Other Earth Sciences Commons^™

Linking Animals Aloft With The Terrestrial Landscape, Jeffrey J. Buler, Wylie C. Barrow Jr., Matthew E. Boone, Deanna K. Dawson, Robert H. Diehl, Frank R. Moore, Lori A. Randall, Timothy D. Schreckengost, Jaclyn A. Smolinsky

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

Despite using the aerosphere for many facets of their life, most flying animals (i.e., birds, bats, some insects) are still bound to terrestrial habitats for resting, feeding, and reproduction. Comprehensive broad-scale observations by weather surveillance radars of animals as they leave terrestrial habitats for migration or feeding flights can be used to map their terrestrial distributions either as point locations (e.g., communal roosts) or as continuous surface layers (e.g., animal densities in habitats across a landscape). We discuss some of the technical challenges to reducing measurement biases related to how radars sample the aerosphere and the flight behavior of animals. …

Extending The Habitat Concept To The Airspace, Robert H. Diehl, Anna C. Peterson, Rachel T. Bolus, Douglas Johnson

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

Habitat is one of the most familiar and fundamental concepts in the fields of ecology, animal behavior, and wildlife conservation and management. Humans interact with habitats through their senses and experiences and education to such a degree that their perceptions of habitat have become second nature. For this reason, it may be difficult at first to accept the airspace as habitat, an area that is invisible, untouchable, highly dynamic, and its occupants difficult to see. Nonetheless, the habitat concept, by definition and in practice, applies readily to the airspace. Some ecological and behavioral processes including habitat selection, foraging, and reproduction …

Water-Level And Recoverable Water In Storage Changes, High Plains Aquifer, Predevelopment To 2015 And 2013–15, Virginia L. Mcguire

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

The High Plains aquifer underlies 111.8 million acres (about 175,000 square miles) in parts of eight States—Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming. Water-level declines began in parts of the High Plains aquifer soon after the beginning of substantial irrigation with groundwater in the aquifer area (about 1950). This report presents water-level changes and change in recoverable water in storage in the High Plains aquifer from predevelopment (about 1950) to 2015 and from 2013 to 2015.

The methods to calculate area-weighted, average water-level changes; change in recoverable water in storage; and total recoverable water in storage …

Key Differences Between Lakes And Reservoirs Modify Climate Signals: A Case For A New Conceptual Model, Nicole M. Hayes, Bridget R. Deemer, Jessica R. Corman, N. Roxanna Razavi, Kristin E. Strock

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

Lakes and reservoirs are recognized as important sentinels of climate change, integrating catchment and atmospheric climate change drivers. Climate change conceptual models generally consider lakes and reservoirs together despite the possibility that these systems respond differently to climate-related drivers. Here, we synthesize differences between lake and reservoir characteristics that are likely important for predicting waterbody response to climate change. To better articulate these differences, we revised the energy mass flux framework, a conceptual model for the effects of climate change on lentic ecosystems, to explicitly consider the differential responses of lake versus reservoir ecosystems. The model predicts that catchment and …

Pso Algorithm For An Optimal Power Controller In A Microgrid, Waleed Al-Saedi, Stefan Lachowicz, Daryoush Habibi, Octavian Bass

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

This paper presents the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm to improve the quality of the power supply in a microgrid. This algorithm is proposed for a real-time selftuning method that used in a power controller for an inverter based Distributed Generation (DG) unit. In such system, the voltage and frequency are the main control objectives, particularly when the microgrid is islanded or during load change. In this work, the PSO algorithm is implemented to find the optimal controller parameters to satisfy the control objectives. The results show high performance of the applied PSO algorithm of regulating the microgrid voltage and …

Fukushima Daiichi-Derived Radionuclides In The Ocean: Transport, Fate, And Impacts, Ken O. Buesseler, Minhan Dai, Michio Aoyama, Claudia R. Benítez-Nelson,, Sabine S. Charmasson, Kathryn A. Higley, Vladimir S. Maderich, Pere Masqué, Paul J. Morris, Deborah H. Oughton, John N. Smith

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

The events that followed the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011, included the loss of power and overheating at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plants, which led to extensive releases of radioactive gases, volatiles, and liquids, particularly to the coastal ocean. The fate of these radionuclides depends in large part on their oceanic geochemistry, physical processes, and biological uptake. Whereas radioactivity on land can be resampled and its distribution mapped, releases to the marine environment are harder to characterize owing to variability in ocean currents and the general challenges of sampling at sea. Five years later, it is …

