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The USGS provides unbiased, objective, and impartial scientific information upon which our audiences, including resource managers, planners, and other entities, rely.
Browse more than 65,000 articles authored by our scientists over the past 100+ year history of the USGS and refine search by topic, location, year, and advanced search.
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The SCEC/USGS community stress drop validation study using the 2019 Ridgecrest earthquake sequence The SCEC/USGS community stress drop validation study using the 2019 Ridgecrest earthquake sequence
We introduce a community stress drop validation study using the 2019 Ridgecrest, California, earthquake sequence, in which researchers are invited to use a common dataset to independently estimate comparable measurements using a variety of methods. Stress drop is the change in average shear stress on a fault during earthquake rupture, and as such is a key parameter in many ground motion...
Authors
Annemarie S. Baltay Sundstrom, Rachel E. Abercrombie, Shanna Xianhui Chu, Taka’aki Taira
Illegal shooting of protected nongame birds along power lines coincides with places and times of peak legal recreational shooting Illegal shooting of protected nongame birds along power lines coincides with places and times of peak legal recreational shooting
Illegal killing of protected nongame birds is pervasive and can be demographically relevant. In 2021 and 2022, we evaluated spatial and temporal patterns in illegal killing of birds along 69.7 km of power lines in the Morley Nelson Snake River Birds of Prey National Conservation Area in Idaho, USA, to provide insight into potential drivers behind the activity and key information to...
Authors
Eve C. Thomason, James R. Belthoff, Sharon A. Poessel, Todd E. Katzner
Earthquake relocations delineate discrete a fault network and deformation corridor throughout Southeast Alaska and Southwest Yukon Earthquake relocations delineate discrete a fault network and deformation corridor throughout Southeast Alaska and Southwest Yukon
Deformation in southeastern Alaska and southwest Yukon is governed by the subduction and translation of the Pacific-Yakutat plates relative to the North American plate in the St. Elias region. Despite notable historical seismicity and major regional faults, studies of the region between the Fairweather and Denali faults are complicated by glacial coverage and the remote setting. In the...
Authors
Katherine M. Biegel, Jeremy M. Gosselin, Jan Dettmer, Maurice Colpron, Eva Enkelmann, Jonathan Saul Caine
Discovery and genomic characterization of a novel hepadnavirus from asymptomatic anadromous alewife (Alosa pseudoharengus) Discovery and genomic characterization of a novel hepadnavirus from asymptomatic anadromous alewife (Alosa pseudoharengus)
The alewife (Alosa pseudoharengus) is an anadromous herring that inhabits waters of northeastern North America. This prey species is a critical forage for piscivorous birds, mammals, and fishes in estuarine and oceanic ecosystems. During a discovery project tailored to identify potentially emerging pathogens of this species, we obtained the full genome of a novel hepadnavirus (ApHBV)...
Authors
Clayton D. Raines, Jan Lovy, Nicolas B.D. Phelps, Sunil Mor, Terry Ng, Luke R. Iwanowicz
Earthquake cycle mechanics during caldera collapse: Simulating the 2018 Kīlauea eruption Earthquake cycle mechanics during caldera collapse: Simulating the 2018 Kīlauea eruption
In multiple observed caldera-forming eruptions, the rock overlying a draining magma reservoir dropped downward along ring faults in sequences of discrete collapse earthquakes. These sequences are analogous to tectonic earthquake cycles and provide opportunities to examine fault mechanics and collapse eruption dynamics over multiple events. Collapse earthquake cycles have been studied...
Authors
Joshua Allen Crozier, Kyle R. Anderson
Ecological dissimilarity matters more than geographical distance when predicting land surface indicators using machine learning Ecological dissimilarity matters more than geographical distance when predicting land surface indicators using machine learning
Supervised training techniques, such as those used in machine learning, use generally large sets of in situ data to train models that can, in turn, be used to make predictions (or prediction maps) about the Earth’s surface in times or places where no in situ data exist. The purpose of the present study is to investigate, using a very large set of in situ data from across the western...
Authors
Bo Zhou, Gregory S. Okin, Junzhe Zhang, Shannon L. Savage, Christopher J. Cole, Michael C. Duniway
Setting a pluralist agenda for water governance: Why power and scale matter Setting a pluralist agenda for water governance: Why power and scale matter
Global water systems are facing unprecedented pressures, including climate change-driven drought and escalating flood risk, environmental contamination, and over allocation. Water management and governance typically lack integration across spatial scales, including relationships between surface and ground water systems. They also routinely ignore connectivity across temporal scales...
