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Book Chapters

Browse more than 5,500 book chapters authored by our scientists over the past 100+ year history of the USGS and refine search by topic, location, year, and advanced search.

Filter Total Items: 6053

Chapter 5: Health and diseases

Health and diseases are integral parts of the life of seabirds that merit attention if we expect to truly understand, protect, and conserve them. Diseases such as avian influenza, avian pox, pasteurellosis, and paralytic shellfish poisoning have a proven history of decreasing the survival or breeding success of seabirds. However, each host-pathogen-environment system is unique, and our current kno
Authors
Ralph Vanstreels, Marcella Uhart, Thierry M. Work

Climate change and ‘alien species in National Parks’: Revisited

The US National Park Service mission includes conserving native species and historical landscapes ‘unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations’. However, humans have increased the introduction of non-native species that can become invasive and which have harmful impacts on native species and landscapes. We revisit two previous papers, ‘Alien Species in National Parks: Drawing Lines in Space
Authors
Catherine S. Jarnevich, Terri Hogan, Jennifer Sieracki, Christine Lipsky, John Wullschleger

Osmoregulation and acid-base balance.

Maintaining relatively constant levels of internal cellular ions is critical to the normal function of all animals. For many organisms this is achieved primarily by regulating the ion and acid-base composition of the blood within narrow limits. This understanding of the importance of “le milieu interior,” first espoused by Claude Bernard in the mid-1800s and later described as “homeostasis” by Wal
Authors
Stephen D. McCormick, Eric T. Schultz, Colin Brauner

Horseshoe crab

No abstract available.
Authors
David R. Smith

The Colorado River – The science-policy interface

No abstract available.
Authors
John C. Schmidt, Lindsey Bruckerhoff, Jianghao Wang, Charles Yackulic

Contaminant studies in Oregon

No abstract available.
Authors
Charles J. Henny

Invasive species control and management: The sea lamprey story

Control of invasive species is a critical component of conservation biology given the catastrophic damage that they can cause to the ecosystems they invade. This is particularly evident with sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus) in the Laurentian Great Lakes. Native to the Atlantic Ocean, the sea lamprey's ability to osmoregulate in fresh water, its wide thermal tolerance, generalist diet, and high fec
Authors
Michael P. Wilkie, Nicholas S. Johnson, Margaret F. Docker

Tectonics, fault zones, and topography in the Alaska-Canada Cordillera with a focus on the Alaska Range and Denali fault zone

Synergistic interactions between geologic structures and topography have long been recognized to reflect numerous Earth processes and rock properties over time. It was not until the advent of plate tectonics in the midtwentieth century that researchers began to view the nature of the northern Cordillera orogen as a quilt of foreign pieces of crust or “suspect terranes”. The Alaska Range shows comp
Authors
Jonathan Caine, Jeff A. Benowitz

Biological assessments of aquatic ecosystems

The aim of biological assessments (or bioassessments) is to provide decision makers and managers the scientific information and tools needed to protect and restore aquatic life. Biological assessments typically include several critical elements, including development of ecological indicators, indices of ecological status, benchmarks by which to gauge impairment, ways to identify the stressors caus
Authors
Charles P. Hawkins, Daren Carlisle

Physics-guided architecture (PGA) of LSTM models for uncertainty quantification in lake temperature modeling

This chapter focuses on meeting the need to produce neural network outputs that are physically consistent and also express uncertainties, a rare combination to date. It explains the effectiveness of physics-guided architecture - long-short-term-memory (PGA-LSTM) in achieving better generalizability and physical consistency over data collected from Lake Mendota in Wisconsin and Falling Creek Reserv
Authors
Arka Daw, R. Quinn Thomas, Cayelan C. Carey, Jordan Read, Alison P. Appling, Anuj Karpatne

Heat budget of lakes

This article gives an overview of the heat fluxes between lakes and their environment. The heat budget of most lakes is dominated by heat fluxes at the lake surface, especially shortwave radiation, incoming and outgoing longwave radiation, and the latent heat flux. The seasonality of these fluxes is the most important driver for seasonal mixing processes in lakes. Changes in heat fluxes and the re
Authors
Martin Schmid, Jordan Read