Articles

Ixodid (hard) ticks play important ecosystem roles and have significant impacts on animal and human health via tick-borne diseases and physiological stress from parasitism. Tick occurrence, abundance, activity, and key life-history traits are highly influenced by host availability, weather, microclimate, and landscape features. As such, changes in the environment can have profound...

Macroalgae and phytoplankton support the base of highly productive nearshore ecosystems in cold-temperate regions. To better understand their relative importance to nearshore food webs, this study considered four regions in the northern Gulf of Alaska where three indicator consumers were collected, filter-feeding mussels (Mytilus trossulus), pelagic-feeding Black Rockfish (Sebastes...

Globally, glaciers and icefields contribute significantly to sea level rise. Here we show that ice loss from Juneau Icefield, a plateau icefield in Alaska, accelerated after 2005 AD. Rates of area shrinkage were 5 times faster from 2015–2019 than from 1979–1990. Glacier volume loss remained fairly consistent (0.65–1.01 km3 a−1) from 1770–1979 AD, rising to 3.08–3.72 km3 a−1 from 1979...

The first multidisciplinary characterisation of Bowditch Seamount in the Sargasso Sea was conducted to provide new baseline knowledge of the biodiversity, geomorphology, oceanography and glacial history of this seamount. A dropframe camera transect 1483–1562 m deep on the seamount documented 77 megafaunal taxa including Vulnerable Marine Ecosystem indicator taxa such as sponges, cold...

Dust transported from rangelands of the Southwestern United States (US) to mountain snowpack in the Upper Colorado River Basin during spring (March-May) forces earlier and faster snowmelt, which creates problems for water resources and agriculture. To better understand the drivers of dust events, we investigated large-scale meteorology responsible for organizing two Southwest US dust...

No abstract available.

The 17 January 1994 Northridge, California, earthquake was a watershed event, with far-reaching societal and scientific impacts. The earthquake, which occurred in the early days of both broadband seismic networks and the Internet, spurred advances in seismic monitoring, real-time systems, and development of data products. Motivated by the 30th anniversary of the earthquake, we present a...

Planet Earth has evolved over the past 4.5 billion years from an entirely anoxic planet with possibly a different tectonic regime to the oxygenated world with horizontal plate tectonics that we know today. For most of this time, Earth has been inhabited by a purely microbial biosphere albeit with seemingly increasing complexity over time. A rich record of this geobiological evolution...

Four new 10Be-26Al isochron burial ages ranging from 4.4 to 2 Ma on ancestral Colorado River deposits in the lower Colorado River corridor (LCRC) help constrain the river’s evolution during the Pliocene and early Pleistocene. They help fill a gap between previous work that focused on older and younger deposits: Older dated deposits include the 5 Ma Bouse Formation, which records the...

Wind erosion and dust emission from drylands have large consequences for ecosystem function and human health. Wind erosion is naturally reduced by soil crusting and sheltering by non-erodible roughness elements such as plants. Land uses that reduce surface roughness and disturb the soil surface can dramatically increase dust emission. Extraction of oil and gas is a common and growing...

Rivers are increasingly used as superhighways for the continental-scale transportation of freight goods, but the ecological impact of large vessel traffic on river ecosystems is difficult to study. Recently, the temporary maintenance closure of lock and dam systems on the Illinois Waterway (USA) brought commercial vessel traffic to a halt along the river's length, offering a rare...

Uncrewed aerial systems (UASs) have been used to collect “pseudo field plot” data in the form of large-scale stereo imagery to supplement and bolster direct field observations to monitor areas in Alaska. These data supplement field data that is difficult to collect in such a vast landscape with a relatively short field season. Dense photogrammetrically derived point clouds are created...