Digital Commons Network^™

Record Of A Live Ocelot (Leopardus Pardalis) At La Michilía Biosphere Reserve, Durango, Mexico, Jorge Servín, Luis E. Aguilar-Jiménez, Edgar F. Hernández-Reyes, Joaquín Tinoco, Jesús Sanchez-Robles

Western North American Naturalist

The first confirmed record of a live ocelot (Leopardus pardalis) in the state of Durango, and in La Michilía Biosphere Reserve, is reported here. This record is based on a photograph of an adult taken during a 2015 winter phototrapping survey. This noteworthy record extends the ocelot’s geographic distribution by >120 km from the nearest record in Sinaloa, Mexico. The record locality is also in oak forest at an unusually high altitude of 2750 m asl for an ocelot in Mexico.


Se informa del primer registro confirmado de Ocelote vivo (Leopardus pardalis) en el estado de …

Netleaf Hackberry Seeds Planted Near Boulders In The Foothills Of The Wasatch Mountains: Germination, Survival, And Patterns Of Establishment, Michael T. Stevens, Daniel L. Holland, Nathan V. Tanner

Western North American Naturalist

Netleaf hackberry (Celtis reticulata) is a deciduous shrub native to the southwestern United States and northern Mexico. Previous field observations have shown limited numbers of juvenile hackberries in the wild. This could be due to low germination and survival rates, but field germination trials have not been done. In the foothills of the Wasatch Mountains in Utah, hackberry shrubs have been shown to grow in association with boulders, likely using them as nurse objects. This experimental study field-tested germination and survival rates around boulders in this area. We located 26 boulders and planted 25 hackberry seeds on the …

Current Population Status Of A Locally Endemic Springsnail (Hydrobiidae: Pyrgulopsis Bedfordensis) In Montana, David M. Stagliano

Western North American Naturalist

The Bedford springsnail (Pyrgulopsis bedfordensis) is one of only 2 species of the genus Pyrgulopsis discovered east of the northern Continental Divide and appears restricted to one spring in central Montana. Due to its endemism, this species was placed on the Montana Species of Concern list as S1, critically imperiled. Despite the snail’s rarity, nothing was known of this population’s characteristics; it was last sampled in 1999. In 2015, I quantitatively sampled this population using a Hess sampler (n = 3) over a 40-m reach to determine the snail’s benthic density and describe the associated macroinvertebrate community. …

Survey Of The Bat Fauna, Desert National Wildlife Refuge, Nevada, Thomas J. O'Shea, Christy Klinger, Lindsay A. Smythe, Laura Wilkinson, John P. Dumbacher

Western North American Naturalist

We conducted a survey of the bat fauna of Desert National Wildlife Refuge (DNWR) in Nevada during 2008–2014. Our objectives were (1) to determine the species present at DNWR by mist-netting at likely bat drinking areas; (2) to compare the bat fauna at White Spot Spring at DNWR to the fauna documented there in 1962–1967; and (3) to assess the possible importance of artificial water sources to bats on this highly arid landscape in relation to an ongoing drought. We captured 480 bats of 10 species in mist nets over drinking water sources; species identifications are documented by voucher specimens. …

Front Matter, Vol. 76 No. 4

Western North American Naturalist

No abstract provided.

Mayflies (Insecta: Ephemeroptera) Of Conservation Concern In Montana: Status Updates And Management Needs, David M. Stagliano

Western North American Naturalist

Montana is home to 133 documented species of mayflies (Insecta: Ephemeroptera) from 55 genera in 16 families. This study reports on the conservation status, critical habitat, and management needs of 7 mayfly species that are currently listed as Montana species of concern (SOC) and 2 species that are currently listed as potential species of concern (PSOC). Six (67%) of these listed mayflies (Anepeorus rusticus, Analetris eximia, Homoeoneuria alleni, Lachlania saskatchewanensis, Macdunnoa nipawinia, and Raptoheptagenia cruentata) are associated with the sand and gravel benthic habitats of large prairie rivers. Two other mayfly species, Caurinella idahoensis (SOC) and Caudatella edmundsi …

Evolutionary View Planning For Optimized Uav Terrain Modeling In A Simulated Environment, Ronald A. Martin, Ivan Rojas, Kevin W. Franke, John Hedengren

