Publications

The Kenai section of the eastern Alaska-Aleutian subduction zone straddles two areas of high slip in the 1964 great Alaska earthquake and is the least studied of the three megathrust segments (Kodiak, Kenai, Prince William Sound) that ruptured in 1964. Investigation of two coastal sites in the eastern part of the Kenai segment, on the southeast coast of the Kenai Peninsula, identified...

In 2012, we completed three consecutive years of full field sampling in WPWS for EVOS Restoration Project 10100750. Nearshore monitoring was conducted in collaboration with the NPS SWAN I&M program and, beginning in 2012, as part of the EVOSTC GWA program. Data collection was done in accordance with standard operating procedures set forth to monitor marine water chemistry and quality...

Introductions of H7 Influenza A virus (IAV) from wild birds into poultry have been documented worldwide, resulting in varying degrees of morbidity and mortality. H7 IAV infection in domestic poultry has served as a source of human infection and disease. We report the detection of H7N9 subtype IAV in Minnesota turkey farms during 2009 and 2011. The full-genome was sequenced from eight...

Migratory birds occupy geographically and ecologically disparate areas during their annual cycle with conditions on breeding and non-breeding grounds playing separate and important roles in population dynamics. We used data from nuclear microsatellite and mitochondrial DNA control region loci to assess the breeding and non-breeding spatial genetic structure of a transoceanic migrant...

Accurate estimates of breeding success are essential for understanding population dynamics and for managing populations. Unfortunately, research activities to collect these data can negatively impact the breeding success of the study species and bias estimates of breeding success. Despite the potential for negative impacts, few studies have documented the effect of capturing incubating...

The polar bear (Ursus maritimus), with its wide-ranging movements, solitary existence and seasonal reproduction, is expected to favor chemosignaling over other communication modalities. However, the topography of its Arctic sea ice habitat is generally lacking in stationary vertical substrates routinely used for targeted scent marking in other bears. These environmental constraints may...

Beaded streams are widespread in permafrost regions and are considered a common thermokarst landform. However, little is known about their distribution, how and under what conditions they form, and how their intriguing morphology translates to ecosystem functions and habitat. Here we report on a Circum-Arctic survey of beaded streams and a watershed-scale analysis in northern Alaska...

Polar ice sheets and mountain glaciers, which cover roughly 11% of the Earth's land surface, store organic carbon from local and distant sources and then release it to downstream environments. Climate-driven changes to glacier runoff are expected to be larger than climate impacts on other components of the hydrological cycle, and may represent an important flux of organic carbon. A...

In March 1989, the T/V Exxon Valdez ran aground in Prince William Sound (PWS), Alaska and spilled an estimated 42 million liters of crude oil (Wolfe et al. 1994). This oil subsequently spread over more than 26,000 km2 of water surface in PWS and the Gulf of Alaska and landed on more than 1000 km of shoreline (Spies et al. 1996, Short et al. 2004; see Fig. 1 in Esler et al., this report)...

The field of mineral evolution—a merger of mineralogy and Earth history—coalesced in 2008 with the first of several global syntheses by Robert Hazen and coworkers in the American Mineralogist. They showed that the cumulative abundance of mineral species has a stepwise trend with first appearances tied to various transitions in Earth history such as the end of planetary accretion at ca. 4...

We provide an expansive analysis of polar bear (Ursus maritimus) circumpolar genetic variation during the last two decades of decline in their sea-ice habitat. We sought to evaluate whether their genetic diversity and structure have changed over this period of habitat decline, how their current genetic patterns compare with past patterns, and how genetic demography changed with ancient

The polar bear (Ursus maritimus) was listed as a globally threatened species under the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA) in 2008, mostly due to the significant threat to their future population viability from rapidly declining Arctic sea ice. A core mandate of the ESA is the development of a recovery plan that identifies steps to maintain viable populations of a listed species. A...