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USGS2019

A draft decision framework for the National Park Service Interior Region 5 bison stewardship strategy

The Department of the Interior Bison Conservation Initiative calls for its bureaus to plan and implement collaborative American bison conservation and to ensure involvement by tribal, state, and local governments and the public in that conservation. Four independently managed and geographically separated National Park Service (NPS) units in Interior Region 5 (IR5) preserve bison and other components of a formerly contiguous Great Plains landscape. Management of bison in IR5 parks has historically been specific to each park, and livestock and range management science informed much of the decision making. In the past two decades, NPS has shifted away from managing bison from this livestock-based perspective towards a wildlife stewardship approach, including ensuring their long-term adaptive potential and considering them as just one part of a complex ecosystem. This shift requires a more holistic and cooperative approach to stewardship that is challenging not only because of limitations in funding and fluctuations in leadership priorities, but also because of the constraints imposed by the parks’ relatively small, fenced areas. The IR5 NPS Bison Stewardship Strategy (“Strategy”) will help the NPS to meet its responsibilities in cooperative stewardship of bison. The Strategy will serve to organize and consolidate the NPS’s legal and policy responsibilities within a framework of collectively defined values and objectives to support the careful and transparent decision-making processes that both guide and transcend park-specific planning. This report describes a preliminary decision framework for the Strategy, including the context, the fundamental objectives, and a range of alternative strategies developed and considered through two workshops and a series of conference calls with NPS personnel, stakeholders, and outside experts with an interest in IR5 NPS bison stewardship. Although not the Strategy itself, this framework serves as the Strategy’s starting point and identifies 14 fundamental objectives, falling in four major themes: Persistence of Wild and Healthy Bison 1. Maximize the long-term persistence of bison in IR5 parks 2. Maximize the long-term adaptive capacity of bison in North America 3. Maximize the wildness of the bison herds 4. Maximize humane treatment of bison, while allowing natural processes to occur Supporting Tribal Buffalo Culture 5. Improve relationships, trust, and communication with Tribes to enhance shared stewardship of bison within and beyond IR5 6. Maximize the number of live, healthy bison that can be transferred to tribal herds Persistence of Native Ecological Communities and Processes 7. Maximize structural and compositional heterogeneity of native prairie plant communities across space and time within each park 8. Maximize the abundance and diversity of animal species of special concern 9. Minimize the loss of native grassland within each park 10. Minimize the abundance of exotic plants in the park landscape 11. Maximize riparian area and wetland integrity Public Outreach 12. Maximize the number of healthy, wild bison that are visible to the public 13. Maximize the safety of visitors 14. Maximize public understanding of the past, present, and future of bison and Native Americans in the Great Plains The terms “minimize” and “maximize” in these objectives describe the desired direction for each individual objective. Finding the right balance among these objectives and any others identified in further work is one of the central challenges in developing the Strategy. To that end, this report also demonstrates and describes potential methods for evaluating how well alternative strategies would achieve each of the fundamental objectives.

Natural Resource Report↗

USGS2026

Spatio-temporal modeling for assessing geoenergy resources: A workflow applied to gas in place variation in coal beds

The ability to estimate spatio-temporal changes in hydrocarbon reservoir properties and energy resources within pore volumes is essential for optimizing production, reservoir management, geologic energy storage, and safety in underground mining operations. In coal seams, predicting remaining methane gas-in-place (GIP) is critical for quantifying producible gas and improving mine safety and productivity through effective ventilation planning. Although such changes are commonly evaluated using physics-based numerical simulation models, these approaches often require extensive data, calibration effort, and time. This study presents a spatio-temporal geostatistical modeling approach that bridges the gap between purely spatial models and full numerical simulations. The method is applied to a case study of coal seam degasification in the Mary Lee coal group, Black Warrior Basin, Alabama, USA, to estimate GIP evolution over time within a selected mining district. The analysis uses published data from prior natural gas production history-matching of degasification using vertical wells. Empirical spatial and temporal statistics were calculated for reservoir pressure and water saturation, and spatio-temporal variogram models were fitted to experimental variograms. These models provided the structural basis for spatio-temporal kriging, integrated with spatial estimates of time-invariant parameters (porosity, density, and thickness) to estimate GIP. This approach enabled estimation of GIP changes over time, including periods without data. Boxplots of GIP estimates indicated systematic depletion and decreasing spatial variability, reflecting the impacts of degasification. Comparison with cumulative gas production from empirical well records showed approximately 85% agreement based on a relative similarity metric. Spatio-temporal GIP estimates were also used to estimate methane emissions to longwall ventilation systems and compared with reported emissions from the U.S. EPA Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, showing similar distributions (≈80%) given data limitations. Overall, this integrated modeling approach provides time-dependent GIP estimates with broader implications for resource assessment applications.

