Publications

On September 19, 2024, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) held a virtual workshop titled “Potential for Evaluation of Fire Models with Remote Sensing Data Workshop” to assess the feasibility of using remotely sensed datasets to evaluate next-generation wildland fire behavior models. Remote sensing and fire modelling experts gathered to: (1) assess the suitability of a variety of...

The deleterious effects of directly-connected impervious surfaces on urban streams have been widely recognized. To deal with these effects, the use of stormwater control measures that aim to disconnect impervious surfaces and prevent stormwater from reaching the stream has surged. However, we lack widespread use of consistent metrics that describe how effective these stormwater control...

Tungsten appears on the 2018 and 2022 U.S. Geological Survey critical mineral lists in part because of a very high global production concentration in China, which produces almost 83 percent of the world’s mined tungsten. Using known parameters and values from other tungsten mining operations, we created hypothetical scenarios in which three tungsten deposits in Uzbekistan are considered...

Dynamic earthquake triggering is commonly identified through the temporal correlation between increased seismicity rates and global earthquakes that are possible triggering events. However, correlation does not imply causation. False positives may occur when unrelated seismicity rate changes coincidently occur at around the time of candidate triggers. We investigate the expected false...

Since the 1980s, monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus plexippus) populations across North America have declined by 80–95%. Although several studies have implicated pesticides as a contributing factor to their population declines, our understanding of monarch exposure levels in nature remains limited. In January 2024, a mass mortality event near an overwintering site in Pacific Grove...

Seawater intrusion (SWI) affects coastal landscapes worldwide. Here we describe the hydrologic pathways through which SWI occurs - over land via storm surge or tidal flooding, under land via groundwater transport, and through watersheds via natural and artificial surface water channels—and how human modifications to those pathways alter patterns of SWI. We present an approach to advance

Key to the success of spaceborne missions is understanding snowmelt in our warming climate, as this has implications for nearly 2 billion people. An obstacle is that surface reflectance products over snow show an erroneous hook with decreases in the visible wavelengths, causing per-band and broadband reflectance errors of up to 33 % and 11 %, respectively. This hook is sometimes mistaken...

Geometrically complex, multifault ruptures have been observed in recent, damaging earthquakes in southeastern California, sparking renewed efforts to identify physical conditions that promote or inhibit fault discontinuity-spanning coseismic ruptures. The likelihood of ruptures propagating across fault discontinuities is thought to be partly controlled by fault geometries, rupture...

The Nature Futures Framework (NFF), developed under the Intergovernmental Science–Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), serves as a catalyst for advancing new scenarios and models focused on biodiversity and ecosystem services within the broader research community. In particular, the framework facilitates the development of scenarios and models that can help...

No abstract available.

Hydrologic alterations within the Everglades have degraded American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis) habitat, reduced prey base, and increased physiological stress. Alligator body condition declined across many management areas from 2000 through 2014, prompting us to investigate the relationship between their intraspecific isotopic niche dynamics and body condition. Alligators...

Animal navigation has long been a fascinating but bewildering subject. Humans and animals might well share similar navigational strategies because they developed within the same physical environments. A “map-and-compass” model has been proposed to explain the two-step avian navigational process, but the “map” step has remained elusive. Although scalar values from bicoordinate geomagnetic...