Bob Thompson
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Science and Products
Past Perspectives of Water in the West
In the intermountain west, seasonal precipitation extremes, combined with population growth, are creating new challenges for the management of water resources, ecosystems, and geologic hazards. This research contributes a comprehensive long-term context for a deeper understanding of past hydrologic variability, including the magnitude and frequency of drought and flood extremes and ecosystem...
Terrestrial Rates and Amplitudes of Changes in Ecoclimate Systems (TRACES)
Vegetation changes caused by climatic variations and/or land use may have large impacts on forests, agriculture, rangelands, natural ecosystems, and endangered species. Climate modeling studies indicate that vegetation cover, in turn, has a strong influence on regional climates, and this must be better understood before models can estimate future environmental conditions. To address these...
A North American Hydroclimate Synthesis (NAHS) of the Common Era
This study presents a synthesis of century-scale hydroclimate variations in North America for the Common Era (last 2000 years) using new age models of previously published multiple proxy-based paleoclimate data. This North American Hydroclimate Synthesis (NAHS) examines regional hydroclimate patterns and related environmental indicators,...
Rodysill, Jessica R. ; Anderson, Lesleigh; Cronin, Thomas M.; Jones, Miriam C.; Thompson, Robert S.; Wahl, David B.; Willard, Debra A.; Addison, Jason A.; Alder, Jay R.; Anderson, Katherine H.; Anderson, Lysanna; Barron, John A.; Bernhardt, Christopher E.; Hostetler, Steven W.; Kehrwald, Natalie M.; Khan, Nicole; Richey, Julie N.; Starratt, Scott W.; Strickland, Laura E.; Toomey, Michael; Treat, Claire C.; Wingard, G. Lynn Late quaternary changes in lakes, vegetation, and climate in the Bonneville Basin reconstructed from sediment cores from Great Salt Lake: Chapter 11
Sediment cores from Great Salt Lake (GSL) provide the basis for reconstructing changes in lakes, vegetation, and climate for the last ~ 40 cal ka. Initially, the coring site was covered by a shallow saline lake and surrounded by Artemisia steppe or steppe-tundra under a cold and dry climate. As Lake Bonneville began to rise (from ~...
Thompson, Robert S.; Oviatt, Charles G.; Honke, Jeffrey S.; McGeehin, John Early Holocene Great Salt Lake
Shorelines and surficial deposits (including buried forest-floor mats and organic-rich wetland sediments) show that Great Salt Lake did not rise higher than modern lake levels during the earliest Holocene (11.5–10.2 cal ka BP; 10–9 14C ka BP). During that period, finely laminated, organic-rich muds (sapropel) containing brine-shrimp cysts and...
Oviatt, Charles G.; Madsen, David B.; Miller, David M.; Thompson, Robert S.; McGeehin, John P. A multi-proxy record of hydroclimate, vegetation, fire, and post-settlement impacts for a subalpine plateau, Central Rocky Mountains U.S.A
Apparent changes in vegetation distribution, fire, and other disturbance regimes throughout western North America have prompted investigations of the relative importance of human activities and climate change as potential causal mechanisms. Assessing the effects of Euro-American settlement is difficult because climate changes occur on multi-...
Anderson, Lesleigh; Brunelle, Andrea; Thompson, Robert S.
Atlas of relations between climatic parameters and distributions of important trees and shrubs in North America: Revisions for all taxa from the United States and Canada and new taxa from the western United States
This is the seventh volume in an atlas series that explores the relations between the geographic distributions of woody plant species and climatic variables in North America. A 25-kilometer (km) equal-area grid of modern climatic and bioclimatic variables was constructed from weather data. The geographic distributions of selected tree and shrub...
Thompson, Robert S.; Anderson, Katherine H.; Pelltier, Richard T.; Strickland, Laura E.; Shafer, Sarah L.; Bartlein, Patrick J.; McFadden, Andrew K. A high-elevation, multi-proxy biotic and environmental record of MIS 6-4 from the Ziegler Reservoir fossil site, Snowmass Village, Colorado, USA
In North America, terrestrial records of biodiversity and climate change that span Marine Oxygen Isotope Stage (MIS) 5 are rare. Where found, they provide insight into how the coupling of the ocean–atmosphere system is manifested in biotic and environmental records and how the biosphere responds to climate change. In 2010–2011,...
