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USGS1989

Acid rain publications by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 1979-1989

Pollution of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems has been a concern to society since the burning of fossil fuels began in the industrial revolution. In the past decade or so, this concern has been heightened by evidence that chemical transformation in the atmosphere of combustion by-products and subsequent long-range transport can cause environmental damage in remote areas. The extent of this damage and the rates of ecological recovery were largely unknown. "Acid rain" became the environmental issue of the 1980's. To address the increasing concerns of the public, in 1980 the Federal government initiated a 10-year interagency research program to develop information that could be used by the President and the Congress in making decisions for emission controls. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has been an active participant in acid precipitation research. The Service provided support to a number of scientific conferences and forums, including the Action Seminar on Acid Precipitation held in Toronto, Canada, in 1979, an international symposium on Acidic Precipitation and Fishery Impacts in Northeastern North America in 1981, and a symposium on Acidic Precipitation and Atmospheric Deposition: A Western Perspective in 1982. These meetings as well as the growing involvement with the government's National Acidic Precipitation Assessment Program placed the Service in the lead in research on the biological effects of acidic deposition. Research projects have encompassed water chemistry, aquatic invertebrates, amphibians, fish, and waterfowl. Water quality surveys have been conducted to help determine the extent of acid precipitation effects in the northeast, Middle Atlantic, and Rocky Mountain regions. In addition to lake and stream studies, research in wetland and some terrestrial habitats has also been conducted. Specific projects have addressed important sport species such as brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis), Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar), and striped bass (Morone saxatilis). Trace metal accumulation in fish has been investigated and a symposium sponsored on related work. U.S> Fish and Wildlife Service scientists serve as advisors and participants in research being conducted by industry, nonprofit groups, State and other Federal agencies. Researcher have worked closely with colleagues in Canada, England, Norway, Scotland, the Soviet Union, and Sweden to gain additional understanding of the problem. In 1982, the Service implemented a mitigation research program to provide resource managers with information to help them protect sensitive ecosystems, and rehabilitation methods for resources already affected by acidification. An international workshop was convened to outline the research needs. Several conferences were organized to develop appropriate field and laboratory procedures. Scientists with the mitigation research program are evaluating the ecological effects of liming (addition of base material) surface waters and surrounding watershed to provide buffering against acidic inputs. Through long-term cooperative project with States and other organizations, investigations are studying possible abatement methods for regions most affected by acidic deposition. To date, more than 200 reports the describe these studies have been published. These products include conference proceedings, journal articles, and in-house scientific publications. An education poster describing the effects of acid rain on aquatic ecosystems was developed and distributed to individuals, conservations and State organizations, and the public education system. This annotated bibliography lists current publications by Service authors, cooperators, or contractors on acid rain and related quality. Entire are arranged alphabetically by author surname. For further information about the research program, contact the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Acid Precipitation Section, National Fishery Research Center -- Leetown, Box 700, Kearneysville, WV 25430.

Biological Report↗
USGS2024

The potential for species distribution models to distinguish source populations from sinks

1. While species distribution models (SDM) are frequently used to predict species occurrences to help inform conservation management, there is limited evidence evaluating whether habitat suitability can reliably predict intrinsic growth rates or distinguish source from sink populations. Filling this knowledge gap is critical for conservation science, as applications of SDMs for management purposes ultimately depend on these typically unobserved population or metapopulation dynamics. 2. Using regression, we associate previously published population level estimates of intrinsic growth and abundance derived from a Bayesian analysis of mark-recapture data for 17 bird species found in the contiguous United States with SDM habitat suitability estimates fitted here to opportunistic data for these same species. We then use AUC to measure how well SDMs can distinguish populations categorized as sources and sinks, depending on their intrinsic growth rates estimated from the mark-recapture data. We built SDMs using two different approaches, boosted regression trees (BRT) and Generalized Linear Models (GLM), and compared their predictive performance. Each SDM was built with presence points obtained from eBird and 10 environmental variables previously selected to model intrinsic growth rates and abundance for these species. 3. We show that SDMs built with opportunistic data are poor predictors of species demography in general; both BRT and GLM explained very little spatial variation of intrinsic growth rate and population abundance (median R2 across 17 species was close to 0.1 for both SDM methods). SDMs do, however, estimate higher suitability for source populations as compared to sinks. Out of 13 species which had both source and sink populations, both BRT and GLM had AUC values greater than 0.7 for 7 species when discriminating between sources and sinks. 4. Habitat suitability have the potential to be a useful measure to indicate a population’s ability to sustain itself as a source population, however more research on a diverse set of taxa is essential to fully explore this potential. This interpretation of habitat suitability can be particularly useful for conservation practice, and identification of explicit cases of when and how SDMs fail to match population demography can be informative for advancing ecological theory.

