Publications

Water quality improvement to avoid excessive phytoplankton blooms often requires eutrophication management where both phosphorus (P) and nitrogen (N) play a role. While empirical eutrophication studies and ecological resource competition theory both provide insight into phytoplankton abundance in response to nutrient loading, they are not seamlessly linked in the current state of...

Today, climate change is affecting virtually all terrestrial and nearshore settings. This commentary discusses the challenges of measuring climate-driven physical landscape responses to modern global warming: short and incomplete data records, land use and seismicity masking climatic effects, biases in data availability and resolution, and signal attenuation in sedimentary systems. We...

Climate change is altering wildfire behavior and vegetation regimes in California’s forested ecosystems. Present day fires are seeing an increase in high burn severity area and high severity patch size. The ability to predict future burn severity patterns would support better policy and land management decisions. Here we demonstrate a methodology to first, statistically estimate...

Through the collection and analysis of shallow and deep subseafloor sediments, rocks, fluids, and life, scientific ocean drilling has enriched our understanding of the complex Earth system. Among other achievements, scientific ocean drilling has documented the history of Earth’s climate, the waxing and waning of polar ice sheets, the past changes in ocean and atmospheric circulation, the...

The tectonometamorphic evolution of the southern Appalachians, which results from multiple Paleozoic orogenies (Taconic, Neoacadian, and Alleghanian), has lacked a consensus interpretation regarding its thermal-metamorphic history. The Blue Ridge terranes have remained the focus of the debate, with the interpreted timing of regional Barrovian metamorphism and associated deformation...

Metrosideros polymorpha (‘ōhi‘a) trees in Hawaiʻi are dying from two distinct diseases, collectively referred to as rapid ‘ōhi‘a death (ROD), caused by Ceratocystis lukuohia and Ceratocystis huliohia. Boring dust (frass) released when ambrosia beetles attack and colonize infected trees has been suspected as a transmission source. We sampled ambrosia beetle frass from six locations on...

Effective planning for species conservation often requires an understanding of habitat use. The resources an animal selects within the landscape relate to its behavioral state and, therefore, incorporating behavior into habitat selection analyses can help inform management of threatened species. Here we present an approach for developing behavior-specific spatial habitat-use models using...

The U.S. Geological Survey has a long history of leading flood-frequency analysis studies. These studies play a critical role in the assessment of risk, protection of lives, and planning and design of flood protection infrastructure. Standard flood-frequency analysis is based on the assumption of stationarity—that is, that the distribution of floods at a given site varies around a...

Executive Summary Southeast Florida is highly susceptible to flooding because of its low topography and porous, highly permeable Biscayne aquifer. Rising seas will likely result in increased groundwater levels in parts of Broward County, Florida, that will reduce available soil storage and therefore increase the likelihood of inundation and flooding from precipitation events. Moreover...

Understanding the spatial and temporal habitat use of a population is a necessary step for recovery planning. For Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha), variation in their migration and habitat use complicate predicting how restoring habitats could impact total recruitment. To evaluate how juvenile life history variation affects a population’s response to potential restoration, we...

As of May 2021, public alerting is now operational for the ShakeAlert earthquake early warning system for the West Coast of the United States in California, Oregon, and Washington. Successful early warning systems require the scientific and technical implementation to be coupled with social and humanitarian considerations, including education and outreach campaigns. Community engagement...

Headwater streams of the Pacific Northwest of North America are home to 52 amphibian species, spanning a diversity of taxa and life histories. Headwater stream-associated amphibians occur both within coldwater-stream channels and throughout adjacent riparian habitat, reflective of the important role of old-growth forests in providing cool, moist microclimates for these sensitive species...