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USGS2005

The Colorado Plateau II: biophysical, socioeconomic, and cultural research

The publication of The Colorado Plateau: Cultural, Biological, and Physical Research in 2004 marked a timely summation of current research in the Four Corners states. This new volume, derived from the seventh Biennial Conference on the Colorado Plateau in 2003, complements the previous book by focusing on the integration of science into resource management issues. The 32 chapters range in content from measuring human impacts on cultural resources, through grazing and the wildland-urban interface issues, to parameters of climate change on the Plateau. The book also introduces economic perspectives by considering shifting patterns and regional disparities in the Colorado Plateau economy. A series of chapters on mountain lions explores the human-wildland interface. These chapters deal with the entire spectrum of challenges associated with managing this large mammal species in Arizona and on the Colorado Plateau, conveying a wealth of timely information of interest to wildlife managers and enthusiasts. Another provocative set of chapters on biophysical resources explores the management of forest restoration, from the micro scale all the way up to large-scale GIS analyses of ponderosa pine ecosystems on the Colorado Plateau. Given recent concerns for forest health in the wake of fires, severe drought, and bark-beetle infestation, these chapters will prove enlightening for forest service, park service, and land management professionals at both the federal and state level, as well as general readers interested in how forest management practices will ultimately affect their recreation activities. With broad coverage that touches on topics as diverse as movement patterns of rattlesnakes, calculating watersheds, and rescuing looted rockshelters, this volume stands as a compendium of cutting-edge research on the Colorado Plateau that offers a wealth of insights for many scholars.

Utah;Colorado;Arizona;New Mexico↗
USGS2008

The Colorado Plateau III: integrating research and resources management for effective conservation

Roughly centered on the Four Corners region of the southwestern United States, the Colorado Plateau covers an area of 130,000 square miles. The relatively high semi-arid province boasts nine national parks, sixteen national monuments, many state parks, and dozens of wilderness areas. With the highest concentration of parklands in North America and unique geological and ecological features, the area is of particular interest to researchers. Derived from the Eighth Biennial Conference of Research on the Colorado Plateau, this third volume in a series of research on the Colorado Plateau expands upon the previous two books. This volume focuses on the integration of science into resource management issues, summarizes what criteria make a successful collaborative effort, outlines land management concerns about drought, provides summaries of current biological, sociological, and archaeological research, and highlights current environmental issues in the Four Corner States of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah. With broad coverage that touches on topics as diverse as historical aspects of pronghorn antelope movement patterns through calculating watershed prescriptions to the role of wind-blown sand in preserving archaeological sites on the Colorado River, this volume stands as a compendium of cuttingedge management-oriented research on the Colorado Plateau. The book also introduces, for the first time, tools that can be used to assist with collaboration efforts among landowners and managers who wish to work together toward preserving resources on the Colorado Plateau and offers a wealth of insights into land management questions for many readers, especially people interested in the natural history, biology, anthropology, wildlife, and cultural management issues of the region.

Utah;Arizona;Colorado;New Mexico↗
USGS2010

The Colorado Plateau IV: shaping conservation through science and management

Roughly centered on the Four Corners region of the southwestern United States, the Colorado Plateau covers some 130,000 square miles of sparsely vegetated plateaus, mesas, canyons, arches, and cliffs in Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico. With elevations ranging from 3,000 to 14,000 feet, the natural systems found within the plateau are dramatically varied, from desert to alpine conditions. This book focuses on the integration of science and resource management issues in this unique and highly varied environment. Broken into three subsections, this volume addresses conservation biology, biophysical resources, and inventory and monitoring concerns. The chapters range in content, addressing conservation issues–past, present, and future–on the Colorado Plateau, measurement of human impacts on resources, grazing and wildland-urban interfaces, and tools and methods for monitoring habitats and species. An informative read for people interested in the conservation and natural history of the region, the book will also serve as a valuable reference for those people engaged in the management of cultural and biological resources of the Colorado Plateau, as well as scientists interested in methods and tools for land and resource management throughout the West.

