Translocating Wild California Valley Quail to Texas: An Evaluation of Survival, Dispersal, Tracking Efficacy, and Roost Preference

Quail translocations are becoming increasingly popular in regions of suitable habitat where local quail populations have declined. In northeastern Texas, USA, northern bobwhite (Colinus virginianus) populations have drastically declined for over a century and have reached undetectable levels in many areas. As a result, the number of quail hunters and quail conservation funding have also declined. California valley quail (Callipepla californica; hereafter, valley quail) have increased across their range and have been translocated to many states and countries. Thus, the goal of this study was to determine whether translocating wild valley quail to Texas was feasible, and evaluate their survival, dispersal, roost location preference, and potential predator impacts. We translocated 748 wild valley quail from Idaho, USA to northeastern Texas in 2019 and 2020. We collected quail location data from very high frequency (VHF) and digital transmitters. Motion-triggered cameras, scent stations, simulated nests, and raptor transects were used to record predator presence and potential predator impacts. Survival of birds with tracking devices was 63% (VHF) in 2019, and 38.8% (VHF) and 92.5% (digital tag) in 2020. Survival was greater for quail with digital transmitters. Median dispersal distance was 633.5 m in 2019 and 246.6 m in 2020 for valley quail with VHF transmitters, and 310.4 m for quail with digital transmitters. Minimum convex polygon area medians were 4.3 ha in 2019 and 3.1 ha in 2020 for quail with VHF transmitters, and 16.1 ha in 2020 for quail with digital transmitters. Roost sites were primarily in young stands of oak trees. Median simulated nest survival was 2 days (minimum [min] = 1, interquartile range [IQR] = 2–5.4, maximum [max] = 23) in 2019, and 7.5 days (min = 2, IQR = 4.5–15.2, max = 23) in 2020. The most frequent mammalian predators observed were raccoons (Procyon lotor), feral hogs (Sus scrofa), and white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus). Red-tailed hawks (Buteo jamaicensis) were the most frequent aerial predator. We completed the first documented translocation of wild California valley quail to Texas, demonstrating it is feasible. Future translocation may benefit from translocating more birds over a longer period of time, with more consistent methodology. The establishment of a sustainable population may require ≥7 years of translocation at a rate of 500 birds per year with \u3e2,000 ha of suitable habitat

Wave and Tidal Controls on Embayment Circulation and Headland Bypassing for an Exposed, Macrotidal Site

Headland bypassing is the transport of sediment around rocky headlands by wave and tidal action, associated with high-energy conditions and embayment circulation (e.g., mega-rips). Bypassing may be a key component in the sediment budget of many coastal cells, the quantification of which is required to predict the coastal response to extreme events and future coastal change. Waves, currents, and water levels were measured off the headland of a sandy, exposed, and macrotidal beach in 18-m and 26-m depths for 2 months. The observations were used to validate a Delft3D morphodynamic model, which was subsequently run for a wide range of scenarios. Three modes of bypassing were determined: (i) tidally-dominated control during low–moderate wave conditions [flux O (0–102 m3 day−1)]; (ii) combined tidal- and embayment circulation controls during moderate–high waves [O (103 m3 day−1)]; and (iii) multi-embayment circulation control during extreme waves [O (104 m3 day−1)]. A site-specific bypass parameter is introduced, which accurately (R2 = 0.95) matches the modelled bypass rates. A 5-year hindcast predicts bypassing is an order of magnitude less than observed cross-shore fluxes during extreme events, suggesting that bypassing at this site is insignificant at annual timescales. This work serves a starting point to generalise the prediction of headland bypassing

The extreme 2013/2014 winter storms: Beach recovery along the southwest coast of England

publisher: Elsevier articletitle: The extreme 2013/2014 winter storms: Beach recovery along the southwest coast of England journaltitle: Marine Geology articlelink: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.margeo.2016.10.011 content_type: article copyright: © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V

Subsurface processes generated by bore-driven swash on coarse-grained beaches

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Performance and durability of HgI_2 X-ray detectors for space missions

Considerable progress has been achieved in HgI_2 detector fabrication technology and amplification electronics. An energy resolution of 198 eV (full width at half maximum) has been obtained for the Mn K_α line of 5.9 keV in a practical X-ray probe without the use of cryogenic cooling. Detectors prepared with Parylene-C encapsulation have demonstrated perfect reliability in two-year tests under high vacuum and temperature and bias cycling. Other HgI_2 detectors have been used to demonstrate proton-radiation-damage resistance to levels of 10^(12) protons/cm^2 at 10.7 MeV. It is concluded that HgI_2 detectors are suitable for the ordinary requirements of energy dispersive detectors in X-ray spectroscopy systems

Sqrt{shat}_{min} resurrected

We discuss the use of the variable sqrt{shat}_{min}, which has been proposed in order to measure the hard scale of a multi parton final state event using inclusive quantities only, on a SUSY data sample for a 14 TeV LHC. In its original version, where this variable was proposed on calorimeter level, the direct correlation to the hard scattering scale does not survive when effects from soft physics are taken into account. We here show that when using reconstructed objects instead of calorimeter energy and momenta as input, we manage to actually recover this correlation for the parameter point considered here. We furthermore discuss the effect of including W + jets and t tbar+jets background in our analysis and the use of sqrt{shat}_{min} for the suppression of SM induced background in new physics searches.Comment: 23 pages, 9 figures; v2: 1 figure, several subsections and references as well as new author affiliation added. Corresponds to published versio

