All Publications

Permafrost holds more than twice the amount of carbon currently in the atmosphere, but this large carbon reservoir is vulnerable to thaw and erosion under a rapidly changing Arctic climate. Convective storms are becoming increasingly common during Arctic summers and can amplify runoff and erosion. These extreme events, in concert with active layer deepening, may accelerate carbon loss...

Four new 10Be-26Al isochron burial ages ranging from 4.4 to 2 Ma on ancestral Colorado River deposits in the lower Colorado River corridor (LCRC) help constrain the river’s evolution during the Pliocene and early Pleistocene. They help fill a gap between previous work that focused on older and younger deposits: Older dated deposits include the 5 Ma Bouse Formation, which records the...

As part of the 2014 Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement, all Bay States and the District of Columbia have committed to improving the condition of the Bay, which includes a goal to achieve sustainable fisheries. One outcome under that broad goal is improved effectiveness of fish habitat conservation and preservation efforts. In support of that outcome, the U.S. Geological Survey Eastern...

Wind erosion and dust emission from drylands have large consequences for ecosystem function and human health. Wind erosion is naturally reduced by soil crusting and sheltering by non-erodible roughness elements such as plants. Land uses that reduce surface roughness and disturb the soil surface can dramatically increase dust emission. Extraction of oil and gas is a common and growing...

Rivers are increasingly used as superhighways for the continental-scale transportation of freight goods, but the ecological impact of large vessel traffic on river ecosystems is difficult to study. Recently, the temporary maintenance closure of lock and dam systems on the Illinois Waterway (USA) brought commercial vessel traffic to a halt along the river's length, offering a rare...

Uncrewed aerial systems (UASs) have been used to collect “pseudo field plot” data in the form of large-scale stereo imagery to supplement and bolster direct field observations to monitor areas in Alaska. These data supplement field data that is difficult to collect in such a vast landscape with a relatively short field season. Dense photogrammetrically derived point clouds are created...

Side-scan sonar (SSS) is a powerful tool that can be used to address many key questions in fisheries science. In principle, SSS uses dual transducers to transmit a narrow-beam, wide-angle acoustic signal as the survey vessel transits an area. The intensity of reflected sound is recorded to generate an image mosaic comprised of benthic substrates and targets in the water column, including...

CoastSeg is an interactive browser-based program that aims to broaden the adoption of satellite-derived shoreline (SDS) detection and coastal landcover mapping workflows among coastal scientists and coastal resource management practitioners. SDS is a sub-field of coastal sciences that aims to detect and post-process a time-series of shoreline locations from publicly available satellite...

Streamflow records from hydrologic models are attractive for use in operational hydrology, such as a streamflow frequency analysis. The amount of bias inherent to simulated streamflow from hydrologic models is often unknown, but it is likely present in derivative products. Therefore, a workflow may help determine where streamflow frequency analysis is credibly feasible from simulated...

We developed Vp, Vs, Vp/Vs ratio, and Poisson’s ratio models of the uppermost crust (

Access to high-quality food is critical for long-distance migrants to provide energy for migration and arrival at breeding grounds in good condition. We studied effects of changing abundance and availability of a marine food, common eelgrass (Zostera marina L.), on an arctic-breeding, migratory goose, black brant (Brant bernicla nigricans Lawrence 1846), at a key non-breeding site, Bahía...

The magnitude and timing of extreme events such as debris and floodflows (collectively referred to as floodflows) in post-wildfire basins are difficult to measure and are even more difficult to predict. To address this challenge, a sensor ensemble consisting of noncontact, ground-based (near-field), Doppler velocity (velocity) and pulsed (stage or gage height) radars, rain gages, and a...