Sediment distribution and hydrologic conditions of the Potomac aquifer in Virginia and parts of Maryland and North Carolina
Randolph E. McFarland
2013, Scientific Investigations Report 2013-5116
Sediments of the heavily used Potomac aquifer broadly contrast across major structural features of the Atlantic Coastal Plain Physiographic Province in eastern Virginia and adjacent parts of Maryland and North Carolina. Thicknesses and relative dominance of the highly interbedded fluvial sediments vary regionally. Vertical intervals in boreholes of coarse-grained sediment...
The influence of stream thermal regimes and preferential flow paths on hyporheic exchange in a glacial meltwater stream
Karen D. Cozzetto, Kenneth E. Bencala, Michael N. Gooseff, Diane M. McKnight
2013, Water Resources Research (49) 5552-5569
Given projected increases in stream temperatures attributable to global change, improved understanding of relationships between stream temperatures and hyporheic exchange would be useful. We conducted two conservative tracer injection experiments in a glacial meltwater stream, to evaluate the effects of hyporheic thermal gradients on exchange processes, including preferential flow paths...
Submergence Vulnerability Index development and application to Coastwide Reference Monitoring System Sites and Coastal Wetlands Planning, Protection and Restoration Act projects
Camille L. Stagg, Leigh A. Sharp, Thomas E. McGinnis, Gregg A. Snedden
2013, Open-File Report 2013-1163
Since its implementation in 2003, the Coastwide Reference Monitoring System (CRMS) in Louisiana has facilitated the creation of a comprehensive dataset that includes, but is not limited to, vegetation, hydrologic, and soil metrics on a coastwide scale. The primary impetus for this data collection is to assess land management activities,...
Shear-wave velocity-based probabilistic and deterministic assessment of seismic soil liquefaction potential
R. Kayen, R.E.S. Moss, E.M. Thompson, R.B. Seed, K.O. Cetin, A. Der Kiureghian, Y. Tanaka, K. Tokimatsu
2013, Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering (139) 407-419
Shear-wave velocity (Vs) offers a means to determine the seismic resistance of soil to liquefaction by a fundamental soil property. This paper presents the results of an 11-year international project to gather new Vs site data and develop probabilistic correlations for seismic soil liquefaction occurrence. Toward that objective, shear-wave velocity...
Environmental consequences of the Retsof Salt Mine roof collapse
Richard M. Yager
2013, Open-File Report 2013-1174
In 1994, the largest salt mine in North America, which had been in operation for more than 100 years, catastrophically flooded when the mine ceiling collapsed. In addition to causing the loss of the mine and the mineral resources it provided, this event formed sinkholes, caused widespread subsidence to land,...
Is there room for all of us? Renewable energy and Xerospermophilus mohavensis
Richard D. Inman, Todd C. Esque, Kenneth E. Nussear, Philip Leitner, Marjorie D. Matocq, Peter J. Weisberg, Tomas E. Dilts, Amy G. Vandergast
2013, Endangered Species Research (20) 1-18
Mohave ground squirrels Xerospermophilus mohavensis Merriam are small ground-dwelling rodents that have a highly restricted range in the northwest Mojave Desert, California, USA. Their small natural range is further reduced by habitat loss from agriculture, urban development, military training and recreational activities. Development of wind and solar resources for renewable...
Monitoring plan for mercury in fish tissue and water from the Boise River, Snake River, and Brownlee Reservoir, Idaho and Oregon
Christopher A. Mebane, Dorene E. MacCoy
2013, Open-File Report 2013-1068
The methylmercury criterion adopted as a water-quality standard in the State of Idaho is a concentration in fish tissue rather than a concentration in water. A plan for monitoring mercury in fish tissue and water was developed to evaluate whether fish in the Boise River, Idaho, upstream and downstream of...
A network extension of species occupancy models in a patchy environment applied to the Yosemite toad (Anaxyrus canorus)
Eric L. Berlow, Roland A. Knapp, Steven M. Ostoja, Richard J. Williams, Heather McKenny, John R. Matchett, Qinghau Guo, Gary M. Fellers, Patrick Kleeman, Matthew L. Brooks, Lucas Joppa
2013, PLoS ONE (8)
A central challenge of conservation biology is using limited data to predict rare species occurrence and identify conservation areas that play a disproportionate role in regional persistence. Where species occupy discrete patches in a landscape, such predictions require data about environmental quality of individual patches and the connectivity among high...
