Mission Areas
Ecosystems
The USGS Ecosystems Mission Area provides science to help America achieve sustainable management and conservation of biological resources in wild and urban spaces, and places in between. Ecosystems scientists examine consequences of climate and environmental change; effects of management actions on communities, lands, and species; and risks and solutions to harmful invasive species, wildlife diseases, and contaminants in the environment.
Newsletter - EcoNews
This quarterly newsletter highlights ecosystems science and activities coming out of our Science Centers and Cooperative Research Units across the Nation.
EcoNews IssuesWebinar - Friday's Findings
A public webinar series meant to offer our audience an opportunity to discover the Ecosystems science capacity within the USGS.
Upcoming WebinarsWhere's our Science?
Find out where Ecosystems Science Centers, Field Stations, Climate Adaptation Science Centers, and Cooperative Research Units are located.
Browse by LocationNews
Wetland Science at WARC
This month we’re recognizing American Wetlands Month by sharing USGS Wetland and Aquatic Research Center (WARC) wetlands research along the Gulf of Mexico, throughout the Southeast, and around the world.
Wetland Word: Sequestration
Scientifically speaking, sequestration refers to the capture and storage of an element, like carbon, in the environment.
USGS EcoNews - Vol. 2 | Issue 3
May is Wetlands Month and full of events and celebrations providing us an opportunity to highlight our ecosystems science supporting amphibian and migratory bird conservation, prevention and control of invasive species, global ungulate migrations, and more!
Publications
Trophic transfer efficiency in the Lake Superior food web: Assessing the impacts of non-native species
Ecosystem-based management relies on understanding how perturbations influence ecosystem structure and function (e.g., invasive species, exploitation, abiotic changes). However, data on unimpacted systems are scarce; therefore, we often rely on impacted systems to make inferences about ‘natural states.’ Among the Laurentian Great Lakes, ...
Mathias, Bryan G.; Hrabik, Thomas R.; Hoffman, Joel C.; Gorman, Owen; Seider, Michael J.; Sierszen, Michael E.; Vinson, Mark; Yule, Daniel; Yurista, Peder M. Assessing the population impacts and cost‐effectiveness of a conservation translocation
Managers often move, or translocate, organisms into habitats that are assumed to be suitable, however the consequences of these translocations are usually not rigorously assessed. Robust assessment of these management experiments should consider impacts to both donor and recipient populations and compare the cost‐effectiveness of translocations to...
Yackulic, Charles B.; Van Haverbeke, David R.; Dzul, Maria C.; Bair, Lucas S.; Young, Kirk L. Climate drivers of large magnitude snow avalanche years in the U.S. northern Rocky Mountains
Large magnitude snow avalanches pose a hazard to humans and infrastructure worldwide. Analyzing the spatiotemporal behavior of avalanches and the contributory climate factors is important for understanding historical variability in climate-avalanche relationships as well as improving avalanche forecasting. We used established dendrochronological...
Peitzsch, Erich; Pederson, Gregory T.; Birkeland, Karl W.; Hendrikx, Jordy; Fagre, Daniel B.