atkinson, David Boore, Yousef Bozorgnia, Kenneth W. Campbell, Brian S.-J. Chiou, Zeynep Gulerce, Behzad Hassani, Tadahiro Kishida, Nicolas Kuehn, Silvia Mazzoni, Saburoh Midorikawa, Grace Alexandra Parker, Hongjun Si, Jonathan P. Stewart, Robert R. Youngs
Island of misfit tortoises: Waif gopher tortoise health assessment following translocation
Translocation, the intentional movement of animals from one location to another, is a common management practice for the gopher tortoise (Gopherus polyphemus). Although the inadvertent spread of pathogens is a concern with any translocation effort, waif tortoises—individuals that have been collected illegally, injured and rehabilitated or have unknown origins—are generally excluded from translocat
Authors
Rebecca K. McKee, Kurt. A. Buhlmann, Clinton T. Moore, Matthew C. Allender, Nicole I. Stacy, Tracey D. Tuberville
Field-trip guide to continental arc to rift volcanism of the southern Rocky Mountains—Southern Rocky Mountain, Taos Plateau, and Jemez Mountains volcanic fields of southern Colorado and northern New Mexico
The southern Rocky Mountains of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado preserve the Oligocene to Pleistocene record of North American continental arc to rift volcanism. The 35–23 million year old (Ma) southern Rocky Mountain volcanic field (SRMVF), spectacularly preserved in the San Juan Mountains of southern Colorado, records the evolution of large andesitic stratovolcanoes to complex caldera
Authors
Ren A. Thompson, Kenzie J. Turner, Peter W. Lipman, John A. Wolff, Michael A. Dungan
Groundwater-level monitoring from January 17 to March 3, 2022, Hālawa area, O‘ahu, Hawai‘i
A reported fuel release in November 2021 at the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility within the naval reservation at Red Hill led to the shutdown of several production wells in the Hālawa area, O‘ahu, Hawai‘i. Red Hill Shaft—one of the high-capacity production wells that shut down—was reactivated on January 29, 2022. Submersible pressure transducers were deployed at 20 wells in the Hālawa area to m
Authors
Rylen K. Nakama, Jackson N. Mitchell, Delwyn S. Oki