Publications

The Arctic Ocean has experienced orbital and millennial-scale climate oscillations over the last 500 kilo-annum (ka) involving massive changes in global sea level and components of the Arctic cryosphere, including sea-ice cover, land-based ice sheets and ice shelves. Although these climate events are only partially understood, micropaleontological studies utilizing ostracodes and benthic

Life history theory provides a framework to understand environmental change based on species strategies for survival and reproduction under stable, cyclical, or stochastic environmental conditions. We evaluated environmental predictors of fish life history strategies in 20 streams intersecting a national park within the Potomac River basin in eastern North America. We sampled stream...

Barkley Canyon is one of the few known sites worldwide with the occurrence of thermogenic gas seepage and formation of structure-II and structure-H gas hydrate mounds on the seafloor. This site is the location of continuous seafloor monitoring as part of the Ocean Networks Canada (ONC) cabled observatory off the west coast off Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. We combine repeat...

Coastal tidal wetlands are highly altered ecosystems exposed to substantial risk due to widespread and frequent land-use change coupled with sea-level rise, leading to disrupted hydrologic and ecologic functions and ultimately, significant reduction in climate resiliency. Knowing where and when the changes have occurred, and the nature of those changes, is important for coastal...

The quantity of ore mined and waste rock (i.e., overburden or barren rock) removed to produce a refined unit of a mineral commodity, its rock-to-metal ratio (RMR), is an important metric for understanding mine wastes and environmental burdens. In this analysis, we provide a comprehensive examination of RMRs for 25 commodities for 2018. The results indicate significant variability across

Preventing wildlife disease outbreaks is a priority for natural resource agencies, and management decisions can be urgent, especially in epidemic circumstances. With the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, wildlife agencies were concerned whether the activities they authorize might increase the risk of viral transmission from humans to North American bats, but had a limited amount of time in which...

For young fishes, growth of somatic tissues and energy reserves are critical steps for survival and progressing to subsequent life stages. When thermal regimes become supraoptimal, routine metabolic rates increase and leave less energy for young fish to maintain fitness-based activities and, in the case of anadromous fishes, less energy to prepare for emigration to coastal habitats. Thus

A variety of seabird species migrate annually from wintering grounds in the Southern Hemisphere to the Gulf of Maine, USA to breed and raise their young. Post-migration, adult seabirds depend on the spatio-temporal match of reliable food resources to replenish energy reserves before breeding. However, the conditions during this critical window of time are becoming increasingly uncertain...

The COVID-19 pandemic has made it clear that epidemic models play an important role in how governments and the public understand and respond to infectious disease crises. In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, models were used first to estimate the true number of infections, then to provide estimates of key parameters, to generate short-term forecasts of outbreak trends, and to...

The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, performed a study to inform the development of the department’s guidelines for the collection and use of water-chemistry data to support calculation of site-dependent aluminum criteria values. The U.S. Geological Survey collected and analyzed discrete water-quality samples at four...

The timing of biological events in plants and animals, such as migration and reproduction, is shifting due to climate change. Anadromous fishes are particularly susceptible to these shifts as they are subject to strong seasonal cycles when transitioning between marine and freshwater habitats to spawn. We used linear models to determine the extent of phenological shifts in adult Alewife...

Aqueous transport of mercury (Hg) across the landscape is closely linked to dissolved organic matter (DOM). Both quantity and quality of DOM affect Hg mobility, as well as the formation and transport of toxic methylmercury (MeHg), but only a limited number of field studies have investigated Hg and MeHg with respect to specific DOM components. We investigated these interactions at the 41...