Publications

This dataset provides industrial-scale onshore wind turbine locations in the United States, corresponding facility information, and turbine technical specifications. The database has wind turbine records that have been collected, digitized, locationally verified, and internally quality controlled. Turbines from the Federal Aviation Administration Digital Obstacles File, through product...

The Kelso Dune field in southern California is intriguing because although it is of limited areal extent (~ 100 km2), it has a wide variety of dune forms and contains many active dunes (~ 40 km2), which is unusual in the Mojave Desert. Studies over the past eight decades have concluded that the dunes are derived primarily from a single source, Mojave River alluvium, under a dominant...

Our understanding of glacial flour dust storm delivery of iron to the Gulf of Alaska (GoA) is limited. Here we interpret concurrent time series satellite, meteorological, and aerosol geochemical data from the GoA to examine how interannual variability in regional weather patterns impacts offshore aerosol glacial Fe deposition. In 2011, when a northerly Aleutian Low (AL) was persistent...

Drivers of environmental change in one location can have profound effects on ecosystem services and human well-being in distant locations, often across international borders. The telecoupling provides a conceptual framework for describing these interactions—for example, locations can be defined as sending areas (sources of flows of ecosystem services, energy, or information) or receiving...

The U.S. Geological Survey currently (2020) publishes information on concentrations and loads of water-quality constituents at 110 sites across the United States as part of the U.S. Geological Survey National Water Quality Network (NWQN). This report details historical and updated methods for computing water-quality loads at NWQN sites. The primary updates to historical load estimation...

The Neogene Peters Hills basin is a small terrestrial basin that formed along the south flank of the Alaska Range during a time in which there was regional shortening. The formation of the Peters Hills basin is consistent with it being a wedge-top basin that formed on top of the active southeast-vergent Broad Pass thrust fault. Movement along this thrust raised a ridge of Jurassic and...

Natural dust is often associated with hot, subtropical deserts, but significant dust events have been reported from cold, high latitudes. This review synthesizes current understanding of high-latitude (≥50°N and ≥40°S) dust source geography and dynamics and provides a prospectus for future research on the topic. Although the fundamental processes controlling aeolian dust emissions in...

1. The monarch has undergone considerable population declines over the past decade, and the governments of Mexico, Canada, and the United States have agreed to work together to conserve the species. 2. Given limited resources, understanding where to focus conservation action is key for widespread species like monarchs. To support planning for continental-scale monarch habitat restoration...

Wetter conditions beginning in 1993 resulted in marked changes in water levels and surface extent of prairie-pothole region wetland ponds, including closed-basin wetlands in the Cottonwood Lake area of North Dakota, U.S.A. Pond water levels after 1993 were consistently 0.5 to 2 m higher than during 1979–1993 (≤ 1 m deep) in wetlands lacking surface or substantial groundwater outlets, and...

The most recent glacial to interglacial transition constitutes a remarkable natural experiment for learning how Earth’s climate responds to various forcings, including a rise in atmospheric CO2. This transition has left a direct thermal remnant in the polar ice sheets, where the exceptional purity and continual accumulation of ice permit analyses not possible in other settings. For...

Ecosystem function in rivers, lakes and coastal waters depends on the functioning of upstream aquatic ecosystems, necessitating an improved understanding of watershed-scale interactions including variable surface-water flows between wetlands and streams. As surface water in the Prairie Pothole Region expands in wet years, surface-water connections occur between many depressional wetlands...

Accuracy of streamflow data depends on the veracity of the rating model used to derive a continuous time series of discharge from the surrogate variables that can readily be collected autonomously at a streamgage. Ratings are typically represented as a simple monotonic increasing function (simple rating), meaning the discharge is a function of stage alone, however this is never truly the...