Book Chapters

Sex determination is the first step toward the establishment of phenotypic sex in most vertebrates. Aquatic poikilotherms such as teleost fishes exhibit a high diversity of sex-determination mechanisms and gonadal phenotypes that are remarkably plastic and responsive to a variety of environmental factors (e.g., water temperature, pH, salinity, photoperiod, population density). This...

Invasive species may be one of the worts environmental problems facing the conservation of natural areas, because of their role in changing ecosystem function. At the same time, invasive species cause much human suffering and economic loss. The approach to eliminating invasive species can be improved by a better understanding of the various types of invasive species, and the scientific...

Catchment models are useful tools to help describe and quantify the sources, transport, and fate of sediment, nutrients, and other constituents in a landscape. Results from catchment models are used to quantify and understand existing conditions and used in restoration efforts by defining areas with highest contributions (hotspots, where actions would be most beneficial) and describing...

Fish assemblages in Atlantic coastal rivers have undergone extensive ecological change in the last two and a half centuries due to human influence, including extirpation of many migratory fish species, such as river herring (Alosa spp.) and introduction of nonnative piscivores, notably Smallmouth Bass Micropterus dolomieu. Recently, dam removals and fish passage improvements in the...

(Fairley) When historians describe the decades preceding designation of Grand Canyon National Park (GCNP), they typically focus attention on early scientific studies conducted by John Wesley Powell, Clarence Dutton, and Charles Walcott. All three of these pioneering scientists were employed by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), a small Federal agency first established in 1879. Yet rarely...

No abstract available.

The Keanakāko‘i Tephra offers an exceptional window into the explosive portion of Kīlauea’s recent past. Once thought to be the products of a single eruption, the deposits instead formed through a wide range of pyroclastic activity during an ~300 yr period following the collapse of the modern caldera in ca. 1500 CE. No single shallow conduit or vent system prevailed during this period...

Two small scoria vents were discovered in the Koa‘e fault system, an extensional regime connecting the east and southwest rift zones of Kīlauea that was previously considered to be noneruptive. The chemical composition of the scoria suggests an early to middle nineteenth-century age. The vents prove that magma can intrude several kilometers into the central part of the Koa‘e fault system...

In 2014–2015, a slow-moving pāhoehoe lava flow from the remote Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō vent on Kīlauea Volcano advanced 20 km into populated areas of the Puna District on the Island of Hawai‘i. The staff of the U.S. Geological Survey’s (USGS) Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO) mobilized their resources to closely monitor the flow and provide up-to-date information to the Hawai‘i County Civil Defense...

The Keanakāko‘i Tephra was deposited from 1500 to ca. 1820 CE, when Kīlauea’s magmatic output was ~2% of the average output during historical times (post–1823 CE). The tephra consists of deposits from numerous phreatomagmatic and phreatic eruptions, three episodes of high lava fountains, and one lava. Fresh glass is available from most tephra units. Major elements and trace elements were

Kīlauea Volcano’s active summit lava lake poses hazards to downwind residents and over 1.6 million Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park visitors each year. The lava lake surface is dynamic; crustal plates separated by incandescent cracks move across the lake as magma circulates below. We hypothesize that these dynamic thermal patterns are related to changes in other volcanic processes, such...

The golden pumice deposit (unit K1) represents one of the latest episodes of Hawaiian fountaining in the Keanakāko‘i Tephra and is the product of the first high fountaining eruption at Kīlauea summit in ~300 yr, since the caldera formed in ca. 1500 CE. We present a new physical characterization of the deposit based on over 200 field sites, all affected by severe erosion, alteration, and...