Combined use of isotopic and hydrometric data to conceptualize ecohydrological processes in a high-elevation tropical ecosystem
Giovanny M Mosquera, Rolando Celleri, Patricio X Lazo, Kellie B Vache, Steven S. Perakis, Patricio Crespo
2016, Hydrological Processes (30) 2930-2947
Few high-elevation tropical catchments worldwide are gauged and even fewer are studied using combined hydrometric and isotopic data. Consequently, we lack information needed to understand processes governing rainfall-runoff dynamics and to predict their influence on downstream ecosystem functioning. To address this need, we present a combination of hydrometric and water...
Hydrologic analyses in support of the Navajo Generating Station–Kayenta Mine Complex environmental impact statement
Stanley A. Leake, Jamie P. Macy, Margot Truini
2016, Open-File Report 2016-1088
IntroductionThe U.S. Department of Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation, Lower Colorado Region (Reclamation) is preparing an environmental impact statement (EIS) for the Navajo Generating Station-Kayenta Mine Complex Project (NGS-KMC Project). The proposed project involves various Federal approvals that would facilitate continued operation of the Navajo Generating Station (NGS) from December...
Regional assessment of persistent organic pollutants in resident mussels from New Jersey and New York estuaries following Hurricane Sandy
Kelly L. Smalling, Ashok D. Deshpande, Heather S. Galbraith, Beth Sharack, DeMond Timmons, Ronald J. Baker
2016, Marine Pollution Bulletin (107) 432-441
Resident mussels are effective indicators of ecosystem health and have been utilized in national assessment and monitoring studies for over two decades. Mussels were chosen because contaminant concentrations in their tissues respond to changes in ambient environmental levels, accumulation occurs with little metabolic transformation and a substantial amount of historic...
Combined use of thermal methods and seepage meters to efficiently locate, quantify, and monitor focused groundwater discharge to a sand-bed stream
Donald O. Rosenberry, Martin A. Briggs, Geoffrey N. Delin, Danielle K. Hare
2016, Water Resources Research (52) 4486-4503
Quantifying flow of groundwater through streambeds often is difficult due to the complexity of aquifer-scale heterogeneity combined with local-scale hyporheic exchange. We used fiber-optic distributed temperature sensing (FO-DTS), seepage meters, and vertical temperature profiling to locate, quantify, and monitor areas of focused groundwater discharge in a geomorphically simple sand-bed stream....
Cyanotoxins in inland lakes of the United States: Occurrence and potential recreational health risks in the EPA National Lakes Assessment 2007
Keith A. Loftin, Jennifer L. Graham, Elizabeth Hilborn, Sarah Lehmann, Michael T. Meyer, Julie E. Dietze, Christopher Griffith
2016, Harmful Algae (56) 77-90
A large nation-wide survey of cyanotoxins (1161 lakes) in the United States (U.S.) was conducted during the EPA National Lakes Assessment 2007. Cyanotoxin data were compared with cyanobacteria abundance- and chlorophyll-based World Health Organization (WHO) thresholds and mouse toxicity data to evaluate potential recreational risks. Cylindrospermopsins, microcystins, and saxitoxins were...
Evaluation of flood inundation in Crystal Springs Creek, Portland, Oregon
Adam Stonewall, Glen Hess
2016, Open-File Report 2016-1079
Efforts to improve fish passage have resulted in the replacement of six culverts in Crystal Springs Creek in Portland, Oregon. Two more culverts are scheduled to be replaced at Glenwood Street and Bybee Boulevard (Glenwood/Bybee project) in 2016. Recently acquired data have allowed for a more comprehensive understanding of the...
Methylmercury degradation and exposure pathways in streams and wetlands impacted by historical mining
Patrick M. Donovan, Joel D. Blum, Michael B. Singer, Mark C. Marvin-DiPasquale, Martin T.K. Tsui
2016, Science of the Total Environment (568) 1192-1203
Monomethyl mercury (MMHg) and total mercury (THg) concentrations and Hg stable isotope ratios (δ202Hg and Δ199Hg) were measured in sediment and aquatic organisms from Cache Creek (California Coast Range) and Yolo Bypass (Sacramento Valley). Cache Creek sediment had a large range in THg (87 to 3870 ng/g) and δ202Hg (−1.69...
Development of a decision support tool for water and resource management using biotic, abiotic, and hydrological assessments of Topock Marsh, Arizona
Christopher Holmquist-Johnson, Leanne Hanson, Joan Daniels, Colin Talbert, Jeanette Haegele
2016, Open-File Report 2016-1065
Topock Marsh is a large wetland adjacent to the Colorado River and the main feature of Havasu National Wildlife Refuge (Havasu NWR) in southern Arizona. In 2010, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and Bureau of Reclamation began a project to improve water management capabilities at Topock Marsh and...