Titanium: light, strong, and white
Laurel Woodruff, George Bedinger
2013, Fact Sheet 2013-3059
Titanium (Ti) is a strong silver-gray metal that is highly resistant to corrosion and is chemically inert. It is as strong as steel but 45 percent lighter, and it is twice as strong as aluminum but only 60 percent heavier. Titanium dioxide (TiO2) has a very high refractive index, which...
Constraints on the upper crustal magma reservoir beneath Yellowstone Caldera inferred from lake-seiche induced strain observations
Karen Luttrell, David Mencin, Oliver Francis, Shaul Hurwitz
2013, Geophysical Research Letters (40) 501-506
Seiche waves in Yellowstone Lake with a ~78-minute period and heights <10 cm act as a load on the solid earth observed by borehole strainmeters with subnanostrain sensitivity throughout the Yellowstone Caldera. The far-field strain induced by the load of the seiche waves calculated with a homogeneous elastic model representing...
Soil Seed Bank Responses to Postfire Herbicide and Native Seeding Treatments Designed to Control Bromus tectorum in a Pinyon–Juniper Woodland at Zion National Park, USA
Matthew L. Brooks, graduate student Hondo Brisbin, Professor Andrea Thode, graduate student Karen Weber
2013, Invasive Plant Science and Management (6) 118-129
The continued threat of an invasive, annual brome (Bromus) species in the western United States has created the need for integrated approaches to postfire restoration. Additionally, the high germination rate, high seed production, and seed bank carryover of annual bromes points to the need to assay soil seed banks as...
A new model for the growth of basaltic shields based on deformation of Fernandina volcano, Galápagos Islands
Marco Bagnardi, Falk Amelung, Michael P. Poland
2013, Earth and Planetary Science Letters (377-378) 358-366
Space-geodetic measurements of surface deformation produced by the most recent eruptions at Fernandina – the most frequently erupting volcano in the Galápagos Archipelago – reveal that all have initiated with the intrusion of subhorizontal sills from a shallow magma reservoir. This includes eruptions from fissures that are oriented both radially...
Factors influencing detection of eDNA from a stream-dwelling amphibian
David S. Pilliod, Caren S. Goldberg, Robert S. Arkle, Lisette P. Waits
2013, Molecular Ecology Resources (14) 109-116
Environmental DNA (eDNA) methods for detecting and estimating abundance of aquatic species are emerging rapidly, but little is known about how processes such as secretion rate, environmental degradation, and time since colonization or extirpation from a given site affect eDNA measurements. Using stream-dwelling salamanders and quantitative PCR (qPCR) analysis, we...
Landscape-scale effects of fire severity on mixed-conifer and red fir forest structure in Yosemite National Park
Van R. Kane, James A. Lutz, Susan L. Roberts, Douglas F. Smith, Robert J. McGaughey, Nicholas A. Povak, Matthew L. Brooks
2013, Forest Ecology and Management (287) 17-31
While fire shapes the structure of forests and acts as a keystone process, the details of how fire modifies forest structure have been difficult to evaluate because of the complexity of interactions between fires and forests. We studied this relationship across 69.2 km2 of Yosemite National Park, USA, that was...
Distribution of indoor radon concentrations in Pennsylvania, 1990-2007
Eliza L. Gross
2013, Scientific Investigations Report 2013-5143
Results from 548,507 indoor radon tests from a database compiled by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, Bureau of Radiation Protection, Radon Division, are evaluated in this report in an effort to determine areas where concentrations of radon are highest. Indoor radon concentrations were aggregated according to geologic unit and...
Detecting annual and seasonal changes in a sagebrush ecosystem with remote sensing-derived continuous fields
Collin G. Homer, Debra K. Meyer, Cameron L. Aldridge, Spencer Schell
2013, Journal of Applied Remote Sensing (7)
Climate change may represent the greatest future risk to the sagebrush ecosystem. Improved ways to quantify and monitor gradual change resulting from climate influences in this ecosystem are vital to its future management. For this research, the change over time of five continuous field cover components including bare ground, herbaceous,...
Internet-based Modeling, Mapping, and Analysis for the Greater Everglades (IMMAGE; Version 1.0): web-based tools to assess the impact of sea level rise in south Florida
Paul Hearn, David Strong, Eric Swain, Jeremy Decker
2013, Open-File Report 2013-1185
South Florida's Greater Everglades area is particularly vulnerable to sea level rise, due to its rich endowment of animal and plant species and its heavily populated urban areas along the coast. Rising sea levels are expected to have substantial impacts on inland flooding, the depth and extent of surge from...
