Publications

Causes of population collapse and failed recovery often remain enigmatic in marine forage fish like Pacific herring (Clupea pallasii) that experience dramatic population oscillations. Diseases such as ichthyophoniasis are hypothesized to contribute to these declines, but lack of long-term datasets frequently prevents inference. Analysis of pathogen surveillance and population assessment...

As of 2016, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Fundamental Science Practices require data management plans (DMPs) for all USGS and USGS-funded research. The USGS Science Data Management Branch of the Science Analytics and Synthesis Program has been working to help the USGS (Bureau) meet this requirement. However, USGS researchers still encounter common data management-related challenges...

Compound earthquakes involving simultaneous ruptures along multiple faults often define a region’s upper threshold of maximum magnitude. Yet, the potential for linked faulting remains poorly understood given the infrequency of these events in the historic era. Geological records provide longer perspectives, although temporal uncertainties are too broad to clearly pinpoint single...

Turtles are one of the most imperiled vertebrate groups in the world. With habitat destruction unabated in many places, urban and suburban greenspaces may serve as refugia for turtles, at least those species able to tolerate heavily altered landscapes. In south-central Louisiana, we have conducted a turtle capture–mark–recapture effort in two ponds in an urban greenspace for 13 yr to...

In 2021, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in cooperation with the Bandera County River Authority and Groundwater District and the Texas Water Development Board, studied floods to produce a library of flood-inundation maps for the Sabinal River near Utopia, Texas. Digital flood-inundation maps were created for a 10-mile reach of the Sabinal River from USGS streamgage 08197936 Sabinal...

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...

No abstract available.

Many agencies and organizations, such as the U.S. Geological Survey, handle massive geospatial datasets and their auxiliary data and are thus faced with challenges in storing data and ingesting it, transferring it between internal programs, and egressing it to external entities. As a result, these agencies and organizations may inadvertently devote unnecessary time and money to convey...

Recreational-grade side-scan sonar (SSS) has only recently been applied to estimate abundance of Paddlefish Polyodon spathula, a large pelagic planktivore, in reservoirs. Current recreational-grade SSS units also have a dedicated down-scan channel, which may be useful for detecting Paddlefish in reservoirs because the range of depths they inhabit. We investigated the utility of down-scan...

The Equus Beds aquifer and Cheney Reservoir are primary sources for the city of Wichita’s current (2023) water supply. The Equus Beds aquifer storage and recovery (ASR) project was developed by the city of Wichita in the early 1990s to meet future water demands using the Little Arkansas River as an artificial aquifer recharge water source during above-base-flow conditions. Little...

PyLith, a community, open-source code for modelling quasi-static and dynamic crustal deformation with an emphasis on earthquake faulting, has recently been updated with a flexible multiphysics implementation. We demonstrate the versatility of the multiphysics implementation by extending the code to model fully coupled continuum poromechanics. We verify the newly incorporated physics...

Aquifer storage and recovery (ASR) can augment water supplies and hydrologic flows under varying climatic conditions. However, imposing drinking water regulations on ASR practices, including pre-treatment before injection into the aquifer, remains arguable. Microbial inactivation data—Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, poliovirus type 1 and Cryptosporidium parvum—were used in a...