Publications

Lake Huron, one of the five Great Lakes, borders the United States and Canada, with Michigan as the only U.S. State on its shoreline. Like other freshwater lakes, it faces water-quality challenges from nutrients and chemicals applied across its drainage basin. Although past studies focused on surface-water sources, groundwater contributions remain less understood. To address this gap...

The New World screwworm (Cochliomyia hominivorax; NWS) is a parasitic blowfly that lays its eggs in open wounds of live, warm-blooded animals including livestock, wildlife, and potentially humans. The larvae consume living animal tissue, and if untreated, the infestation can lead to death. Although NWS was eradicated in the United States in 1966, it has been moving northward from its...

The MultiResolution Land Characteristics (MRLC) consortium’s National Land Cover Database (NLCD) was established as an operational, stakeholder-oriented land cover monitoring program with the release of the NLCD2001 database. Both land cover and land cover change data became available with the release of NLCD2006. Here, we report the land cover and land cover change accuracies for...

Contaminants found in treated wastewater discharged to streams, including pharmaceuticals and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), are of global concern due to their deleterious effects on aquatic ecosystems and potential impacts to human health. Hyporheic zones have strong potential for contaminant attenuation. Assessing this potential requires collection of physical and...

Gopher Tortoises inhabit coastal systems, including barrier islands, across the southeastern U.S. St. Vincent National Wildlife Refuge is an uninhabited barrier island located off the coast of northwestern Florida. Although tortoises have been observed on the island, no information is available on the status of the population. We conducted a line transect distance sampling survey to...

Lithium demand is projected to increase more than 48 times by 2040 due to electric vehicle production and other energy storage needs. Most lithium production is outside of the USA, thereby increasing supply chain vulnerability. The combined end use importance and heightened supply risk of lithium make this lightest metallic element a critical commodity to the USA. To mitigate this supply...

Freshwater salinization impacts the availability of water for human use and ecosystem needs worldwide. It has been estimated that total dissolved solids (TDS) in the Colorado River Basin cause $350 million/year in damages and substantial resources are devoted to reducing TDS loading to streams. This study describes the development and application of coupled watershed models that enable...

Snow is a vital component of high-latitude terrestrial systems, but environmental factors (e.g., permafrost) and complex vegetation challenge the accurate measurement of key snowpack properties. We evaluated local-scale ground-penetrating radar (GPR) and large-scale airborne lidar retrievals of snow depth collected during the NASA SnowEx 2023 campaign in tundra and boreal forest...

Species diversity is the foundation of many ecological disciplines. This metric is often approximated using species richness and evenness, even though actual richness likely exceeds observations due to imperfect sampling methods. Estimating the “true” species richness, which includes identifying the number of missing species, has intrigued ecologists for decades. We adopted a parametric...

Given the rise in anthropogenic, environmental, and disease events contributing to marine bird mortality, there is a critical need to improve the rigor of mortality assessments. Deficits in data collection and mortality estimation can hinder a manager’s ability to document the scale of events and assess population level impacts. Therefore, to inform decisions required during activities...

This study seeks to determine the effects of oil field produced water disposal operations and well mechanical integrity issues on groundwater quality in oil fields in the southwest San Joaquin Valley, California. Whereas previous studies used groundwater wells to study shallow aquifers outside the oil fields, this study demonstrates that future approaches may use oil well geophysical...

The iconic Old Faithful Geyser in Yellowstone National Park, USA, has attracted a significant amount of research because of the relative regularity and impressive size of its eruptions. Numerous studies have included observations, measurements, and analyses that informed models of geyser eruptions. However, fundamental quantities, including the associated mass and heat discharged, remain...