Publications
Listed here are publications, reports and articles by the Land Change Science Program in the USGS Ecosystems Mission Area.
Filter Total Items: 1136
North Pacific deglacial hypoxic events linked to abrupt ocean warming
Marine sediments from the North Pacific document two episodes of expansion and strengthening of the subsurface oxygen minimum zone (OMZ) accompanied by seafloor hypoxia during the last deglacial transition1, 2, 3, 4. The mechanisms driving this hypoxia remain under debate1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. We present a new high-resolution alkenone palaeotemperature reconstruction from the...
Authors
Summer K. Praetorius, Alan C. Mix, Maureen H. Davies, Matthew D Wolhowe, Jason A. Addison, Frederick G Prahl
Predictions of future ephemeral springtime waterbird stopover habitat availability under global change
In the present period of rapid, worldwide change in climate and landuse (i.e., global change), successful biodiversity conservation warrants proactive management responses, especially for long-distance migratory species. However, the development and implementation of management strategies can be impeded by high levels of uncertainty and low levels of control over potentially impactful...
Authors
Daniel R. Uden, Craig Allen, Andrew A. Bishop, Roger Grosse, Christopher F. Jorgensen, Theodore G. LaGrange, Randy G. Stutheit, Mark P. Vrtiska
Engagement with indigenous peoples and honoring traditional knowledge systems
The organizers of the 2014 US National Climate Assessment (NCA) made a concerted effort to reach out to and collaborate with Indigenous peoples, resulting in the most comprehensive information to date on climate change impacts to Indigenous peoples in a US national assessment. Yet, there is still much room for improvement in assessment processes to ensure adequate recognition of...
Authors
Julie Maldonado, Bull Bennett, Karletta Chief, Patricia Cochran, Karen Cozetto, Bob Gough, Margaret Hiza, Kathy Lynn, Nancy Maynard, Garrit Voggesser
By
Energy and Mineral Resources Mission Area, Ecosystems Land Change Science Program, Energy Resources Program, Groundwater and Streamflow Information Program, Land Change Science Program, Mineral Resources Program, National Laboratories Program, Science and Decisions Center, Geology, Minerals, Energy, and Geophysics Science Center
Projected future vegetation changes for the northwest United States and southwest Canada at a fine spatial resolution using a dynamic global vegetation model.
Future climate change may significantly alter the distributions of many plant taxa. The effects of climate change may be particularly large in mountainous regions where climate can vary significantly with elevation. Understanding potential future vegetation changes in these regions requires methods that can resolve vegetation responses to climate change at fine spatial resolutions. We...
Authors
Sarah Shafer, Patrick J. Bartlein, Elizabeth M. Gray, Richard T. Pelltier
Linking microbial community structure and microbial processes: An empirical and conceptual overview
A major goal of microbial ecology is to identify links between microbial community structure and microbial processes. Although this objective seems straightforward, there are conceptual and methodological challenges to designing studies that explicitly evaluate this link. Here, we analyzed literature documenting structure and process responses to manipulations to determine the frequency...
Authors
R.L. Bier, Emily. S Bernhardt, Claudia M. Boot, Emily B. Graham, Edward K. Hall, Jay T. Lennon, Diana R. Nemergut, Brooke Bossert Osborne, Clara Ruiz-Gonzalez, Joshua P. Schimel, Mark P. Waldrop, Matthew D. Wallenstein
Taking a systems approach to ecological systems
Increasingly, there is interest in a systems-level understanding of ecological problems, which requires the evaluation of more complex, causal hypotheses. In this issue of the Journal of Vegetation Science, Soliveres et al. use structural equation modeling to test a causal network hypothesis about how tree canopies affect understorey communities. Historical analysis suggests structural...
Authors
James B. Grace
Adaptive invasive species distribution models: A framework for modeling incipient invasions
The utilization of species distribution model(s) (SDM) for approximating, explaining, and predicting changes in species’ geographic locations is increasingly promoted for proactive ecological management. Although frameworks for modeling non-invasive species distributions are relatively well developed, their counterparts for invasive species—which may not be at equilibrium within...
Authors
Daniel R. Uden, Craig Allen, David G. Angeler, Lucia Corral, Kent A. Fricke
On the reconstruction of palaeo-ice sheets: Recent advances and future challenges
Reconstructing the growth and decay of palaeo-ice sheets is critical to understanding mechanisms of global climate change and associated sea-level fluctuations in the past, present and future. The significance of palaeo-ice sheets is further underlined by the broad range of disciplines concerned with reconstructing their behaviour, many of which have undergone a rapid expansion since the...
Authors
Chris R. Stokes, Lev Tarasov, Robin Blomdin, Thomas M. Cronin, Timothy G. Fisher, Richard Gyllencreutz, Clas Hattestrand, Jakob Heyman, Richard C. A. Hindmarsh, Anna L. C. Hughes, Martin Jakobsson, Nina Kirchner, Stephen J. Livingstone, Martin Margold, Julian B. Murton, Riko Noormets, W. Richard Peltier, Dorothy M. Peteet, David Z. Piper, Frank Preusser, Hans Renssen, David W. Roberts, Didier M. Roche, Francky Saint-Ange, Arjen P. Stroeven, James T. Teller
Effects of Hydrocarbon Extraction on Landscapes of the Appalachian Basin
An important and sometimes overlooked aspect of contemporary natural gas exploration, development, and delivery activities is the geographic profile and spatial footprint that these activities have on the land surface. The function of many ecosystems and the goods and services they provide, in large part, are the result of their natural spatial arrangement on the landscape. Shale-gas...
Authors
E. Terrence Slonecker, Lesley E. Milheim, Coral M. Roig-Silva, Siddiq Kalaly
Chemical and biotic characteristics of prairie lakes and large wetlands in south-central North Dakota—Effects of a changing climate
The climate of the prairie pothole region of North America is known for variability that results in significant interannual changes in water depths and volumes of prairie lakes and wetlands; however, beginning in July 1993, the climate of the region shifted to an extended period of increased precipitation that has likely been unequaled in the preceding 500 years. Associated changing...
Authors
David M. Mushet, Martin B. Goldhaber, Christopher T. Mills, Kyle McLean, Vanessa M. Aparicio, R. Blaine McCleskey, JoAnn M. Holloway, Craig A. Stockwell
Larger trees suffer most during drought in forests worldwide
The frequency of severe droughts is increasing in many regions around the world as a result of climate change. Droughts alter the structure and function of forests. Site- and region-specific studies suggest that large trees, which play keystone roles in forests and can be disproportionately important to ecosystem carbon storage and hydrology, exhibit greater sensitivity to drought than...
Authors
Amy C. Bennett, Nathan G. McDowell, Craig Allen, Kristina J. Anderson-Teixeira
A Green's function approach for assessing the thermal disturbance caused by drilling deep boreholes in rock or ice
A knowledge of subsurface temperatures in sedimentary basins, fault zones, volcanic environments and polar ice sheets is of interest for a wide variety of geophysical applications. However, the process of drilling deep boreholes in these environments to provide access for temperature and other measurements invariably disturbs the temperature field around a newly created borehole...
Authors
Gary D. Clow