Utah;Colorado;Arizona;New Mexico↗
USGS2016

Manganese nodules

The existence of manganese (Mn) nodules (Figure 1) has been known since the late 1800s when they were collected during the Challenger expedition of 1873–1876. However, it was not until after WWII that nodules were further studied in detail for their ability to adsorb metals from seawater. Many of the early studies did not distinguish Mn nodules from Mn crusts. Economic interest in Mn nodules began in the late 1950s and early 1960s when John Mero finished his Ph.D. thesis on this subject, which was published in the journal Economic Geology (Mero, 1962) and later as a book (Mero, 1965). By the mid-1970s, large consortia had formed to search for and mine Mn nodules that occur between the Clarion and Clipperton fracture zones (CCZ) in the NE Pacific (Figure 2). This is still the area considered of greatest economic potential in the global ocean because of high nickel (Ni), copper (Cu), and Mn contents and the dense distribution of nodules in the area. While the mining of nodules was fully expected to begin in the late 1970s or early 1980s, this never occurred due to a downturn in the price of metals on the global market. Since then, many research cruises have been undertaken to study the CCZ nodules, and now 15 contracts for exploration sites have been given or are pending by the International Seabed Authority (ISA). Many books and science journal articles have been published summarizing the early work (e.g., Baturin, 1988; Halbach et al., 1988), and research has continued to the present day (e.g., ISA, 1999; ISA, 2010). Although the initial attraction for nodules was their high Ni, Cu, and Mn contents, subsequent work has shown that nodules host large quantities of other critical metals needed for high-tech, green-tech, and energy applications (Hein et al., 2013; Hein and Koschinsky, 2014).

Book chapter↗
USGS2013

Spatial capture-recapture

Spatial Capture-Recapture provides a revolutionary extension of traditional capture-recapture methods for studying animal populations using data from live trapping, camera trapping, DNA sampling, acoustic sampling, and related field methods. This book is a conceptual and methodological synthesis of spatial capture-recapture modeling. As a comprehensive how-to manual, this reference contains detailed examples of a wide range of relevant spatial capture-recapture models for inference about population size and spatial and temporal variation in demographic parameters. Practicing field biologists studying animal populations will find this book to be a useful resource, as will graduate students and professionals in ecology, conservation biology, and fisheries and wildlife management.

Book↗
USGS2014

Tick control: Trapping, bio-control, host management and other alternative strategies

Biology of Ticks is the most comprehensive work on tick biology and tick-borne diseases. This second edition is a multi-authored work, featuring the research and analyses of renowned experts across the globe. Spanning two volumes, the book examines the systematics, biology, structure, ecological adaptations, evolution, genomics and the molecular processes that underpin the growth, development and survival of these important disease-transmitting parasites. Also discussed is the remarkable array of diseases transmitted (or caused) by ticks, as well as modern methods for their control. This book should serve as a modern reference for students, scientists, physicians, veterinarians and other specialists. Volume II includes chapters on the ecology of non-nidicolous and nidicolous ticks, genetics and genomics (including the genome of the Lyme disease vector Ixodes scapularis) and immunity, including host immune responses to tick feeding and tick-host interactions, as well as the tick's innate immune system that prevents and/or controls microbial infections. Six chapters cover in depth the many diseases caused by the major tick-borne pathogens, including tick-borne protozoa, viruses, rickettsiae of all types, other types of bacteria (e.g., the Lyme disease agent) and diseases related to tick paralytic agents and toxins. The remaining chapters are devoted to tick control using vaccines, acaricides, repellents, biocontrol, and, finally, techniques for breeding ticks in order to develop tick colonies for scientific study.