Faculty Publications

This work demonstrates the use of genetic algorithms in optimized view planning for 3D reconstruction applications using small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The quality of UAV site models is currently highly dependent on manual pilot operations or grid-based automation solutions. When applied to 3D structures, these approaches can result in gaps in the total coverage or inconsistency in final model resolution. Genetic algorithms can effectively explore the search space to locate image positions that produce high quality models in terms of coverage and accuracy. A fitness function is defined, and optimization parameters are selected through semi-exhaustive search. A novel simulation …

Habitat And Fish Assemblage Associations And Current Status Of Northern Leatherside Chub Lepidomeda Copei In Western Wyoming, Luke D. Schultz, Peter A. Cavalli, Hilda Sexauer, David Zafft

Western North American Naturalist

Human activities have extensively altered native fish assemblages and their habitats in the western United States. Conservation and restoration for long-term persistence of these fishes requires knowledge of their distributional patterns and life history requirements. Northern leatherside chub Lepidomeda copei (hereafter northern leatherside) is a cyprinid native to the Snake and Bear River Basins of Wyoming, Idaho, Nevada, and Utah, and it is believed to have declined in distribution relative to historical records. To address information gaps in the species’ ecology and assess its status in the state, the objectives of this study were first to document the distribution (2010–2011) …

Confirmation Of The Presence Of Microtus Californicus In Baja California, México, Aldo Guevara-Carrizales, Anny Peralta-García, Jorge H. Valdez-Villavicencio, Clark R. Mahrdt, Gorgonio Ruiz-Campos

Western North American Naturalist

We provide a record and field observations of California vole (Microtus californicus) based on a specimen collected on 5 June 2013 in riparian habitat from Arroyo San Rafael, northwestern Sierra San Pedro Mártir, Baja California, México. The last known record of this species in México was in 1974. This species was suspected to be extirpated from México; however, our recent record confirms its present occurrence in this country.


Proveemos un registro y observaciones de campo del meteoro de California (Microtus californicus) con base en un espécimen recolectado el 5 de junio de 2103 en hábitat ribereño …

Behavioral Ecology Of American Pikas (Ochotona Princeps) At Mono Craters, California: Living On The Edge, Andrew T. Smith, John D. Nagy, Constance I. Millar

Western North American Naturalist

The behavioral ecology of the American pika (Ochotona princeps) was investigated at a relatively hot south-facing, low-elevation site in the Mono Craters, California, a habitat quite different from the upper montane regions more typically inhabited by this species and where most prior investigations have been conducted. Mono Craters pikas exhibited a behavioral profile that contrasted significantly with that of pikas found in upper montane regions. Mono Craters pikas were less surface active than pikas in studies at high-elevation sites, although their rate of short-call vocalizations was similar. Mono Craters pikas did not exhibit typical foraging behavior: they fed …

End Matter, Vol. 76 No. 4

Western North American Naturalist

No abstract provided.

Evaluating The Efficacy Of Brood Flush Counts: A Case Study In Two Quail Species, Jeremy P. Orange, Craig A. Davis, R. Dwayne Elmore, Evan P. Tanner, Samuel D. Fuhlendorf, Eric T. Thacker

Western North American Naturalist

Taking brood flush counts is a common sampling method that has been used for decades to estimate brood and chick survival in many gallinaceous bird species. However, brood survival estimates based upon flush counts may be biased because of low detection probabilities, occurrence of brood amalgamations, brood abandonment, and brooding adult mortality. Given that brood flush counts are still commonly used to estimate brood survival, and in some cases extrapolated to provide an estimate of chick survival, it is important to evaluate biases associated with this method. Therefore, we evaluated the use of brood flush counts to estimate brood survival …

Stepping Towards Open Source Hydrological Modeling: Problems And Prospects, Kazi Rahman, Nicolas Ray, Gregory Giuliani, Rocio Escobar, Gissela Girón, Julia Schwank, Chris George, Anthony Lehmann

Open Water Journal

Hydrological modeling is a powerful technique for hydrologic system investigation for research hydrologists, and practicing water resources planners and engineers involved in the planning and development of an integrated approach for the management of water resources. Hydrological models are based on our understanding of the physics of the hydrological processes which control catchment response and use physically based equations to describe these processes. Some typical examples of field applications of hydrologic modeling includes the study of the effect of climate and land use changes, the prediction of the behavior of ungauged catchments, spatial variability in catchment inputs and outputs, movement …