Journal of Animal Ecology↗
USGS2025

Linking age and social status of cooperative breeders to vulnerability throughout the harvest season

Individual behaviors are influenced by environmental, genetic, and demographic factors. Some animals choose to live in groups and cooperatively breed, and their behaviors can change depending on dynamic factors such as group size and composition that affect group persistence. In Idaho, USA, gray wolves ( Canis lupus ) are harvested annually, providing an opportunity to investigate the effects of harvest and seasonal behaviors on a population of cooperative breeders. These annual hunting and trapping seasons overlap with the dispersal and breeding periods for wolves and we do not know how harvest affects the vulnerability of different sex and age classes during these important biological periods. We applied 9 years (2009–2018) of genetic, age, and harvest data from harvested wolves to investigate how behaviors (dispersal and breeding) and biological drivers might influence the vulnerability of wolves to harvest. We created pedigrees from genotypes of non-invasively collected scats to estimate the expected proportion of the wolf population composed of 3 different age classes (pup, yearling, and sexually mature or ≥2 years old) and compared them to the observed number of each age class harvested during biologically significant periods (i.e., dispersal and breeding). We found that pups were more vulnerable to harvest in December when wolf harvest transitioned largely to trapping (accounts for 66% of harvest), and found evidence that adults were more vulnerable to harvest during their breeding season in January and February. In contrast, we found no difference in the expected versus observed number of wolves ≥2 years old in the harvest during peak dispersal season (December), or in the expected versus observed number of yearlings in the harvest during September and October when pups are mobile and groups of wolves abandon the use of pup-rearing sites. Some age classes were disproportionally harvested during certain periods for specific years, but this was not consistent across all years, suggesting there is more to learn about the vulnerability of different age classes to harvest. We found harvest can disproportionally affect some demographic classes of individuals depending on year, biological period, and harvest type. With wolves continuing to recolonize historical ranges, our approach can benefit managers and future studies with the goal of identifying how interannual harvest affects groups of wolves.

Idaho↗
USGS2003

Estimating natal dispersal movement rates of female European ducks with multistate modelling

1. We used up to 34 years of capture-recapture data from about 22 100 new releases of day-old female ducklings and multistate modelling to test predictions about the influence of environmental, habitat and management factors on natal dispersal probability of three species of ducks within the Engure Marsh, Latvia. 2. The mean natal dispersal distances were very similar (c. 0.6-0.7 km) for all three species and were on average 2.7 times greater than breeding dispersal distances recorded within the same study system. 3. We were unable to confirm the kinship hypothesis and found no evidence that young first-nesting females nested closer to their relatives (either mother or sister) than to the natal nest. 4. Young female northern shovelers, like adults, moved from small islands to the large island when water level was high and vice versa when water level was low before the construction of elevated small islands. Movement probabilities between the two strata were much higher for young shovelers than adults, suggesting that young birds had not yet developed strong fidelity to the natal site. Movements of young female tufted ducks , unlike those of shovelers, were not dependent on water level fluctuations and reflected substantial flexibility in choice of first nesting sites. 5. Data for young birds supported our earlier conclusion that common pochard nesting habitats in black-headed gull colonies were saturated during the entire study period. Young females, like the two adult age groups, moved into and out of colonies with similar probability. Fidelity probability of female pochards to each stratum increased with age, being the lowest (0.62) for young (DK) females, intermediate (0.78) for yearlings (SY) and the highest (0.84) for adult (ASY) females. 6. Young female tufted ducks , like adults, showed higher probabilities of moving from islands to emergent marshes when water levels were higher both before and after habitat management. The relationship between the spring water levels and movement was much weaker for young females than for adults. 7. Young female diving ducks exhibited much stronger (compared to adults) asymmetric movement with respect to proximity to water, with higher movement probabilities to near-water locations than away from these locations. 8. Local survival of day-old ducklings during the first year of life was time-specific and very low (means for different strata/states 0.01-0.08) because of high rates of emigration and prefledging mortality.

