Search USGS⌕ Search

Geology topics

Research about Europe

Source-linked reports with geographic coverage including Europe.

10 recordsLinked to original sources
USGS2024

Geographic distribution of feather δ34S in Europe

Geographic distribution models of environmentally stable isotopes (the so-called “isoscapes”) are widely employed in animal ecology, and wildlife forensics and conservation. However, the application of isoscapes is limited to elements and regions for which the spatial patterns have been estimated. Here, we focused on the ubiquitous yet less commonly used stable sulfur isotopes (δ 34 S). To predict the European δ 34 S isoscape, we used 242 feather samples from Eurasian Reed Warbler ( Acrocephalus scirpaceus ) formed at 69 European wetland sites. We quantified the relationships between sample δ 34 S and environmental covariates using a random forest regression model and applied the model to predict the geographic distribution of δ 34 S. We also quantified within-site variation in δ 34 S and complementarity with other isotopes on both individual and isoscape levels. The predicted feather δ 34 S isoscape shows only slight differences between the central and southern parts of Europe while the coastal regions were most enriched in 34 S. The most important covariates of δ 34 S were distance to coastline, surface elevation, and atmospheric concentrations of SO 2 gases. The absence of a systematic spatial pattern impedes the application of the δ 34 S isoscape, but high complementarity with other isoscapes advocates the combination of multiple isoscapes to increase the precision of animal tracing. Feather δ 34 S compositions showed considerable within-site variation with highest values in inland parts of Europe, likely attributed to wetland anaerobic conditions and redox sensitivity of sulfur. The complex European geography and topography as well as using δ 34 S samples from wetlands may contribute to the absence of a systematic spatial gradient of δ 34 S values in Europe. We thus encourage future studies to focus on the geographic distribution of δ 34 S using tissues from diverse taxa collected in various habitats over large land masses in the world (i.e., Africa, South America, or East Asia).

Ecosphere↗
USGS2023

Reconnaissance survey for potential energy storage and carbon dioxide storage resources of petroleum reservoirs in western Europe

Energy producers and utilities use oil and gas reservoirs for gas storage to meet peak seasonal demand or to supplement intermittent energy production. These reservoirs are also suitable for the long-term storage of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), a greenhouse gas. This study reports on a reconnaissance analysis of the potential magnitude of storage resources in 9424 known oil and gas reservoirs from 24 countries within highly industrialized western Europe. To standardize the storage resources of the oil and gas reservoirs, their volumetric capacity is expressed in terms of metric tons (mass) of CO 2 . Estimates of recoverable oil and gas at the surface are converted to subsurface volumes and then converted to the equivalent mass of CO 2 at reservoir conditions. The results indicate 36.7 gigatons of CO 2 could be stored, with oil reservoirs accounting for 32% of that total and natural gas reservoirs comprising the remaining 68%. About four-fifths of the reservoir storage resource is offshore, with about three-fourths of that offshore resource at water depths of 200 m or less. Most countries do not have the reservoir storage resources to store 15 years of CO 2 at 2017 emission levels. With few exceptions the bulk of the storage is offshore for countries that do have at least 15 years of storage. The expansion of natural gas storage for strategic purposes in abandoned onshore gas reservoirs is not expected to seriously impact CO 2 storage. The contribution of this analysis is the description of the spatial distribution of potential storage and physical accessibility.

Natural Resources Research↗
USGS2023

Cross-continental evaluation of landscape-scale drivers and their impacts to fluvial fishes: Understanding frequency and severity to improve fish conservation in Europe and the United States

Fluvial fishes are threatened globally from intensive human landscape stressors degrading aquatic ecosystems. However, impacts vary regionally, as stressors and natural environmental factors differ between ecoregions and continents. To date, a comparison of fish responses to landscape stressors over continents is lacking, limiting understanding of consistency of impacts and hampering efficiencies in conserving fishes over large regions. This study addresses these shortcomings through a novel, integrative assessment of fluvial fishes throughout Europe and the conterminous United States. Using large-scale datasets, including information on fish assemblages from more than 30,000 locations on both continents, we identified threshold responses of fishes summarized by functional traits to landscape stressors including agriculture, pasture, urban area, road crossings, and human population density. After summarizing stressors by catchment unit (local and network) and constraining analyses by stream size (creeks vs. rivers), we analyzed stressor frequency (number of significant thresholds) and stressor severity (value of identified thresholds) within ecoregions across Europe and the United States. We document hundreds of responses of fish metrics to multi-scale stressors in ecoregions across two continents, providing rich findings to aid in understanding and comparing threats to fishes across the study regions. Collectively, we found that lithophilic species and, as expected, intolerant species are most sensitive to stressors in both continents, while migratory and rheophilic species are similarly strongly affected in the United States. Also, urban land use and human population density were most frequently associated with declines in fish assemblages, underscoring the pervasiveness of these stressors in both continents. This study offers an unprecedented comparison of landscape stressor effects on fluvial fishes in a consistent and comparable manner, supporting conservation of freshwater habitats in both continents and worldwide.