Biological soil crusts: An organizing principle in dryland ecosystems (aka: the role of biocrusts in arid land hydrology)
Sonia Chamizo, Jayne Belnap, David J Elridge, Oumarou M Issa
2016, Book chapter, Ecological studies
Biocrusts exert a strong influence on hydrological processes in drylands by modifying numerous soil properties that affect water retention and movement in soils. Yet, their role in these processes is not clearly understood due to the large number of factors that act simultaneously and can mask the biocrust effect. The...
Synthesis on biological soil crust research
Bettina Weber, Jayne Belnap, Burkhard Buedel
2016, Book chapter, Ecological studies
In this closing chapter, we summarize the advances in biocrust research made during the last 1.5 decades. In the first part of the chapter, we discuss how in some research fields, such as the microbial diversity of fungi, bacteria, and microfauna; the interaction between biocrusts and vascular plants; and in...
Spatially explicit modeling of annual and seasonal habitat for greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) in Nevada and Northeastern California—An updated decision-support tool for management
Peter S. Coates, Michael L. Casazza, Brianne E. Brussee, Mark A. Ricca, K. Benjamin Gustafson, Erika Sanchez-Chopitea, Kimberly Mauch, Lara Niell, Scott Gardner, Shawn Espinosa, David J. Delehanty
2016, Open-File Report 2016-1080
Successful adaptive management hinges largely upon integrating new and improved sources of information as they become available. As a timely example of this tenet, we updated a management decision support tool that was previously developed for greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus, hereinafter referred to as “sage-grouse”) populations in Nevada and California....
Dendritic network models: Improving isoscapes and quantifying influence of landscape and in-stream processes on strontium isotopes in rivers
Sean R. Brennan, Christian E. Torgersen, Jeff P. Hollenbeck, Diego P. Fernandez, Carrie K Jensen, Daniel E. Schindler
2016, Geophysical Research Letters (43) 5043-5051
A critical challenge for the Earth sciences is to trace the transport and flux of matter within and among aquatic, terrestrial, and atmospheric systems. Robust descriptions of isotopic patterns across space and time, called “isoscapes,” form the basis of a rapidly growing and wide-ranging body of research aimed at quantifying...
Toward improved simulation of river operations through integration with a hydrologic model
Eric D. Morway, Richard G. Niswonger, Enrique Triana
2016, Environmental Modelling and Software 255-274
Advanced modeling tools are needed for informed water resources planning and management. Two classes of modeling tools are often used to this end–(1) distributed-parameter hydrologic models for quantifying supply and (2) river-operation models for sorting out demands under rule-based systems such as the prior-appropriation doctrine. Within each of these two...
Storm-event-transport of urban-use pesticides to streams likely impairs invertebrate assemblages
Kurt D. Carpenter, Kathryn Kuivila, Michelle Hladik, Tana Haluska, Michael B. Cole
2016, Environmental Monitoring and Assessment (188)
Insecticide use in urban areas results in the detection of these compounds in streams following stormwater runoff at concentrations likely to cause toxicity for stream invertebrates. In this 2013 study, stormwater runoff and streambed sediments were analyzed for 91 pesticides dissolved in water and 118 pesticides on sediment. Detections included...
A partial exponential lumped parameter model to evaluate groundwater age distributions and nitrate trends in long-screened wells
Bryant C. Jurgens, John Karl Bohlke, Leon J. Kauffman, Kenneth Belitz, Bradley K. Esser
2016, Journal of Hydrology (543) 109-126
A partial exponential lumped parameter model (PEM) was derived to determine age distributions and nitrate trends in long-screened production wells. The PEM can simulate age distributions for wells screened over any finite interval of an aquifer that has an exponential distribution of age with depth. The PEM has...
Regional oxygen reduction and denitrification rates in groundwater from multi-model residence time distributions, San Joaquin Valley, USA
Christopher T. Green, Bryant C. Jurgens, Yong Zhang, Jeffrey Starn, Michael J. Singleton, Bradley K. Esser
2016, Journal of Hydrology (145) 47-55
Rates of oxygen and nitrate reduction are key factors in determining the chemical evolution of groundwater. Little is known about how these rates vary and covary in regional groundwater settings, as few studies have focused on regional datasets with multiple tracers and methods of analysis that account for effects of...
