Publications

The Alaskan landscape is changing, both in terms of effects of human activities as a consequence of increased population, social and economic development and their effects on the local and broad landscape; and those effects that accompany naturally occurring hazards such as volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and tsunamis. Some of the most prevalent changes, however, are those resulting...

Cambrian-Lower Ordovician carbonate rocks that likely formed as part of the Laurentian continental margin, and may thus have been part of the Cambrian-Ordovician great American carbonate bank, occur in east-central Alaska in the Nation Arch area. These strata accumulated on the southwestern margin (present-day coordinates) of the Yukon stable block, a broad area of early Paleozoic...

The collection of papers that follow continues the series of U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) investigative reports in Alaska under the broad umbrella of the geologic sciences. This series represents new and sometimes-preliminary findings that are of interest to Earth scientists in academia, government, and industry; to land and resource managers; and to the general public. The reports...

Populations of Pacific common eiders (Somateria mollissima v-nigrum) on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta (YKD) in western Alaska declined by 50–90% from 1957 to 1992 and then stabilized at reduced numbers from the early 1990s to the present. We investigated the underlying processes affecting their population dynamics by collection and analysis of demographic data from Pacific common eiders at 3...

Daily streamflow records for water years 1950–2010 in the Susitna River Basin range in length from 4 to 57 years, and many are distributed within that period in a way that might not adequately represent long-term streamflow conditions. Streamflow in the basin is affected by the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), a multi-decadal climate pattern that shifted from a cool phase to a warm...

The Copper River basin, the sixth largest watershed in Alaska, drains an area of 24,200 square miles in south-central Alaska. This large, glacier-fed river flows across a wide alluvial fan before it enters the Gulf of Alaska. The Copper River Highway, which traverses the alluvial fan, has been affected by channel planform reconfiguration. Currently (2012), two areas of the Copper River...

This map covers the Eagle 1:250,000-scale quadrangle in the northeastern part of the Yukon-Tanana Upland in Alaska. It shows the extent of five major glacial advances, former glacial lakes, and present fragmented terrace deposits related to the advances. The Yukon-Tanana Upland is an area of about 116,550 km2 between the Yukon and Tanana Rivers in east-central Alaska that extends into...

For birds maintaining long-term monogamous relationships, mate loss might be expected to reduce fitness, either through reduced survival or reduced future reproductive investment. We used harvest of male brant during regular sport hunting seasons as an experimental removal to examine effects of mate loss on fitness of female black brant (Branta bernicla nigricans; hereafter brant). We...

The cyclic climate regime of the late Quaternary caused dramatic environmental change at high latitudes. Although these events may have been brief in periodicity from an evolutionary standpoint, multiple episodes of allopatry and divergence have been implicated in rapid radiations of a number of organisms. Shrews of the Sorex cinereus complex have long challenged taxonomists due to...

A predictive, coastal erosion/shoreline change model has been developed for a small coastal segment near Drew Point, Beaufort Sea, Alaska. This coastal setting has experienced a dramatic increase in erosion since the early 2000’s. The bluffs at this site are 3-4 m tall and consist of ice-wedge bounded blocks of fine-grained sediments cemented by ice-rich permafrost and capped with a thin...

Reduced immune gene diversity is thought to negatively affect the capacity of organisms to adapt to pathogen challenges, which represent a major force in natural selection. Genes of the Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) are the most widely invoked adaptive loci in conservation biology, and have become the most popular genetic markers to investigate pathogen-host interactions in...

We developed microsatellite loci for demographic assessments of shorebirds, a group with limited markers. First, we isolated five dinucleotide repeat microsatellite loci from the Black Oystercatcher (Haematopodidae: Haematopus bachmani), and three from the Bristle-thighed Curlew (Scolopacidae: Numenius tahitiensis); both species are of conservation concern. All eight loci were...