Publications

The demands of increasing human population in the coastal zone create competition with coastal habitat preservation and with recreational and commercial uses of the coast and nearshore waters. As climate changes over the coming century, these problems facing coastal communities will likely worsen. Good management and policy decision-making require baseline information on the rates...

Phosphatic rocks are distributed widely in the Lisburne Group, a mainly Carboniferous carbonate succession that occurs throughout northern Alaska. New sedimentologic, paleontologic, and geochemical data presented here constrain the geographic and stratigraphic extent of these strata and their depositional and paleogeographic settings. Our findings support models that propose very high...

We report on the development of an approximately 85-g beaded collar for dual micro GPS/VHF transmitter attachment to semi-aquatic nutria (Myocastor coypus). Prototype collars were tested on captive nutria and refined during field trials. Central to the design was novel use of the VHF transmitter antenna as a collar. A circular collar was formed by passing the 44-cm antenna cable through...

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are working together to study sea-floor environments off the northeast coast of the United States. During 2008, NOAA survey H11996 collected multibeam echosounder data in a 65-square kilometer area in central Rhode Island Sound, southeast of Point Judith, Rhode Island. During 2010, the USGS...

No abstract available.

The southern San Andreas fault has not experienced a large earthquake for approximately 300 years, yet the previous five earthquakes occurred at ~180-year intervals. Large strike-slip faults are often segmented by lateral stepover zones. Movement on smaller faults within a stepover zone could perturb the main fault segments and potentially trigger a large earthquake. The southern San...

Loess accumulated on a Bull Lake outwash terrace of Marine Oxygen Isotope Stage 6 (MIS 6) age in southern Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The 9 m section displays eight intervals of loess deposition (Loess 1 to Loess 8, oldest), each followed by soil development. Our age-depth model is constrained by thermoluminescence, meteoric 10Be accumulation in soils, and cosmogenic 10Be surface exposure...

Two of 36 forest restoration sites in the Mississippi Alluvial Valley surveyed from 2000-2002 harbored Quiscalus quiscula (Common Grackle). Occupied sites were in less-forested landscapes and had sparser understory vegetation due to flooding. Probability of daily nest survival (0.9077) of 169 Common Grackle nests was influenced by nest-placement, temporal, and landscape effects. Age of...

Watershed Regressions for Pesticides (WARP) models, previously developed for atrazine at the national scale, can be improved for application to the U.S. Corn Belt region by developing region-specific models that include important watershed characteristics that are influential in predicting atrazine concentration statistics within the Corn Belt. WARP models for the Corn Belt (WARP-CB)...

Informal (visitor-created) trails represent a threat to the natural resources of protected natural areas around the globe. These trails can remove vegetation, displace wildlife, alter hydrology, alter habitat, spread invasive species, and fragment landscapes. This study examines informal and formal trails within Great Falls Park, VA, a sub-unit of the George Washington Memorial Parkway...

Polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based methods to determine the sex of birds are well established and have seen few modifications since they were first introduced in the 1990s. Although these methods allowed for sex determination in species that were previously difficult to analyse, they were not conducive to high-throughput analysis because of the laboriousness of DNA extraction and gel

Arsenic (As) concentrations in the waters of Raccoon Creek in southern New Jersey commonly exceed the State\'s Surface Water Quality Standard (SWQS) for freshwater of 0.017 microgram per liter (mu or ug/L). In order to assess contributions of As from residential runoff to the creek, samples of runoff water were collected from a detention basin in each of two residential developments...