Enhanced Flexibility And Coupling Opportunities: The Process-Based, Open-Source, Hydrological- Model Wetspa, E. Salvadore, J. Bronders, O. Schmitz, O. Batelaan

Open Water Journal

Hydrological modeling is evolving following advances in computational capabilities and the spread of digital data. Keeping up with technological development is becoming a challenge and might results in increased complexity and higher uncertainties. Many tools are today available to detailed simulate particular hydrological processes but the water system at the catchment scale requires the integration of several domains. For all this reasons flexibility and ease of integration are important requirements for the hydrological models of tomorrow. To this end, we considered the spatially distributed hydrological model WetSpa (Water and energy transfer between Soil plant and atmosphere) and we modified its …

Development Of A Stream Water Temperature Model As A Component Model For Openmi Based Integrated Modelling Of River Zenne, Belgium., Narayan Kumar Shrestha, Olkeba Tolessa Leta, Jiri Nossent, Ann Van Griensven, Willy Bauwens

Open Water Journal

In 2000, the European Union launched the Water Framework Directive (WFD) (EU, 2000), which calls to achieve a good ecological status of all water bodies by 2015 through integrated river basin management. Integrated models are therefore necessary to serve as tools for river basin management in the scope of the WFD. Despite large investments made for the management of the Brussels’ sewer systems, the Zenne river still receives high loads of pollutants, especially considering the small size of this receiving water body. An interuniversity, multidisciplinary research project ‘Good Ecological Status of the river Zenne (GESZ)’ was therefore launched to evaluate …

The Importance Of Open Data And Software For Large Scale Hydrological Modelling, L. Strömbäck, B. Arheimer, G. Lindström, C. Donnelly, D. Gustafsson, K. Isberg, I. Pechlivanidis, J. Andersson, C. Pers

Open Water Journal

An important goal for hydrological research at SMHI in Sweden is large scale hydrological modelling. The goal of this work is to simulate hydrological conditions over large geographical areas, such as Europe and the Arctic region. Our most important tool is the HYPE model, which is designed to enable simulation over large areas. However, another important prerequisite for these large scale models is the availability of open data, which enables us to collect the information required for the model setup. In this paper we will give an overview over the work and focus on the aspects that make large scale …

Advanced Catalog Service For Sharing Data And Application Models In A River Basin, Aklilu Dinkneh Teklesadik, Ann Van Griensven, Carlos Velez

Open Water Journal

Models play an important role in river basin management and different softwares have been developed to quantify the impact of land management practices on river basins, to solve water allocation problem, to predict extreme events (drought and flooding) and many other applications. Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) is one of these software used in water management practice. The software is used worldwide and there are more than 1000 peer reviewed articles published. Reviews of these papers show that there is much duplication of SWAT applications for the same case study. One of the reasons is the lack of information, …

Lakemip Kivu: Evaluating The Representation Of A Large, Deep Tropical Lake By A Set Of 1-Dimensional Lake Models, W. Thiery, V. M. Stepanenko, X. Fang, K. D. Jöhnk, Z. Li, A. Martynov, M. Perroud, Z. M. Subin, F. Darchambeau, D. Mironov, N. P. M. Van Lipzig

Open Water Journal

The African great lakes are of utmost importance for the local economy (fishing), as well as being essential to the survival of the local people. During the last decades, these lakes experienced fast changes in ecosystem structure and functioning and their future evolution is a major concern. In this study, for the first time a set of one-dimensional lake models are evaluated for Lake Kivu (2.28 °S; 28.98 °E), East-Africa. The unique limnology of this meromictic Lake, with the importance of salinity and subsurface springs in a tropical high-altitude climate, presents a worthy challenge to the seven models involved in …

The Impact Of Considering Different Sources Of Uncertainty On A Swat Model Parameter Distributions And Model Outputs: The River Zenne (Belgium) Case Study, Olkeba Tolessa Leta, Jiri Nossent, Carlos Velez, Narayan Kumar Shrestha, Ann Van Griensven, Willy Bauwens