Alabama↗

USGS2025

Tapwater exposures, residential risk, and mitigation in a PFAS-impacted-groundwater community

Tapwater (TW) safety and sustainability are priorities in the United States. Per/polyfluoroalkyl substance(s) (PFAS) contamination is a growing public-health concern due to prolific use, widespread TW exposures, and mounting human-health concerns. Historically-rural, actively-urbanizing communities that rely on surficial-aquifer private wells incur elevated risks of unrecognized TW exposures, including PFAS, due to limited private-well monitoring and contaminant-source proliferation in urbanizing landscapes. Here, a broad-analytical-scope TW-assessment was conducted in a hydrologically-vulnerable, Mississippi River alluvial-island community, where PFAS contamination of the shallow-alluvial drinking-water aquifer has been documented, but more comprehensive contaminant characterization to inform decision-making is currently lacking. In 2021, we analyzed 510 organics, 34 inorganics, and 3 microbial groups in 11 residential and community locations to assess (1) TW risks beyond recognized PFAS issues, (2) day-to-day and year-to-year risk variability, and (3) suitability of the underlying sandstone aquifer as an alternative source to mitigate TW-PFAS exposures. Seventy-six organics and 25 inorganics were detected. Potential human-health risks of detected TW exposures were explored based on cumulative benchmark-based toxicity quotients ( ∑ TQ ). Elevated risks ( ∑ TQ ≥ 1) from organic and inorganic contaminants were observed in all alluvial-aquifer-sourced synoptic samples but not in sandstone-aquifer-sourced samples. Repeated sampling at 3 sites over 52–55 h indicated limited variability in risk over the short-term. Comparable PFAS-specific ∑ TQ for spatial-synoptic, short-term (3 days) temporal, and long-term (3 years quarterly) temporal samples indicated that synoptic results provided useful insight into the risks of TW-PFAS exposures at French Island over the long-term. No PFAS detections in sandstone-aquifer-sourced samples over a 3 year period indicated no PFAS-associated risk and supported the sandstone aquifer as an alternative drinking-water source to mitigate community TW-PFAS exposures. This study illustrated the importance of expanded contaminant monitoring of private-well TW, beyond known concerns (in this case, PFAS), to reduce the risks of a range of unrecognized contaminant exposures.

Wisconsin↗

USGS2026

Changing drivers of regional large magnitude avalanche frequency throughout Colorado, USA

Large magnitude snow avalanches (destructive size ≥ D3) impact settlements, transportation corridors, and public safety worldwide. In Colorado, United States, avalanches have killed more people than any other natural hazard since 1950. In March 2019, a large magnitude avalanche cycle occurred throughout the entire mountainous portion of Colorado resulting in more than 1000 reported avalanches during a two-week period. Nearly 200 of these avalanches were size D4 or larger with at least three D5 avalanches. However, placing this 2019 large magnitude avalanche cycle in historic context requires data prior to the instrumental record. Here, we paired tree disturbance data from dendrochronology (1698 to 2020) with meteorological data from the modeled and instrumental record (1901 to 2020) to understand the frequency and climate drivers of large magnitude snow avalanche cycles. The extensive number of downed trees from the 2019 avalanche cycle allowed us to collect 1,188 cross-sections and cores from 1023 individual trees within 24 avalanche paths across the state. From these samples we identified 4135 avalanche-related growth disturbances. We employed a strategic nested sampling design to spatially aggregate avalanche frequency from individual avalanche paths, to counties, to three major sub-regions (i.e., north, central, and south), and across the entire region (i.e., state of Colorado). Over a period spanning more than three centuries (1698 to 2020), we identified 76 avalanche years within 24 individual avalanche paths. Large magnitude avalanche event frequency varied across paths and sub-regions with several notable region-wide avalanche cycles. Both tree-ring and historical written records highlighted 1899 as a year with widespread and large magnitude avalanche activity similar to the March 2019 avalanche cycle. Since the early-20th century (1900 to 2020) regional avalanche probability declined significantly in parallel with decreasing snowpack throughout Colorado. Similarly, dominant avalanche regimes shifted from large magnitude regional cycles driven by above average snowfall years over most of the record, to regional avalanche cycles occurring more commonly in average to low snow years since 1988. In recent decades, a lack of December precipitation and above average March precipitation characterized years with regional large magnitude avalanche activity. Even with declining snow water equivalent, truly extreme regional large magnitude avalanche cycles remain possible – as demonstrated by the 2019 cycle. This underscores that rare but high-impact events are not eliminated by long-term trends. Understanding the changing snow and weather drivers and subsequent behavior of large magnitude avalanche cycles across multiple spatial scales may improve avalanche forecasting and the products and mitigations strategies developed by structural engineers to mitigate avalanche danger. This can decrease the avalanche risk to the public and improve infrastructure design in avalanche terrain.

Colorado↗