Articles

The U.S. Geological Survey Land Change Monitoring, Assessment and Projection (USGS LCMAP) has released a suite of annual land cover and land cover change products for the conterminous United States (CONUS). The accuracy of these products was assessed using an independently collected land cover reference sample dataset produced by analysts interpreting Landsat data, high-resolution aerial

Recreational angling in the United States (US) is largely a personal hobby that scales up to a multibillion-dollar economic activity. Given dramatic changes to personal decisions and behaviors resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, we surveyed recreational anglers across the US to understand how the pandemic may have affected their fishing motivations and subsequent activities. Nearly a...

Salinity (sodium chloride [NaCl]) is a prevalent and persistent contaminant that negatively affects freshwater ecosystems. Although most studies focus on effects of salinity from road salts (primarily NaCl), high-salinity wastewaters from energy extraction (wastewaters) could be more harmful because they contain NaCl and other toxic components. Many amphibians are sensitive to salinity...

Efforts to breed Attwater's prairie chickens (APC; Tympanuchus cupido attwateri) in captivity to supplement wild populations of this endangered bird have been negatively affected by infections with Avipoxvirus and reticuloendotheliosis virus (REV). Because REV can be integrated into the genome of fowlpox virus (FPV) and may be transmitted in that manner, identifying the source of avipox...

Throughout a 20 year biosurveillance period, viral hemorrhagic septicemia virus was isolated in low titers from only 6/7355 opportunistically sampled adult Pacific herring, reflecting the typical endemic phase of the disease when the virus persists covertly. However, more focused surveillance efforts identified the presence of disease hot spots occurring among juvenile life history...

Various ecomorphs of shallow-water Cisco Coregonus artedi were the dominant fish planktivores in each of the Great Lakes until invasive species and over fishing resulted in extirpations and extinctions. In this paper we describe the present morphological diversity and distribution of shallow-water Ciscoes in each of Lake Huron’s three basins: the main basin, Georgian Bay, and North...

Many novel research algorithms have been developed to analyze urban heat island (UHI) and UHI regional impacts (UHIRIP) with remotely sensed thermal data tables. We present a comprehensive review of some important aspects of UHI and UHIRIP studies that use remotely sensed thermal data, including concepts, datasets, methodologies, and applications. We focus on reviewing progress on multi...

Sampling rare and clustered populations is challenging because of the effort required to find rare units. Heuristically, a practitioner would prefer to discontinue sampling in areas where rare units of interest are apparently extremely sparse or absent. We take advantage of the characteristics of inverse sampling to adaptively inform practitioners when it is efficient to move on to...

Since 2017, the orbit of Landsat 7 has drifted outside its nominal mission requirement toward an earlier acquisition time because of limited onboard fuel resources. This makes quantitative analyses from Landsat 7 data potentially unreliable for many scientific studies. To comprehensively understand the effect of ongoing (2018–2020) orbit drift on Landsat 7 data, we compared surface...

The rapidly emerging field of macrogenetics focuses on analysing publicly accessible genetic datasets from thousands of species to explore large-scale patterns and predictors of intraspecific genetic variation. Facilitated by advances in evolutionary biology, technology, data infrastructure, statistics and open science, macrogenetics addresses core evolutionary hypotheses (such as...

Autonomous passive integrated transponder (PIT) tag antennas are commonly used to detect fish marked with PIT tags but cannot detect unmarked fish, creating challenges for abundance estimation. Here we describe an approach to estimate abundance from paired physical capture and antenna detection data in closed and open mark-recapture models. Additionally, for open models, we develop an...

Noble gases record fluid interactions in multiphase subsurface environments through fractionation processes during fluid equilibration. Water in the presence of hydrocarbons at the subsurface acquires a distinct elemental signature due to the difference in solubility between these two fluids. We find the atmospheric noble gas signature in produced water is partially preserved after...