Journal of Animal Ecology↗
USGS2026

When best intentions are not enough - A collaboration between scientists, policymakers, and an agricultural community

Rocky Mountain National Park is a Congressionally mandated Clean Air Act Class I Area, but years of research have documented evidence of biogeochemical and ecological change caused by atmospheric deposition of nitrogen. A coalition of government agencies—National Park Service, the Environmental Protection Agency Region 8, and the State of Colorado—developed the 2007 Nitrogen Deposition Reduction Plan to reduce wet nitrogen deposition to the park from the baseline in 2006 by 50% by 2032. Fifty-four percent of wet nitrogen deposition is ammonium, primarily sourced from industrial cattle and dairy operations east of the park. An Agriculture Subcommittee, meeting with regulatory and management agencies and scientists since 2006, has explored voluntary options to reduce ammonia emissions. Ammonia emissions are unregulated in the U.S. Despite sustained efforts, neither ammonium deposition nor total inorganic nitrogen deposition have declined at the rate determined to reach the targeted value by 2032. In fact, ammonia is increasing over the Front Range agricultural area. Wet nitrogen deposition in 2024 was 2.81 kg N ha −1 yr −1 , 0.61 kg N ha −1 yr −1 higher than targeted in the Nitrogen Deposition Reduction Plan. The collaborative approach between agricultural producers, regulatory entities, and resource managers is not working, but not for lack of effort by all parties. Cattle process nitrogen inefficiently, and while management practices can somewhat reduce the proportion of ammonia emitted from feedlots, with more than one million head of cattle east of Rocky Mountain National Park, large-scale reductions are unlikely. New programs to reduce emissions of nitrogen oxides (46% of wet nitrogen deposition) may reduce nitrogen deposition that is changing park ecosystems. Improved integration of crop and livestock agriculture and valuation of the ecosystem services and economy of Rocky Mountain National Park alongside agricultural value are topics for further discussion. Implications : Nitrogen deposition in precipitation to Rocky Mountain National Park has changed natural ecosystems. To protect its Clean Air Act Class I status a 2007 Nitrogen Deposition Reduction Plan agreed upon by state and federal agencies set a goal to reduce wet nitrogen deposition to the Park by half by 2032. Industrial livestock operations are a large source of nitrogen; an Agriculture Subcommittee explored voluntary options to reduce emissions from cattle. Despite sustained efforts nitrogen deposition has not declined. Further reductions in industry and transportation emissions will be needed reduce nitrogen deposition to Rocky Mountain National Park.

Colorado↗
USGS2021

Genomic signatures of thermal adaptation are associated with clinal shifts of life history in a broadly distributed frog

Temperature is a critical driver of ectotherm life-history strategies, whereby a warmer environment is associated with increased growth, reduced longevity and accelerated senescence. Increasing evidence indicates that thermal adaptation may underlie such life-history shifts in wild populations. Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and copy number variants (CNVs) can help uncover the molecular mechanisms of temperature-driven variation in growth, longevity and senescence. However, our understanding of these mechanisms is still limited, which reduces our ability to predict the response of non-model ectotherms to global temperature change. In this study, we examined the potential role of thermal adaptation in clinal shifts of life-history traits (i.e. life span, senescence rate and recruitment) in the Columbia spotted frog Rana luteiventris along a broad temperature gradient in the western United States. We took advantage of extensive capture–recapture datasets of 20,033 marked individuals from eight populations surveyed annually for 14–18 years to examine how mean annual temperature and precipitation influenced demographic parameters (i.e. adult survival, life span, senescence rate, recruitment and population growth). After showing that temperature was the main climatic predictor influencing demography, we used RAD-seq data (50,829 SNPs and 6,599 putative CNVs) generated for 352 individuals from 31 breeding sites to identify the genomic signatures of thermal adaptation. Our results showed that temperature was negatively associated with annual adult survival and reproductive life span and positively associated with senescence rate. By contrast, recruitment increased with temperature, promoting the long-term viability of most populations. These temperature-dependent demographic changes were associated with strong genomic signatures of thermal adaptation. We identified 148 SNP candidates associated with temperature including three SNPs located within protein-coding genes regulating resistance to cold and hypoxia, immunity and reproduction in ranids. We also identified 39 CNV candidates (including within 38 transposable elements) for which normalized read depth was associated with temperature. Our study indicates that both SNPs and structural variants are associated with temperature and could eventually be found to play a functional role in clinal shifts in senescence rate and life-history strategies in R. luteiventris . These results highlight the potential role of different sources of molecular variation in the response of ectotherms to environmental temperature variation in the context of global warming.

