All Publications

The polar bear (Ursus maritimus) is a species particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. As the climate warms, polar bears will be forced to move to more suitable habitats which are likely to shrink, adapt to the new conditions, or decline in population size. However, the genomic diversity within and among all 19 subpopulations of polar bears, and therefore their adaptive...

Conservation translocations may be a useful tool for the restoration of declining freshwater invertebrates, but they are poorly represented in the literature. We conducted a before-after/control-impact (BACI) experiment to test the efficacy of conservation translocation for re-establishing abundant populations of the amphipod Gammarus lacustris, a declining species and wildlife food...

Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is a fatal prion disease of cervids spreading across North America. More effective mitigation efforts may require expansion of the available toolkit to include new methods that provide earlier antemortem detection, higher throughput, and less expense than current immunohistochemistry (IHC) methods. The rectal mucosa near the rectoanal junction is a site of...

No abstract available.

Executive Summary Two Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship (MAPS) stations were operated at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton (MCBCP), California, in 2021: one at De Luz Creek and one at the Santa Margarita River. The stations were established to provide data on Neotropical migratory birds at MCBCP to support the dual missions of environmental stewardship and military readiness...

Drought is one of the key drivers of food insecurity in Afghanistan, which is among the most food insecure countries in the world. In this study, we build on previous research and seek to answer the central question: “What is the influence of El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) on drought outlooks and agricultural yield outcome in Afghanistan, and how do these influences vary spatially?”...

An increase in seismic activity precedes most volcanic eruptions. Whereas event-based forecasting approaches have been successful, some eruptions remain unanticipated, resulting in casualties and damage. Our study leverages the recent advancements in ambient field seismology. We explore features extracted from continuous ambient fields using traditional methods, for example, peak ground...

Estimates of actual evapotranspiration (ETa) are valuable for effective monitoring and management of water resources. In areas that lack ground-based monitoring networks, remote sensing allows for accurate and consistent estimates of ETa across a broad scale—though each algorithm has limitations (i.e., ground-based validation, temporal consistency, spatial resolution). We developed an...

Sources and fluxes of methane to the atmosphere from permafrost are significant but poorly constrained in global climate models. We present data collected from the variable permafrost setting of the outer Mackenzie River Delta, including observations of aquatic methane seepage, core determinations of in situ methane occurrence and seep gas isotope geochemistry. The sources and locations...

The concentration of chlorophyll a in phytoplankton and periphyton represents the amount of algal biomass. We compiled an 18-year record (2005–2022) of pigment data from water bodies across the United States (US) to support efforts to develop process-based, machine learning, and remote sensing models for prediction of harmful algal blooms (HABs). To our knowledge, this dataset of nearly...

Letterkenny Army Depot in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, built an Ammonium Perchlorate Rocket Motor Destruction (ARMD) Facility in 2016 to centralize rocket motor destruction and contain all waste during the destruction process. The U.S. Geological Survey has collected environmental samples from groundwater, surface water, and soils at ARMD since 2016. During 2021, samples were collected...

Preface This study was completed to provide timely scientific information regarding greater sage-grouse population trends, habitat selection, and the efficacy of previous conservation actions implemented to benefit the Bi-State Distinct Population Segment (DPS). Specifically, we provide these analyses to inform the current (2024) status review and pending listing decision for the DPS...