Publications

Invasive Central American boas (Boa imperator) have established a reproducing population on the western side of St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands but prevalence throughout the island is largely unknown. The large snakes threaten endemic and endangered species through competition and predation, jeopardizing island biodiversity. Environmental DNA (eDNA) methods were used to investigate...

The United States is estimated to have hundreds of thousands of orphan oil and gas wells. Orphan wells are abandoned wells that are both unremediated and have no responsible operator. While traditionally considered environmental and economic liabilities, orphan oil and gas wells may offer new opportunities in sustainable geothermal energy development. This study evaluates the potential...

Ensemble tree-based algorithms are robust tools for estimating sparsely distributed resources with non-linear dependencies (e.g., hydrothermal systems). These algorithms naturally accommodate the threshold conditions necessary to enable and support hydrothermal systems (e.g., having sufficient heat and permeability) and are simpler than many other non-linear machine learning strategies...

World-class Carlin-type Au deposits hosted in sedimentary rock were formed when profuse Eocene silicic magmatism swept across northern Nevada in response to arc migration. Carlin-type Au deposits formed along with porphyry/skarn Cu-Mo-W-Au deposits, epithermal Ag-Au deposits, and distal disseminated Ag-Au deposits. But unlike these other Au-bearing deposits that have clear associations...

Assessing the potential for geothermal energy and liquid water presence in the Martian subsurface is crucial for future exploration and habitability studies. In this work, we employed comprehensive finite element model simulations adapted specifically for Martian conditions to estimate subsurface temperatures and the potential for liquid water at depth within Martian crater basins. Rock...

Lithium brine extractions and geothermal resource developments often are not economically viable as standalone projects, but they May become cost effective when the potential for both resources exist within the same reservoir. Subsurface datasets were analyzed to identify areas in the U.S. Gulf Coast region with potential for lithium brine and geothermal heat recovery. Temperature...

Observations of the Evening Bat (Nycticeius humeralis), a species historically distributed abundantly throughout the southeastern United States, are speculated to have increased in the Midwest. One hypothesis for this expansion in geographic distribution is that local extirpations of other bat species resulted in the expanded realized niche spaces for evening bats. In Indiana, such niche...

Fens are groundwater-fed wetlands that can provide habitat for plants and animals. Due to anthropogenic activities and climate change, many fens around the world are at risk. This paper presents the results of a study of the hydrology and geochemistry of fens in Big Smoky Valley, central Nevada to support the Bureau of Land Management’s activities in the area. A water sample from the...

Classification of massive datasets by machine learning (ML) algorithms is promising for many scientific domains, especially wildlife monitoring programs that rely on passive acoustic surveys for detecting species. However, treating ML-predicted class labels (e.g., species identity) as truth biases inferences of focal parameters within common modeling frameworks. One solution is to model...

Greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus; hereafter sage-grouse) are at the center of State and national land-use policies largely because of their unique life-history traits as an ecological indicator for the health of sagebrush ecosystems. This updated population trend analysis provides State and Federal land and wildlife managers with the best available science to help guide...

Wildlife agencies collect data on productivity (e.g., proportion of hens with poults and number of poults per hen) of wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) to monitor population status and trends. However, sampling protocols to collect productivity data rely on opportunistic observations reported by wildlife agency personnel and the public and have changed over time and differed among...

The Hawaiian Volcanoes Supersite was established in 2008 with the goal of making large amounts of volcano monitoring data, especially satellite measurements, freely available at a site of international interest, scientific importance, and impactful natural hazards. The location was chosen because of the long history of volcanological research and innovation on the Island of Hawaiʻi, as...