Publications
Listed here are publications, reports and articles by the Climate R&D program.
Filter Total Items: 1019
Groundwater level trends and drivers in two northern New England glacial aquifers
We evaluated long-term trends and predictors of groundwater levels by month from two well-studied northern New England forested headwater glacial aquifers: Sleepers River, Vermont, 44 wells, 1992-2013; and Hubbard Brook, New Hampshire, 15 wells, 1979-2004. Based on Kendall Tau tests with Sen slope determination, a surprising number of well-month combinations had negative trends (decreasing water l
Authors
James B. Shanley, Ann T. Chalmers, Thomas J. Mack, Thor E. Smith, Philip T. Harte
Seismic evidence of glacial-age river incision into the Tahaa barrier reef, French Polynesia
Rivers have long been recognized for their ability to shape reef-bound volcanic islands. On the time-scale of glacial–interglacial sea-level cycles, fluvial incision of exposed barrier reef lagoons may compete with constructional coral growth to shape the coastal geomorphology of ocean islands. However, overprinting of Pleistocene landscapes by Holocene erosion or sedimentation has largely obscure
Authors
Michael Toomey, Jonathan D. Woodruff, Andrew D. Ashton, J. Taylor Perron
Climate change and dissolved organic carbon export to the Gulf of Maine
Ongoing climate change is affecting the concentration, export (flux), and timing of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) exported to the Gulf of Maine (GoM) through changes in hydrologic regime. DOC export was calculated for water years 1950 through 2013 for 20 rivers and for water years 1930 through 2013 for 14 rivers draining to the GoM. DOC export was also estimated for the 21st century based on clim
Authors
Thomas G. Huntington, William M. Balch, George R. Aiken, Justin Sheffield, Lifeng Luo, Collin S. Roesler, Philip Camill
Calcareous microfossil-based orbital cyclostratigraphy in the Arctic Ocean
Microfaunal and geochemical proxies from marine sediment records from central Arctic Ocean (CAO) submarine ridges suggest a close relationship over the last 550 thousand years (kyr) between orbital-scale climatic oscillations, sea-ice cover, marine biological productivity and other parameters. Multiple paleoclimate proxies record glacial to interglacial cycles. To understand the climate-cryosphere
Authors
Rachel Marzen, Lauren H. DeNinno, Thomas M. Cronin
Status and trends of land change in the Eastern United States—1973 to 2000
PrefaceU.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Professional Paper 1794–D is the fourth in a four-volume series on the status and trends of the Nation’s land use and land cover, providing an assessment of the rates and causes of land-use and land-cover change in the Eastern United States between 1973 and 2000. Volumes A, B, and C provide similar analyses for the Western United States, the Great Plains of the
Radiocarbon constraints imply reduced carbon uptake by soils during the 21st century
Soil is the largest terrestrial carbon reservoir and may influence the sign and magnitude of carbon cycle-climate feedbacks. Many Earth system models (ESMs) estimate a significant soil carbon sink by 2100, yet the underlying carbon dynamics determining this response have not been systematically tested against observations. We used 14C data from 157 globally distributed soil profiles sampled to 1 m
Authors
Yujie He, Susan E. Trumbore, Margaret S. Torn, Jennifer W. Harden, Lydia J.S. Vaughn, Steven D. Allison, J. T. Randerson
Ancient DNA reveals substantial genetic diversity in the California Condor (Gymnogyps californianus) prior to a population bottleneck
Critically endangered species that have undergone severe population bottlenecks often have little remaining genetic variation, making it difficult to reconstruct population histories to apply in reintroduction and recovery strategies. By using ancient DNA techniques, it is possible to combine genetic evidence from the historical population with contemporary samples to provide a more complete pictu
Authors
Jesse D'Elia, Susan M. Haig, Thomas D. Mullins, Mark P. Miller
Comparison of methods for quantifying surface sublimation over seasonally snow-covered terrain
Snow sublimation can be an important component of the snow-cover mass balance, and there is considerable interest in quantifying the role of this process within the water and energy balance of snow-covered regions. In recent years, robust eddy covariance (EC) instrumentation has been used to quantify snow sublimation over snow-covered surfaces in complex mountainous terrain. However, EC can be cha
Authors
Graham A. Sexstone, David W. Clow, David I. Stannard, Steven R. Fassnacht
Detecting failure of climate predictions
The practical consequences of climate change challenge society to formulate responses that are more suited to achieving long-term objectives, even if those responses have to be made in the face of uncertainty1, 2. Such a decision-analytic focus uses the products of climate science as probabilistic predictions about the effects of management policies3. Here we present methods to detect when climate
Authors
Michael C. Runge, Julienne C. Stroeve, Andrew P. Barrett, Eve McDonald-Madden
Experimental warming in a dryland community reduced plant photosynthesis and soil CO2 efflux although the relationship between the fluxes remained unchanged
1. Drylands represent our planet's largest terrestrial biome and, due to their extensive area, maintain large stocks of carbon (C). Accordingly, understanding how dryland C cycling will respond to climate change is imperative for accurately forecasting global C cycling and future climate. However, it remains difficult to predict how increased temperature will affect dryland C cycling, as substanti
Authors
Timothy M. Wertin, Jayne Belnap, Sasha C. Reed
Iron oxide minerals in dust-source sediments from the Bodélé Depression, Chad: Implications for radiative properties and Fe bioavailability of dust plumes from the Sahara
Atmospheric mineral dust can influence climate and biogeochemical cycles. An important component of mineral dust is ferric oxide minerals (hematite and goethite) which have been shown to influence strongly the optical properties of dust plumes and thus affect the radiative forcing of global dust. Here we report on the iron mineralogy of dust-source samples from the Bodélé Depression (Chad, north-c
Authors
Bruce M. Moskowitz, Richard L. Reynolds, Harland L. Goldstein, Thelma Beroquo, Raymond F. Kokaly, Charlie S Bristow
Accommodation space in a high-wave-energy inner-shelf during the Holocene marine transgression: Correlation of onshore and offshore inner-shelf deposits (0–12 ka) in the Columbia River littoral cell system, Washington and Oregon, USA
The Columbia River Littoral Cell (CRLC), a high-wave-energy littoral system, extends 160 km alongshore, generally north of the large Columbia River, and 10–15 km in across-shelf distance from paleo-beach backshores to about 50 m present water depths. Onshore drill holes (19 in number and 5–35 m in subsurface depth) and offshore vibracores (33 in number and 1–5 m in subsurface depth) constrain inne
Authors
C. D. Peterson, D. C. Twichell, M. C. Roberts, S. Vanderburgh, Steven W. Hostetler