Publications
USGS research activities relevant to Alaska have yielded more than 9400 historical publications. This page features some of the most recent newsworthy research findings.
Filter Total Items: 2897
Annual review 2023: Critical minerals
No abstract available.
Authors
Graham W. Lederer, James V. Jones, Darcy McPhee, Jeffrey L. Mauk, Robert R. Seal, Kate M. Campbell, Jane M. Hammarstrom, Paul A. Bedrosian, Patricia Grace Macqueen, Garth E. Graham, Federico Solano, George N. D. Case, David George Pineault
Drought, fire, and archeology in the Jemez Mountains, New Mexico
In the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico, cultural resources and traditional cultural landscapes are vulnerable to compounded impacts of changing climate and wildfires. Here, we discuss impacts to archeological resources observed in recent, high-severity fires, including at Bandelier National Monument and Valles Caldera National Preserve, and describe an interdisciplinary effort to quantity...
Authors
Anastasia Steffen, Jamie Civitello, Rachel A. Loehman, Robert Parmenter
Detrital zircons and the magmatic history of Viti Levu, Fiji
We integrate the existing detrital zircon data from multiple modern river sediment samples on Viti Levu, Fiji, with the most current available geological and topographic mapping of the respective river drainage basins to compare detrital populations with potential bedrock sources. The temporal and spatial variations in zircon geochemistry supplement what is known from igneous rocks and...
Authors
Allen Stork, James B Gill, Erin Todd, Elizabeth Kathleen Drewes-Todd
A high-resolution, daily hindcast (1990-2021) of Alaskan river discharge and temperature from coupled and optimized physical models
Water quality and freshwater ecosystems are affected by river discharge and temperature. Models are frequently used to estimate river temperature on large spatial and temporal scales due to limited observations of discharge and temperature. In this study, we use physically based river routing and temperature models to simulate daily discharge and river temperature for rivers in 138...
Authors
Dylan Blaskey, Michael Gooseff, Yifan Cheng, Andrew Newman, Joshua C. Koch, Keith Musselman
A comparison of contemporary and historical hydrology and water quality in the foothills and coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Arctic Slope, northern Alaska
The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is a unique landscape in northern Alaska with limited water resources, substantial biodiversity of rare and threatened species, as well as oil and gas resources. The region has unique hydrology related to perennial springs, and the formation of large aufeis fields—sheets of ice that grow in the river channels where water reaches the surface in the...
Authors
Joshua C. Koch, Heather Best, Carson Baughman, Charles Couvillion, Michael P. Carey, Jeff Conaway
Seasonal and decadal subsurface thaw dynamics of an Aufeis feature investigated through numerical simulations
Aufeis (also known as icings) are large sheet-like masses of layered ice that form in river channels in arctic environments in the winter as groundwater discharges to the land surface and subsequently freezes. Aufeis are important sources of water for Arctic river ecosystems, bolstering late summer river discharge and providing habitat for caribou escaping insect harassment. The aim of...
Authors
Alexi Lainis, Roseanna M. Neupauer, Joshua C. Koch, Michael Gooseff
Geophysical constraints on continental rejuvenation in central China: Implications for outward growth of the Tibetan Plateau
Continental rejuvenation results from the tectonic reactivation of crustal structures and lithospheric reworking by mantle flow. Geochemical observations and field mapping have traditionally provided the primary evidence for the secular evolution of crustal composition and tectonic processes during continental rejuvenation. Nonetheless, the impact of continental rejuvenation on the...
Authors
Yi-Peng Zhang, Pei-Zhen Zhang, Richard O. Lease, Min-Juan Li, Renjie Zhou, Bin-Bin Xu, Si-Yuan Chen, Xu-Zhang Shen, Wen-Jun Zheng, Xiao-Hui He, Wei-Tao Wang, Yue-Jun Wang
A systematic review of the effects of climate variability and change on black and brown bear ecology and interactions with humans
Climate change poses a pervasive threat to humans and wildlife by altering resource availability, changing co-occurrences, and directly or indirectly influencing human-wildlife interactions. For many wildlife agencies in North America, managing bears (Ursus spp.) and human-bear interactions is a priority, yet the direct and indirect effects of climate change are exacerbating management...
Authors
Katherine Anne Kurth, Kate Malpeli, Joseph D. Clark, Heather E. Johnson, Frank T. van Manen
Approaches for using CMIP projections in climate model ensembles to address the ‘hot model’ problem
Several recent generation global-climate models were found to have anomalously high climate sensitivities and may not be useful for certain applications. Four approaches for developing ensembles of climate projections for applications that address this issue are:Using an “all models” approach;Screening using equilibrium climate sensitivity and (or) transient climate response;Bayesian...
Authors
Ryan Boyles, Catherine A. Nikiel, Brian W. Miller, Jeremy Littell, Adam J. Terando, Imtiaz Rangwala, Jay R. Alder, Derek H. Rosendahl, Adrienne M. Wootten
Satellite Interferometry Landslide Detection and Preliminary Tsunamigenic Plausibility Assessment in Prince William Sound, Southcentral Alaska
Regional mapping of actively deforming landslides, including measurements of landslide velocity, is integral for hazard assessments in paraglacial environments. These inventories are also critical for describing the potential impacts that the warming effects of climate change have on slope instability in mountainous and cryospheric terrain. The objective of this study is to identify slow...
Authors
Lauren N. Schaefer, Jinwook Kim, Dennis M. Staley, Zhong Lu, Katherine R. Barnhart
Lingering impacts of the 2014-2016 northeast Pacific marine heatwave on seabird demography in Cook Inlet, Alaska (USA)
A protracted period (2014-2016) of anomalously warm water in the northeast Pacific Ocean precipitated an extensive die-off of common murres Uria aalge (hereafter ‘murres’) during 2015-2016, accompanied by reduced colony attendance and reproductive success of murres and black-legged kittiwakes Rissa tridactyla (‘kittiwakes’) starting in 2015. Most murres died of starvation following a...
Authors
Sarah K. Schoen, Mayumi L. Arimitsu, Caitlin Elizabeth Marsteller, John F. Piatt
Alaska's climate sensitive Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta supports seven million Arctic-breeding shorebirds, including the majority of six North American populations
Baseline information about declining North American shorebird populations is essential to determine the effects of global warming at low-lying coastal areas of the Arctic and subarctic, where numerous taxa breed, and to assess population recovery throughout their range. We estimated population sizes on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta in western Alaska on the eastern edge of the Bering Sea. We...
Authors
James E. Lyons, Stephen C. Brown, Sarah T. Saalfeld, James A. Johnson, Brad A. Andres, Kristine M. Sowl, Robert E. Gill, Brian J. McCaffery, Lindall Kidd, Metta McGarvey, Brad Winn, H. River Gates, Diane A. Granfors, Richard B. Lanctot