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
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Breeding dynamics of gopher frog metapopulations over 10 years
Populations of amphibians that breed in isolated, ephemeral wetlands may be particularly sensitive to breeding and recruitment rates, which can be influenced by dynamic and difficult-to-predict extrinsic factors. The gopher frog Rana capito is a declining species currently proposed for listing under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, as well as one of many pond-breeding amphibians of conservation co
Authors
Brian A. Crawford, Anna L. Farmer, Kevin M Enge, Aubrey Heupel Greene, Lauren Diaz, John C. Maerz, Clinton T. Moore
Biogeography of freshwater mussels (Bivalvia: Unionida) in Texas and implications on conservation biology
AimBiogeography seeks to identify and explain the spatial distributions of species and has become an important tool used by conservationists to protect and manage aquatic organisms. Texas, located in the southwestern United States, is home to 52 species of freshwater mussels, 9 of which are endemic to Texas and 7 that are endemic to Texas and neighboring states or countries. There have been two ma
Authors
Michael de Moulpied, Chase H. Smith, Clint R. Robertson, Nathan Johnson, Roel Lopez, Charles R. Randklev
Structured decision making to rank North American Wetland Conservation Act proposals within joint venture regions
The North American Wetlands Conservation Act (16 U.S.C. 4401-4412) provided funding and administration for wetland management and conservation projects. The North American Wetland Conservation Fund, enabled in 1989 with the Act, provides financial resources. Resource allocation decisions are based, in part, on regional experts, particularly migratory bird Joint Ventures (JVs) (i.e., partnerships f
Authors
Anastasia Krainyk, James E. Lyons, Gregory J. Soulliere, John M. Coluccy, Barry C. Wilson, Michael G. Brasher, Mohammed A Al-Saffar, Dale D. Humburg
Can coastal habitats rise to the challenge? Resilience of estuarine habitats, carbon accumulation, and economic value to sea-level rise in a Puget Sound estuary
Sea-level rise (SLR) and obstructions to sediment delivery pose challenges to the persistence of estuarine habitats and the ecosystem services they provide. Restoration actions and sediment management strategies may help mitigate such challenges by encouraging the vertical accretion of sediment in and horizontal migration of tidal forests and marshes. We used a process-based soil accretion model (
Authors
Monica Mei Jeen Moritsch, Kristin B. Byrd, Melanie J. Davis, Anthony J. Good, Judith Z. Drexler, James T. Morris, Isa Woo, Lisamarie Windham-Myers, Eric E. Grossman, Glynnis Nakai, Katrina L. Poppe, John M. Rybczyk
Long-term groundwater availability in the Waihe‘e, ‘Īao, and Waikapū aquifer systems, Maui, Hawai‘i
Groundwater levels have declined since the 1940s in the Wailuku area of central Maui, Hawai‘i, on the eastern flank of West Maui volcano, mainly in response to increased groundwater withdrawals. Available data since the 1980s also indicate a thinning of the freshwater lens and an increase in chloride concentrations of pumped water from production wells. These trends, combined with projected increa
Authors
Kolja Rotzoll, Delwyn S. Oki, Adam G. Johnson, William R. Souza
Quantifying the effects of tides, river flow, and barriers on movements of Chinook Salmon smolts at junctions in the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta using multistate models
Successful migration of Chinook Salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) smolts seaward in the Sacramento – San Joaquin River Delta (hereafter, Delta) requires navigating a network of numerous branching channels. Within the Delta, several key junctions route smolts either towards more direct paths to the ocean or towards the interior Delta, an area associated with decreased survival. Movements within the
Authors
Michael Dodrill, Russell Perry, Adam Pope, Xiaochun Wang
Dynamic sensitivity to resource availability influences population responses to mismatches in a shorebird
Climate change has caused shifts in seasonally recurring biological events leading to the temporal decoupling of consumer-resource pairs – i.e., phenological mismatching. Although mismatches often affect individual fitness, they do not invariably scale up to affect populations, making it difficult to assess the risk they pose. Individual variation may contribute to this inconsistency, with changes
Authors
Luke R. Wilde, Josiah E. Simmons, Rose J. Swift, Nathan R. Senner
Georgia and Landsat
Georgia’s nickname is “The Peach State” for its fruitful production, but it also could be called “The State of Abundance.” Georgia ranks in the top 10 States for population, at more than 10 million residents, and 6 million residents are in the greater Atlanta area. Georgia also ranks in the top 10 States for forest areas with 24 million acres, or about two-thirds of the State. Its trees vary from
Authors
A look ahead to the next decade at US volcano observatories
Volcano monitoring, eruption response, and hazard assessment at volcanoes in the United States of America (US) fall under the mandate of five regional volcano observatories covering 161 active volcanoes. Working in a wide range of volcanic and geographic settings, US observatories must learn from and apply new knowledge and techniques to a great variety of scientific and hazard communication probl
Authors
Hannah R. Dietterich, Christina A. Neal
Taking the leap: A binational translocation effort to close the 420-km gap in the Baja California lineage of the California red-legged frog (Rana draytonii)
Conservation translocations, the human-mediated movement and release of a living organism for a conservation benefit, are increasingly recommended in species’ recovery plans as a technique for mitigating population declines or augmenting genetic diversity. However, translocation protocols for species with broad distributions may require regionally specific considerations to increase success, as en
Authors
Susan North, Jonathan Q. Richmond, Frank E. Santana, Anny Peralta-García, Elizabeth Gallegos, Adam R. Backlin, Cynthia Joan Hitchcock, Bradford Hollingsworth, Jorge H. Valdez-Villavicencio, Zachary Principe, Robert N. Fisher, Clark S. Winchell
Chew-cards can accurately index invasive rat densities in Mariana Island forests
Rats (Rattus spp.) are likely established on 80–90% of the world’s islands and represent one of the most damaging and expensive biological invaders. Effective rat control tools exist but require accurate population density estimates or indices to inform treatment timing and effort and to assess treatment efficacy. Capture-mark-recapture data are frequently used to produce robust density estimates,
Authors
Emma B. Hanslowe, Amy A. Yackel Adams, Melia Gail Nafus, Douglas A Page, Danielle R. Bradke, Francesca T. Erickson, Larissa L. Bailey
Application of recursive estimation to heat tracing for groundwater/surface-water exchange
We present and demonstrate a recursive-estimation framework to infer groundwater/surface-water exchange based on temperature time series collected at different vertical depths below the sediment/water interface. We formulate the heat-transport problem as a state-space model (SSM), in which the spatial derivatives in the convection/conduction equation are approximated using finite differences. The
Authors
W. Anderson McAliley, Frederick Day-Lewis, David Rey, Martin Briggs, Allen M. Shapiro, Dale Werkema