Analytical properties of some commercially available nitrate reductase enzymes evaluated as replacements for cadmium in automated, semiautomated, and manual colorimetric methods for determination of nitrate plus nitrite in water
Charles J. Patton, Jennifer R. Kryskalla
2013, Scientific Investigations Report 2013-5033
A multiyear research effort at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Water Quality Laboratory (NWQL) evaluated several commercially available nitrate reductase (NaR) enzymes as replacements for toxic cadmium in longstanding automated colorimetric air-segmented continuous-flow analyzer (CFA) methods for determining nitrate plus nitrite (NOx) in water. This research culminated in USGS...
Water-level data for the Albuquerque Basin and adjacent areas, central New Mexico, period of record through September 30, 2012
Joseph E. Beman
2013, Data Series 790
The Albuquerque Basin, located in central New Mexico, is about 100 miles long and 25–40 miles wide. The basin is defined as the extent of consolidated and unconsolidated deposits of Tertiary and Quaternary age that encompasses the structural Rio Grande Rift within the basin. Drinking-water supplies throughout the basin were...
A comprehensive evaluation of two MODIS evapotranspiration products over the conterminous United States: using point and gridded FLUXNET and water balance ET
Naga M. Velpuri, Gabriel B. Senay, Ramesh K. Singh, Stefanie Bohms, James P. Verdin
2013, Remote Sensing of Environment (139) 35-49
Remote sensing datasets are increasingly being used to provide spatially explicit large scale evapotranspiration (ET) estimates. Extensive evaluation of such large scale estimates is necessary before they can be used in various applications. In this study, two monthly MODIS 1 km ET products, MODIS global ET (MOD16) and Operational Simplified...
Coastal flood inundation monitoring with Satellite C-band and L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar data
Elijah W. Ramsey III, Amina Rangoonwala, Terri Bannister
2013, Journal of the American Water Resources Association (49) 1239-1260
Satellite Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) was evaluated as a method to operationally monitor the occurrence and distribution of storm- and tidal-related flooding of spatially extensive coastal marshes within the north-central Gulf of Mexico. Maps representing the occurrence of marsh surface inundation were created from available Advanced Land Observation Satellite (ALOS)...
Clustering of velocities in a GPS network spanning the Sierra Nevada Block, the northern Walker Lane Belt, and the Central Nevada Seismic Belt, California-Nevada
James C. Savage, Robert W. Simpson
2013, Journal of Geophysical Research B: Solid Earth (118) 4937-4947
The deformation across the Sierra Nevada Block, the Walker Lane Belt, and the Central Nevada Seismic Belt (CNSB) between 38.5°N and 40.5°N has been analyzed by clustering GPS velocities to identify coherent blocks. Cluster analysis determines the number of clusters required and assigns the GPS stations to the proper clusters....
Scenarios of bioenergy development impacts on regional groundwater withdrawals
Daniel R. Uden, Craig R. Allen, Rob B. Mitchell, Qingfeng Guan, Tim D. McCoy
2013, Journal of Soil and Water Conservation (68) 124A-128A
Irrigation increases agricultural productivity, but it also stresses water resources (Huffaker and Hamilton 2007). Drought and the potential for drier conditions resulting from climate change could strain water supplies in landscapes where human populations rely on finite groundwater resources for drinking, agriculture, energy, and industry (IPCC 2007). For instance, in...
Brine intrusion by upconing for a high-level nuclear waste repository at Forsmark: Scoping calculations
Clifford I. Voss, Joel Geier, Georg Lindgren
2013, Report
SSM currently reviews a license application for a spent nuclear fuel repository that is proposed to be located at Forsmark, Sweden. The repository is to be situated at 500 m depth in the rock and copper canisters are deposited in holes excavated from the tunnel system. To protect the canisters...
Massachusetts shoreline change project: a GIS compilation of vector shorelines and associated shoreline change data for the 2013 update
Theresa L. Smith, Emily A. Himmelstoss, E. Robert Thieler
2013, Open-File Report 2012-1183
Identifying the rates and trends associated with the position of the shoreline through time presents vital information on potential impacts these changes may have on coastal populations and infrastructure, and supports informed coastal management decisions. This report publishes the historical shoreline data used to assess the scale and timing of...
