Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

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: 2891

Evaluation of potential protective factors against metabolic syndrome in bottlenose dolphins:feeding and activity patterns of dolphins in Sarasota Bay, Florida

Free-ranging bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) living in Sarasota Bay, Florida appear to have a lower risk of developing insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome compared to a group of dolphins managed under human care. Similar to humans, differences in diet and activity cycles between these groups may explain why Sarasota dolphins have lower insulin, glucose, and lipids. To identify poten
Authors
Randall S. Wells, Katherine A. McHugh, David C. Douglas, Steve Shippee, Elizabeth Berens McCabe, Nélio B. Barros, Goldie T. Phillips

Demography and behavior of polar bears summering on land in Alaska

Polar bears (Ursus maritimus) in the southern Beaufort Sea population (SB) are spending increased time on the coastal North Slope of Alaska between July and October (Gleason and Rode 2010). The duration spent on land by polar bears, satellite collared on the sea-ice in the spring, during the summer and fall has also increased (USGS, unpublished data; Figure 1). This change in polar bear ecology ha
Authors
Elizabeth L. Peacock

Free-living waterfowl and shorebirds

No abstract available.
Authors
Daniel M. Mulcahy

Sources of global climate data and visualization portals

Climate is integral to the geophysical foundation upon which ecosystems are structured. Knowledge about mechanistic linkages between the geophysical and biological environments is essential for understanding how global warming may reshape contemporary ecosystems and ecosystem services. Numerous global data sources spanning several decades are available that document key geophysical metrics such as
Authors
David C. Douglas

Delineation of Tundra Swan Cygnus c. columbianus populations in North America: geographic boundaries and interchange

North American Tundra Swans Cygnus c. columbianus are composed of two wellrecognised populations: an Eastern Population (EP) that breeds across northern Canada and north of the Brooks Range in Alaska, which migrates to the eastern seaboard of the United States, and a Western Population (WP) that breeds in coastal regions of Alaska south of the Brooks Range and migrates to western North America. We
Authors
Craig R. Ely, William J. L. Sladen, Heather M. Wilson, Susan E. Savage, Kristine M. Sowl, Bill Henry, Mike Schwitters, James Snowden

Post-breeding migration of Dutch-breeding black-tailed godwits: timing, routes, use of stopovers, and nonbreeding destinations

Conservation of long-distance migratory shorebirds is complex because these species use habitats spread across continents and hemispheres, making identification of critical habitats and potential bottlenecks in the annual cycle especially difficult. The population of Black-tailed Godwits that breeds in Western Europe, Limosa limosa limosa, has declined precipitously over the past few decades. Desp
Authors
Jos C. E. W. Hooijmeijer, Nathan R. Senner, T. Lee Tibbitts, Robert E. Gill, David C. Douglas, Leo W. Bruinzeel, Eddy Wymenga, Theunis Piersma

New imaging of submarine landslides from the 1964 earthquake near Whittier, Alaska, and a comparison to failures in other Alaskan fjords

The 1964 Alaska M w 9.2 earthquake triggered numerous submarine slope failures in fjords of southern Alaska. These failures generated local tsunamis, such as at Whittier, where they inundated the town within 4 min of the beginning of shaking. Run-up was up to 32 m, with 13 casualties. We collected new multibeam bathymetry and high-resolution sparker seismic data in Passage Canal, and we examined b
Authors
Peter J. Haeussler, Thomas E. Parsons, David P. Finlayson, Patrick J. Hart, Jason D. Chaytor, Holly F Ryan, Homa J. Lee, Keith A. Labay, Andrew Peterson, Lee Liberty

Prevalence of pure versus mixed snow cover pixels across spatial resolutions in alpine environments: implications for binary and fractional remote sensing approaches

Remote sensing of snow-covered area (SCA) can be binary (indicating the presence/absence of snow cover at each pixel) or fractional (indicating the fraction of each pixel covered by snow). Fractional SCA mapping provides more information than binary SCA, but is more difficult to implement and may not be feasible with all types of remote sensing data. The utility of fractional SCA mapping relative
Authors
David J. Selkowitz, Richard Forster, Megan K. Caldwell

Wildlife health in a rapidly changing North: focus on avian disease

Climate-related environmental changes have increasingly been linked to emerging infectious diseases in wildlife. The Arctic is facing a major ecological transition that is expected to substantially affect animal and human health. Changes in phenology or environmental conditions that result from climate warming may promote novel species assemblages as host and pathogen ranges expand to previously u
Authors
Caroline R. Van Hemert, John M. Pearce, Colleen M. Handel

Free-living waterfowl and shorebirds

No abstract available.
Authors
Daniel M. Mulcahy

The 2010 slow slip event and secular motion at Kilauea, Hawai`i inferred from TerraSAR-X InSAR data

We present here an Small BAseline Subset (SBAS) algorithm to extract both transient and secular ground deformations on the order of millimeters in the presence of tropospheric noise on the order of centimeters, when the transient is of short duration and known time, and the background deformation is smooth in time. We applied this algorithm to study the 2010 slow slip event as well as the secular
Authors
Jingyi Chen, Howard A. Zebker, Paul Segall, Asta Miklius