Europe↗
USGS2021

Alpine glacier reveals ecosystem impacts of Europe's prosperity and peril over the last millennium

Information about past ecosystem dynamics and human activities is stored in the ice of Colle Gnifetti glacier in the Swiss Alps. Adverse climatic intervals incurred crop failures and famines and triggered reestablishment of forest vegetation but also societal resilience through innovation. Historical documents and lake sediments record these changes at local—regional scales but often struggle to comprehensively document continental-scale impacts on ecosystems. Here, we provide unique multiproxy evidence of broad-scale ecosystem, land use, and climate dynamics over the past millennium from a Colle Gnifetti microfossil and oxygen isotope record. Microfossil data indicate that before 1750 CE forests and fallow land rapidly replaced crop cultivation during historically documented societal crises caused by climate shifts and epidemics. Subsequently, with technology and the introduction of more resilient crops, European societies adapted to the Little Ice Age cold period, but resource overexploitation and industrialization led to new regional to global-scale environmental challenges.

Geophysical Research Letters↗
USGS2018

Making do with less: Must sparse data preclude informed harvest strategies for European waterbirds?

The demography of many European waterbirds is not well understood because most countries have conducted little monitoring and assessment, and coordination among countries on waterbird management has little precedent. Yet intergovernmental treaties now mandate the use of sustainable, adaptive harvest strategies, whose development is challenged by a paucity of demographic information. In this study, we explore how a combination of allometric relationships, fragmentary monitoring and research information, and expert judgment can be used to estimate the parameters of a theta-logistic population model, which in turn can be used in a Markov decision process to derive optimal harvesting strategies. We show how to account for considerable parametric uncertainty, as well as for different management objectives. We illustrate our methodology with a poorly understood population of taiga bean geese ( Anser fabalis fabalis ), which is a popular game bird in Fennoscandia. Our results for taiga bean geese suggest that they may have demographic rates similar to other, well-studied species of geese, and our model-based predictions of population size are consistent with the limited monitoring information available. Importantly, we found that by using a Markov decision process, a simple scalar population model may be sufficient to guide harvest management of this species, even if its demography is age-structured. Finally, we demonstrated how two different management objectives can lead to very different optimal harvesting strategies, and how conflicting objectives may be traded off with each other. This approach will have broad application for European waterbirds by providing preliminary estimates of key demographic parameters, by providing insights into the monitoring and research activities needed to corroborate those estimates, and by producing harvest management strategies that are optimal with respect to the managers’ objectives, options, and available demographic information.

Ecological Applications↗
USGS2017

Stormwater management network effectiveness and implications for urban watershed function: A critical review

Deleterious effects of urban stormwater are widely recognized. In several countries, regulations have been put into place to improve the conditions of receiving water bodies, but planning and engineering of stormwater control is typically carried out at smaller scales. Quantifying cumulative effectiveness of many stormwater control measures on a watershed scale is critical to understanding how small-scale practices translate to urban river health. We review 100 empirical and modelling studies of stormwater management effectiveness at the watershed scale in diverse physiographic settings. Effects of networks with stormwater control measures (SCMs) that promote infiltration and harvest have been more intensively studied than have detention-based SCM networks. Studies of peak flows and flow volumes are common, whereas baseflow, groundwater recharge, and evapotranspiration have received comparatively little attention. Export of nutrients and suspended sediments have been the primary water quality focus in the United States, whereas metals, particularly those associated with sediments, have received greater attention in Europe and Australia. Often, quantifying cumulative effects of stormwater management is complicated by needing to separate its signal from the signal of urbanization itself, innate watershed characteristics that lead to a range of hydrologic and water quality responses, and the varying functions of multiple types of SCMs. Biases in geographic distribution of study areas, and size and impervious surface cover of watersheds studied also limit our understanding of responses. We propose hysteretic trajectories for how watershed function responds to increasing imperviousness and stormwater management. Even where impervious area is treated with SCMs, watershed function may not be restored to its predevelopment condition because of the lack of treatment of all stormwater generated from impervious surfaces; non-additive effects of individual SCMs; and persistence of urban effects beyond impervious surfaces. In most cases, pollutant load decreases largely result from run-off reductions rather than lowered solute or particulate concentrations. Understanding interactions between natural and built landscapes, including stormwater management strategies, is critical for successfully managing detrimental impacts of stormwater at the watershed scale.

