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At least 523 records · Page 29Linked to original sources
USGS2023

A recruitment niche framework for improving seed-based restoration

As larger tracts of land experience degradation, seed-based restoration (SBR) will be a primary tool to reestablish vegetation and ecosystem function. SBR has advanced in terms of technical and technological approaches, yet plant recruitment remains a major barrier in some systems, notably drylands. There is an unmet opportunity to test science-based approaches to seed mix design and application, based not only on diversity or local provenance, but on the unique recruitment strategies of species. We lay out a framework that uses a quantitative representation of species' recruitment niches to match them to targeted goals (e.g. drought or invasion resistance) and methods (e.g. precision tools and technologies) in SBR. We first describe how to quantify the recruitment niche with seed and seedling traits tied to observed recruitment responses to environmental factors. We then show how a quantified recruitment niche framework can serve as the foundation to address three major restoration challenges: (1) designing forward-looking seed mixes that increase resilience to future climate and disturbance, (2) accounting for natural recovery in SBR planning, and (3) applying precision seeding practices to maximize restoration success. Finally, we demonstrate these ideas with existing data and discuss key challenges to adoption in SBR practice. While the ideas in this framework are based in ecological theory, they will require substantial testing and refinement by scientists engaged in SBR efforts. If this framework is integrated into research agendas, we believe it has the potential to unify and advance diverse elements of seed-based restoration ecology and improve restoration outcomes.

Restoration Ecology↗
USGS2025

Seed coating treatments alter emergence windows of native Intermountain West U.S. grasses under different regimes of water availability

Introduction Seed-based restoration is widely implemented to recover degraded lands but often fails. Seed enhancement technologies may improve outcomes by shifting emergence to target favorable climate windows and serving as a bet-hedging strategy against increasingly variable precipitation patterns. Objectives To test the potential benefit of these technologies, we applied seed coatings designed to accelerate or delay emergence to four native Intermountain West perennial grasses that are commonly used for restoration. Methods We subjected seeds to six different watering regimes in the greenhouse that represented variation in precipitation timing and amount and compared the emergence, growth, and biomass of coated and uncoated seedlings. Results Seed coating designed to accelerate germination strongly increased emergence in species with high dormancy requirements, while seed coating designed to delay germination decreased emergence in species with low dormancy by about half and postponed emergence by up to 15 days. These coatings altered emergence timing regardless of watering regime, suggesting that seed coating could expand emergence windows under variable precipitation regimes. Seedling growth and total biomass were less dependent on seed coating and were more driven by the average amount of soil moisture provisioned to the developing plant. While seed coating designed to accelerate germination increased the emergence of two grass species, growth decreased during late periods of water availability, suggesting a trade-off in seedling performance. Conclusions Our results show promise for seed coatings to shift windows of emergence, but further field testing could improve our understanding of their effects in restoration settings.

western United States↗
USGS2020

Improving geospatial query performance of an interoperable geographic situation-awareness system (IGSAS) for disaster response

Disaster response operations require fast and coordinated actions based on the real-time disaster situation information. Although Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) or crowdsourced geospatial data applications have demonstrated to be valuable tools for gathering real-time disaster situation information, they only provide limited utility for disaster response coordination because of the lack of compatibility and interoperability. VGI based on Geospatial Semantic Web (GSW) technologies has the potential to overcome the incompatibility and heterogeneity problems. However, GSW-based VGI often has poor performance due to complex geometric computation. The objective of this research is to explore how to use optimization techniques to improve performance of an interoperable geographic situation-awareness system (IGSAS) based on GSW technologies for disaster response. We conducted experiments to evaluate various client-side optimization techniques for improving performance of an IGSAS prototype for flooding disaster response in New Haven, Connecticut. Our experimental results show that the developed prototype can greatly reduce the runtime costs of geospatial semantic queries through on-the-fly spatial indexing, tile-based rendering, efficient algorithms for spatial join, and caching, especially for those spatial-join geospatial queries that involve a large number of spatial features and heavy geometric computation.

