Publications

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The U.S. Geological Survey's Wildland Fire Science Program produces fundamental information to identify the causes of wildfires, understand the impacts and benefits of both wildfires and prescribed fires, and help prevent and manage larger, catastrophic events. Our fire scientists provide information and develop tools that are widely used by stakeholders to make decisions before, during...

Determining a species’ habitat use is an essential first step in any wildlife conservation action. We described habitat use, animal movements and probable lambing areas in a remote, restricted-access region of the Mojave Desert. Differences in habitat use between sexes was apparent, supporting the often-reported concept of risk-aversion by females. Animals exhibited low variability in...

Significant Findings for Year 2017: 1) Offshore spring total phosphorus (TP) in 2017 was 4.4 µg/L; values remained stable since 2001. Offshore soluble reactive phosphorus (SRP) remained low (1.1 µg/L) in 2017; Apr/May – Oct mean values have been stable in nearshore and offshore habitats since 1998 (range, 0.4 – 3.3 µg/L). Apr/May – Oct mean TP concentrations were low at both nearshore...

Wildland fire characteristics, such as area burned, number of large fires, burn intensity, and fire season duration, have increased steadily over the past 30 years, resulting in substantial increases in the costs of suppressing fires and managing damages from wildland fire events (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2017). Wildland fire management could benefit...

Executive Summary The Bi-State Distinct Population Segment (Bi-State DPS) of greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus, hereinafter “sage-grouse”) represents a genetically distinct and geographically isolated population that straddles the border between Nevada and California. The primary threat to these sage-grouse populations is the expansion of single-leaf pinyon (Pinus monophylla...

Most volcanoes worldwide are not monitored in real-time; for those that are, patterns of pre-eruptive earthquakes coupled with conceptual models of magma ascent enable short-term forecasting of eruption onset. Basic event locations, characterization of background seismicity, and recognition of changes in earthquake types and energy release are most important to successful eruption...

We estimated detection probabilities of bird carcasses along sandy beaches and in marsh edge habitats in the northern Gulf of Mexico to help inform models of bird mortality associated with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. We also explored factors that may influence detection probability, such as carcass size, amount of scavenging, location on the beach, habitat type, and distance into...

We genotyped 7,588 brook trout representing 406 collections from across the State of North Carolina (Figure 1) at 12 microsatellite loci (King et al. 2012). The vast majority of collections appeared to represent single populations, based on general conformance to HardyWeinberg equilibrium and limited evidence for linkage-disequilibrium. Allelic diversity was low to moderate relative to...

This study examines Holocene impacts of changes in climate, land use, and sea-level rise (SLR) on sediment accretion, carbon accumulation rates (CAR), and vegetation along a transect of tidal freshwater forested wetlands (TFFW) to oligohaline marsh along the Waccamaw River, South Carolina (4 sites) and along the Savannah River, Georgia (4 sites). We use pollen, plant macrofossils...

Understanding the importance of biotic interactions in driving the distribution and abundance of species is a central goal of plant ecology. Early vascular plants likely colonized land occupied by biocrusts — photoautotrophic, surface‐dwelling soil communities comprised of cyanobacteria, bryophytes, lichens and fungi — suggesting biotic interactions between biocrusts and plants have been...

American horseshoe crabs (Limulus polyphemus) have varied migration patterns and harvesting pressure throughout their range, potentially leading to regional differences in population dynamics. Here, a multi-state mark–recapture model was used to estimate annual survival and exchange rates of adult horseshoe crabs across three geographic regions in Long Island, NY (South Shore, North...