Book Chapters

To support global drought early warning, the Climate Hazards Center (CHC) at the University of California, Santa Barbara developed the Climate Hazards center InfraRed Precipitation with Stations (CHIRPS) dataset, in collaboration with the US Geological Survey and NASA SERVIR. Specifically designed to support early warning applications, CHIRPS has high a spatial resolution (0.05°), a long...

ShakeCast® – short for ShakeMap Broadcast – is a fully automated software system for delivering specific ShakeMap products to critical users and for triggering established post-earthquake response protocols. ShakeCast is a freely available, postearthquake situational awareness software application that automatically retrieves earthquake shaking data from ShakeMap to compare ground...

This chapter introduces background and historical information on how structural equation modeling (SEM) came to be developed. Then, the main differences between SEM and earlier multivariate methods are explained. The chapter describes three main applications of SEM: path analysis, factor analysis, and hybrid models. Some computer programs are recommended for these applications. The step...

As an ultimate driver of marine ecosystem processes, climate change is expected to influence proximate disease drivers in marine systems. The observable effects of climate change, including changes in temperature, hypoxia, CO2 accumulation, precipitation, and storm and cyclone frequencies and intensities, may directly act as proximate drivers of marine disease, especially in...

This chapter reviews how marine ecosystems respond to parasites. Evidence from several marine ecosystems shows that parasites can wield control over ecosystem structure, function, and dynamics by regulating host density and phenotype. Like predators, parasites can generate or modify trophic cascades, regulate important foundational species and ecosystem engineers, and mediate species...

Parasites have important and unique impacts on marine food webs. By infecting taxa across all trophic levels, parasites affect both bottom-up and top-down processes in marine systems. When host densities are high enough, parasites can regulate or even decimate their populations, causing regime shifts in marine systems. As consumers and resources, parasites are enmeshed in food webs in...

Tropical forests represent

The Trout Rock caves (Hamilton Cave, Trout Cave, New Trout Cave) are located in a hill named Cave Knob that overlooks the South Branch of the Potomac River in Pendleton County, West Virginia (U.S.A). The geologic structure of this hill is a northeasttrending anticline, and the caves are located at different elevations primarily along the contact between the Devonian New Creek Limestone...

The first annual meeting of the Geological Society of America (GSA) was held in 1888 in Ithaca, New York (Fairchild, 1932), but official Sections of GSA formed much later. During the spring of 1949, a symposium in Knoxville, Tennessee, on mineral resources of the southeastern United States became the catalyst for the creation of the Southeastern Section of the Geological Society of...

The chapter starts by addressing some of the issues that come from not using a conceptual framework. This point is illustrated using an example with causal factors. The chapter then goes on to explain the mechanics of establishing conceptual frameworks. Lastly, it lays out a step-by-step guide on how to create a framework—generating a set of concepts, specifying the relations between...

Landbirds in the Gulf of Mexico region include an ecologically diverse group of taxa that depend on a wide range of terrestrial habitats and the airspace above them. For the GoMAMN region of the Gulf of Mexico, the Landbird Working Group identified 19 species from 12 families as priorities for monitoring (Table 3.1). In addition, all species that stopover within the GoMAMN region during...

Geological Surveys have long filled the role of providing Earth system science data and knowledge. These functions are increasingly complicated by accelerating environmental and societal change. Here we describe the USGS response to these evolving conditions. Underpinning the USGS approach is the recognition that many of the issues facing the U.S. and the world involve the interaction...