Publications

To address increasing demand for ecological models of aquatic species that can inform the management of national freshwater resources, we leveraged manager input to develop suites of environmental data layers characterizing freshwater habitats for the contiguous United States. Using the National Hydrography Dataset, these new data cover lentic and lotic systems under current and near...

Saltwater is migrating into freshwater aquifers globally with water quality and biogeochemical implications, yet saltwater intrusion in glaciated regions is sparsely investigated. Field observations suggest that groundwater head in glaciated systems is influenced by ice sheet forcings and provides evidence that seawater infiltrated into offshore aquifers during past deglaciation events...

Kīlauea volcano underwent dramatic morphological changes in 2018. That year recorded the end of the 35-year-long eruption of Puʻuʻōʻō (1983–2018) and 10-year-long (2008–2018) Halemaʻumaʻu lava lake and emplacement of the ~4-month-long lower East Rift Zone lava flows that coincided with ~500 m of summit caldera collapse. Starting on December 20, 2020, eruptions resumed at Kīlauea’s summit...

We present the 2025 U.S. Geological Survey Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands (PRVI) time‐independent earthquake rupture forecast (ERF), developed for the 2025 update to the National Seismic Hazard Model (NSHM) for PRVI. The updated ERF improves upon a prior model from 2003, including an expanded fault inventory with slip‐rate estimates, updated seismicity catalogs, and refined...

The Marfa Basin in West Texas is a late Palaeozoic synorogenic depocenter associated with regional deformation linked to the Ancestral Rocky Mountains (ARM) and Ouachita–Marathon–Sonora (OMS) orogenies in southwestern Laurentia. Basin strata range in age from Middle Pennsylvanian to the middle Permian and include the Cieneguita, Alta, Pinto Canyon, Rose Mine and Mina Grande Formations...

Ecological pressures on aquatic ecosystems have increased over recent centuries due to human activities and climate change. However, contextualizing ecosystem deterioration is often challenging due to limited knowledge of environmental changes over millennial timescales. Subtropical Carolina bays in North Carolina, USA, have remained unglaciated, preserving paleolimnological records that...

Freshwater lakes play a critical role in the global carbon cycle by storing and transforming organic matter (OM) from both terrestrial and aquatic sources. Small lakes in northern temperate regions, despite their limited surface area, disproportionately influence regional carbon budgets. Buried sediments integrate OM inputs over time and archive ecosystem responses to natural and...

Reservoirs are globally important sources of greenhouse gases, but the magnitude of their emissions is highly uncertain. Here we present data for 146 reservoirs from two surveys of reservoir methane and carbon dioxide emissions, one at the regional scale in the midwestern United States and one at the national scale in the conterminous United States, plus data from one reservoir in...

Executive Summary The U.S. Geological Survey Earth Resources Observation and Science Calibration and Validation (Cal/Val) Center of Excellence (ECCOE) focuses on improving the accuracy, precision, calibration, and product quality of remote-sensing data, leveraging years of multiscale optical system geometric and radiometric calibration and characterization experience. The ECCOE Landsat...

The flea-borne agent of plague, Yersinia pestis, is lethal to endangered black-footed ferrets (Mustela nigripes, BFFs) and the prairie dogs (Cynomys spp., PDs) on which BFFs depend for habitat and prey. We developed bait pellets containing insecticides for flea control with PDs. Individual baits contained 0.46, 0.91, 1.21, or 1.52 mg fipronil, 5.40 mg afoxolaner, 50.62 mg fluralaner, or...

At the request of the Lake Erie Committee, spatial units for Lake Erie Cisco were delineated during spring 2024. Spatial units correspond to the reproductive habitat of extirpated (unoccupied spatial units) and extant (occupied spatial units) populations. Spatial units were delineated using a Council of Lake Committees-endorsed method that involves synthesizing data for evaluation by a...

Using a geology-based assessment methodology, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated undiscovered, technically recoverable mean conventional resources of 37.6 billion barrels of oil and 281.6 trillion cubic feet of gas in 31 geologic provinces of South America and the Caribbean.