Book chapter↗
USGS2014

Geomorphological Fieldwork

Geomorphological Fieldwork addresses a topic that always remains popular within the geosciences and environmental science. More specifically, the volume conveys a growing legacy of field-based learning for young geomorphologists that can be used as a student book for field-based university courses and postgraduate research requiring fieldwork or field schools. The editors have much experience of field-based learning within geomorphology and extend this to physical geography. The topics covered are relevant to basic geomorphology as well as applied approaches in environmental and cultural geomorphology. The book integrates a physical-human approach to geography, but focuses on physical geography and geomorphology from an integrated field-based geoscience perspective.

Book↗
USGS2015

Wolves on the hunt: The behavior of wolves hunting wild prey

The interactions between apex predators and their prey are some of the most awesome and meaningful in nature—displays of strength, endurance, and a deep coevolutionary history. And there is perhaps no apex predator more impressive and important in its hunting—or more infamous, more misjudged—than the wolf. Because of wolves’ habitat, speed, and general success at evading humans, researchers have faced great obstacles in studying their natural hunting behaviors. The first book to focus explicitly on wolf hunting of wild prey, Wolves on the Hunt seeks to fill these gaps in our knowledge and understanding. Combining behavioral data, thousands of hours of original field observations, research in the literature, a wealth of illustrations, and—in the e-book edition and online—video segments from cinematographer Robert K. Landis, the authors create a compelling and complex picture of these hunters. The wolf is indeed an adept killer, able to take down prey much larger than itself. While adapted to hunt primarily hoofed animals, a wolf—or especially a pack of wolves—can kill individuals of just about any species. But even as wolves help drive the underlying rhythms of the ecosystems they inhabit, their evolutionary prowess comes at a cost: wolves spend one-third of their time hunting—the most time consuming of all wolf activities—and success at the hunt only comes through traveling long distances, persisting in the face of regular failure, detecting and taking advantage of deficiencies in the physical condition of individual prey, and through ceaseless trial and error, all while risking injury or death. By describing and analyzing the behaviors wolves use to hunt and kill various wild prey—including deer, moose, caribou, elk, Dall sheep, mountain goats, bison, musk oxen, arctic hares, beavers, and others—Wolves on the Hunt provides a revelatory portrait of one of nature’s greatest hunters.

Book↗
USGS2006

King of the 40th parallel - Discovery in the American West

This book recounts the life and achievements of Clarence King, widely recognized as one of America’s most gifted intellectuals of the nineteenth century, and a legendary figure in the American West. King’s genius, singular accomplishments, and near-death adventures unfold in a narrative centered on his personal relationship with his lifelong friend and colleague, James Gardner. The two, upon completing their studies at Yale, traveled by wagon train across the continent and worked with the California Geological Survey. King went on to establish the Geological Exploration of the 40th Parallel, a government mapping program that stretched across the western mountain chains from California to Wyoming. This was the precursor to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Founded in 1879, with Clarence King as its architect and first director, the USGS became the most important and influential science agency in the nation. The adventurous aspects of conducting geological fieldwork in the West, much of them documented by letters written by King and Gardner, punctuate a book copiously illustrated with historic maps and photographs showing localities and people important to the story.

Book↗
USGS2016

Crustal permeability

Permeability is the primary control on fluid flow in the Earth’s crust and is key to a surprisingly wide range of geological processes, because it controls the advection of heat and solutes and the generation of anomalous pore pressures. The practical importance of permeability – and the potential for large, dynamic changes in permeability – is highlighted by ongoing issues associated with hydraulic fracturing for hydrocarbon production (“fracking”), enhanced geothermal systems, and geologic carbon sequestration. Although there are thousands of research papers on crustal permeability, this is the first book-length treatment. This book bridges the historical dichotomy between the hydrogeologic perspective of permeability as a static material property and the perspective of other Earth scientists who have long recognized permeability as a dynamic parameter that changes in response to tectonism, fluid production, and geochemical reactions.