Open Water Journal

The European Union Water Framework Directive (EU-WFD) called its member countries to achieve a good ecological status for all inland and coastal water bodies by 2015 (EU, 2000). However, the River Zenne (Belgium) is far from this objective. Therefore, an interuniversity and multidisciplinary project “Towards a Good Ecological Status in the River Zenne (GESZ)” was launched to evaluate the effects of wastewater management plans on the river. In the framework of this project, different models have been developed and integrated using the Open Modelling Interface (OpenMI) (Gregersen et al., 2007). The hydrologic, physically-based, semi-distributed Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) …

State Of R In Hydrological Modelling, J. A. Torres, E. Pebesma

Open Water Journal

Access to clean and safe water is a human right and to grant it under a sustainable development point of view is paramount for well being of the future generations. Therefore, it is important to understand the interaction between the mate- rial flows to coastal waters that are constrained by catchment boundaries and the human activi- ties therein, and those materials that are tied to trade and other trans-boundary processes (e.g. re- sidence time, transport and fate of physical, chemi- cal and microbiological water-quality determinants) and their global implications on preserving the qua- lity of the natural environment.

Development Of A Spatial Data Infrastructure For The Water Sector Of Benin, J. Van Der Kwast, D. Van Den Bergh, D. Mama, P. Hounkpe, J. De Schutter

Open Water Journal

Benin has adequate water resources for food production, drinking water and nature conservation. Nevertheless, unsustainable agricultural and other land-use practices and water use, combined with the anticipated effects of climate change and population growth threaten the water resources. As more West African countries, Benin is already confronted with large environmental problems such as seasonal water shortages, (urban) pollution, salinization and increasing damage due to flooding. For this reason Benin adopted Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) as the key policy to manage its large problems with water resources in a sustainable way.

Reacher: A Decision Support Tool To Evaluate Scenarios Of Measures For The Reduction Of Pollution Fluxes, J. Van Der Kwast, S. Yalew, S. Broekx, P. J. Haest, P. Seuntjens, S. Jesenska, C. Carpentier, L. Blaha, J. Boucard, J. Slobodník, L. Bastiaens, A. Van Griensven

Open Water Journal

Decision makers need tools for assessing the impacts of their management practices on the water quality. The complicated nature of simulation models and the large computation time they need hamper the use of these tools in the decision making process. Furthermore, decision makers often lack the detailed domain knowledge to judge processes included in the models. They need decision support tools with an intuitive user interface design simplifying the interaction with models and the visualization of the produced results. REACHER is a generic river basin management tool that assesses the ecological and economic impact of rehabilitation technologies at the river …

On The Necessity Of A Joint Open Environment For Operational Hydrology Across Europe, Thomas Vansteenkiste, Joost Dewelde, Willem Defloor, Neel Devroede, Kris Cauwenberghs

Open Water Journal

The Flemish Environment Agency (or VMM) contributes as an agency of the Flemish government for a better environment in Flanders. Its Division Operational Water Management is competent for the maintenance, investment and renovation works of the non-navigable watercourses in catchments larger than 50 km2. In support of these tasks, a performant set of operational instruments over the last 10 years for monitoring and predicting the status of the rivers has been developed, including a wide range of monitoring networks (> 400 sites), off-line and real-time hydraulic models (> 1000 km) and a comprehensive real-time flood warning system. Next to these …

Cmd: A Semi-Automatic Model Structure Identification And Calibration Tool For River Water Quantity Modelling, Vincent Wolfs, Pieter Meert, Patrick Willems

Open Water Journal

Detailed hydrodynamic models that solve the full de Saint-Venant equations play a crucial role in support of river engineering, management and integrated catchment modelling. They explain the current state of a river system, and are useful for various types of scenario investigations. However, detailed physically-based models show two major disadvantages. Due to the long calculation times, simulations have to be limited both in time and space. Applications involving numerous simulations, such as global optimization problems at catchment level, real time control applications and uncertainty analyses, cannot be performed. Secondly, the coupling of models created in different software environments can be …

The Use Of Google’S Earth Engine For Assessing Vegetation Cover In The Anger Valley, Upper Blue Nile Basin, Seleshi G. Yalew, Ann Van Griensven, Marloes M. Mul