Transactions in GIS↗
USGS2016

Best practices in passive remote sensing VNIR hyperspectral system hardware calibrations

Hyperspectral imaging (HSI) is an exciting and rapidly expanding area of instruments and technology in passive remote sensing. Due to quickly changing applications, the instruments are evolving to suit new uses and there is a need for consistent definition, testing, characterization and calibration. This paper seeks to outline a broad prescription and recommendations for basic specification, testing and characterization that must be done on Visible Near Infra-Red grating-based sensors in order to provide calibrated absolute output and performance or at least relative performance that will suit the user’s task. The primary goal of this paper is to provide awareness of the issues with performance of this technology and make recommendations towards standards and protocols that could be used for further efforts in emerging procedures for national laboratory and standards groups.

Conference Paper↗
USGS2002

A compact high-resolution 3-D imaging spectrometer for discovering Oases on Mars

A new design for a very lightweight, very high throughput reflectance sectrometer enabled by two new technologies being developed is presented. These new technologies include integral field unit optics to enable simultaneous imaging and spectroscopy at high spatial resolution with an infrared (IR) array, and silicon grisms to enable compact and high-resolution spectroscopy.

Conference Paper↗
USGS2007

Sampling and monitoring for closure

An important aspect of planning a new mine or mine expansion within the modern regulatory framework is to design for ultimate closure. Sampling and monitoring for closure is a form of environmental risk management. By implementing a sampling and monitoring program early in the life of the mining operation, major costs can be avoided or minimized. The costs for treating mine drainage in perpetuity are staggering, especially if they are unanticipated. The Metal Mining Sector of the Acid Drainage Technology Initiative (ADTI-MMS), a cooperative government-industry-academia organization, was established to address drainage-quality technologies of metal mining and metallurgical operations. ADTI-MMS recommends that sampling and monitoring programs consider the entire mine-life cycle and that data needed for closure of an operation be collected from exploration through postclosure.

Reviews in Engineering Geology↗
USGS2016

A multiagency and multijurisdictional approach to mapping the glacial deposits of the Great Lakes region in three dimensions

The Great Lakes Geologic Mapping Coalition (GLGMC), consisting of state geological surveys from all eight Great Lakes states, the Ontario Geological Survey, and the U.S. Geological Survey, was conceived out of a societal need for unbiased and scientifically defensible geologic information on the shallow subsurface, particularly the delineation, interpretation, and viability of groundwater resources. Only a small percentage (<10%) of the region had been mapped in the subsurface, and there was recognition that no single agency had the financial, intellectual, or physical resources to conduct such a massive geologic mapping effort at a detailed scale over a wide jurisdiction. The GLGMC provides a strategy for generating financial and stakeholder support for three-dimensional (3-D) geologic mapping, pooling of physical and personnel resources, and sharing of mapping and technological expertise to characterize the thick cover of glacial sediments. Since its inception in 1997, the GLGMC partners have conducted detailed surficial and 3-D geologic mapping within all jurisdictions, and concurrent significant scientific advancements have been made to increase understanding of the history and framework of geologic processes. More importantly, scientific information has been provided to public policymakers in understandable formats, emphasis has been placed on training early-career scientists in new mapping techniques and emerging technologies, and a successful model has been developed of state/provincial and federal collaboration focused on geologic mapping, as evidenced by this program's unprecedented and long-term successful experiment of 10 geological surveys working together to address common issues.

GSA Special Papers↗
USGS2010

Geological mapping goes 3-D in response to societal needs

The transition to 3-D mapping has been made possible by technological advances in digital cartography, GIS, data storage, analysis, and visualization. Despite various challenges, technological advancements facilitated a gradual transition from 2-D maps to 2.5-D draped maps to 3-D geological mapping, supported by digital spatial and relational databases that can be interrogated horizontally or vertically and viewed interactively. Challenges associated with data collection, human resources, and information management are daunting due to their resource and training requirements. The exchange of strategies at the workshops has highlighted the use of basin analysis to develop a process-based predictive knowledge framework that facilitates data integration. Three-dimensional geological information meets a public demand that fills in the blanks left by conventional 2-D mapping. Two-dimensional mapping will, however, remain the standard method for extensive areas of complex geology, particularly where deformed igneous and metamorphic rocks defy attempts at 3-D depiction.