Journal of Animal Ecology↗
USGS2004

Holocene reef accretion: southwest Molokai, Hawaii, U.S.A.

Two reef systems off south Molokai, Hale O Lono and Hikauhi (separated by only 10 km), show strong and fundamental differences in modern ecosystem structure and Holocene accretion history that reflect the influence of wave-induced near-bed shear stresses on reef development in Hawaii. Both sites are exposed to similar impacts from south, Kona, and trade-wind swell. However, the Hale O Lono site is exposed to north swell and the Hikuahi site is not. As a result, the reef at Hale O Lono records no late Holocene net accretion while the reef at Hikauhi records consistent and robust accretion over late Holocene time. Analysis and dating of 24 cores from Hale O Lono and Hikauhi reveal the presence of five major lithofacies that reflect paleo-environmental conditions. In order of decreasing depositional energy they are: (1) coral-algal bindstone; (2) mixed skeletal rudstone; (3) massive coral framestone; (4) unconsolidated floatstone; and (5) branching coral framestone-bafflestone. At Hale O Lono, 10 cores document a backstepping reef ranging from ∼ 8,100 cal yr BP (offshore) to ∼ 4,800 cal yr BP (nearshore). A depauperate community of modern coral diminishes shoreward and seaward of ∼ 15 m depth due to wave energy, disrupted recruitment activities, and physical abrasion. Evidence suggests a change from conditions conducive to accretion during the early Holocene to conditions detrimental to accretion in the late Holocene. Reef structure at Hikauhi, reconstructed from 14 cores, reveals a thick, rapidly accreting and young reef (maximum age ∼ 900 cal yr BP). Living coral cover on this reef increases seaward with distance from the reef crest but terminates at a depth of ∼ 20 m where the reef ends in a large sand field. The primary limitation on vertical reef growth is accommodation space under wave base, not recruitment activities or energy conditions. Interpretations of cored lithofacies suggest that modern reef growth on the southwest corner of Molokai, and by extension across Hawaii in general, is controlled by wave-induced near-bed shear stress related to refracted North Pacific swell. Holocene accretion patterns here also reflect the long-term influence of wave-induced near-bed shear stress from north swell during late Holocene time. This finding is consistent with other studies (e.g., Grigg 1998; Cabioch et al. 1999) that reflect the dominance of swell energy and sea level in controlling modern and late Holocene accretion elsewhere in Hawaii and across the Pacific and Indian oceans. Notably, however, this result is refined and clarified for Hawaii in the hypothesis of Rooney et al. (2003) stating that enhancement of the El Niño Southern Oscillation beginning approximately 5000 years ago led to increased north swell energy and signaled the end to net accretion along exposed coastlines in Hawaii. The exposure of Hale O Lono to north swell and the age of sea floor there (ca. 4,800 cal yr BP), coupled with the lack of north swell incidence at Hikauhi and the continuous accretion that has occurred there over the last millennium, strongly supports the ENSO reef hypothesis as outlined by Rooney et al. (2003). Other factors controlling Holocene reef accretion at the study site are relative sea-level position and rate of rise, and wave sheltering by Laau Point. Habitat suitable for reef accretion on the southwest shore of Molokai has shrunk throughout the Holocene.

Hawai'i↗