Book↗
USGS1954

The flood control controversy: Big dams, little dams, and land management

The purpose of this book is to investigate the facts regarding flood control, a subject that has given rise to extreme controversy in the United States in recent years. The question of flood control is obviously a vital one not only to the United States but to many other countries. It is hoped that this book may lead to a far clearer understanding of the facts involved and so may prove a truly important influence in reconciling existing differences of opinion. Most of the material presented here has not previously been available to the general reader nor has it been easily accessible to professional people. Much of it, in fact, has been gathered by the authors from unpublished reports of government agencies and from discussions with technicians in the field. Part of the material, on the other hand, such as the sections on flood plain formation and the hydrologic effect of small dams, stems from original research by the authors.

Book↗
USGS2006

Structural equation modeling and natural systems

This book, first published in 2006, presents an introduction to the methodology of structural equation modeling, illustrates its use, and goes on to argue that it has revolutionary implications for the study of natural systems. A major theme of this book is that we have, up to this point, attempted to study systems primarily using methods (such as the univariate model) that were designed only for considering individual processes. Understanding systems requires the capacity to examine simultaneous influences and responses. Structural equation modeling (SEM) has such capabilities. It also possesses many other traits that add strength to its utility as a means of making scientific progress. In light of the capabilities of SEM, it can be argued that much of ecological theory is currently locked in an immature state that impairs its relevance. It is further argued that the principles of SEM are capable of leading to the development and evaluation of multivariate theories of the sort vitally needed for the conservation of natural systems.

Book↗
USGS1999

Wetland restoration, flood pulsing, and disturbance dynamics

While it is generally accepted that flood pulsing and disturbance dynamics are critical to wetland viability, there is as yet no consensus among those responsible for wetland restoration about how best to plan for those phenomena or even whether it is really necessary to do so at all. In this groundbreaking book, Dr. Beth Middleton draws upon the latest research from around the world to build a strong case for making flood pulsing and disturbance dynamics integral to the wetland restoration planning process. While the initial chapters of the book are devoted to laying the conceptual foundations, most of the coverage is concerned with demonstrating the practical implications for wetland restoration and management of the latest ecological theory and research. It includes a fascinating case history section in which Dr. Middleton explores the restoration models used in five major North American, European, Australian, African, and Asian wetland projects, and analyzes their relative success from the perspective of flood pulsing and disturbance dynamics planning. Wetland Restoration also features a wealth of practical information useful to all those involved in wetland restoration and management, including: * A compendium of water level tolerances, seed germination, seedling recruitment, adult survival rates, and other key traits of wetland plant species * A bibliography of 1,200 articles and monographs covering all aspects of wetland restoration * A comprehensive directory of wetland restoration ftp sites worldwide * An extensive glossary of essential terms

Book↗
USGS1993

Seismic to­mography; theory and practice

Although highly theoretical and computer-orientated, seismic tomography has created spectacular images of anomolies within the Earth with dimensions of thousands of kilometers to few tens of meters. These images have enabled Earth scientists working on diverse areas to attack fundamental problems relating to the deep dynamical processes within our planet. Additionally, this technique is being used extensively to study the Earth's hazardous regions such as earthquake fault zones and volcanoes, as well as features beneficial to man such as oil or mineral-bearing structures. This book has been written by world experts and describes the theories, experimental and analytical procedures and results of applying seismic tomography from global to purely local scale. It represents the collective global perspective on the state of the art and focusses not only on the theoretical and practical aspects, but also on the uses for hydrocarbon, mineral and geothermal exploitation. Students and researchers in the Earth sciences, and research and exploration geophysicists should find this a useful, practical reference book for all aspects of their work.

Book↗
USGS2017

Mathematical models for plant-herbivore interactions

Mathematical Models of Plant-Herbivore Interactions addresses mathematical models in the study of practical questions in ecology, particularly factors that affect herbivory, including plant defense, herbivore natural enemies, and adaptive herbivory, as well as the effects of these on plant community dynamics. The result of extensive research on the use of mathematical modeling to investigate the effects of plant defenses on plant-herbivore dynamics, this book describes a toxin-determined functional response model (TDFRM) that helps explains field observations of these interactions. This book is intended for graduate students and researchers interested in mathematical biology and ecology.