GSA Today↗
USGS2017

Engaging the user community for advancing societal applications of the Surface Water Ocean Topography mission

Scheduled for launch in 2021, the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission will be a truly unique mission that will provide high-temporal-frequency maps of surface water extents and elevation variations of global water bodies (lakes/reservoirs, rivers, estuaries, oceans, and sea ice) at higher spatial resolution than is available with current technologies (Biancamaria et al. 2016; Alsdorf et al. 2007). The primary instrument on SWOT is based on a Ka-band radar interferometer (KaRIN), which uses radar interferometery technology. The satellite will fly two radar antennas at either end of a 10-m (33 ft) mast, allowing it to measure the elevation of the surface along a 120-km (75 mi)-wide swath below. The availability of high-frequency and high-resolution maps of elevations and extents for surface water bodies and oceans will present unique opportunities to address numerous societally relevant challenges around the globe (Srinivasan et al. 2015). These opportunities may include such diverse and far-ranging applications as fisheries management, flood inundation mapping/risk mitigation/forecasting, wildlife conservation, global data assimilation for improving forecast of ocean tides and weather, reservoir management, climate change impacts and adaptation, and river discharge estimation, among others. Although SWOT is a research mission and not scheduled for launch for another 4 years, there is a need to build engagement within the application community now and to explore how best to advance the societal relevance and benefits of the SWOT mission from concept to reality. The SWOT Applications Working Group organized a workshop on 5–6 April 2017 at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) headquarters in Reston, Virginia. The goal of the workshop was to understand and communicate how the applications community can use SWOT data to address problems of profound societal relevance.

Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society↗
USGS2013

Flying with the wind: Scale dependency of speed and direction measurements in modelling wind support in avian flight

Background : Understanding how environmental conditions, especially wind, influence birds' flight speeds is a prerequisite for understanding many important aspects of bird flight, including optimal migration strategies, navigation, and compensation for wind drift. Recent developments in tracking technology and the increased availability of data on large-scale weather patterns have made it possible to use path annotation to link the location of animals to environmental conditions such as wind speed and direction. However, there are various measures available for describing not only wind conditions but also the bird's flight direction and ground speed, and it is unclear which is best for determining the amount of wind support (the length of the wind vector in a bird’s flight direction) and the influence of cross-winds (the length of the wind vector perpendicular to a bird’s direction) throughout a bird's journey. Results : We compared relationships between cross-wind, wind support and bird movements, using path annotation derived from two different global weather reanalysis datasets and three different measures of direction and speed calculation for 288 individuals of nine bird species. Wind was a strong predictor of bird ground speed, explaining 10-66% of the variance, depending on species. Models using data from different weather sources gave qualitatively similar results; however, determining flight direction and speed from successive locations, even at short (15 min intervals), was inferior to using instantaneous GPS-based measures of speed and direction. Use of successive location data significantly underestimated the birds' ground and airspeed, and also resulted in mistaken associations between cross-winds, wind support, and their interactive effects, in relation to the birds' onward flight. Conclusions : Wind has strong effects on bird flight, and combining GPS technology with path annotation of weather variables allows us to quantify these effects for understanding flight behaviour. The potentially strong influence of scaling effects must be considered and implemented in developing sampling regimes and data analysis.

Movement Ecology↗
USGS2022

The global environmental agenda urgently needs a semantic web of knowledge

Progress in key social-ecological challenges of the global environmental agenda (e.g., climate change, biodiversity conservation, Sustainable Development Goals) is hampered by a lack of integration and synthesis of existing scientific evidence. Facing a fast-increasing volume of data, information remains compartmentalized to pre-defined scales and fields, rarely building its way up to collective knowledge. Today's distributed corpus of human intelligence, including the scientific publication system, cannot be exploited with the efficiency needed to meet current evidence synthesis challenges; computer-based intelligence could assist this task. Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based approaches underlain by semantics and machine reasoning offer a constructive way forward, but depend on greater understanding of these technologies by the science and policy communities and coordination of their use. By labelling web-based scientific information to become readable by both humans and computers, machines can search, organize, reuse, combine and synthesize information quickly and in novel ways. Modern open science infrastructure—i.e., public data and model repositories—is a useful starting point, but without shared semantics and common standards for machine actionable data and models, our collective ability to build, grow, and share a collective knowledge base will remain limited. The application of semantic and machine reasoning technologies by a broad community of scientists and decision makers will favour open synthesis to contribute and reuse knowledge and apply it toward decision making.

