Publications

Climate change is occurring rapidly in the Arctic, and an improved understanding of the response of aquatic biota and ecosystems will be important for this data-limited region. Here, we applied biochronology techniques and mixed-effects modelling to assess relationships among growth increments found on lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush) otoliths (N = 49) captured from 13 lakes on the...

Environmental contamination is widespread and can negatively impact wildlife health. Some contaminants, including heavy metals, have immunosuppressive effects, but prior studies have rarely measured contamination and disease simultaneously, which limits our understanding of how contaminants and pathogens interact to influence wildlife health. Here, we measured mercury concentrations...

Although polar bears (Ursus maritimus) of the Southern Beaufort Sea (SBS) subpopulation have commonly created maternal dens on sea ice in the past, maternal dens on land have become increasingly prevalent as sea ice declines. This trend creates conditions for increased human–bear interactions associated with local communities and industrial activity. Maternal denning is a vulnerable...

Ongoing environmental change across the Arctic is affecting many freshwater ecosystems, including small thaw ponds that support macroinvertebrates, thus potentially affecting important forage for fish and bird species. To accurately predict how fish and wildlife that depend on these macroinvertebrates will be affected by ecosystem change at high latitudes, understanding proximate factors...

The ​U.S. Geological Survey Benchmark Glacier Project combines decades of direct glaciological data with remote sensing data to advance the quantitative understanding of glacier-climate interactions. The global loss of glaciers, and consequent implications for water resources, sea level rise, and ecosystem function underscores the importance of U.S. Geological Survey glaciology research...

An opportunistic investigation into ecosystem instability in Kachemak Bay (KBay), Alaska, has led us to investigate exposure to toxic algae in sea otters. We used gene expression to explore the physiological health of sea otters sampled in KBay in May 2019. We found altered levels of gene transcripts in comparison with reference sea otters from clinically normal, oil-exposed, and...

Surface and subsurface moored buoy, ship-based, remotely sensed, and reanalysis datasets are used to investigate thermal variability of northern Gulf of Alaska (NGA) nearshore, coastal, and offshore waters over synoptic to century-long time scales. NGA sea surface temperature (SST) showed a larger positive trend of 0.22 ± 0.10 °C per decade over 1970–2021 compared to 0.10 ± 0.03 °C per...

Building continental-scale hydrologic models in data-sparse regions requires an understanding of spatial variation in hydrologic processes. Extending these models to ungaged locations requires techniques to group ungaged locations with gaged ones to make process importance and model parameter transfer decisions to ungaged locations. This analysis (1) tested the utility of fundamental...

We examine fossil foraminiferal assemblages from 20 sediment cores to assess sudden relative sea-level (RSL) changes across three mud-over-peat contacts at three salt marshes in northern Humboldt Bay, California (~44.8°N, -124.2°W). We use a validated foraminiferal-based Bayesian transfer function to evaluate the variability of subsidence stratigraphy at a range of 30-6000 m across an...

The Pacific Arctic region has experienced, and is projected to continue experiencing, rapid climate change. Large uncertainties exist in our understanding of the impact these physical changes have on the region’s ecology. This is, in part, due to the lack of long-term data. Here we investigate bivalve mollusc growth increment width chronologies (sclerochronologies) to develop a long-term

In light of ongoing and geographically widespread highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) outbreaks in wild birds throughout much of Eurasia during 2020–21, the Interagency Steering Committee for Avian Influenza Surveillance in Wild Migratory Birds disseminated an informational memorandum in January 2021 to highlight the need for enhanced surveillance and heightened awareness in North...

New lithologic and detrital zircon (DZ) U-Pb data from Devonian–Triassic strata on St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea and from the western Brooks Range of Alaska suggest affinities between these two areas. The Brooks Range constitutes part of the Arctic Alaska–Chukotka microplate, but the tectonic and paleogeographic affinities of St. Lawrence Island are unknown or at best speculative...