Articles

The devastating Kahramanmaraş earthquake sequence occurred on February 6, 2023. Two main events, Mw 7.8 and Mw 7.5 occurred 9 hours apart, affected 11 cities in Turkey, and subjected an area of ∼90,000 km2 to shaking levels known to trigger landslides (peak ground acceleration > 0.08 g). Extensive landsliding was expected given the hilly terrain affected by this significant ground...

Ocean waves excite continuous globally observable seismic signals. We use data from 52 globally distributed seismographs to analyze the vertical component primary microseism wavefield at 14–20 s period between the late 1980s and August 2022. This signal is principally composed of Rayleigh waves generated by ocean wave seafloor tractions at less than several hundred meters depth, and is...

Winter drawdown (WD) is a common lake management tool for multiple purposes such as flood control, aquatic vegetation reduction, and lake infrastructure maintenance. To minimize adverse impacts to a lake’s ecosystem, regulatory agencies may provide managers with general guidelines for drawdown and refill timing, drawdown magnitude, and outflow limitations. However, there is significant...

Impacts of sea level rise will last for centuries; therefore, flood risk modeling must transition from identifying risky locations to assessing how populations can best cope. We present the first spatially interactive (i.e., what happens at one location affects another) land change model (FUTURES 3.0) that can probabilistically predict urban growth while simulating human migration and...

Nearly 70 years ago a young ranger naturalist working in Yellowstone National Park (YNP), Frederick B. Turner, became fascinated with the abundance of frogs next to his cabin at “Soldier Creek” (known as Lodge Creek today). This interest blossomed into Turner’s PhD research and his publication in 1960 about the local population of Columbia spotted frogs (shown to right) became a classic...

As the Arctic and its rivers continue to warm, a better understanding of the possible future impacts on people would benefit from close partnership with Indigenous communities and scientists from diverse fields of study. We present efforts by the Arctic Rivers Project to conduct community-engaged research to increase collective understanding of the historical and potential future impacts...

Seismic images of Earth’s interior have revealed two continent-sized anomalies with low seismic velocities, known as the large low-velocity provinces (LLVPs), in the lowermost mantle. The LLVPs are often interpreted as intrinsically dense heterogeneities that are compositionally distinct from the surrounding mantle. Here we show that LLVPs may represent buried relics of Theia mantle...

Sea-level rise is particularly concerning for tidal wetlands that reside within an area with steep topography or are constrained by human development and alteration of sedimentation. Sediment augmentation to increase wetland elevations has been considered as a potential strategy for such areas to prevent wetland loss over the coming decades. However, there is little information on the...

Remote cameras (“trail cameras”) are a popular tool for non-invasive, continuous wildlife monitoring, and as they become more prevalent in wildlife research, machine learning (ML) is increasingly used to automate or accelerate the labor-intensive process of labelling (i.e., tagging) photos. Human-machine hybrid tagging approaches have been shown to greatly increase tagging efficiency (i...

Documenting dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) concentration and form at appropriate temporal and spatial scales is key to understanding aquatic ecosystem health, particularly as DIN fuels primary productivity. In addition to point and non-point source nutrient inputs, factors such as hydrology, geomorphology, temperature, light, and biogeochemical transformations influence nutrient...

We evaluate the potential performance of the ShakeAlert earthquake early warning system for M 9 megathrust earthquakes in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) using synthetic seismograms from 30 simulated M 9 earthquake scenarios on the Cascadia subduction zone. The timeliness and accuracy of source estimates and effectiveness of ShakeAlert alert contours are evaluated with a station‐based alert

Algal blooms appear to be increasing on benthic substrates of naturally nutrient-poor lakes worldwide, yet common drivers across these systems remain elusive. The phenomenon has been notable in high-elevation mountain lakes, which is enigmatic given their relative remoteness from human disturbance. We suggest that warming-induced changes in redox conditions that promote nutrient release...