Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center
Publications
Browse more than 150,000 publications authored by our scientists over the past 100+ year history of the USGS. Publications available are: USGS-authored journal articles, series reports, book chapters, other government publications, and more.
Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center Publications
Flooding tolerance of Sagittaria latifolia and Sagittaria rigida under controlled laboratory conditions
Pool‐scale growing‐season water‐level reductions (drawdowns) have been implemented on the Upper Mississippi River in an effort to improve fish and wildlife habitat. Aquatic vegetation is a key habitat component, with perennial emergent species, such as Sagittaria latifolia and Sagittaria rigida, especially important. River managers...
Kenow, Kevin P.; Gray, Brian R.; Lyons, James E.
Preliminary investigation of groundwater quality near a Michigan cemetery, 2016–17
The potential effect of cemetery leachate on groundwater quality in the United States has rarely been studied. Nutrients and other constituents associated with decomposition and burial processes (such as embalming) have the potential to reach shallow groundwater and could affect nearby drinking-water sources. The objective of this preliminary...
Brennan, Angela K.; Givens, Carrie E.; Prokopec, Julia G.; Hoard, Christopher J. Investigating the mixing efficiencies of liquid-to-liquid chemical injection manifolds for aquatic invasive species management
Aquatic invasive species (AIS) have spread throughout the United States via major rivers and tributaries. Locks and dams positioned along affected waterways, specifically lock chambers, are being evaluated as potential management sites to prevent further expansion into new areas. Recent research has shown that infusion of chemicals (e.g., carbon...
Zolper, Thomas J.; Cupp, Aaron R.; Smith, David L. Wrangling distributed computing for high-throughput environmental science: An introduction to HTCondor
Biologists and environmental scientists now routinely solve computational problems that were unimaginable a generation ago. Examples include processing geospatial data, analyzing -omics data, and running large-scale simulations. Conventional desktop computing cannot handle these tasks when they are large, and high-performance computing is not...
Erickson, Richard A.; Fienen, Michael N.; McCalla, S. Grace; Weiser, Emily L.; Bower, Melvin L.; Knudson, Jonathan M.; Thain, Greg Quantifying climate sensitivity and climate-driven change in North American amphibian communities
Changing climate will impact species’ ranges only when environmental variability directly impacts the demography of local populations. However, measurement of demographic responses to climate change has largely been limited to single species and locations. Here we show that amphibian communities are responsive to climatic variability, using >...
Miller, David A.W.; Campbell Grant, Evan H.; Muths, Erin L.; Amburgey, Staci M.; Adams, M.J.; Joseph, Maxwell B.; Waddle, J. Hardin; Johnson, Pieter T.J.; Ryan, Maureen E.; Schmidt, Benedikt R.; Calhoun, Daniel L.; Davis, Courtney L.; Fisher, Robert N.; Green, David M.; Hossack, Blake R.; Rittenhouse, Tracy A.G.; Walls, Susan C.; Bailey, Larissa L.; Cruickshank, Sam S.; Fellers, Gary M.; Gorman, Thomas A.; Haas, Carola A.; Hughson, Ward; Pilliod, David S.; Price, Steven J.; Ray, Andrew M.; Sadinski, Walter; Saenz, Daniel; Barichivich, William J.; Brand, Adrianne B,; Brehme, Cheryl S.; Dagit, Rosi; Delaney, Katy S.; Glorioso, Brad M.; Kats, Lee B.; Kleeman, Patrick M.; Pearl, Christopher; Rochester, Carlton J.; Riley, Seth P. D.; Roth, Mark F.; Sigafus, Brent A spatially discrete, integral projection model and its application to invasive carp
Natural resource managers and ecologists often desire an understanding of spatial dynamics such as migration, dispersion, and meta-population dynamics. Network-node models can capture these salient features. Additionally, the state-variable used with many species may be appropriately modeled as a continuous variable (e.g., length) and...
Erickson, Richard A.; Eager, Eric E.; Kocovsky, Patrick; Glover, David C.; Kallis, Jahn L.; Long, K. R. Effects of leg flags on nest survival of four species of Arctic‐breeding shorebirds
Marking wild birds is an integral part of many field studies. However, if marks affect the vital rates or behavior of marked individuals, any conclusions reached by a study might be biased relative to the general population. Leg bands have rarely been found to have negative effects on birds and are frequently used to mark individuals. Leg flags,...
Weiser, Emily L.; Lanctot, Richard B.; Brown, Stephen C.; Gates, H. River; Bentzen, Rebecca L.; Boldenow, Megan L.; Cunningham, Jenny A.; Doll, Andrew C.; Donnelly, Tyrone F.; English, Willow B.; Franks, Samantha E.; Grond, Kristen; Herzog, Patrick; Hill, Brooke L.; Kendall, Steve J.; Kwon, Eunbi; Lank, David B.; Liebezeit, Joseph R.; Rausch, Jennie; Saalfeld, Sarah T.; Taylor, Audrey R.; Ward, David H.; Woodard, Paul F.; Sandercock, Brett K. Aquatic vegetation responses to island construction (habitat restoration) in a large floodplain river
The Upper Mississippi River is maintained in its current navigable state through impoundments, dredging, and other engineering projects. These stressors, along with anthropogenic impacts and natural system processes, led to declines in aquatic vegetation and the loss of fish and wildlife habitat, with a major downturn the late 1980s and early...
Drake, Deanne C.; Gray, Brian R.; Forbes, Nora Multi-year data from satellite- and ground-based sensors show details and scale matter in assessing climate’s effects on wetland surface water, amphibians, and landscape conditions
Long-term, interdisciplinary studies of relations between climate and ecological conditions on wetland-upland landscapes have been lacking, especially studies integrated across scales meaningful for adaptive resource management. We collected data in situ at individual wetlands, and via satellite for surrounding 4-km2 landscape...
Sadinski, Walter; Gallant, Alisa L.; Roth, Mark; Brown, Jesslyn; Senay, Gabriel; Brininger, Wayne L.; Jones, Perry M.; Stoker, Jason M. Effects of formaldehyde on nitrification in biofilters of small‐scale recirculating systems
Florfenicol (Aquaflor®) is the only U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved drug for treating diseased fish reared in recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS). Treating diseased fish in RAS is challenging because of the potential to damage nitrifying bacteria in the biofilters. Impaired nitrification can lead to concentrations of ammonia...
Fredricks, Kim T.; Cupp, Aaron R.; Schleis, Susan M.; Erickson, Richard A.; Gaikowski, Mark P. Stable isotope comparison between mantle and foot tissues of two freshwater unionids: Implications for food web studies
Unionid mussels are a key taxon for stable isotope studies of aquatic food webs, often serving as the primary integrator of the pelagic baseline. Past isotope studies with mussels have commonly used either foot tissue or mantle tissue, but no study has yet to quantify the relation of both carbon and nitrogen isotopes between these two tissue...
LaFrancois, Toben; Fritts, Andrea; Knights, Brent C.; Karns, Byron
A bioassay assessment of a zebra mussel (Dreissena polymorpha) eradication treatment
Zebra mussels (Dreissena polymorpha, Pallas, 1771) are an aquatic invasive species in theUnited States, and new infestations of zebra mussels can rapidly expand into dense colonies. Zebramussels were first reported in Marion Lake, Dakota County, Minnesota, in September 2017, andsurveys indicated the infestation was likely isolated near a public...
Barbour, Matthew T.; Wise, Jeremy K.; Luoma, James A.