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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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Urbanization alters riverine fluorescent dissolved organic matter characteristics in a forested city – metropolitan Atlanta, Georgia (USA) Urbanization alters riverine fluorescent dissolved organic matter characteristics in a forested city – metropolitan Atlanta, Georgia (USA)

Streams and rivers in urban watersheds are predicted to export more bioreactive, autochthonous dissolved organic matter (DOM) relative to forested watersheds. However, the spatial and temporal variations of DOM quality in forested urban watersheds remain uncertain, and their relationships with socioeconomic conditions, biological characteristics, and the built environment are...
Authors
Shuo Chen, Rebecca Hale, Kristina G. Hopkins, Liz Ortiz Muñoz, John Kominoski, Sarah Ledford, Krista A. Capps

Bird guilds exhibit varied responses to floodplain forest restoration in the Colorado River delta, Mexico Bird guilds exhibit varied responses to floodplain forest restoration in the Colorado River delta, Mexico

Grouping species into guilds can be useful to inform management decisions locally and at broader scales because guilds lack species-specificity. We investigated the response of five breeding bird guilds to riparian habitat restoration in the arid Colorado River delta, based on two decades of bird detections (2002–2021) at 230 bird count stations across 7 routes in actively revegetated (...
Authors
Eduardo González-Sargas, Timothy D. Meehan, Osvel Hinojosa-Huerta, Stefanny Villagomez-Palma, Christopher Dodge, Martha Gómez-Sapiens, Pamela L. Nagler, Patrick B. Shafroth

Boxed in or branching out? Movement and resource selection of eastern box turtles (Terrapene carolina carolina) in an urban green space Boxed in or branching out? Movement and resource selection of eastern box turtles (Terrapene carolina carolina) in an urban green space

The eastern box turtle (Terrapene carolina carolina) is a long-lived terrestrial turtle species distributed throughout the eastern United States that has experienced widespread population decline. Many eastern box turtle populations are persisting as remanent populations in small, fragmented urban green spaces. We investigated the movement and resource selection of eastern box turtles...
Authors
Max D. Jones, Kenneth B. Ferebee, W. Mark Ford, Elizabeth Ann Hunter

Activity, but not size of Black-tailed Praire Dog colonies, is associated with higher Athene cunicularia hypugaea (Western Burrowing Owl) occupancy and reproductive success in the shortgrass prairie Activity, but not size of Black-tailed Praire Dog colonies, is associated with higher Athene cunicularia hypugaea (Western Burrowing Owl) occupancy and reproductive success in the shortgrass prairie

Conservation in fragmented ecosystems, such as grasslands, has historically put more value on larger habitat patches but recent research suggests that small, high-quality habitat patches hold important conservation value. In many grassland systems, Athene cunicularia hypugaea (Western Burrowing Owl) relies on habitat patches created by Cynomys ludovicianus (Black-tailed Prairie Dog...
Authors
Sarah R. Albright, Reesa Y. Conrey, William L. Kendall

Short-term estuarine phytoplankton dynamics in response to hurricanes along the Gulf Coast of America: A Variational Autoencoder (VAE) approach with satellite and bio-optical observations Short-term estuarine phytoplankton dynamics in response to hurricanes along the Gulf Coast of America: A Variational Autoencoder (VAE) approach with satellite and bio-optical observations

Hurricanes drive diverse estuarine phytoplankton responses and can trigger cascading ecological and physicochemical impacts. Capturing these short-term dynamics requires high spatiotemporal resolution. Here, we applied a globally-applicable coastal ocean color algorithm, Variational Autoencoder (VAE), to Sentinel-2 MSI imagery for chlorophyll-a (Chl-a) estimation and validated its strong
Authors
Jiang Li, Bingqing Liu, Jiadong Lou, Xu Yuan, Eurico J. D'Sa, Melissa Millman Baustian, Megan La Peyre, Angelina Freeman, Vitor S. Martins, Emad Habib

A tool for prioritizing gravel augmentation reaches for sediment starved rivers A tool for prioritizing gravel augmentation reaches for sediment starved rivers