Environmental Evidence↗
USGS2018

Accounting for location uncertainty in azimuthaltelemetry data improves ecological inference

Background Characterizing animal space use is critical for understanding ecological relationships. Animal telemetry technology has revolutionized the fields of ecology and conservation biology by providing high quality spatial data on animal movement. Radio-telemetry with very high frequency (VHF) radio signals continues to be a useful technology because of its low cost, miniaturization, and low battery requirements. Despite a number of statistical developments synthetically integrating animal location estimation and uncertainty with spatial process models using satellite telemetry data, we are unaware of similar developments for azimuthal telemetry data. As such, there are few statistical options to handle these unique data and no synthetic framework for modeling animal location uncertainty and accounting for it in ecological models. We developed a hierarchical modeling framework to provide robust animal location estimates from one or more intersecting or non-intersecting azimuths. We used our azimuthal telemetry model (ATM) to account for azimuthal uncertainty with covariates and propagate location uncertainty into spatial ecological models. We evaluate the ATM with commonly used estimators (Lenth (1981) maximum likelihood and M-Estimators) using simulation. We also provide illustrative empirical examples, demonstrating the impact of ignoring location uncertainty within home range and resource selection analyses. We further use simulation to better understand the relationship among location uncertainty, spatial covariate autocorrelation, and resource selection inference. Results We found the ATM to have good performance in estimating locations and the only model that has appropriate measures of coverage. Ignoring animal location uncertainty when estimating resource selection or home ranges can have pernicious effects on ecological inference. Home range estimates can be overly confident and conservative when ignoring location uncertainty and resource selection coefficients can lead to incorrect inference and over confidence in the magnitude of selection. Furthermore, our simulation study clarified that incorporating location uncertainty helps reduce bias in resource selection coefficients across all levels of covariate spatial autocorrelation. Conclusion The ATM can accommodate one or more azimuths when estimating animal locations, regardless of how they intersect; this ensures that all data collected are used for ecological inference. Our findings and model development have important implications for interpreting historical analyses using this type of data and the future design of radio-telemetry studies.

Movement Ecology↗
USGS2013

Advancements in understanding the aeromagnetic expressions of basin-margin faults—An example from San Luis Basin, Colorado

Advancements in aeromagnetic acquisition technology over the past few decades have led to greater resolution of shallow geologic sources with low magnetization, such as intrasedimentary faults and paleochannels. Detection and mapping of intrasedimentary faults in particular can be important for understanding the overall structural setting of an area, even if exploration targets are much deeper. Aeromagnetic methods are especially useful for mapping structures in mountain-piedmont areas at the margins of structural basins, where mineral exploration and seismic-hazard studies may be focused, and where logistical or data-quality issues encumber seismic methods. Understanding if the sources of aeromagnetic anomalies in this context originate from sedimentary units or bedrock is important for evaluating basin structure and/or depth to shallow exploration targets. Advancements in aeromagnetic acquisition technology over the past few decades have led to greater resolution of shallow geologic sources with low magnetization, such as intrasedimentary faults and paleochannels. Detection and mapping of intrasedimentary faults in particular can be important for understanding the overall structural setting of an area, even if exploration targets are much deeper. Aeromagnetic methods are especially useful for mapping structures in mountain-piedmont areas at the margins of structural basins, where mineral exploration and seismic-hazard studies may be focused, and where logistical or data-quality issues encumber seismic methods. Understanding if the sources of aeromagnetic anomalies in this context originate from sedimentary units or bedrock is important for evaluating basin structure and/or depth to shallow exploration targets. Although explorationists have surmised that subtle, narrow, linear aeromagnetic anomalies or gradients are caused by intrasedimentary faults, the nature of the magnetic sources has been debated. A common and intuitive explanation for the linear anomalies considers that the magnetic properties of the fault zone have been altered by secondary chemical processes, either through the growth or destruction of magnetic minerals. However, comprehensive, multidisciplinary studies of partially exposed intrasedimentary faults in basins within the central Rio Grande Rift, New Mexico, have shown that the anomalies can be completely explained by the tectonic juxtaposition of strata of differing magnetic properties at the fault (summarized in Grauch and Hudson, 2007 , 2011 ). Whereas a reduction in magnetic susceptibility was detected at some fault zones in the laboratory, the slight reduction and small volume of material affected were insufficient to produce aeromagnetic anomalies ( Hudson et al., 2008 ). A key finding of the studies summarized by Grauch and Hudson (2007 , 2011 ) is that multiple magnetic contrasts (sources) can be vertically stacked at one fault. This situation requires rethinking of common assumptions when modeling faults as simple steps or when interpreting depth-estimation results. The multiple contrasts in these case studies arise from the tectonic juxtaposition of stratified sediments with differing magnetic properties. Multiple, vertically stacked magnetic sources also can occur where volcanic layers are interbedded with the sedimentary section or where faults offset both shallow bedrock and its overlying sedimentary cover. The latter situation is common at basin margins. Herein, we summarize and expand on an investigation of the sources of aeromagnetic anomalies related to faults along the eastern margin of the San Luis Basin, northern Rio Grande Rift, Colorado ( Grauch et al., 2010 ). Similar to the faults examined in the central Rio Grande Rift, magnetic sources can be completely explained by tectonic juxtaposition and produce multiple, vertically stacked magnetic contrasts at individual faults. However, the geologic sources are different. They arise from both the sedimentary cover and the underlying bedrock rather than from stratified sediments. In addition, geologic evidence for secondary growth or destruction of magnetic minerals at the fault zone is lacking.