Open Water Journal

Earth Engine is a platform designed to enable petabyte-scale, scientific analysis and visualization of geospatial datasets set to be released by Google. Currently under limited release for ‘trusted testers’ only, it is a platform that makes available nearly 40 years of the world’s satellite imagery with cloud computing resources and tools for scientists and researchers. The platform is set to provide computational power using Google’s parallel processing power and access to develop and/or run algorithms on the full Earth Engine data archive. Its applications include detecting deforestation, classifying land-cover and estimating forest biomass and carbon. In this study, we demonstrate …

Quantification Of The Uncertainty Due To The Regulation Of Hydraulic Structures In Flood Forecasting, N. Zarrineh, N. Van Steenbergen, P. Willems

Open Water Journal

Flood forecasting systems predict discharges and water levels at various locations along the river. These predictions are based on rainfall observations and forecasts, and hydrological and hydraulic simulation models. These models contain several types of uncertainties. Therefore before using these models as a decision-making tool, they have to be evaluated in order to assess uncertainties and enhance the simulation accuracy and to reduce the possibility of improper decision making resulting in undesirable consequences. One of the most important model uncertainty sources is the regulation of the hydraulic structures in the hydrodynamic model. These regulations are calculated, making use of fixed …

Mascaret – An Open Source 1d Simulation Code For Flow Hydrodynamic With A Generic Application Programing Interface, Jean-Marc Lacombe, Fabrice Zaoui, Nicole Goutal

Open Water Journal

MASCARET is an open source software dedicated to the simulation of one-dimensional flow hydrodynamic in open channels networks (http://www.openmascaret.org). It is distributed under the GNU general public license. The code provides a generic Application Programming Interface (API) which allows an easy integration in frameworks or coupling with other simulators.

This API allows the classic main steps of a simulation: initialization, time step integration, and finalization. In addition, it is possible to access and modify all the variables and parameters disseminated in the code through a single interface. It is also possible to obtain all the information about these variables (metadata): …

A Reference Database With Transient River And Drain Boundary Conditions For Modflow, Foncke Koen, De Sutter Renaat, Bronders Jan, Hendrix Rik, Haest Pieter Jan, Johan Lermytte, Andy Louwyck

Open Water Journal

A modelling instrument was built that is able to semi-automatically set up a (steady-state or transient) groundwater model. With a given model area and modelling period, the instrument is able to select the appropriate hydrogeology data and boundary conditions, and to build a Modflow groundwater model. The river and drainage boundary conditions are selected from a PostgreSQL/PostGis database, which has been built with surface water data from various data sources using open source tools like the PostGis geoprocessing functions and the Python programming language.

The basic surface water data cover the area of the Flemish Groundwater Model, which covers Flanders …

Cmf - An Open Source Hydrological Modelling Toolkit, Philipp Kraft, Hans-Georg Frede, Lutz Breuer

Open Water Journal

In the past four decades, hundreds (if not thousands) of hydrological models have been developed to predict the transfer of water through landscapes. Despite this variety of models, the basic challenge for all kind of models is the same: solve the dynamic local to global water mass balance of a landscape. However, the transport processes, surface flow, subsurface flow, snow drift, evaporation and transpiration can be modelled with differing complexity, theory and parameterizations. Clark et al. (2011) denote, that a hydrological model is therefore not one hypothesis of process behaviour, but a multitude of interconnected hypotheses, which remain untested, since …

Adding The Influence Of A Shallow Water Table On Hydrology, Sediment And Pesticide Transport In A Vegetative Filter Strip Model : Development Of A Mechanistic Algorithm, Coupling, And Global Sensitivity Analysis To Evaluate This New Version Of The Open Source Model Vfsmod, Claire Lauvernet, Rafael Muñoz-Carpena, Nadia Carluer

Open Water Journal

A shallow water table can significantly affect soil infiltration and surface runoff during a rainfall event. Simple and robust models used as components of larger scale hydrological models are needed to analyze the impacts of shallow water table in the landscape. Salvucci and Entekhabi (1995) and Chu (1997) proposed an approximate non-uniform Green-Ampt time-implicit integral form solutions to the infiltration case for ponded soils bounded by a water table under initial hydrostatic equilibrium.