Supernova Legacy Survey: Using Spectral Signatures To Improve Type Ia Supernovae As Distance Indicators

GMOS optical long-slit spectroscopy at the Gemini-North telescope was used to classify targets from the Supernova Legacy Survey (SNLS) from July 2005 and May 2006 - May 2008. During this time, 95 objects were observed. Where possible the objects' redshifts (z) were measured from narrow emission or absorption features in the host galaxy spectrum, otherwise they were measured from the broader supernova features. We present spectra of 68 confirmed or probable SNe Ia from SNLS with redshifts in the range 0.17 \leq z \leq 1.02. In combination with earlier SNLS Gemini and VLT spectra, we used these new observations to measure pseudo-equivalent widths (EWs) of three spectral features - CaII H&K, SiII and MgII - in 144 objects and compared them to the EWs of low-redshift SNe Ia from a sample drawn from the literature. No signs of changes with z are seen for the CaII H&K and MgII features. Systematically lower EW SiII is seen at high redshift, but this can be explained by a change in demographics of the SNe Ia population within a two-component model combined with an observed correlation between EW SiII and photometric lightcurve stretch.Comment: 49 pages including 2 online-only appendices, accepted for publication in MNRA

Role of waves and tides on depth of closure and potential for headland bypassing

No embargo required.© 2018 Depth of closure is a fundamental concept used to define the seaward extent of a morphodynamically active shoreface at a particular temporal scale. The estimation of this limit in relation to the depth in front of the bounding headlands along embayed coastlines allows questioning whether embayments, often deemed closed sediment cells, experience more headland bypassing than expected. Wave-based parameterisations developed for microtidal beaches are most widely used to estimate closure depth; however, a re-evaluation of the concept for shorefaces influenced by geological control (presence of headlands and/or bedrock) and strong tidal currents is appropriate. Here, we use the macrotidal, embayed and high-energy coastline of SW England to identify the ‘active’ nearshore limits with a multi-method approach that includes observations of shoreface morphology and sedimentology, offshore/inshore wave formulations and bed shear stress computations. We identify the basal limit of ‘significant’ (i.e., 0.14 m) morphological change (Depth of Closure; DoC) and a maximum depth of extreme bed activity and sediment transport (Depth of Transport; DoT). Observations of DoC correspond closely to the values predicted by existing formulations based on inshore wave conditions (10–15 m for the study area; relative to mean low water spring water level in this case). The computed DoT, represented by the upper-plane bed transition attained under extreme conditions, exceeds 30 m depth in the study area. The significant implication is that, even though many headlands appear sufficiently prominent to suggest a closed boundary between adjacent embayments, significant wave- and tide-driven sediment transport is likely to occur beyond the headland base during extreme events, especially at low water levels. The maximum depth for significant sediment transport (DoT) was computed across a broad wave-current parameter space, further highlighting that tidal currents can increase this closure depth estimate by ~10 m along macrotidal coastlines, representing a 30% increase compared to tideless settings. This work illustrates the importance of tidal currents in depth of closure calculations and challenges the notion that embayed beaches are generally closed cells, as headland bypassing may be more wide spread than commonly assumed along exposed coastlines globally

Supersymmetry Without Prejudice at the LHC

The discovery and exploration of Supersymmetry in a model-independent fashion will be a daunting task due to the large number of soft-breaking parameters in the MSSM. In this paper, we explore the capability of the ATLAS detector at the LHC ($\sqrt s=14$ TeV, 1 fb$^{-1}$) to find SUSY within the 19-dimensional pMSSM subspace of the MSSM using their standard transverse missing energy and long-lived particle searches that were essentially designed for mSUGRA. To this end, we employ a set of $\sim 71$k previously generated model points in the 19-dimensional parameter space that satisfy all of the existing experimental and theoretical constraints. Employing ATLAS-generated SM backgrounds and following their approach in each of 11 missing energy analyses as closely as possible, we explore all of these $71$k model points for a possible SUSY signal. To test our analysis procedure, we first verify that we faithfully reproduce the published ATLAS results for the signal distributions for their benchmark mSUGRA model points. We then show that, requiring all sparticle masses to lie below 1(3) TeV, almost all(two-thirds) of the pMSSM model points are discovered with a significance $S>5$ in at least one of these 11 analyses assuming a 50\% systematic error on the SM background. If this systematic error can be reduced to only 20\% then this parameter space coverage is increased. These results are indicative that the ATLAS SUSY search strategy is robust under a broad class of Supersymmetric models. We then explore in detail the properties of the kinematically accessible model points which remain unobservable by these search analyses in order to ascertain problematic cases which may arise in general SUSY searches.Comment: 69 pages, 40 figures, Discussion adde