Book Chapters

This essay presents the hypothesis that short-lived or evanescent microbial ecosystems exist in Earth’s lower troposphere (~ 18 km). Volcanic eruptions, dust storms, fires, and sea spray are known to seed the atmosphere with microorganisms and to serve as potential nutrient sources while in the atmosphere and upon deposition. Recent research has demonstrated that microorganisms are...

During the past half century or so diverse histories of Great Salt Lake have been written from differing perspectives and all of them have contributed ideas and essential data. The published literature, however, can be confusing and misleading. In this chapter, we review and provide context for a number of those publications. This chapter is intended as a summary of what is known, what...

Unique among all the contaminants that adversely affect surface- and groundwater quality, radioactive compounds pose a double threat from toxicity and ionizing radiation. The high energy potential of many of these materials makes them both useful and hazardous. The unique properties of radioactive materials make them invaluable for medical and energy applications. However, mining...

This chapter discusses the data and methods used by the US National Park Service to estimate the economic effects of National Park visitor spending to local and regional economies. Topics covered include a summary of economic effects analyses, required data for analysis (visitor count data, trip characteristics and spending patterns, and regional economic multipliers) and how these data...

Chapter 23 of the First World Ocean Assessment (WOA I) focused on marine mining, and particularly on established extractive industries, which are predominantly confined to near-shore areas, where shallow-water, near-shore aggregate and placer deposits, and somewhat deeper water phosphate deposits are found (United Nations, 2017a). At the time of publication, there were no commercially...

The Golden Eagle inhabits a wide range of latitudes and habitats throughout the Palearctic and into northern Africa, where it is largely resident. In North America, its breeding distribution includes most of Canada and Alaska, as well as the western half of the United States and northern and western Mexico. Most eagles that nest in northern Canada and interior and northern Alaska migrate...

Genetic data are a powerful and important tool for guiding rewilding efforts and for monitoring the recovery outcomes of those efforts. When used in conjunction with historic species’ distribution records and predictive habitat suitability modeling, genetic information adds a key piece to the puzzle that will increase the probability of successful ecosystem restoration.

The Pleistocene Okanogan lobe of Cordilleran ice in north-central Washington State dammed Columbia River to pond glacial Lake Columbia and divert the river south across one or another low spot along a 230-km-long drainage divide. When enormous Missoula floods from the east briefly engulfed the lake, water poured across a few such divide saddles. The grandest such spillway into the...

Big Soda Lake is a 63 m deep, 1.6 km2 maar lake in the Great Basin of Nevada, USA. Water level in the lake is controlled by groundwater inputs from the surrounding aquifer and the only surface water input is rainfall, which is negligible. A core taken in 2010 records an 8.75 m depositional history of the lake. A radiocarbon date on fossil pollen from 8.4 m below the sediment water...

Elizabeth Gierlowski-Kordesch (1956–2016) was a leader and innovator in the specialty field of limnogeology since its beginnings in the late 1980s. Her excitement for field work and examining sediments was contagious, and she was always testing new research ideas. Beth would have been thrilled with the diversity of papers presented in the volume and the wide array of techniques used to...

Each year we report on the progress toward rehabilitation of the Lake Ontario lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush) population, including the results of stocking, annual assessment surveys, creel surveys, and evidence of natural reproduction observed from standard surveys performed by USGS and NYSDEC. Response to the COVID-19 pandemic limited survey effort such that spring and summer bottom...

No abstract available.