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Holocene dune formation at Ash Meadows National Wildlife Area, Nevada, USA

Small isolated dune fields in the northern Mojave Desert are important centers of biodiversity and archaeological occupation sites. Currently dunes at Ash Meadows, Nevada, are stabilized by vegetation and are experiencing erosion of their upwind margins, indicating a negative sediment budget. New OSL ages from dunes at Ash Meadows indicate continuous eolian accumulation from 1.5 to 0.8 ka, with fu
Authors
Nicholas Lancaster, Shannon Mahan

A national geographic framework for guiding conservation on a landscape scale

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, along with the global conservation community, has recognized that the conservation challenges of the 21st century far exceed the responsibilities and footprint of any individual agency or program. The ecological effects of climate change and other anthropogenic stressors do not recognize geopolitical boundaries and, as such, demand a national geographic framewor
Authors
Michael J. Millard, Craig A. Czarnecki, John M. Morton, Laura A. Brandt, Jennifer S. Briggs, Frank S. Shipley, Roger G. Sayre, Pamela J. Sponholtz, David Perkins, Darin G. Simpkins, Janith Taylor

A half-million-year record of paleoclimate from the Lake Manix Core, Mojave Desert, California

Pluvial lakes in the southwestern U.S. responded sensitively to past climate through effects on rainfall, runoff, and evaporation. Although most studies agree that pluvial lakes in the southwestern U.S. reached their highest levels coeval with glacial stages, the specific timing of increased effective moisture and lake-level rise is debated, particularly for the southwesternmost lakes. We obtained
Authors
Marith C. Reheis, Jordon Bright, Steve P. Lund, David M. Miller, Gary Skipp, Robert J. Fleck

Fingerprinting of glacial silt in lake sediments yields continuous records of alpine glaciation (35–15 ka), western USA

Fingerprinting glacial silt in last glacial-age sediments from Upper Klamath Lake (UKL) and Bear Lake (BL) provides continuous radiocarbon-dated records of glaciation for the southeastern Cascade Range and northwestern Uinta Mountains, respectively. Comparing of these records to cosmogenic exposure ages from moraines suggests that variations in glacial flour largely reflect glacial extent. The two
Authors
Joseph G. Rosenbaum, Richard L. Reynolds, Steven M. Colman

Post-fire land treatments and wind erosion -- lessons from the Milford Flat Fire, UT, USA

We monitored sediment flux at 25 plots located at the northern end of the 2007 Milford Flat Fire (Lake Bonneville Basin, west-central Utah) to examine the effectiveness of post-fire rehabilitation treatments in mitigating risks of wind erosion during the first 3 years post fire. Maximum values were recorded during Mar–Jul 2009 when horizontal sediment fluxes measured with BSNE samplers ranged from
Authors
Mark E. Miller, Matthew A. Bowker, Richard L. Reynolds, Harland L. Goldstein

Holocene seasonal variability inferred from multiple proxy records from Crevice Lake, Yellowstone National Park, USA

A 9400-yr-old record from Crevice Lake, a semi-closed alkaline lake in northern Yellowstone National Park, was analyzed for pollen, charcoal, geochemistry, mineralogy, diatoms, and stable isotopes to develop a nuanced understanding of Holocene environmental history in a region of northern Rocky Mountains that receives both summer and winter precipitation. The limited surface area, conical bathymet
Authors
Cathy Whitlock, Walter E. Dean, Sherilyn C. Fritz, Lora R. Stevens, Jeffery R. Stone, Mitchell J. Power, Joseph R. Rosenbaum, Kenneth L. Pierce, Brandi B. Bracht-Flyr

Airborne electromagnetic imaging of discontinuous permafrost

The evolution of permafrost in cold regions is inextricably connected to hydrogeologic processes, climate, and ecosystems. Permafrost thawing has been linked to changes in wetland and lake areas, alteration of the groundwater contribution to streamflow, carbon release, and increased fire frequency. But detailed knowledge about the dynamic state of permafrost in relation to surface and groundwater
Authors
B. J. Minsley, J.D. Abraham, B. D. Smith, J. C. Cannia, C.I. Voss, M.T. Jorgenson, Michelle Ann Walvoord, B.K. Wylie, L. Anderson, L.B. Ball, M. Deszcz-Pan, T.P. Wellman, T. A. Ager

A Holocene record of endogenic iron and manganese precipitation and vegetation history in a lake-fen complex in northwestern Minnesota

Little Shingobee Lake and Fen are part of the extensive network of lakes and wetlands in the Shingobee River headwaters of northwestern Minnesota, designed to study the interactions between surface and ground waters. Prior to about 11.2 cal. ka, most of these lakes and wetlands were interconnected to form glacial Lake Willobee, which apparently formed when a debris flow dammed the Shingobee River.
Authors
Walter E. Dean, L.A. Doner

The influence of upper-crust lithology on topographic development in the central Coast Ranges of California

A fundamental geological tenet is that as landscapes evolve over graded to geologic time, geologic structures control patterns of topographic distribution in mountainous areas such that terrain underlain by competent rock will be higher than terrain underlain by incompetent rock. This paper shows that in active orogens where markedly weak and markedly strong rocks are juxtaposed along contacts tha
Authors
A.F. Garcia, Shannon Mahan

Duststones on Mars: Source, transport, deposition and erosion

Dust is an abundant material on Mars, and there is strong evidence that it is a contributor to the rock record as “duststone,” analogous in many ways to loess on Earth. Although a common suite of dust formation mechanisms has operated on the two planets, fundamental differences in environments and geologic histories have resulted in vastly different weighting functions, causing distinct deposition
Authors
Nathan T. Bridges, Daniel R. Muhs

Intercalibration of radioisotopic and astrochronologic time scales for the Cenomanian-Turonian boundary interval, western interior Basin, USA

We develop an intercalibrated astrochronologic and radioisotopic time scale for the Cenomanian-Turonian boundary (CTB) interval near the Global Stratotype Section and Point in Colorado, USA, where orbitally influenced rhythmic strata host bentonites that contain sanidine and zircon suitable for 40Ar/39Ar and U-Pb dating. Paired 40Ar/39Ar and U-Pb ages are determined from four bentonites that span
Authors
S.R. Meyers, S.E. Siewert, B. S. Singer, B.B. Sageman, D.J. Condon, J. D. Obradovich, B.R. Jicha, David A. Sawyer

KINEROS2/AGWA: Model use, calibration and validation

KINEROS (KINematic runoff and EROSion) originated in the 1960s as a distributed event-based model that conceptualizes a watershed as a cascade of overland flow model elements that flow into trapezoidal channel model elements. KINEROS was one of the first widely available watershed models that interactively coupled a finite difference approximation of the kinematic overland flow equations to a phys
Authors
D.C. Goodrich, I.S. Burns, C.L. Unkrich, Darius J. Semmens, D.P. Guertin, M. Hernandez, S. Yatheendradas, Jeffrey R. Kennedy, Lainie R. Levick