Authors
Elizabeth Macpherson, Rosa I. Cuppari, Aurora Kagawa-Viviani, Holly Brause, William A. Brewer, William E Grant, Nicole M. Herman-Mercer, Ben Livneh, Kaustuv Raj Neupane, Tanya N. Petach, Chelsea N. Peters, Hsiao-Hsuan Wang, Claudia Pahl-Wostl, Howard Wheater
Human-induced range expansions result in a recent hybrid zone between sister species of ducks Human-induced range expansions result in a recent hybrid zone between sister species of ducks
Landscapes are consistently under pressure from human-induced ecological change, often resulting in shifting species distributions. For some species, changing the geographical breadth of their niche space results in matching range shifts to regions other than those in which they are formally found. In this study, we employ a population genomics approach to assess potential conservation...
Authors
Philip Lavretsky, Kevin J. Kraai, David Butler, James Morel, Jay Alan VonBank, Joseph Marty, Vergie Musni, Daniel P. Collins
Evaluating the effectiveness of joint species distribution modeling for fresh water fish communities within large watersheds Evaluating the effectiveness of joint species distribution modeling for fresh water fish communities within large watersheds
Accurately predicting species’ distributions is critical for the management and conservation of fish and wildlife populations. Joint Species Distribution Models (JSDMs) account for dependencies between species often ignored by traditional species distribution models. We evaluated how a JSDM approach could improve predictive strength for stream fish communities within large watersheds...
Authors
Paul McLaughlin, Kevin Krause, Kelly O. Maloney, Taylor Woods, Tyler Wagner
Quantifying intraspecific variation in host resistance ad tolerance to a lethal pathogen Quantifying intraspecific variation in host resistance ad tolerance to a lethal pathogen
Testing for intraspecific variation for host tolerance or resistance in wild populations is important for informing conservation decisions about captive breeding, translocation, and disease treatment. Here, we test the importance of tolerance and resistance in multiple populations of boreal toads (Anaxyrus boreas boreas) against Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), the amphibian fungal...
Authors
B. Hardy, Erin L. Muths, W. C. Funk, L. L. Bailey
Why do avian responses to change in Arctic green-up vary? Why do avian responses to change in Arctic green-up vary?
Global climate change has altered the timing of seasonal events (i.e., phenology) for a diverse range of biota. Within and among species, however, the degree to which alterations in phenology match climate variability differ substantially. To better understand factors driving these differences, we evaluated variation in timing of nesting of eight Arctic-breeding shorebird species at 18...
Authors
Eveling A. Tavera, David B. Lank, David C. Douglas, Brett K. Sandercock, Richard B. Lanctot, Niels M. Schmidt, Jeroen Reneerkens, David H. Ward, Joël Bêty, Eunbi Kwon, Nicolas Lecomte, Cheri L Gratto-Trevor, Paul A. Smith, Willow B. English, Sarah T. Saalfeld, Stephen C. Brown, H. River Gates, Erica Nol, Joseph R. Liebezeit, Rebecca L. McGuire, Laura McKinnon, Steve Kendall, Martin D. Robards, Megan Boldenow, David C. Payer, Jennie Rausch, Mikhail Soloviev, Diana V. Solovyeva, Steve Zack, Jordyn Stalwick, Kirsty E. B. Gurney
Pockmarks offshore Big Sur, California provide evidence for recurrent, regional, and unconfined sediment gravity flows Pockmarks offshore Big Sur, California provide evidence for recurrent, regional, and unconfined sediment gravity flows
Recent surface ship multibeam surveys of the Sur Pockmark Field, offshore Central California, reveal >5,000 pockmarks in an area that is slated to host a wind farm, between 500- and 1,500-m water depth. Extensive fieldwork was conducted to characterize the seafloor environment and its recent geologic history, including visual observations with remotely operated vehicles, sediment core...
Authors
E. Lundsten, Charles K. Paull, R. Gwiazda, S. Dobbs, D.W. Caress, Linda A. Kuhnz, M. Walton, N. Nieminski, Mary McGann, Thomas Lorenson, Guy R. Cochrane, Jason A. Addison