Publications
These publications showcase the significant science conducted in our Science Centers.
Filter Total Items: 16783
Movement behavior preceding autumn mortality for white-tailed deer in central New York
A common yet largely untested assumption in the theory of animal movements is that increased rates and a wider range of movements, such as occurs during breeding, make animals more vulnerable to mortality. We examined mortality among 34 white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) wearing GPS collars during the autumn breeding season of 2006 and 2007 in a heavily hunted, forest-agricultural landscap
Authors
Brigham J. Whitman, W. F. Porter, Amy C. Dechen Quinn, David M. Williams, Jacqueline L. Frair, H. Brian Underwood, Joanne C. Crawford
Assessment of capacity-building activities for forest measurement, reporting, and verification, 2011–15
This report was written as a collaborative effort between the U.S. Geological Survey, SilvaCarbon, and Wageningen University with funding provided by the U.S. Agency for International Development and the European Space Agency, respectively, to address a pressing need for enhanced result-based monitoring and evaluation of delivered capacity-building activities. For this report, the capacity-buildin
Authors
Elitsa I. Peneva-Reed, J. Erika Romijn
Remotely sensing the morphometrics and dynamics of a cold region dune field using historical aerial photography and airborne LiDAR data
This study uses an airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) survey, historical aerial photography and historical climate data to describe the character and dynamics of the Nogahabara Sand Dunes, a sub-Arctic dune field in interior Alaska’s discontinuous permafrost zone. The Nogahabara Sand Dunes consist of a 43-km2 area of active transverse and barchanoid dunes within a 3200-km2 area of vegeta
Authors
Carson Baughman, Benjamin M. Jones, Karin L. Bodony, Daniel H. Mann, Christopher F. Larsen, Emily A. Himmelstoss, Jeremy Smith
Characterizing local and range wide variation in demography and adaptive capacity of a forest indicator species
The red-backed salamander (Plethodon cinereus) is considered an indicator of forest health. The range of the species covers much of the eastern and central US, and is often locally abundant where it occurs, primarily in deciduous forest. While there are expectations that changes in climate will result in changes in forest ecosystems, the ability of a forest indicator such as the red-backed salaman
Authors
Evan H. Campbell Grant
User’s guide for MapMark4GUI—A graphical user interface for the MapMark4 R package
MapMark4GUI is an R graphical user interface (GUI) developed by the U.S. Geological Survey to support user implementation of the MapMark4 R statistical software package. MapMark4 was developed by the U.S. Geological Survey to implement probability calculations for simulating undiscovered mineral resources in quantitative mineral resource assessments. The GUI provides an easy-to-use tool to input d
Authors
Jason L. Shapiro
USGS critical minerals review
The United States’ supply of critical minerals has been a concern and a source of potential strategic vulnerabilities for U.S. economic and national security interests for decades (for example, see Strategic and Critical Minerals Stockpiling Act, 1939). More recently, with the rapid increase in the types of materials being used in advanced technologies (Fortier et al. 2018a), and geopolitical even
Authors
Steven M. Fortier, Jane M. Hammarstrom, Sarah J. Ryker, Warren C. Day, Robert R. Seal
North American net import reliance of mineral materials in 2014 for advanced technologies
The U.S. Geological Survey and Natural Resources Canada conducted a study on the net import reliance of each North American country, and the impact of North American trade on the net import reliance of 12 nonfuel mineral commodities that are associated with advanced technology products: cadmium, cobalt, gallium, germanium, graphite, indium, lithium, nickel, rare earth elements, selenium, silver an
Authors
Jaime L. Brainard, Robert G Sinclair, Kevin Stone, Elizabeth Scott Sangine, Steven M. Fortier
Downhole physical property-based description of a gas hydrate petroleum system in NGHP-02 Area C: A channel, levee, fan complex in the Krishna-Godavari Basin offshore eastern India
India’s second National Gas Hydrate Program expedition, NGHP-02, collected logging while drilling and sediment core data in Area C offshore eastern India, to investigate controls on the distribution and peak saturations of methane gas hydrate occurrences in buried channel, levee and fan deposits. Physical property results are presented here for the four Area C coring sites: NGHP-02-07, targeting
Authors
William F. Waite, Junbong Jang, Timothy S. Collett, Ronish Kumar
Canopy volume removal from oil and gas development activity in the upper Susquehanna River basin in Pennsylvania and New York (USA): An assessment using lidar data
Oil and gas development is changing the landscape in many regions of the United States and globally. However, the nature, extent, and magnitude of landscape change and development, and precisely how this development compares to other ongoing land conversion (e.g. urban/sub-urban development, timber harvest) is not well understood. In this study, we examine land conversion from oil and gas infrastr
Authors
John A. Young, Kelly O. Maloney, E. Terrence Slonecker, Lesley E. Milheim, David Siripoonsup
Streamflow, water quality, and constituent loads and yields, Scituate Reservoir Drainage Area, Rhode Island, water year 2015
Streamflow and concentrations of sodium and chloride estimated from records of specific conductance were used to calculate loads of sodium and chloride during water year (WY) 2015 (October 1, 2014, through September 30, 2015) for tributaries to the Scituate Reservoir, Rhode Island. Streamflow and water-quality data used in the study were collected by the U.S. Geological Survey and the Providence W
Authors
Kirk P. Smith
Assessment of skin and liver neoplasms in brown bullhead (Ameiurus nebulosus) collected at the Ashtabula River Area of Concern and associated reference site, Ohio, in 2016
Brown bullhead (Ameiurus nebulosus) is a commonly used indicator species for tumor surveys at Great Lakes Areas of Concern. The “fish tumors or other deformities” is one of the beneficial use impairments at the Ashtabula River Area of Concern. In May 2016, 150 brown bullhead were collected in the lower Ashtabula River and 150 were collected in the nearby Conneaut Creek as a reference. Length, weig
Authors
Vicki S. Blazer, Heather L. Walsh, Ryan P. Braham
Slope failure and mass transport processes along the Queen Charlotte Fault, southeastern Alaska
The Queen Charlotte Fault defines the Pacific–North America transform plate boundary in western Canada and southeastern Alaska for c. 900 km. The entire length of the fault is submerged along a continental margin dominated by Quaternary glacial processes, yet the geomorphology along the margin has never been systematically examined due to the absence of high-resolution seafloor mapping data. Hence
Authors
Daniel Brothers, Brian D. Andrews, Maureen A. L. Walton, H. Gary Greene, J. Vaughn Barrie, Nathaniel C. Miller, Uri S. ten Brink, Amy E. East, Peter J. Haeussler, Jared W. Kluesner, James E. Conrad