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Publications

Read publications and other informational products to learn more about USGS science occurring in the Mississippi Basin.

Filter Total Items: 5215

Ecology of an insular snake assemblage in coastal Maine

Wildlife populations at the peripheries of their distributions or on isolated islands often display divergent and poorly understood morphological or life-history characteristics compared to core populations. We used a capture–mark–recapture dataset collected over a 19-year period to characterize a northern, insular snake assemblage in coastal Maine. We captured 611 individual snakes of 4 species (
Authors
John D. Willson, Ethan J. Royal, Jacquelyn C. Guzy, Meredith C. Swartwout, Chelsea S. Kross

Guide to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) sampling within Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are synthetic chemicals with a nondegradable fluorinated carbon backbone that have been incorporated in countless industrial and commercial applications. Because PFAS are nondegradable, they have been detected in all environmental media, indicating extensive global contamination. The unique physiochemical properties of PFAS and their complex interactions
Authors
Erin L. Pulster, Sarah R. Bowman, Landon Keele, Jeffery Steevens

Precision of four calcified structures for age estimation of Black Carp

ObjectiveBlack Carp Mylopharyngodon piceus is an emerging invasive species in North America with an expanding population in the Mississippi River basin. Current aging methods use a suite of structures for age estimation, and a single structure is needed to minimize processing time, to maximize consistency of age and growth measurements, and to allow for back-calculation of individual fish length a
Authors
Patrick Kroboth, Anne Marie Herndon, Cortney Cox, Jesse Robert Fischer

Improving crop-specific groundwater use estimation in the Mississippi Alluvial Plain: Implications for integrated remote sensing and machine learning approaches in data-scarce regions

Study regionThe Mississippi Alluvial Plain (MAP) in the United States (US).Study focusUnderstanding local-scale groundwater use, a critical component of the water budget, is necessary for implementing sustainable water management practices. The MAP is one of the most productive agricultural regions in the US and extracts more than 11 km3/year for irrigation activities. Consequently, groundwater-le
Authors
Sayantan Majumdar, Ryan Smith, Md Fahim Hasan, Jordan Wilson, Vincent E. White, Emilia L. Bristow, James R. Rigby, Wade Kress, Jaime A. Painter

Resource-driven pattern formation in consumer-resource systems with asymmetric dispersal on a plane

This paper considers resource-driven pattern formation in consumer-resource systems. Here, a planar pattern consists of many big patches, and a big patch can be regarded as combination of many patches on the plane. The consumer moves between patches asymmetrically, while the asymmetry is driven by the resource abundance. Based on experimental models with linearly-linked patches, we propose a plana
Authors
Weiting Song, Shikun Wang, Yuanshi Wang, Don DeAngelis

Introduction and methods of analysis for peak streamflow trends and their relation to changes in climate in Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin

Flood-frequency analysis, also called peak-flow frequency or flood-flow frequency analysis, is essential to water resources management applications including critical structure design and floodplain mapping. Federal guidelines for doing flood-frequency analyses are presented in a U.S. Geological Survey Techniques and Methods Report known as Bulletin 17C. A basic assumption within Bulletin 17C is t
Authors
Karen R. Ryberg, Thomas M. Over, Sara B. Levin, David C. Heimann, Nancy A. Barth, Mackenzie K. Marti, Padraic S. O'Shea, Christopher A. Sanocki, Tara J. Williams-Sether, Harper N. Wavra, T. Roy Sando, Steven K. Sando, Milan S. Liu

A multiscale perspective for improving conservation of Conchos pupfish

Desert spring systems of the American southwest hold high local fish endemism and are ranked among the most threatened ecosystems in the world. The prioritization of conservation resources to protect species living within these arid landscapes requires knowledge of species abundance and distribution. The plight of Conchos pupfish (Cyprinodon eximius) is representative of freshwater fishes the worl
Authors
Lindsey C. Elkins, Matthew Ross Acre, Megan G. Bean, Sarah M. Robertson, Ryan Smith, Joshuah S. Perkin

Sicklefin Chub (Macrhybopsis meeki) and Sturgeon Chub (M. gelida) temporal and spatial patterns from extant population monitoring and habitat data spanning 23 Years

Sicklefin (Macrhybopsis meeki) and sturgeon chub (M. gelida) historically occurred throughout the Missouri River (MR), in some tributaries, and Mississippi River downstream of the MR. They have been species of U.S. state-level conservation concern and U.S. Endangered Species Act listing candidates since the 1990s. We applied analytical approaches from occupancy modeling to correlation to monitorin
Authors
Mark L. Wildhaber, Benjamin M West, Kendell Ray Bennett, Jack Howard May, Janice L. Albers, Nicholas S. Green

Mixture effects of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances on embryonic and larval Sheepshead Minnows (Cyprinodon variegatus)

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are ubiquitous and persistent environmental contaminants originating from many everyday products. Perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) are two PFAS that are commonly found at high concentrations in aquatic environments. Both chemicals have previously been shown to be toxic to fish, as well as having complex and largely un
Authors
Philip Tanabe, Peter B. Key, Katy W. Chung, Emily C. Pisarski, Jessica L. Reiner, Rodowa. Alix E., Jason Tyler Magnuson, Marie E. DeLorenzo

Accelerating elevation gain indicates land loss associated with erosion in Mississippi River Deltaic Plain tidal wetlands

In recent years, the Mississippi River Deltaic Plain (MRDP) has experienced the highest rates of wetland loss in the USA. Although the process of vertical drowning has been heavily studied in coastal wetlands, less is known about the relationship between elevation change and land loss in wetlands that are experiencing lateral erosion and the contribution of erosion to land loss in the MRDP. We qua
Authors
Camille Stagg, Leigh Anne Sharp, Emily Fromenthal, Brady Couvillion, Victoria Woltz, Sarai Piazza

Subsurface redox interactions regulate ebullitive methane flux in heterogeneous Mississippi River deltaic wetland

As interfaces connecting terrestrial and ocean ecosystems, coastal wetlands develop temporally and spatially complex redox conditions, which drive uncertainties in greenhouse gas emission as well as the total carbon budget of the coastal ecosystem. To evaluate the role of complex redox reactions in methane emission from coastal wetlands, a coupled reactive-transport model was configured to represe
Authors
Jiaze Wang, Theresa O'Meara, Sophie LaFond-Hudson, Songjie He, Kanchan Maiti, Eric Ward, Benjamin N. Sulman

A dataset of amphibian species in U.S. National Parks

National parks and other protected areas are important for preserving landscapes and biodiversity worldwide. An essential component of the mission of the United States (U.S.) National Park Service (NPS) requires understanding and maintaining accurate inventories of species on protected lands. We describe a new, national-scale synthesis of amphibian species occurrence in the NPS system. Many park u
Authors
Benjamin Lafrance, Andrew M. Ray, Robert N. Fisher, Evan H. Campbell Grant, Charles Shafer, David Beamer, Stephen Frank Spear, Todd W Pierson, Jon M. Davenport, Matthew L. Niemiller, R. Alexander Pyron, Brad Glorioso, William Barichivich, Brian J. Halstead, Kory Roberts, Blake R. Hossack