Decadal-scale export of nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment from the Susquehanna River basin, USA: Analysis and synthesis of temporal and spatial patterns
Qian Zhang, William P. Ball, Douglas L. Moyer
2016, Science of the Total Environment (563-564) 1016-1029
The export of nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and suspended sediment (SS) is a long-standing management concern for the Chesapeake Bay watershed, USA. Here we present a comprehensive evaluation of nutrient and sediment loads over the last three decades at multiple locations in the Susquehanna River basin (SRB), Chesapeake's largest tributary...
Tidal saline wetland regeneration of sentinel vegetation types in the Northern Gulf of Mexico: An overview
Scott F. Jones, Camille L. Stagg, Ken W. Krauss, Mark W. Hester
2016, Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science (174) A1-A10
Tidal saline wetlands in the Northern Gulf of Mexico (NGoM) are dynamic and frequently disturbed systems that provide myriad ecosystem services. For these services to be sustained, dominant macrophytes must continuously recolonize and establish after disturbance. Macrophytes accomplish this regeneration through combinations of vegetative propagation and sexual reproduction, the relative...
Latest Miocene-earliest Pliocene evolution of the ancestral Rio Grande at the Española-San Luis Basin boundary, northern New Mexico
Daniel J. Koning, Scott B. Aby, V. J. Grauch, Matthew J. Zimmerer
2016, New Mexico Geology (38) 24-49
We use stratigraphic relations, paleoflow data, and 40Ar/39Ar dating to interpret net aggradation, punctuated by at least two minor incisional events, along part of the upper ancestral Rio Grande fluvial system between 5.5 and 4.5 Ma (in northern New Mexico). The studied fluvial deposits, which we informally call the...
Climate regulates alpine lake ice cover phenology and aquatic ecosystem structure
Daniel L. Preston, Nel Caine, Diane M. McKnight, Mark W. Williams, Katherina Hell, Matthew P. Miller, Sarah J. Hart, Pieter T.J. Johnson
2016, Geophysical Research Letters (43) 5353-5360
High-elevation aquatic ecosystems are highly vulnerable to climate change, yet relatively few records are available to characterize shifts in ecosystem structure or their underlying mechanisms. Using a long-term dataset on seven alpine lakes (3126 to 3620 m) in Colorado, USA, we show that ice-off dates have shifted seven days earlier over...
Three-dimensional flow structure and patterns of bed shear stress in an evolving compound meander bend
Frank L. Engel, Bruce L. Rhoads
2016, Earth Surface Processes and Landforms (41) 1211-1226
Compound meander bends with multiple lobes of maximum curvature are common in actively evolving lowland rivers. Interaction among spatial patterns of mean flow, turbulence, bed morphology, bank failures and channel migration in compound bends is poorly understood. In this paper, acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) measurements of the three-dimensional (3D)...
The ecology of methane in streams and rivers: Patterns, controls, and global significance
Emily H. Stanley, Nora J. Casson, Samuel T. Christel, John T. Crawford, Luke C. Loken, Samantha K. Oliver
2016, Ecological Monographs (86) 146-171
Streams and rivers can substantially modify organic carbon (OC) inputs from terrestrial landscapes, and much of this processing is the result of microbial respiration. While carbon dioxide (CO2) is the major end-product of ecosystem respiration, methane (CH4) is also present in many fluvial environments even though methanogenesis typically requires anoxic...
POLARIS: A 30-meter probabilistic soil series map of the contiguous United States
Nathaniel W. Chaney, Eric F Wood, Alexander B McBratney, Jonathan W Hempel, Travis W. Nauman, Colby W. Brungard, Nathan P Odgers
2016, Geoderma (274) 54-67
A new complete map of soil series probabilities has been produced for the contiguous United States at a 30 m spatial resolution. This innovative database, named POLARIS, is constructed using available high-resolution geospatial environmental data and a state-of-the-art machine learning algorithm (DSMART-HPC) to remap the Soil Survey Geographic (SSURGO) database. This...
Extremes of heat, drought and precipitation depress reproductive performance in shortgrass prairie passerines
Reesa Y. Conrey, Susan K. Skagen, Amy Yackel, Arvind O. Panjabi
2016, Ibis (158) 614-629
Climate change elevates conservation concerns worldwide because it is likely to exacerbate many identified threats to animal populations. In recent decades, grassland birds have declined faster than other North American bird species, a loss thought to be due to habitat loss and fragmentation and changing agricultural practices. Climate change poses...
Flood-inundation maps for the East Fork White River at Shoals, Indiana
Justin A. Boldt
2016, Scientific Investigations Report 2016-5036
Digital flood-inundation maps for a 5.9-mile reach of the East Fork White River at Shoals, Indiana (Ind.), were created by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in cooperation with the Indiana Office of Community and Rural Affairs. The flood-inundation maps, which can be accessed through the USGS Flood Inundation Mapping Science...