Colorado↗
USGS2023

GeoAI for spatial image processing

The development of digital image processing, as a subset of digital signal processing, depended upon the maturity of photography and image science, introduction of computers, discovery and advancement of digital recording devices, and the capture of digital images. In addition, government and industry applications in the Earth and medical sciences were paramount to the growth of the technology. From the early days when photography was first introduced to science to today, artificial intelligence and deep learning technologies have been intensively used to analyze imagery. Spatial image processing has experienced breakthroughs and evolutions. This chapter presents an overview of the history of image processing, GeoAI-based image processing applications, and the role of GeoAI in advancing image processing methods and research. We also discussed the remaining challenges to using GeoAI for image processing regarding training data annotation, the issues of scale, resolution, and change in space over time.

Book chapter↗
USGS2016

Endocrine-disrupting chemicals and oil and natural gas operations: Potential environmental contamination and recommendations to assess complex environmental mixtures

Background : Hydraulic fracturing technologies, developed over the last 65 years, have only recently been combined with horizontal drilling to unlock oil and gas reserves previously deemed inaccessible. While these technologies have dramatically increased domestic oil and natural gas production, they have also raised concerns for the potential contamination of local water supplies with the approximately 1,000 chemicals used throughout the process, including many known or suspected endocrine-disrupting chemicals. Objectives : We discuss the need for an endocrine component to health assessments for drilling-dense regions in the context of hormonal and anti-hormonal activities for chemicals used. Methods : We discuss the literature on 1) surface and ground water contamination by oil and gas extraction operations, and 2) potential human exposure, particularly in context of the total hormonal and anti-hormonal activities present in surface and ground water from natural and anthropogenic sources, with initial analytical results and critical knowledge gaps discussed. Discussion : In light of the potential for environmental release of oil and gas chemicals that can disrupt hormone receptor systems, we recommend methods for assessing complex hormonally active environmental mixtures. Conclusions : We describe a need for an endocrine-centric component for overall health assessments and provide supporting information that using this may help explain reported adverse health trends as well as help develop recommendations for environmental impact assessments and monitoring programs.

