Alicia Balster-Gee
Science and Products
U.S. West Coast and Alaska Marine Geohazards
Marine geohazards are sudden and extreme events beneath the ocean that threaten coastal populations. Such underwater hazards include earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, landslides, and tsunamis.
Devastating earthquakes in Japan (2011) and Chile (2010) that spawned pan-oceanic tsunamis sent a sobering reminder that U.S. coastlines are also vulnerable to natural disasters that originate in...
Geology of the Payette National Forest and vicinity, west-central Idaho
Before the Late Cretaceous, the eastern and western parts of the geologically complex Payette National Forest, as divided by the Salmon River suture, had fundamentally different geologic histories. The eastern part is underlain by Mesoproterozoic to Cambrian(?) rocks of the Laurentian (Precambrian North American) continent. Thick Mesoproterozoic...
Lund, Karen
Oregon and Landsat
Oregon’s landscape is as complex and diverse as it is beautiful. Mountain peaks in the Cascade Range soar higher than 10,000 feet. Crater Lake sinks to a depth of 1,943 feet, making it the deepest lake in the United States. Oregon’s lands feature forests, farm fields, grasslands, ocean coastline, rivers, a semidesert, and mountain ranges that...
Golden Eagle
The Golden Eagle inhabits a wide range of latitudes and habitats throughout the Palearctic and into northern Africa, where it is largely resident. In North America, its breeding distribution includes most of Canada and Alaska, as well as the western half of the United States and northern and western Mexico. Most eagles that nest in northern Canada...
Katzner, Todd E.; Kochert, Michael N.; Steenhof, Karen; McIntyre, Carol L.; Craig, Erica H.; Miller, Tricia A.
Geophysical and video logs of selected wells at and near the former Naval Air Warfare Center Warminster, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, 2017-19
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) collected borehole geophysical and video logs in 17 open-hole wells in Northampton, Warminster, and Warwick Townships, Bucks County, Pennsylvania during 2017–19 to support detailed groundwater investigations at and near the former Naval Air Warfare Center (NAWC) Warminster, where groundwater contamination with per...
Senior, Lisa A.; Anderson, J. Alton; Bird, Philip H. The effects of urban land cover dynamics on urban heat Island intensity and temporal trends
Assessments of surface urban heat island (UHI) have focused on using remote sensing and land cover data to quantify UHI intensity and spatial distribution within a certain time period by including land cover information. In this study, we implemented a prototype approach to characterize the spatiotemporal variations of UHI using time series of...
Xian, George Z.; Shi, Hua; Auch, Roger F.; Gallo, Kevin; Zhou, Qiang; Wu, Zhuoting; Kolian, Michael
Regression relations and long-term water-quality constituent concentrations, loads, yields, and trends in the North Fork Ninnescah River, south-central Kansas, 1999–2019
Cheney Reservoir, in south-central Kansas, is the primary water supply for the city of Wichita, Kansas. The North Fork Ninnescah River is the largest tributary to Cheney Reservoir and contributes about 70 percent of the inflow. The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the City of Wichita, has been continuously monitoring water quality (...
Kramer, Ariele R.; Klager, Brian J.; Stone, Mandy L.; Eslick-Huff, Patrick J. Abundance of a recently discovered Alaskan rhodolith bed in a shallow, seagrass-dominated lagoon
Rhodoliths are important foundation species of the benthic photic zone but are poorly known and rarely studied in Alaska. A bed of Lithothamnion soriferum rhodoliths was discovered in 2008 in Kinzarof Lagoon, Alaska, a shallow-water embayment dominated by eelgrass (Zostera marina). Rhodolith presence and biomass were estimated to assess trends...
Ward, David H.; Amundson, Courtney; Fitzmorris, Patrick; Menning, Damian M.; Markis, Joel; Sowl, Kristine M.; Lindstrom, Sandra C. Acoustic tag retention and tagging mortality of juvenile cisco Coregonus artedi
Release of hatchery-reared juvenile cisco (Coregonus artedi) is an important tool for recovering Great Lakes populations, but post-release survival is unknown. Telemetry using small acoustic tags provides opportunities to assess the efficacy of hatchery-reared fish releases. However, better understanding of the tolerance of juvenile...
McKenna, James E.; Sethi, Suresh; Scholten, Grant Marvin; Kraus, Jeremy W.; Chalupnicki, Marc
Characterization of water-resource threats and needs for U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service National Wildlife Refuges in the Legacy Mountain-Prairie Region, 2020
The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), began a study in 2019 to complete the compilation and quality assurance of water-resource threats and needs data for the 117 National Wildlife Refuges (NWRs) in the FWS Legacy Mountain-Prairie Region (LMPR) and to characterize the water-resource threats and...
Bauch, Nancy J.; Kohn, Michael S.; Caruso, Brian S. Remote sensing analysis to quantify change in woodland canopy cover on the San Carlos Apache Reservation, Arizona (1935 vs. 2017)
Since the late 1800s, pinyon–juniper woodland across the western U.S. has increased in density and areal extent and encroached into former grassland areas. The San Carlos Apache Tribe wants to gain qualitative and quantitative information on the historical conditions of their tribal woodlands to use as a baseline for restoration efforts. At the...
Middleton, Barry R.; Norman, Laura M. Exploring the regional dynamics of U.S. irrigated agriculture from 2002 to 2017
The United States has a geographically mature and stable land use and land cover system including land used as irrigated cropland; however, changes in irrigation land use frequently occur related to various drivers. We applied a consistent methodology at a 250 m spatial resolution across the lower 48 states to map and estimate irrigation dynamics...
Shrestha, Dinesh; Brown, Jesslyn F.; Benedict, Trenton D; Howard, Daniel Metabarcoding of environmental samples suggest wide distribution of eelgrass (Zostera marina) pathogens in the north Pacific
Seagrass meadows provide important ecological services to the marine environment but are declining worldwide. Although eelgrass meadows in the north Pacific are thought to be relatively healthy, few studies have assessed the presence of known disease pathogens in these meadows. In a pilot study to test the efficacy of the methods and to provide...
Menning, Damian M.; Gravley, Hunter A; Cady, Melissa N.; Pepin, Daniel J; Wyllie-Echeverria, Sandy; Ward, David H.; Talbot, Sandra L.