Europe↗
USGS2013

Porphyry copper assessment of Europe, exclusive of the Fennoscandian Shield: Chapter K in Global mineral resource assessment

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) collaborated with European geologists to assess resources in porphyry copper deposits in Europe, exclusive of Scandinavia (Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland) and Russia. Porphyry copper deposits in Europe are Paleozoic and Late Cretaceous to Miocene in age. A number of the 31 known Phanerozoic deposits contain more than 1 million metric tons of contained copper, including the Majdanpek deposit, Serbia; Assarel, Bulgaria; Skouries, Greece; and Rosia Poeni, Romania. Five geographic areas were delineated as permissive tracts for post-Paleozoic porphyry copper deposits. Two additional tracts were delineated to show the extent of permissive igneous rocks associated with porphyry copper mineralization related to the Paleozoic Caledonian and Variscan orogenies. The tracts are based on mapped and inferred subsurface distributions of igneous rocks of specific age ranges that define areas where the occurrence of porphyry copper deposits within 1 kilometer of the Earth’s surface is possible. These tracts range in area from about 4,000 to 93,000 square kilometers. Although maps at a variety of different scales were used in the assessment, the final tract boundaries are intended for use at a scale of 1:1,000,000. The post-Paleozoic deposits in Europe all formed in conjunction with the tectonic evolution of southern Europe as the former Tethyan Ocean closed by convergence of the African and Arabian Plates with Europe, accompanied by accretion of microcontinents to the southern Eurasian Plate and development and demise of magmatic arcs and ocean basins. Many of the deposits formed in extensional or post-collisional settings; these tectonic environments are increasingly being recognized as environments where porphyry copper deposits occur. Probabilistic estimates of undiscovered porphyry copper deposits were made for four Phanerozoic permissive tracts; the other tracts are discussed qualitatively. Assessment participants estimated numbers of undiscovered deposits at different levels of confidence for the four tracts. These estimates were then combined with grade and tonnage models using Monte Carlo simulation to generate probabilistic estimates of amounts of in-place undiscovered resources. Additional resources that may be present in extensions of known deposits were not evaluated. Assessment results are reported in tables and graphs as expected amounts of metal and rock in undiscovered deposits at different quantile levels, as well as the arithmetic mean for each commodity for each tract. This assessment estimated a mean of 14 undiscovered porphyry copper deposits within the four permissive tracts for which estimates were made. On the basis of global grade and tonnage models, mean (arithmetic) estimated resources that could be associated with undiscovered deposits are about 46 million metric tons of copper and about 2,600 metric tons of gold, as well as byproduct molybdenum and silver. Reliable reported identified resources for the 27 deposits in the assessed areas total about 44 million metric tons of copper and about 2,300 metric tons of gold. Exploration for gold-rich porphyry systems is ongoing in some parts of historical copper mining districts in central Europe and in northwesternmost (European) Turkey. Political and social conflicts, environmental concerns associated with historical mining, and the global economic situation have had negative effects on exploration, development, and mining in Europe for many years. The assessment includes an overview with summary tables. Detailed descriptions of each tract, including the rationales for delineation and assessment, are given in appendixes A–G. Appendix H describes a geographic information system (GIS) that includes tract boundaries and point locations of known porphyry copper deposits and significant prospects.

Scientific Investigations Report↗
USGS2003

Map showing geology, oil and gas fields, and geologic provinces of Europe including Turkey

Introduction This digitally compiled map includes geology, geologic provinces, and oil and gas fields of Europe including Turkey. The maps are part of a worldwide series of maps on CD-ROM released by the U.S. Geological Survey's World Energy Project. The goal of the project is to assess the undiscovered, technically recoverable oil and gas resources of the world. For data management purposes the world was divided into eight energy regions corresponding approximately to the economic regions of of the world as defined by the U.S. Department of State. Europe (Region 4) includes Albania, Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Malta, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, San Marino, Serbia and Montenegro, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom and Vatican. The depicted portion of Region 2 includes Turkey.

Open-File Report↗
USGS1993

Glaciers of Europe

This chapter, consisting of six independently authored subchapters, including one subchapter, Glaciers of the Alps, that has four independently authored sections, is the fourth to be released in U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 1386, Satellite Image Atlas of Glaciers of the World, a series of 11 chapters. In each chapter, remotely sensed images, primarily from the Landsat 1, 2, and 3 series of spacecraft, are used to study the glacierized regions of our planet and monitor glacier changes. Landsat images, acquired primarily during the middle to late 1970’s, were used by an international team of glaciologists and other scientists to study various geographic areas or discuss glaciological topics. In each geographic area the present areal distribution of glaciers was compared, where possible, with historical information about their past extent. The atlas provides an accurate regional inventory of the areal extent of glacier ice on our planet during the 1970’s as part of a growing international scientific effort to measure global environmental change on the Earth’s surface.

Professional Paper↗