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Publications

Browse publications authored by our scientists.  Publications available are: USGS-authored journal articles, series reports, book chapters, other government publications, and more. **Disclaimer: The views expressed in Non-USGS publications are those of the author and do not represent the views of the USGS, Department of the Interior, or the U.S. Government.

Filter Total Items: 3984

The influence of angler values, involvement, catch orientation, satisfaction, agency trust, and demographics on support for habitat protection and restoration versus stocking in publicly managed waters

Resource managers benefit from knowledge of angler support for fisheries management strategies. Factors including angler values (protection, utilitarian, and dominance), involvement (attraction, centrality, social, identity affirmation, and expression), catch-related motivations (catching some, many, and big fish, and keeping fish), satisfaction, agency trust, and demographics may relate to fisher
Authors
Susan A. Schroeder, David C. Fulton, Eric Altena, Heather Baird, Douglas J. Dieterman, Martin Jennings

Effects of temperature and precipitation on grassland bird nesting success as mediated by patch size

Grassland birds are declining faster than any other bird guild across North America. Shrinking ranges and population declines are attributed to widespread habitat loss and increasingly fragmented landscapes of agriculture and other land uses that are misaligned with grassland bird conservation. Concurrent with habitat loss and degradation, temperate grasslands have been disproportionally affected
Authors
Benjamin Zuckerberg, Christine Ribic, Lisa A. McCauley

Extinction risk and conservation options for Maui Parrotbill, an endangered Hawaiian honeycreeper

Extinction rates for island birds around the world have been historically high. For forest passerines, the Hawaiian archipelago has suffered some of the highest extinction rates and reintroduction is a conservation tool that can be used to prevent the extinction of some of the remaining endangered species. Population viability analyses can be used to assess risks to vulnerable populations and eval
Authors
Hanna L. Mounce, Christopher C. Warren, Conor P. McGowan, Eben H. Paxton, J.J. Groombridge

Riparian defoliation by the invasive green alder sawfly influences terrestrial prey subsidies to salmon streams

Invasive species in riparian forests are unique as their effects can transcend ecosystem boundaries via stream‐riparian linkages. The green alder sawfly (Monsoma pulveratum) is an invasive wasp whose larvae are defoliating riparian thin‐leaf alder (Alnus tenuifolia) stands across southcentral Alaska. To test the hypothesis that riparian defoliation by this invasive sawfly negatively affects the fl
Authors
David A. Roon, Mark S. Wipfli, James J. Kruse

Evidence for exposure to selenium by breeding interior snowy plovers (Charadrius nivosus) in saline systems of the Southern Great Plains

Interior snowy plover (Charadrius nivosus) population declines and deteriorating conditions throughout the Southern Great Plains (SGP) of Texas, New Mexico, and Oklahoma may be linked to environmental contaminants. Concentrations of V, As, Cd, Pb, and Se were quantified in breeding snowy plover blood, feathers (5th primary; P5), and potential prey (tiger beetles [Cicindela circumpicta and C. togat
Authors
H.M. Ashbaugh, Warren C. Conway, David A. Haukos, D. P. Collins, C. E. Comer, A. D. French

The influence of nutrients from carcasses of sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus) on larval growth and spawner abundance

Migrations of anadromous sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus) from marine ecosystems serve as vectors of nutrients into freshwater food webs. Larval sea lamprey reside in streams for 6–8 years as deposit feeders before metamorphosing into juveniles and migrating to the ocean. Previous work has shown that carcass nutrients, which result from the death of adult lamprey after spawning, increase stream pr
Authors
Daniel M. Weaver, Stephen M. Coghlan, Joseph D. Zydlewski

Landscape structure and temporal dynamic effects on Wintering Mallard abundance and distributions in the Mississippi alluvial valley

Context Management of wintering waterfowl in North America requires adaptability because constant landscape and environmental change challenges existing management strategies regarding waterfowl habitat use at large spatial scales. Migratory waterfowl including mallards (Anas platyrhynchos) use the lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley (MAV) for wintering habitat, making this an important area of emph
Authors
John A. Herbert, Avishek Chakraborty, Luke W. Naylor, William S. Beattty, David G. Krementz

Capture versus tagging impacts on chum salmon freshwater spawning migration travel times

The spawning migration travel times of chum salmon, Oncorhynchus keta (Walbaum), fitted with gastrically implanted radio tags vs external spaghetti tags were tested for a short [≈60 river km (rkm)] and long migration route (≈730 rkm) on the Koyukuk River, Alaska, USA. Using a novel application of statistical arrival curve models to infer travel times for uncaptured fish, migrations by chum salmon
Authors
Suresh Sethi

Assessment of Alaska rain-on-snow events using dynamical downscaling

The ice formed by cold-season rainfall or rain on snow (ROS) has striking impacts on the economy and ecology of Alaska. An understanding of the atmospheric drivers of ROS events is required to better predict them and plan for environmental change. The spatially/temporally sparse network of stations in Alaska makes studying such events challenging, and gridded reanalysis or remote sensing products
Authors
Peter A. Bieniek, Uma S. Bhatt, John E. Walsh, Rick Lader, Brad Griffith, Jennifer K. Roach, Richard L. Thoman

Examination of multiple working hypotheses to address reproductive failure in reintroduced Whooping Cranes

Understanding multiple challenges that restrict conservation success is a central task of applied ecology, especially when resources are limited and actions are expensive, such as with reintroduction programs. Simultaneous consideration of multiple hypotheses can expedite identification of factors that most limit conservation success. Since 2001, reintroduction of a migratory population of Whoopin
Authors
Jeb A. Barzen, Sarah J. Converse, Peter H. Adler, Anne E Lacy, Elmer Gray, Andrew Gossens

The perpetual state of emergency that sacrifices protected areas in a changing climate

A modern challenge for conservation biology is to assess the consequences of policies that adhere to assumptions of stationarity (e.g. historic norms) in an era of global environmental change. Such policies may result in unexpected and surprising levels of mitigation given future climate change trajectories, especially as agriculture looks to protected areas to buffer against production losses dur
Authors
Dirac Twidwell, Carissa L. Wonkka, Christine H. Bielski, Craig R. Allen, David G. Angeler, Jacob Drozda, Ahjond S. Garmestani, Julia Johnson, Larkin A. Powell, Caleb P. Roberts

Evaluation of targeted and untargeted effects-based monitoring tools to assess impacts of contaminants of emerging concern on fish in the South Platte River, CO

Rivers in the arid Western United States face increasing influences from anthropogenic contaminants due to population growth, urbanization, and drought. To better understand and more effectively track the impacts of these contaminants, biologically-based monitoring tools are increasingly being used to complement routine chemical monitoring. This study was initiated to assess the ability of both ta
Authors
Drew R. Ekman, Kristen Keteles, Jon Beihoffer, Jenna E. Cavallin, Kenneth Dahlin, John M. Davis, Aaron Jastrow, James M. Lazorchak, Marc A. Mills, Mark Murphy, David Nguyen, Alan M. Vajda, Daniel L. Villeneuve, Dana L. Winkelman, Timothy W. Collette