Biloxi Marsh Platform Response Due To Meteorological Forcing, Rachelle Thomason

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The Biloxi Marsh of the eastern Mississippi River delta plain is exposed to meteorological forces ranging from large-scale, mid-latitude cyclones to smaller scale storms and squalls. Each time that these marsh platforms are exposed to a storm event, the potential exists for either deposition or erosion to take place. This study examines the connection between wind speeds, stratigraphic composition, marsh edge morphology, and marsh edge erosion at 4 sites in the Biloxi Marsh. As much as 2.17 m of erosion were measured during the 9-month study with a maximum, averaged erosion rate of 0.03 m day^-1. Shell berm …

New Insights Into The Martian Crust And Angrite Parent Body Through Meteorites, Alison R. Santos

Earth and Planetary Sciences ETDs

Petrologic studies of two new, unique meteorites were conducted in order to characterize the samples and provide insights into their parent bodies. The first sample, Northwest Africa 7034, is the first martian meteorite breccia to be discovered. In an effort to understand the martian crustal materials sampled by the breccia, we developed a classification scheme for the breccia clasts based on their texture, mineralogy, and chemistry. We then further investigated two clast groups which contained trends in mineralogy and chemistry that suggested a possible genetic relationship between the two. Our findings suggest they are not related by a simple igneous …

Characterization And Delineation Of Karst Geohazards Along Rm652 Using Electrical Resistivity Tomography, Culberson County, Texas, Adam F. Majzoub

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Delaware Basin of West Texas and southeastern New Mexico is the major western subdivision of the Permian Basin and a northern extension of the Chihuahuan Desert. The major evaporite unit within the Delaware Basin is the Castile Formation, which consists of gypsum/anhydrite and is highly susceptible to dissolution and karsting. Manifestations of karst within the Castile outcrop are abundant and include sinkholes, subsidence features and caves, both epigene and hypogene in origin.

Land reconnaissance surveys conducted during the summer of 2015 documented abundant karst landforms in close proximity to a major thoroughfare, RM 652, in Culberson County, Texas. 2D …

Early Miocene Quantitative Calcareous Nannofossil Biostratigraphy From The Tropical Atlantic, Waheed A. Albasrawi

Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Quantitative analysis for the Lower Miocene of Ocean Drilling Program Hole 959A from the West African margin was performed to document all the calcareous nannofossil biostratigraphic events present. Combined with data from previous investigations of the Lower Miocene from the tropical Atlantic, this research identifies and tests the viability of markers used in current zonation scheme, identifies alternative markers for age boundaries, and examine statistically the most probable order of event in the Lower Miocene using the Ranking and Scaling method (RASC).

The examination of Hole 959A was performed on a 112 samples. Seven additional sites that collectively span the …

Modeling The Effects Of Tile Drain Placement On The Hydrologic Function Of Farmed Prairie Wetlands1, Brett Werner, John Tracy, W. Carter Johnson, Richard A. Voldseth, Glenn R. Guntenspergen, Bruce Millett

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

The early 2000s saw large increases in agricultural tile drainage in the eastern Dakotas of North America. Agricultural practices that drain wetlands directly are sometimes limited by wetland protection programs. Little is known about the impacts of tile drainage beyond the delineated boundaries of wetlands in upland catchments that may be in agricultural production. A series of experiments were conducted using the well-published model WETLANDSCAPE that revealed the potential for wetlands to have significantly shortened surface water inundation periods and lower mean depths when tile is placed in certain locations beyond the wetland boundary. Under the soil conditions found in …

Groundwater Declines Are Linked To Changes In Great Plains Stream Fish Assemblages, Joshuah S. Perkin, Keith B. Gido, Jeffrey A. Falke, Kurt D. Fausch, Harry Crockett, Eric R. Johnson, John Sanderson

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

Groundwater pumping for agriculture is a major driver causing declines of global freshwater ecosystems, yet the ecological consequences for stream fish assemblages are rarely quantified. We combined retrospective (1950–2010) and prospective (2011–2060) modeling approaches within a multiscale framework to predict change in Great Plains stream fish assemblages associated with groundwater pumping from the United States High Plains Aquifer. We modeled the relationship between the length of stream receiving water from the High Plains Aquifer and the occurrence of fishes characteristic of small and large streams in the western Great Plains at a regional scale and for six subwatersheds nested within …

Predicting Post-Fire Change In West Virginia, Usa From Remotely-Sensed Data, Michael Strager P. Strager, Melissa Thomas-Van Gundy, Aaron E. Maxwell

Journal of Geospatial Applications in Natural Resources

Prescribed burning is used in West Virginia, USA to return the important disturbance process of fire to oak and oak-pine forests. Species composition and structure are often the main goals for re-establishing fire with less emphasis on fuel reduction or reducing catastrophic wildfire. In planning prescribed fires land managers could benefit from the ability to predict mortality to overstory trees. In this study, wildfires and prescribed fires in West Virginia were examined to determine if specific landscape and terrain characteristics were associated with patches of high/moderate post-fire change. Using the ensemble machine learning approach of Random Forest, we determined that …

