Publications

The actual state of ecological systems is rarely known with certainty, but management actions must often be taken regardless of imperfect measurement (partial observability). Because of the difficulties in accounting for partial observability, it is usually treated in an ad hoc fashion, or simply ignored altogether. Yet incorporating partial observability into decision processes lends a...

The Williston Basin has been a leading oil and gas producing area for more than 50 years. While oil production initially peaked within the Williston Basin in the mid-1980s, production rapidly increased in the mid-2000s, largely because of improved horizontal (directional) drilling and hydraulic fracturing methods. In 2012, energy development associated with the Bakken Formation was...

The Williston Basin has been a leading domestic oil and gas producing region. As energy demands have increased, so has energy development. A group of 13 Federal agencies and Tribal groups formed the Bakken Federal Executive Group to address common challenges associated with energy development, with a focus on understanding the cumulative environmental challenges attributed to oil and gas

Executive Summary The Williston Basin, which includes parts of Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota in the United States and parts of Manitoba and Saskatchewan in Canada, has been explored as a potential source of energy resources since the early 20th century; however, commercially viable petroleum drilling and recovery began in earnest in the 1950s. When oil prices rose in the mid...

About this volume The Williston Basin, which includes parts of Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota in the United States, has been a leading domestic oil and gas producing area. To better understand the potential effects of energy development on environmental resources in the Williston Basin, the U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the Bureau of Land Management, and in support...

The ecosystems of the Williston Basin provide direct and indirect benefits to society. These benefits include carbon sequestration, flood control, nutrient rich soils for agricultural productivity, and habitat for wildlife. This chapter’s main focus is on the effects of energy development on species that occupy the ecosystems in the Williston Basin. We compiled a list of documented...

Using a geology-based assessment methodology, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated undiscovered, technically recoverable mean resources of 278 million barrels of oil and 25.7 trillion cubic feet of gas in Paleozoic total petroleum systems of the Central European Basin System.

The 1989, Mw = 6.9 Loma Prieta earthquake resulted in tens of lives lost and cost California almost 3% of its gross domestic product. Despite widespread damage, the earthquake did not clearly rupture the surface, challenging the identification and characterization of these hidden hazards. Here, we show that they can be illuminated by inverting fluvial topography for slip-and moment...

Around the world, wetland vulnerability to sea-level rise (SLR) depends on different factors including tidal regimes, topography, creeks and estuary geometry, sediment availability, vegetation type, etc. The Plum Island estuary (PIE) is a mesotidal wetland system on the east coast of the United States. This research applied a newly updated Hydro-MEM (integrated hydrodynamic-marsh) model...

Disturbances elicit both positive and negative effects on organisms; these effects vary in their strength and their timing. Effects of disturbance interval (i.e., the length of time between disturbances) on population growth will depend on both the timing and strength of positive and negative effects of disturbances. Climate change can modify the relative strengths of these positive and...

Sand ripples are geomorphic features on the seafloor that affect bottom boundary layer dynamics including wave attenuation and sediment transport. We present a new equilibrium ripple predictor using a machine learning approach that outputs a probability distribution of wave-generated equilibrium wavelengths and statistics including an estimate of ripple height, the most probable ripple...

The Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) suite instrument on board NASA's Curiosity rover has characterized the inorganic and organic chemical composition of seven samples from the Glen Torridon (GT) clay-bearing unit. A variety of organic molecules were detected with SAM using pyrolysis (up to ∼850°C) and wet chemistry experiments coupled with evolved gas analysis (EGA) and gas chromatography...