Miller, Ian M.; Pigati, Jeffrey S.; Anderson, R. Scott; Johnson, Kirk R.; Mahan, Shannon; Ager, Thomas A.; Baker, Richard G.; Blaauw, Maarten; Bright, Jordon; Brown, Peter M.; Bryant, Bruce; Calamari, Zachary T.; Carrara, Paul E.; Michael D., Cherney; Demboski, John R.; Elias, Scott A.; Fisher, Daniel C.; Gray, Harrison J.; Haskett, Danielle R.; Honke, Jeffrey S.; Jackson, Stephen T.; Jiménez-Moreno, Gonzalo; Kline, Douglas; Leonard, Eric M.; Lifton, Nathaniel A.; Lucking, Carol; McDonald, H. Gregory; Miller, Dane M.; Muhs, Daniel R.; Nash, Stephen E.; Newton, Cody; Paces, James B.; Petrie, Lesley; Plummer, Mitchell A.; Porinchu, David F.; Rountrey, Adam N.; Scott, Eric; Sertich, Joseph J. W.; Sharpe, Saxon E.; Skipp, Gary L.; Strickland, Laura E.; Stucky, Richard K.; Thompson, Robert S.; Wilson, Jim Last interglacial plant macrofossils and climates from Ziegler Reservoir, Snowmass Village, Colorado, USA
Ninety plant macrofossil taxa from the Ziegler Reservoir fossil site near Snowmass Village, Colorado, record environmental changes at high elevation (2705 m asl) in the Rocky Mountains during the Last Interglacial Period. Present-day vegetation is aspen forest (Populus tremuloides) intermixed with species of higher (Picea, Abies)...
Strickland, Laura E.; Baker, Richard G.; Thompson, Robert S.; Miller, Dane M.
U.S. Geological Survey Climate and Land Use Change Science Strategy—A Framework for Understanding and Responding to Global Change
Executive SummaryThe U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), a nonregulatory Federal science agency with national scope and responsibilities, is uniquely positioned to serve the Nation’s needs in understanding and responding to global change, including changes in climate, water availability, sea level, land use and land cover, ecosystems, and global...
Burkett, Virginia R.; Kirtland, David A.; Taylor, Ione L.; Belnap, Jayne; Cronin, Thomas M.; Dettinger, Michael D.; Frazier, Eldrich L.; Haines, John W.; Loveland, Thomas R.; Milly, Paul C.D.; O'Malley, Robin; Thompson, Robert S.; Maule, Alec G.; McMahon, Gerard; Striegl, Robert G.
Atlas of relations between climatic parameters and distributions of important trees and shrubs in North America—Modern data for climatic estimation from vegetation inventories
Vegetation inventories (plant taxa present in a vegetation assemblage at a given site) can be used to estimate climatic parameters based on the identification of the range of a given parameter where all taxa in an assemblage overlap ("Mutual Climatic Range"). For the reconstruction of past climates from fossil or subfossil plant assemblages, we...
Thompson, Robert S.; Anderson, Katherine H.; Pelltier, Richard T.; Strickland, Laura E.; Shafer, Sarah L.; Bartlein, Patrick J. Quantitative estimation of climatic parameters from vegetation data in North America by the mutual climatic range technique
The mutual climatic range (MCR) technique is perhaps the most widely used method for estimating past climatic parameters from fossil assemblages, largely because it can be conducted on a simple list of the taxa present in an assemblage. When applied to plant macrofossil data, this unweighted approach (MCRun) will frequently identify a large range...
Anderson, Katherine H.; Bartlein, Patrick J.; Strickland, Laura E.; Pelltier, Richard T.; Thompson, Robert S.; Shafer, Sarah L.
Geology for a changing world 2010-2020-Implementing the U.S. Geological Survey science strategy
This report describes a science strategy for the geologic activities of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) for the years 2010-2020. It presents six goals with accompanying strategic actions and products that implement the science directions of USGS Circular 1309, 'Facing Tomorrow's Challenges-U.S. Geological Survey Science in the Decade 2007-2017...
Gundersen, Linda C.S.; Belnap, Jayne; Goldhaber, Martin; Goldstein, Arthur; Haeussler, Peter J.; Ingebritsen, S.E.; Jones, John W.; Plumlee, Geoffrey S.; Thieler, E. Robert; Thompson, Robert S.; Back, Judith M.
USGS global change science strategy: A framework for understanding and responding to climate and land-use change
This U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Global Change Science Strategy expands on the Climate Variability and Change science component of the USGS 2007 Science Strategy, “Facing Tomorrow’s Challenges: USGS Science in the Coming Decade” (U.S. Geological Survey, 2007). Here we embrace the broad definition of global change provided in the U.S. Global...
Burkett, Virginia R.; Taylor, Ione L.; Belnap, Jayne; Cronin, Thomas M.; Dettinger, Michael D.; Frazier, Eldrich L.; Haines, John W.; Kirtland, David A.; Loveland, Thomas R.; Milly, Paul C.D.; O'Malley, Robin; Thompson, Robert S.