Change Detection Of Mount Nyiragongo Post Eruption, Molly E. Karnes

Scholars Week

Because of the dangerous nature of volcanic eruptions, it makes them very difficult to study, however this makes them even more important for us to study because of how much destruction they can cause in such a short amount of time. We need to study all parts of an eruption to gain more insight into the specifics of how a volcano works. Having a better understanding of how large of an area is effected by an eruption will allow governments to decide on evacuation procedures. The goal of my project is to answer a very simple question, “How can we …

Germination And Growth Of Native And Invasive Plants On Soil Associated With Biological Control Of Tamarisk (Tamarix Spp.), Rebecca A. Sherry, Patrick B. Shafroth, Jayne Belnap, Steven Ostoja, Sasha C. Reed

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

Introductions of biocontrol beetles (tamarisk beetles) are causing dieback of exotic tamarisk in riparian zones across the western United States, yet factors that determine plant communities that follow tamarisk dieback are poorly understood. Tamarisk-dominated soils are generally higher in nutrients, organic matter, and salts than nearby soils, and these soil attributes might influence the trajectory of community change. To assess physical and chemical drivers of plant colonization after beetle-induced tamarisk dieback, we conducted separate germination and growth experiments using soil and litter collected beneath defoliated tamarisk trees. Focal species were two common native (red threeawn, sand dropseed) and two common …

Managing Drought Risk In A Changing Climate, Donald A. Wilhite

National Drought Mitigation Center: Faculty Publications

There is an increasing concern worldwide regarding the ineffectiveness of current drought management practices that are based largely on crisis management. These practices are reactive and, therefore, only treat the symptoms (impacts) of drought rather than the underlying causes of the vulnerabilities associated with impacts. More effective drought management requires a shift in the paradigm from drought response to a drought risk management approach.

Using Climate Information For Drought Planning, Taryn Finnessey, Michael Hayes, Jeff Lukas, Mark D. Svoboda

National Drought Mitigation Center: Faculty Publications

Historically, drought has been responded to rather than prepared for, yet studies have illustrated that proactive investment in drought risk management reduces impacts and overall response costs. One key element of preparedness is the use of sufficient climate information for monitoring, forecasting, and tracking long-term trends. In the face of a changing climate and increasing variability, these types of data are even more critical for planning and overall resiliency. The systematic use of these data to inform the drought planning component of drought risk management is a relatively recent development. Actionable science has direct applicability for planning and decision-making, and …

A Complex Origin For The Kelso Dunes, Mojave National Preserve, California, Usa: A Case Study Using A Simple Geochemical Method With Global Applications, Daniel R. Muhs, Nicholas Lancaster, Gary L. Skipp

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

The Kelso Dune field in southern California is intriguing because although it is of limited areal extent (~100 km2), it has a wide variety of dune forms and contains many active dunes (~40 km2), which is unusual in the Mojave Desert. Studies over the past eight decades have concluded that the dunes are derived primarily from a single source, Mojave River alluvium, under a dominant, westerly-to-northwesterly wind regime. The majority of these studies did not, however, present data to support the Mojave River as the only source.We conducted mineralogical and geochemical studies ofmost of the 14 geomorphically defined dune groups …

Droughtscape, Fall 2016, National Drought Mitigation Center

DroughtScape: Quarterly Newsletter of the National Drought Mitigation Center (2007–2023)

Contents

NDMC welcome two to team

Third quarter drought summary: Drought still spreading

Third quarter drought impacts: It was a hot, dry summer

Drought management framework for Africa approved

MENA region update

US Virgin Islands one step closer to its own drought monitor

Montana looks to improve watershed resilience

Tournament tackles hazards

Web tool will help officials make drought-related decisions

Dry Horizons launches

Status Of Scientific Knowledge, Recovery Progress, And Future Research Directions For The Gulf Sturgeon, Acipenser Oxyrinchus Desotoi Vladykov, 1955, K.J. Sulak, F. Parauka, W. T. Slack, R. T. Ruth, M. T. Randall, K. Luke, M. E. Price

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

The Gulf Sturgeon, Acipenser oxyrinchus desotoi, is an anadromous species of Acipenseridae and native to North America. It currently inhabits and spawns in the upper reaches of seven natal rivers along the northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico from the Suwannee River, Florida, to the Pearl River, Louisiana, during spring to autumn. Next to the Alligator Gar (Atractosteus spatula), the Gulf Sturgeon is currently the largest fish species occurring in U.S. Gulf Coast rivers, attaining a length of 2.35 m and weights exceeding 135 kg, but historically attained a substantially larger size. Historically, the spawning populations existed in additional …