Articles

Decaying barrels on the seafloor linked to DDT contamination have raised concerns about the public health implications of decades old industrial waste dumped off the coast of Los Angeles. To explore their contents, we collected sediment cores perpendicular to five deep-sea barrels. The concentration of DDT and its breakdown products were highly elevated relative to control sites yet did...

Freshwater mussels are critical to the health of freshwater systems, but their populations are declining dramatically throughout the world. The limited resources available for freshwater mussel conservation necessitates the geographic prioritization of conservation-related actions. However, lack of knowledge about freshwater mussel spatial distributions hinders decision making in this...

This study evaluates the performance of a rigid gas flux chamber equipped with a mass flow meter (MFM) for measuring gas emissions from leaking orphan wells and similar pressure-driven gas point sources. We conducted a series of laboratory and field experiments to evaluate the sensitivity, stability, and dynamic range of an MFM chamber system and found an optimal method for sealing the...

Temporal patterns in chemistry of headwater streams reflect responses of water and elemental cycles to perturbations occurring at local to global scales. We evaluated multi-scale temporal patterns in up to 32 y of monthly observations of stream chemistry (ammonium, calcium, dissolved organic carbon, nitrate, total dissolved phosphorus, and sulfate) in 22 reference catchments within the...

Understanding how social vulnerability relates to disaster impacts is critical for addressing social equity, yet the role of spatial scale in this relationship is often overlooked. Most studies use aggregated data, risking ecological fallacy—misinterpreting individual outcomes from group-level data. This study examines how spatial scale influences the relationship between social...

A non-indigenous species (NIS) of benthic foraminifera was first identified in a core collected in 1993 in San Francisco Bay, California, USA, and subsequently identified as Trochammina hadai Uchio, 1962. Archived samples and literature reviews were used to determine that the species, which is native to Asia, arrived in San Francisco Bay between the early 1960s and 1983. Through...

Aeolian sediment transport shapes landscapes on Earth and other planetary surfaces, yet key uncertainties remain in how the near-bed saltation cloud responds to changing wind and surface conditions. Leveraging recent advances in image-based particle tracking, we conducted wind tunnel experiments using high-speed imaging and Particle Tracking Velocimetry to quantify sand grain...

The Miocene provides an excellent climatic analogue for near-future runaway anthropogenic warming, with atmospheric CO2 concentrations and global average temperatures similar to those projected for the coming century under extreme-emissions scenarios. However, the magnitude of Miocene Arctic warming remains unclear due to the scarcity of reliable proxy data. Here we use stable oxygen...

Determining which statistical methods are appropriate for data is both user and data dependent and prone to change as new methodology becomes available. This process encompasses model ideation, model selection, and determining appropriate use of statistical methods. Literature on models for animal movement emerging in the past two decades has yielded a rich collection of statistical...

Diagnostic bones can aid in identification and size determination of fishes from ingested prey, archaeological remains or damaged specimens. We extracted diagnostic structures, including cleithra, dentaries, opercles and otoliths, from juvenile spring Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) from three distinct groups: hatchery, naturally produced and surrogate, representing shared...

Dust palliatives are used to reduce fugitive dust in areas susceptible to erosion by wind and rain. In 2015, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) temporarily approved the use of polymer-based dust palliatives during the construction and operation of a solar energy facility and, in 2019, on a mining access road in Clark County, Nevada. The areas treated with palliative are habitat to the...

Salt marsh resilience to sea-level rise largely depends on the balance of sediment exchanges with surrounding bays. In this study, we investigate mechanisms that determine residual sediment fluxes using continuous measurements of bay-marsh sediment exchange conducted in a tidal creek spanning 13 months (753 tidal cycles) in an intertidal marsh recently subsidized with sediment via thin...