Articles

Geographical distributions of waterfowl exhibit annual variation in response to spatiotemporal variation in weather conditions, habitat availability, and other factors. Continuing changes in climate and land use could lead to persistent shifts of waterfowl distributions, potentially causing a mismatch with habitat conservation planning, wetland restoration efforts, and harvest management...

The recovery of top predators is thought to have cascading effects on vegetated ecosystems and their geomorphology1,2, but the evidence for this remains correlational and intensely debated3,4. Here we combine observational and experimental data to reveal that recolonization of sea otters in a US estuary generates a trophic cascade that facilitates coastal wetland plant biomass and...

Forest thinning on public lands in the Pacific Northwest USA is an important tool for restoring diversity in forest stands with a legacy of simplified structure from decades of intensive management for timber production. A primary application of thinning in young ( 50-year-old) stands is to accelerate forest development to mitigate loss of late-seral habitat to decades of logging...

Conservation translocations are frequently inhibited by extensive dispersal after release, which can expose animals to dispersal-related mortality or Allee effects due to a lack of nearby conspecifics. However, translocation-induced dispersals also provide opportunities to study how animals move across a novel landscape, and how their movements are influenced by landscape configuration...

Many Mississippi River Delta studies have shown recent declines in fluvial sediment load from the river and associated land loss. In contrast, recent sedimentary processes on the subaqueous delta are less documented. To help address this knowledge gap, multicores were collected offshore from the three main river outlets at water depths of 25–280 m in June 2017 just after the peak river...

Wildlife conservation strategies focused on one season or population segment may fail to adequately protect populations, especially when a species’ habitat preferences vary among seasons, age-classes, geographic regions, or other factors. Conservation of golden eagles (Aquila chrysaetos) is an example of such a complex scenario, in which the distribution, habitat use, and migratory...

Species with extensive geographical ranges pose special challenges to assessing drivers of wildlife disease, necessitating collaborative and large-scale analyses. The imperilled foothill yellow-legged frog (Rana boylii) inhabits a wide geographical range and variable conditions in rivers of California and Oregon (USA), and is considered threatened by the pathogen Batrachochytrium...

Avian eggshell thickness is an important life history metric in birds and has broad applications across disciplines ranging from animal behavior to toxicology. Empirical eggshell thickness values for songbirds (Order Passeriformes) are under-represented in the literature due to the difficulty of measuring smaller eggs using traditional methods. We used a Hall-effect thickness gauge to...

As part of the U.S. Geological Survey’s 2023 50‐State National Seismic Hazard Model (NSHM), we make modest revisions and additions to the central and eastern U.S. (CEUS) fault‐based seismic source model that result in locally substantial hazard changes. The CEUS fault‐based source model was last updated as part of the 2014 NSHM and considered new information from the Seismic Source

The Permian Basin, underlying southeast New Mexico and west Texas, is one of the most productive oil and gas (OG) provinces in the United States. Oil and gas production yields large volumes of wastewater with complex chemistries, and the environmental health risks posed by these OG wastewaters on sensitive desert ecosystems are poorly understood. Starting in November 2017, 39 illegal...

Many studies use landscape form to determine spatial patterns of tectonic deformation, and these are particularly effective when paired with independent measures of rock uplift and erosion. Here, we use morphometric analyses and 10Be catchment-averaged erosion rates, together with reverse slip rates from the Sierra Madre−Cucamonga fault zone, to reveal patterns in uplift, erosion, and...

The fracture of Earth materials occurs over a wide range of time and length scales. Physical conditions, particularly the stress field and Earth material properties, may condition rupture in a specific fracture regime. In nature, fast and slow fractures occur concurrently: tectonic tremor events are fast enough to emit seismic waves and frequently accompany slow earthquakes, which are...