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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Filter Total Items: 171176
Assessment of undiscovered, technically recoverable conventional oil and gas resources in the Upper Jurassic Smackover Formation, U.S. Gulf Coast, 2022
Using a geology-based assessment methodology, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated undiscovered, technically recoverable mean resources of 143 million barrels of oil and 1,084 billion cubic feet of natural gas in conventional accumulations for the Upper Jurassic Smackover Formation in the onshore U.S. Gulf Coast region.
Authors
Justin E. Birdwell, Katherine J. Whidden, Stanley T. Paxton, Scott A. Kinney, Rand D. Gardner, Janet K. Pitman, Katherine L. French, Tracey J. Mercier, Cheryl A. Woodall, Heidi M. Leathers-Miller, Christopher J. Schenk
Physics to fish—Understanding the factors that create and sustain native fish habitat in the San Francisco Estuary
Executive SummaryThe Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation) operates the Central Valley Project (CVP), one of the nation’s largest water projects. Reclamation has an ongoing need to improve the scientific basis for adaptive management of the CVP and, by extension, joint operations with California’s State Water Project. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) works cooperatively with the Bureau of Reclamati
Authors
Larry R. Brown, David E. Ayers, Brian A. Bergamaschi, Jon R. Burau, Evan T. Dailey, Bryan D. Downing, Maureen A. Downing-Kunz, Frederick V. Feyrer, Brock M. Huntsman, Tamara E. C. Kraus, Tara Morgan, Jessica R. Lacy, Francis Parchaso, Catherine A. Ruhl, Elizabeth B. Stumpner, Paul Stumpner, Janet Thompson, Matthew J. Young
National shoreline change—Summary statistics of shoreline change from the 1800s to the 2010s for the coast of California
Rates of shoreline change have been updated for the open-ocean sandy coastline of California as part of studies conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey. Shorelines from the original assessment (1800s through 1998 or 2002), as well as additional shoreline position data from 2009 to 2011, 2015, and 2016 extracted from light detection and ranging (lidar) data, were used to compute long-term rates (ap
Authors
Meredith G. Kratzmann
National-scale remotely sensed lake trophic state from 1984 through 2020
Lake trophic state is a key ecosystem property that integrates a lake’s physical, chemical, and biological processes. Despite the importance of trophic state as a gauge of lake water quality, standardized and machine-readable observations are uncommon. Remote sensing presents an opportunity to detect and analyze lake trophic state with reproducible, robust methods across time and space. We used La
Authors
Michael Frederick Meyer, Simon Nemer Topp, Tyler Victor King, Robert Ladwig, Rachel M. Pilla, Hilary A. Dugan, Jack R. Eggleston, Stephanie E. Hampton, Dina M Leech, Isabella Oleksy, Jesse Cleveland Ross, Matthew V Ross, Iestyn R Woolway, Xiao Yang, Matthew R. Brousil, Kate Colleen Fickas, Julie C Padowski, Amina Pollard, Jianning Ren, Jacob Aaron Zwart
Nanoscale silicate melt textures determine volcanic ash surface chemistry
Explosive volcanic eruptions produce vast quantities of silicate ash, whose surfaces are subsequently altered during atmospheric transit. These altered surfaces mediate environmental interactions, including atmospheric ice nucleation, and toxic effects in biota. A lack of knowledge of the initial, pre-altered ash surface has required previous studies to assume that the ash surface composition crea
Authors
Adrian Hornby, Paul M Ayris, David Damby, Spyros Diplas, Julia Eychenne, Jackie E. Kendrick, Corrado Cimarelli, Ulli Kueppers, Bettina Scheu, James E. P. Utley, Donald B. Dingwell
Bringing partners together: A symposium on native lampreys and the Pacific Lamprey Conservation Initiative
A symposium at the 2022 American Fisheries Society meeting highlighted collaborations among biologists, policymakers, and Native American tribes addressing conservation for native lampreys. We present key findings from the symposium and related research and an example of grassroots effort to protect and restore Pacific Lamprey.