Gravel augmentation is a widely used restoration technique used to improve habitat below dams, including salmonids spawning habitat. However, gravel augmentation can be cost-prohibitive, and it is often unclear which stream segments have the highest potential to benefit spawning salmonids. A tool to help prioritize reaches for gravel restoration could aid managers in making good...
Authors
Patricia J. Wohner, Peter A. Samarin, James T. Peterson

Towards global mapping of dynamic surface water extents using Sentinel-1 SAR data Towards global mapping of dynamic surface water extents using Sentinel-1 SAR data

We introduce a fully automated and scalable method for mapping surface water extents from single-acquisition Sentinel-1 synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery. This approach integrates adaptive thresholding of radiometric terrain-corrected SAR backscatter data, fuzzy-logic classification, region growing, dark land estimation, and a bimodality test to minimize false positives in low...
Authors
Jungkyo Jung, Heresh Fattahi, Seongsu Jeong, Matthew G. Bonnema, John W. Jones, David Bekaert, Steven K. Chan, Alexander L. Handweger

Opportunities for the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Seismic Hazard Model to improve seismic risk assessment of critical infrastructure. Opportunities for the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Seismic Hazard Model to improve seismic risk assessment of critical infrastructure.

As fragility and risk modeling techniques and computational capabilities evolve, complemented by moving toward more routine and systematic seismic risk assessment of all buildings and critical infrastructure, the authors pose a few critical questions to investigate how the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Seismic Hazard Models (NSHMs) can be used and enhanced further to serve such...
Authors
Kishor S. Jaiswal, N. Simon Kwong

Invasive carps versus native fish: A first-pass trait-based index for assessing competition threats. Invasive carps versus native fish: A first-pass trait-based index for assessing competition threats.

Introduction: Bigheaded carp (Hypophthalmichthys spp.) are invasive fish in the Mississippi River basin. Their rapid proliferation has raised concerns about exploitative competition with native fishes, with consequences that remain incompletely understood. We aimed to identify native species most susceptible to competition based on overlap with bigheaded carp in dietary and habitat...
Authors
Leandro E. Miranda, Mirtha A. Angulo-Valencia

Metalloporphyrins in the Eagle Ford Shale Metalloporphyrins in the Eagle Ford Shale

Using Fourier-transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry (FT-ICR-MS), Zheng et al. (2018, Energy & Fuels 32, 10382) reported abundant iron and vanadyl porphyrins and minor amounts of gallium and nickel porphyrins in asphaltenes extracted from a single lower Eagle Ford Shale sample. This finding is most unusual as iron and gallium porphyrins have been previously found only in...
Authors
Clifford C. Walters, Anthony Mennitto, Katherine L. French

Spatially concentrating logging could mitigate climate-magnified fragmentation risks to a globally endangered bird Spatially concentrating logging could mitigate climate-magnified fragmentation risks to a globally endangered bird

1. Rising timber demand is transforming forest structure globally, profoundly affecting biodiversity and climate resilience. Logging-driven fragmentation is potentially a major driver of biodiversity loss in production landscapes, yet its interactions with escalating climate stressors remain poorly understood. 2. We combine two decades of Landsat-derived habitat metrics with 29,000...
Authors
Gianluca Cerullo, Dusty Gannon, Jennifer A. Bailey Guerrero, Emily Conklin, Anna Bloch Kohlberg, Kim Nelson, James W. Rivers, Jonathon Joseph Valente, Zhiqiang Yang, Matthew G.  Betts

Small earthquake moment magnitude and implications for frequency–magnitude scaling of injection induced earthquakes of the Raton Basin Small earthquake moment magnitude and implications for frequency–magnitude scaling of injection induced earthquakes of the Raton Basin

Accurate estimation of earthquake source parameters—such as moment magnitudes, corner frequencies, and stress drops—is essential for improving seismic hazard assessments and understanding earthquake physics. In this study, moment magnitudes (MW) are calculated for 31,581 earthquakes associated with wastewater injection in the Raton Basin (located along the border between northern New...
Authors
Andres Felipe Peña Castro, Brandon Schmandt, Margaret Elizabeth Glasgow, Mohammadreza Jamalreyhani, Ruijia Wang, Elizabeth S. Cochran
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