Environmental Health Perspectives↗
USGS2003

Atomic weights of the elements. Review 2000 (IUPAC Technical Report)

A consistent set of internationally accepted atomic weights has long been an essential aim of the scientific community because of the relevance of these values to science and technology, as well as to trade and commerce subject to ethical, legal, and international standards. The standard atomic weights of the elements are regularly evaluated, recommended, and published in updated tables by the Commission on Atomic Weights and Isotopic Abundances (CAWIA) of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC). These values are invariably associated with carefully evaluated uncertainties. Atomic weights were originally determined by mass ratio measurements coupled with an understanding of chemical stoichiometry, but are now based almost exclusively on knowledge of the isotopic composition (derived from isotope-abundance ratio measurements) and the atomic masses of the isotopes of the elements. Atomic weights and atomic masses are now scaled to a numerical value of exactly 12 for the mass of the carbon isotope of mass number 12. Technological advances in mass spectrometry and nuclear-reaction energies have enabled atomic masses to be determined with a relative uncertainty of better than 1 ×10−7 . Isotope abundances for an increasing number of elements can be measured to better than 1 ×10−3 . The excellent precision of such measurements led to the discovery that many elements, in different specimens, display significant variations in their isotope-abundance ratios, caused by a variety of natural and industrial physicochemical processes. While such variations increasingly place a constraint on the uncertainties with which some standard atomic weights can be stated, they provide numerous opportunities for investigating a range of important phenomena in physical, chemical, cosmological, biological, and industrial processes. This review reflects the current and increasing interest of science in the measured differences between source-specific and even sample-specific atomic weights. These relative comparisons can often be made with a smaller uncertainty than is achieved in the best calibrated “absolute ” (=SI-traceable) atomic-weight determinations. Accurate determinations of the atomic weights of certain elements also influence the values of fundamental constants such as the Avogadro, Faraday, and universal gas constants. This review is in two parts: the first summarizes the development of the science of atomic-weight determinations during the 20th century; the second summarizes the changes and variations that have been recognized in the values and uncertainties of atomic weights, on an element-by-element basis, in the latter part of the 20th century.

Pure and Applied Chemistry↗
USGS2005

Initial results of rover localization and topographic mapping for the 2003 mars exploration rover mission

This paper presents the initial results of lander and rover localization and topographic mapping of the MER 2003 mission (by Sol 225 for Spirit and Sol 206 for Opportunity). The Spirit rover has traversed a distance of 3.2 km (actual distance traveled instead of odometry) and Opportunity at 1.2 km. We localized the landers in the Gusev Crater and on the Meridiani Planum using two-way Doppler radio positioning technology and cartographic triangulations through landmarks visible in both orbital and ground images. Additional high-resolution orbital images were taken to verify the determined lander positions. Visual odometry and bundle-adjustment technologies were applied to overcome wheel slippages, azimuthal angle drift and other navigation errors (as large as 21 percent). We generated timely topographic products including 68 orthophoto maps and 3D Digital Terrain Models, eight horizontal rover traverse maps, vertical traverse profiles up to Sol 214 for Spirit and Sol 62 for Opportunity, and five 3D crater models. A web-based landing-site Geographic Information System (GIS) has been set up at The Ohio State University to update and disseminate the daily localization and topographic information to support tactical and strategic operations of the mission. Also described in this paper are applications of the data for science operations planning, geological traverse survey, survey of wind-related features, and other science applications. The majority of the instruments onboard both rovers are healthy at this moment, and they will continue to explore the two landing sites on the Martian surface. We expect to report further localization and topographic mapping results to be achieved in the rest of the mission period and in post-mission data processing.

Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing↗
USGS2017

Operational shoreline mapping with high spatial resolution radar and geographic processing

A comprehensive mapping technology was developed utilizing standard image processing and available GIS procedures to automate shoreline identification and mapping from 2 m synthetic aperture radar ( SAR ) HH amplitude data. The development used four NASA Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle SAR ( UAVSAR ) data collections between summer 2009 and 2012 and a fall 2012 collection of wetlands dominantly fronted by vegetated shorelines along the Mississippi River Delta that are beset by severe storms, toxic releases, and relative sea-level rise. In comparison to shorelines interpreted from 0.3 m and 1 m orthophotography, the automated GIS 10 m alongshore sampling found SAR shoreline mapping accuracy to be ±2 m, well within the lower range of reported shoreline mapping accuracies. The high comparability was obtained even though water levels differed between the SAR and photography image pairs and included all shorelines regardless of complexity. The SAR mapping technology is highly repeatable and extendable to other SAR instruments with similar operational functionality.

Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing↗