Authors
Theresa L. Liedtke, Julianne E. Harris, Christina J. Wang, Trent M. Sutton
Assessing the accuracy of OpenET satellite-based evapotranspiration data to support water resource and land management applications
Remotely sensed evapotranspiration (ET) data offer strong potential to support data-driven approaches for sustainable water management. However, practitioners require robust and rigorous accuracy assessments of such data. The OpenET system, which includes an ensemble of six remote sensing models, was developed to increase access to field-scale (30 m) ET data for the contiguous United States. Here
Authors
John Volk, Justin Huntington, Forrest Melton, Richard M. Allen, Martha Anderson, Joshua Fisher, Ayse Kilic, Anderson Ruhoff, Gabriel B. Senay, Blake Minor, Charles Morton, Thomas Ott, Lee Johnson, Bruno Comini de Andrade, Will Carrarra, Conor Doherty, Christian Dunkerly, Mackenzie Friedrichs, Alberto Guzman, Christopher Hain, Gregory Halverson, Yanghui Kang, Kyle Knipper, Leonardo Laipelt, Samuel Ortega-Salazar, Christopher Pearson, Gabriel Edwin Lee Parrish, A.J. Purdy, Peter M. ReVelle, Tianxin Wang, Yun Yang
Shoreline slope influences movements of larval lampreys over dewatered substrate
Larval lampreys are filter feeders that live for several years burrowed in fine sediments in freshwater streams. Stream side channels and edges, where larval lampreys gather, are vulnerable to natural and human-caused dewatering. Water level reductions can strand and kill thousands of larval lampreys, in part because many remain burrowed until their habitats are exposed, at which point larvae must
Authors
Theresa L. Liedtke, Julianne E. Harris, Ann E. Gray
Encounter rates and catch-and-release mortality of steelhead in the Snake River basin
ObjectiveThe potential influence (i.e., impact rate) of catch-and-release fisheries on wild steelhead Oncorhynchus mykiss is poorly understood and is a function of the abundance of wild fish, how many fish are encountered by anglers (i.e., encounter rate), and the mortality of fish that are caught and released. In Idaho, estimates of wild steelhead encounter rates have been derived using the numbe
Authors
William Lubenau, Timothy B. Johnson, Brett J. Bowersox, Timothy Copeland, Joshua McCormick, Michael Quist
Opportunities for improved consideration of cultural benefits in environmental decision-making
Many cultural benefits of ecosystem services (ES) are difficult to capture in standard ES assessments. Scholars and practitioners often respond to this gap by seeking to develop new scientific methods to capture and integrate the plural values associated with diverse cultural benefits categories. This increasing emphasis on value pluralism represents an essential step toward recognitional justice
Authors
Kristin R. Hoelting, Joshua M Morse, Rachelle K. Gould, Doreen E. Martinez, Rina S. Hauptfeld, Amanda E. Cravens, Sara J. Breslow, Lucas Bair, Rudy Schuster, Michael C. Gavin
Prey selection by black-footed ferrets (Mustela nigripes): Implications for intersexual resource partitioning and conservation
Intraspecific resource partitioning may play a critical role in how predators optimize prey selection. The Black-footed Ferret (Mustela nigripes; henceforth, ferret) is a highly specialized predator of prairie dogs (Cynomys spp.; henceforth, PDs). Adult ferrets are sexually dimorphic and PDs are of similar size making them a difficult prey item. PD young are born 6 to 8 weeks prior to births of fe
Authors
Dean E. Biggins, David A. Eads, Shantini Ramakrishnan, Amanda R. Goldberg, Samantha L. Eads, Joanna Hardin, Darla Konkel
Saltwater intrusion and sea level rise threatens U.S. rural coastal landscapes and communities
The United States (U.S.) coastal plain is subject to rising sea levels, land subsidence, more severe coastal storms, and more intense droughts. These changes lead to inputs of marine salts into freshwater-dependent coastal systems, creating saltwater intrusion. The penetration of salinity into the coastal interior is exacerbated by groundwater extraction and the high density of agricultural canals
Authors
Kiera O'Donnell, Emily S. Bernhardt, Xi Yang, Ryan Emanuel, Marcelo Ardon, Manuel Lerdau, Alex Manda, Anna Braswell, Todd BenDor, Eric Edwards, Elizabeth Frankenberg, Ashley Helton, John Kominoski, Amy Lesen, Lindsay Naylor, Gregory Noe, Kate Tully, Elliott White, Justin Wright