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Necropsies were conducted on 4 Antillean manatees Trichechus manatus manatus that were stranded in single events on the coastal beaches of Puerto Rico from August 2010 to August 2011. Three manatees were emaciated and the gastrointestinal tracts were devoid of digesta. Microscopically, all manatees had severe widespread inflammatory lesions of...

Approximately 42 percent of all West Virginians rely on groundwater for their domestic water supply. However, prior to 2008, the quality of the West Virginia’s groundwater resource was largely unknown. The need for a statewide assessment of groundwater quality prompted the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in cooperation with West Virginia...

The Arctic Alaska Petroleum Province encompasses all lands and adjacent continental shelf areas north of the Brooks Range-Herald arch tectonic belts and south of the northern (outboard) margin of the Alaska rift shoulder. Even though only a small part is thoroughly explored, it is one of the most prolific petroleum...

Groundwater discharge to rivers has increased in recent decades across the circumpolar region and has been attributed to thawing permafrost in arctic and subarctic watersheds. Permafrost-driven changes in groundwater discharge will alter the flux of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) in rivers, yet little is known about the chemical composition and...

The US Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS) has recently adopted standards for biological core variables in collaboration with the US Geological Survey/Ocean Biogeographic Information System (USGS/OBIS-USA) and other federal and non-federal partners. In this Community White Paper (CWP) we provide a process to bring into IOOS a rich new source...

Mountain goats (Oreamnos americanus) were introduced in Washington's Olympic Mountains during the 1920s. The population subsequently increased in numbers and expanded in range, leading to concerns by the 1970s over the potential effects of non-native mountain goats on high-elevation plant communities in Olympic National Park. The National Park Service (NPS)...

A study was initiated in 2009 by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in cooperation with Routt County, the Colorado Water Conservation Board, and the City of Steamboat Springs, to compile and analyze historic water-quality data and assess water-quality conditions in the Upper Yampa River watershed (UYRW) in northwestern Colorado. Water-quality...

Concentrations of dissolved nitrite plus nitrate increased fairly steadily in samples from four shallow groundwater monitoring wells after biosolids applications to nonirrigated farmland began in 1993. The U.S. Geological Survey began a preliminary assessment of sources of nitrogen in shallow groundwater at part of the biosolids-application area near Deer Trail,...

A qualitative freshwater mussel survey was conducted in a section of the main stem Delaware River near the Pond Eddy Bridge site, New York and Pennsylvania, during summer 2011 to assess population levels of state and Federal threatened and endangered species. Historical data that were collected at this site were...

A common goal in ecology and wildlife management is to determine the causes of variation in population dynamics over long periods of time and across large spatial scales. Many assumptions must nevertheless be overcome to make appropriate inference about spatio-temporal variation in population dynamics, such as autocorrelation among data points,...

The Late Cretaceous Boulder batholith in southwest Montana consists of the Butte Granite and a group of associated smaller intrusions emplaced into Mesoproterozoic to Mesozoic sedimentary rocks and into the Late Cretaceous Elkhorn Mountains Volcanics. The Boulder batholith is dominated by the voluminous Butte Granite, which is surrounded by as...

Nutrient enrichment from atmospheric deposition, agricultural activities, wildlife, and domestic sources is a concern at Acadia National Park on Mount Desert Island, Maine, because of the potential problems of degradation of water quality and eutrophication in estuaries. Degradation of water quality has been observed at Bass Harbor Marsh estuary in...

New geochronologic and thermochronologic data from rocks near Hatcher Pass, southwest Talkeetna Mountains, Alaska, record earliest Paleocene erosional and structural exhumation on the flank of the active Cook Inlet forearc basin. Cretaceous plutons shed sediments to the south, forming the Paleocene Arkose Ridge Formation. A Paleocene(?)-Eocene detachment fault juxtaposed ~60...

In support of a larger study to evaluate geothermal resource development of high-permeability stratigraphic units in sedimentary basins, this paper integrates groundwater and thermal data to evaluate heat and fluid flow within the eastern Great Basin. Previously published information from a hydrogeologic framework, a potentiometric-surface map, and groundwater budgets was...

The Arctic is warming faster than other regions of the world due to positive climate feedbacks associated with loss of snow and ice. One highly visible consequence has been a rapid decline in Arctic sea ice over the past 3 decades - a decline projected to continue and result in...

The geology of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park region of Tennessee and North Carolina was studied from 1993 to 2003 as part of a cooperative investigation by the U.S. Geological Survey with the National Park Service (NPS). This work resulted in a 1:100,000-scale geologic map derived from mapping that...

The Pacific walrus Odobenus rosmarus divergens feeds on benthic invertebrates on the continental shelf of the Chukchi and Bering Seas and rests on sea ice between foraging trips. With climate warming, ice-free periods in the Chukchi Sea have increased and are projected to increase further in frequency and duration. We...

The healthy condition of the physical living space in a natural stream—defined by unaltered hydrology (streamflow), high diversity of habitat features, and natural water chemistry—supports diverse biological communities with aquatic species that are sensitive to disturbances. In a highly degraded urban stream, the poor condition of the physical living space—streambank and...

In 2003, eighty-three percent of Americans lived in metropolitan areas, and considerable population increases are predicted within the next 50 years. Nowhere are the environmental changes associated with urban development more evident than in urban streams. Contaminants, habitat destruction, and increasing streamflow flashiness resulting from urban development have been associated...

Urban development remains an important agent of environmental change in the United States. The U.S. population grew by 17 percent from 1982 to 1997, while urbanized land area grew by 47 percent, suggesting that urban land consumption far outpaced population growth (Fulton and others, 2001; Sierra Club, 2003; American Farmland...

Mercury is a toxic pollutant. In its elemental form, gaseous mercury has a long residence time in the atmosphere, up to a year, allowing it to be transported long distances from emission sources. Mercury can be emitted from natural sources such as volcanoes, or from anthropogenic sources, such as coal-fired...

Ohio’s water resources support a complex web of human activities and nature—clean and abundant water is needed for drinking, recreation, farming, and industry, as well as for fish and wildlife needs. The distribution of rainfall can cause floods and droughts, which affects streamflow, groundwater, water availability, water quality, recreation, and...

Water in the Little Colorado River within Grand Canyon is naturally high in salt (NaCl), which is known to prohibit development of external fish parasites such as Ich (Ichthyophthirius multifiliis). The naturally high salinity (>0.3%) of the Little Colorado River at baseflow may be one factor allowing survival and persistence...

This report describes micrometeorological, evapotranspiration, and soil-moisture data collected since 2006 at the Amargosa Desert Research Site adjacent to a low-level radio-active waste and hazardous chemical waste facility near Beatty, Nevada. Micrometeorological data include precipitation, solar radiation, net radiation, air temperature, relative humidity, saturated and ambient vapor pressure, wind speed...

The continuous slope-area (CSA) method is an innovative gaging method for indirect computation of complete-event discharge hydrographs that can be applied when direct measurement methods are unsafe, impractical, or impossible to apply. This paper reports on use of the method to produce event-specific discharge hydrographs in a network of sand-bedded...