Book↗
USGS2017

A synthesis of living shoreline perspectives

The main goal of this summary chapter is to synthesize author perspectives across the contributed chapters, make recommendations on the correct usage of the term living shorelines, and offer guidance for planning in the future. Nature-based approaches are being applied globally, as signified by the breadth of geographic coverage in this book. The author’s institutions and locations of study span the East, Gulf, and West Coasts of the United States, including the states of Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, California, Washington, and several national perspectives, including Hawaii; British Columbia in Canada; the Netherlands, as well as perspectives across Europe also including Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom; Sydney Harbor in Australia; and Belize. Living shoreline techniques are very diverse and practices can vary by region, salinity and tidal regime, and degrees of natural and artificial components. Techniques covered in this book include restoring oyster reefs, eelgrass, and mangroves, planting marshes with and without supportive sills (e.g., stone, oyster shell bags, coir logs), incorporating structures such as logs and reef balls, nourishing beaches and dunes with sediment, engineering habitat features into seawalls, and managed realignment. All of these can have a variety of components, such as permitting, land acquisition, design, and monitoring. However, given the diverse representation, there are some shared commonalities that can help inform and direct shoreline management moving forward.

Book chapter↗
USGS2015

Bayesian models: A statistical primer for ecologists

Bayesian modeling has become an indispensable tool for ecological research because it is uniquely suited to deal with complexity in a statistically coherent way. This textbook provides a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the latest Bayesian methods—in language ecologists can understand. Unlike other books on the subject, this one emphasizes the principles behind the computations, giving ecologists a big-picture understanding of how to implement this powerful statistical approach. Bayesian Models is an essential primer for non-statisticians. It begins with a definition of probability and develops a step-by-step sequence of connected ideas, including basic distribution theory, network diagrams, hierarchical models, Markov chain Monte Carlo, and inference from single and multiple models. This unique book places less emphasis on computer coding, favoring instead a concise presentation of the mathematical statistics needed to understand how and why Bayesian analysis works. It also explains how to write out properly formulated hierarchical Bayesian models and use them in computing, research papers, and proposals. This primer enables ecologists to understand the statistical principles behind Bayesian modeling and apply them to research, teaching, policy, and management. Presents the mathematical and statistical foundations of Bayesian modeling in language accessible to non-statisticians Covers basic distribution theory, network diagrams, hierarchical models, Markov chain Monte Carlo, and more Deemphasizes computer coding in favor of basic principles Explains how to write out properly factored statistical expressions representing Bayesian models

Book↗
USGS1999

Yellowstone and the biology of time: Photographs across a century

Established in 1872, Yellowstone National Park is the oldest and one of the largest national parks in the world. In this remarkable book, scientists Mary Meagher and Douglas B. Houston present 100 sets of photographs that compare the Yellowstone of old with the park of today. Most of the photo sets include three pictures-not the usual two-with many of the original views dating back to the 1870s and 1880s. From the same photo points used by early photographers, Meagher and Houston rephotographed the scenes in the 1970s, and then, following the great fires of 1988, again in the 1990s. The result is an illuminating record of Yellowstone’s dynamic ecosystem and its changes over time. Through close analysis of the photos and reference to the vast amount of available data, Meagher and Houston describe changes in vegetation, growth of wildlife populations, the effect of beaver occupancy on wetland areas, and geothermal and elevational shifts. At the same time they point out the extent to which many sites have not changed-despite important switches in park policy and an increase in human activity. Yellowstone National Park has long been the focus of major ecological debates. Should managers allow wildfires to burn? Should the elk and bison populations be controlled? Are too many people visiting the park? Yellowstone And The Biology Of Time offers a wealth of information to help us answer these questions. A visual treasure, this book will be of value to scientists from various disciplines as well as to the many people who care about Yellowstone and other protected wilderness areas around the world.

Yellowstone National Park↗