Publications

The fate and transport of inorganic nitrogen (N) is a critically important issue for human and aquatic ecosystem health because discharging N-contaminated groundwater can foul drinking water and cause algal blooms. Factors controlling N-processing were examined in sediments at three sites with contrasting hydrologic regimes at a lake on Cape Cod, MA. These factors included water...

Well-informed river management decisions rely on an explicit statement of objectives, repeatable analyses, and a transparent system for assessing trade-offs. These components may then be applied to compare alternative operational regimes for water resource infrastructure (e.g., diversions, locks, and dams). Intra- and inter-annual hydrologic variability further complicates these already...

Community N-mixture abundance models for replicated counts provide a powerful and novel framework for drawing inferences related to species abundance within communities subject to imperfect detection. To assess the performance of these models, and to compare them to related community occupancy models in situations with marginal information, we used simulation to examine the effects of...

Unequal sex ratios can reduce the productivity of animal populations and are especially prevalent among endangered species. A cohort of 333 Roseate Tern Sterna dougallii chicks at a site where the adult sex ratio was skewed towards females was sexed at hatching and followed through fledging and return to the breeding area, and subsequently during adulthood. The entire regional...

Historically high flood levels were observed during flooding in Lake Champlain and the Richelieu River from late April through May 2011. Flooding was caused by record spring precipitation and snowmelt from the third highest cumulative snowfall year on record, which included a warm, saturated late spring snowpack. Flood stage was exceeded for a total of 67 days from April 13 to June 19...

Water temperature is a primary driver of stream ecosystems and commonly forms the basis of stream classifications. Robust models of stream temperature are critical as the climate changes, but estimating daily stream temperature poses several important challenges. We developed a statistical model that accounts for many challenges that can make stream temperature estimation difficult. Our...

Over the last few years, canyons along the northern U.S. Atlantic continental margin have been the focus of intensive research examining canyon evolution, submarine geohazards, benthic ecology and deep-sea coral habitat. New high-resolution multibeam bathymetry and Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) dives in the major shelf-breaching and minor slope canyons, provided the opportunity to...

The proposal for the “Anthropocene” epoch as a formal unit of the geologic time scale has received extensive attention in scientific and public media. However, most articles on the Anthropocene misrepresent the nature of the units of the International Chronostratigraphic Chart, which is produced by the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) and serves as the basis for the...

The hyper-abundance of migratory wildlife in many ecosystems depends on maintaining access to seasonally available resources. In Eastern and Southern Africa, land-use change and a loss of connectivity have coincided with widespread declines in the abundance and geographic range of ungulate populations. Using photographic capture-mark-recapture, we examine the historical pattern of loss...

An integrated synthesis of existing datasets (detailed geologic mapping, geochronologic, paleontologic, geophysical) with new paleontologic and geochemical investigations of rocks previously interpreted as part of the Neoproterozoic Walden Creek Group in southeastern Tennessee suggest a necessary reevaluation of the kinematics and structural architecture of the Blue Ridge Foothills. The...

Numerical modeling has emerged over the last several decades as a widely accepted tool for investigations in environmental sciences. In estuarine research, hydrodynamic and ecological models have moved along parallel tracks with regard to complexity, refinement, computational power, and incorporation of uncertainty. Coupled hydrodynamic-ecological models have been used to assess...

Accelerated sea-level rise (SLR) poses the threat of salt marsh submergence, especially in marshes that are relatively low-lying. At the same time, restoration efforts are producing new low-lying marshes, many of which are thriving and avoiding submergence. To understand the causes of these different fates, we studied two Long Island Sound marshes: one that is experiencing submergence...