2020

The purpose of this study is to understand how the USGS is using decision support, learning from successes and pitfalls in order to help streamline the design and development process across all levels of USGS scientific tool creation and outreach. What should researchers consider before diving into tool design and development? Our goal is to provide a synthesis of lessons learned and...

A unique opportunity for USGS to collaborate with IRIS-PASSCAL (the national seismic instrument facility) has presented itself to develop a geophysical data archive format that follows FAIR principles. IRIS-PASSCAL is extending facility to include magnetotelluric (MT) instruments prescribing the need for them to archive collected MT data by extending their existing protocol. Concurrently...

Many coastal areas are experiencing departures from normal conditions due to changing land use and climate patterns, including increased frequency, severity, or duration of floods and droughts, in some cases combinations of the two. To address these issues, the U.S. Geological Survey developed the Coastal Salinity Index (CSI) to identify and communicate fluctuating salinity conditions...

We are working to incorporate environmental DNA (eDNA) data into the Nonindigenous Aquatic Species (NAS) database, which houses over 570,000 records of nonindigenous species nationally, and already is used by a broad user-base of managers and researchers regularly for invasive species monitoring. eDNA studies have allowed for the identification and biosurveillance of numerous invasive...

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing ecology and conservation by enabling species recognition from photos and videos. Our project evaluates the capacity to expand AI for individual fish recognition for population assessment. The success of this effort would facilitate fisheries analysis at an unprecedented scale by engaging anglers and citizen scientists in imagery collection...

Rangeland ecosystems are one of the largest single providers of agro-ecological services in the U.S. The plant growth of these rangelands helps determine the amount of forage available for our livestock and for wildlife, as well as information about fire likelihood and restoration opportunities. However, every spring, ranchers and other rangeland managers face the same difficult...

Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) are instruments that collect water-quality, depth, and other data in waterbodies. They produce complex and massive datasets. There is currently no standard method to store, organize, process, quality-check, analyze, or visualize this data. The Waterbody Rapid Assessment Tool (WaterRAT) is aPython application that processes and displays water-quality...

In the mid-1800s, tile-drains were installed in poorly-drained soils of topographic lows as water management to protect cropland during wet conditions; consequently, estimations of tile-drain location have been based on soil series. Most tile drains are in the Midwest, however each state has farms with tile and tile-drain density has increased in the last decade. Where tile drains...

Understanding and anticipating change in dynamic Earth systems is vital for societal adaptation and welfare. USGS possesses the multidisciplinary capabilities to anticipate Earth systems change, yet our work is often bound within a single discipline and/or Mission Area. The proposed work breaks new ground in moving USGS towards an interdisciplinary predictive modeling framework. We are...

Wildfires affect streams and rivers when they burn vegetation and scorch the ground. This makes floods more likely to happen and reduces water quality. Public managers, first responders, fire scientists, and hydrologists need timely information before and after a fire to plan for floods and water treatment. This project will create a method to combine national fire databases with the...

The proposed work will create a seamless pilot dataset of continuous basin characteristics (for example upstream average precipitation, elevation, or dominant land cover type) for the conterminous United States. Basin characteristic data are necessary for training or parameterizing statistical, machine learning, and physical models, and for making predictions across the landscape...

The cloud offers new and exciting opportunities for USGS employees to leverage computing resources and services that can quickly improve their workflows and reduce expenditures typically associated with establishing a comparable environment with physical infrastructure. However, due to the novelty of access to and use of the cloud environment, there is limited documentation and shared...