Publications

The eastern box turtle (Terrapene carolina carolina) is a long-lived terrestrial turtle species distributed throughout the eastern United States that has experienced widespread population decline. Many eastern box turtle populations are persisting as remanent populations in small, fragmented urban green spaces. We investigated the movement and resource selection of eastern box turtles...

Hurricanes drive diverse estuarine phytoplankton responses and can trigger cascading ecological and physicochemical impacts. Capturing these short-term dynamics requires high spatiotemporal resolution. Here, we applied a globally-applicable coastal ocean color algorithm, Variational Autoencoder (VAE), to Sentinel-2 MSI imagery for chlorophyll-a (Chl-a) estimation and validated its strong

Acadia National Park has had increases in the frequency and magnitude of precipitation in recent years, leading to increased flood flows, stream erosion, and costly infrastructure damage. To improve infrastructure management in a changing climate, the U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the National Park Service, has developed multiple datasets that can help natural resource...

The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the Wyoming Water Development Office, developed regional regression equations based on basin characteristics and streamflow statistics for streamgages through water year 2021 (October 1, 2020, to September 30, 2021). The regression equations allow estimates of mean annual maximum, mean annual, mean seasonal, and mean monthly streamflows...

Magnitude and frequency of annual peak streamflows were computed for 813 streamgages on rural, unregulated streams with annual peak streamflow data from 1791 through the 2021 water years in and near Virginia and West Virginia. The study was done in cooperation with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the West Virginia Department of Transportation, and the Virginia Department of...

As fragility and risk modeling techniques and computational capabilities evolve, complemented by moving toward more routine and systematic seismic risk assessment of all buildings and critical infrastructure, the authors pose a few critical questions to investigate how the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Seismic Hazard Models (NSHMs) can be used and enhanced further to serve such...

Introduction: Bigheaded carp (Hypophthalmichthys spp.) are invasive fish in the Mississippi River basin. Their rapid proliferation has raised concerns about exploitative competition with native fishes, with consequences that remain incompletely understood. We aimed to identify native species most susceptible to competition based on overlap with bigheaded carp in dietary and habitat...

Using a geology-based assessment methodology, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated undiscovered, technically recoverable mean conventional resources of 269 million barrels of oil and 14.3 trillion cubic feet of gas in the Larsen Basin, Antarctica.

1. Rising timber demand is transforming forest structure globally, profoundly affecting biodiversity and climate resilience. Logging-driven fragmentation is potentially a major driver of biodiversity loss in production landscapes, yet its interactions with escalating climate stressors remain poorly understood. 2. We combine two decades of Landsat-derived habitat metrics with 29,000...

Accurate estimation of earthquake source parameters—such as moment magnitudes, corner frequencies, and stress drops—is essential for improving seismic hazard assessments and understanding earthquake physics. In this study, moment magnitudes (MW) are calculated for 31,581 earthquakes associated with wastewater injection in the Raton Basin (located along the border between northern New...

Reproductive output can vary widely among mammalian species. There are many drivers that affect reproductive output including evolutionary, environmental, population, social, and individual traits. Although several factors, including human-caused mortality, can affect reproductive output, we generally have a poor understanding of how such factors interact to affect reproduction...

Magnetic storms induce geoelectric fields at Earth's surface that can interfere with grounded long-line systems. The September 1859 storm disrupted global telegraph operations, the March 1989 storm caused a blackout in Canada and interfered with electric-power-transmission systems in the United States, and other storms have had related impacts. The geographic and temporal dependence of...