Articles

Spatial covariance is a metric used to delineate grassland cores and track state transitions driven by woody encroachment in rangelands, and it does so by calculating the degree of spatial coexistence between functional groups like grasses and trees at different scales. Spatial covariance is being used in biome-scale frameworks aimed at combatting woody plant encroachment and grassland

Space weather poses an important but under-quantified threat to society. While severe geomagnetic storms are recognized as potential global catastrophes, their socio-economic impacts remain poorly quantified. We present a novel physics-engineering-economic framework that links geophysical drivers to power grid geoelectric fields, transformer vulnerability, and macroeconomic consequences...

Population monitoring of at-risk species is fundamental to directing effective and timely conservation actions. For wide-ranging threatened species, such as the wolverine (Gulo gulo), monitoring across multiple jurisdictions is necessary to track their distribution to inform collaborative regional and national management and policy. We repeated a landscape-scale, multi-jurisdictional...

Ocean acidification (OA) poses a significant threat to the ability of marine calcifying organisms—such as mollusks, corals, crustaceans, and plankton—to form and maintain their calcium carbonate-based shells. While some species show greater sensitivity to OA than others, the impacts on benthic marine calcifiers remain inadequately understood. This study investigates the shell density...

Sampling aquatic habitats for environmental DNA (eDNA) has emerged as a valuable population monitoring tool, particularly for species that are difficult to survey with conventional methods. However, eDNA approaches are limited in their ability to provide demographic information, resulting in most applications focusing on documenting species presence and distributions. Advancing molecular...

Context

Corner frequency (fc) and seismic moment (M0) are key parameters derived from seismic signals that are used to characterize earthquake stress drop, rupture area, and slip. These parameters are also affected by fault geometry and boundary conditions. However, the systematic study of these effects in laboratory settings has been challenging. This study presents laboratory earthquake...

The United States National Marine Fisheries Service determines “essential fish habitat (EFH)” for federally managed species in coordination with regional fishery management councils, considers adverse effects to those habitats, and provides information to further habitat conservation and enhancement. Identifying discrete subsets of EFH as “habitat areas of particular concern (HAPC)” can...

The U.S. Geological Survey collects remote sensing data to support national scientific assessments of natural resources, hazards, and landscape change. Spectrometers and spectroradiometers are essential for gathering point-based spectral measurements used in applications such as uncrewed aerial systems (UAS) multispectral image calibration, validation, and analysis. Evaluating how...

King Rails (Rallus elegans), a declining species of secretive marsh bird, have a mixed migratory strategy, with some individuals migrating and some being year-round residents. Determining the distribution of migratory versus resident King Rails is critical to guiding habitat management and assessing risks to populations. We examined the migratory status of adult King Rails at the Choctaw...

The 2022 Hunga volcano eruption generated one of the largest and most destructive volcanic tsunamis ever recorded. We interpret the timing, nature and relative hazard of volcanic-tsunamigenic processes by combining geophysical, oceanographic, atmospheric, and eye-witness observations of this event. Hydro-acoustic signal (T waves) detected on seismic stations up to 2600 km away provided a...

Climate change is leading to rapid and unprecedented changes to Australia's alpine ecosystems. The impacts of these changes at a species level are not fully understood, making it challenging to holistically assess the impacts of a changing climate in these ecosystems. To address this gap, we combine a literature review with expert opinion to conduct individual adaptive capacity analyses...