Collaborative Studies for Mercury Characterization in Coal and Coal Combustion Products, Republic of South Africa
Allan Kolker, Constance L. Senior, Chris van Alphen
2016, Open-File Report 2014-1153
Mercury (Hg) analyses were obtained for 42 samples of feed coal provided by Eskom, the national electric utility of South Africa, representing all 13 coal-fired power stations operated by Eskom in South Africa. This sampling includes results for three older power stations returned to service starting in the late 2000s....
New insights into debris-flow hazards from an extraordinary event in the Colorado Front Range
Jeffrey A. Coe, Jason W. Kean, Jonathan W. Godt, Rex L. Baum, Eric S. Jones, David Gochis, Gregory S Anderson
2016, GSA Today (24) 4-10
Rainfall on 9–13 September 2013 triggered at least 1,138 debris flows in a 3430 km2 area of the Colorado Front Range. The historical record reveals that the occurrence of these flows over such a large area in the interior of North America is highly unusual. Rainfall that triggered the debris...
First record of the bigeye shiner (Notropis boops) from West Virginia
Stuart A. Welsh, Daniel A. Cincotta, Richard L. Raesly
2016, American Midland Naturalist (172) 373-375
We report a population of Bigeye Shiner Notropis boops in the South Fork Hughes River drainage of the Little Kanawha River, West Virginia. A total of 27 individuals of N. boops were collected during five sampling efforts from 1999 to 2005. These specimens represent an addition to the...
Geophysical log database for the Floridan aquifer system and southeastern Coastal Plain aquifer system in Florida and parts of Georgia, Alabama, and South Carolina
Lester J. Williams, Jessica E. Raines, Amanda E. Lanning
2016, Data Series 760
A database of borehole geophysical logs and other types of data files were compiled as part of ongoing studies of water availability and assessment of brackish- and saline-water resources. The database contains 4,883 logs from 1,248 wells in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, and from a limited number of offshore...
Preliminary methodology to assess the national and regional impact of U.S. wind energy development on birds and bats
James E. Diffendorfer, Julie A. Beston, Matthew D. Merrill, Jessica C. Stanton, M.D. Corum, Scott R. Loss, Wayne E. Thogmartin, Douglas H. Johnson, Richard A. Erickson, Kevin W. Heist
2015, Scientific Investigations Report 2015-5066
The U.S. Geological Survey has developed a methodology to assess the impacts of wind energy development on wildlife; it is a probabilistic, quantitative assessment methodology that can communicate to decision makers and the public the magnitude of these effects on species populations. The methodology is currently applicable to birds and...
The 2014 Mw6.1 South Napa Earthquake: A unilateral rupture with shallow asperity and rapid afterslip
Shengji Wei, Sylvain Barbot, Robert Graves, James J. Lienkaemper, Teng Wang, Kenneth W. Hudnut, Yuning Fu, Don Helmberger
2015, Seismological Research Letters (86) 344-354
The Mw6.1 South Napa earthquake occurred near Napa, California on August 24, 2014 (UTC), and was the largest inland earthquake in Northern California since the 1989 Mw6.9 Loma Prieta earthquake. The first report of the earthquake from the Northern California Earthquake Data Center (NCEDC) indicates a hypocentral depth of 11.0km...
Reconnaissance stratigraphic studies in the Susitna basin, Alaska, during the 2014 field season
David L. LePain, Richard G. Stanley, Nina T. Harun, Kenneth P. Helmold, Rebekah Tsigonis
2015, Report
The Susitna basin is a poorly-understood Cenozoic successor basin immediately north of Cook Inlet in south-central Alaska (Kirschner, 1994). The basin is bounded by the Castle Mountain fault and Cook Inlet basin on the south, the Talkeetna Mountains on the east, the Alaska Range on the north, and the Alaska–Aleutian...
Geomorphology, active tectonics, and landscape evolution in the Mid-Atlantic region
Frank J. Pazzaglia, Mark W. Carter, Claudio Berti, Ronald C. Counts, Gregory S. Hancock, David Harbor, Richard W. Harrison, Matthew J. Heller, Shannon A. Mahan, Helen Malenda, Ryan McKeon, Michelle S. Nelson, Phillip Prince, Tammy M. Rittenour, James Spotilla, G. Richard Whittecar
2015, Book chapter, GSA Field Guides
In 2014, the geomorphology community marked the 125th birthday of one of its most influential papers, “The Rivers and Valleys of Pennsylvania” by William Morris Davis. Inspired by Davis’s work, the Appalachian landscape rapidly became fertile ground for the development and testing of several grand landscape evolution paradigms, culminating with...
Evaluation of perchlorate sources in the Rialto-Colton and Chino California subbasins using chlorine and oxygen isotope ratio analysis
Paul B. Hatzinger, J.K. Bohlke, John A. Izbicki, Nicholas F. Teague, Neil C. Sturchio
2015, Report
Perchlorate (ClO4-) in groundwater can be from synthetic or natural sources, the latter of which include both historical application of imported nitrate fertilizers from the Atacama Desert of Chile and naturally deposited ClO4- that forms atmospherically and accumulates in arid regions such as the southwestern US. The objective of this...
Dating base flow in streams using dissolved gases and diurnal temperature changes
Ward E. Sanford, Gerolamo C. Casile, Karl B. Haase
2015, Water Resources Research (51) 9790-9803
A method is presented for using dissolved CFCs or SF6 to estimate the apparent age of stream base flow by indirectly estimating the mean concentration of the tracer in the inflowing groundwater. The mean value is estimated simultaneously with the mean residence times of the gas and water in the...
Modeling the present and future geographic distribution of the Lone star tick, Amblyomma americanum (Ixodida: Ixodidae), in the continental United States
Yuri P. Springer, Catherine S. Jarnevich, David T. Barnett, Andrew J. Monaghan, Rebecca J. Eisen
2015, American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (93) 875-890
The Lone star tick (Amblyomma americanum L.) is the primary vector for pathogens of significant public health importance in North America, yet relatively little is known about its current and potential future distribution. Building on a published summary of tick collection records, we used an ensemble modeling approach to predict the...
Efficient wetland surface water detection and monitoring via Landsat: Comparison with in situ data from the Everglades Depth Estimation Network
John W. Jones
2015, Remote Sensing (9) 12503-12538
The U.S. Geological Survey is developing new Landsat science products. One, named Dynamic Surface Water Extent (DSWE), is focused on the representation of ground surface inundation as detected in cloud-/shadow-/snow-free pixels for scenes collected over the U.S. and its territories. Characterization of DSWE uncertainty to facilitate its appropriate use in...
Decision analysis to support development of the Glen Canyon Dam long-term experimental and management plan
Michael C. Runge, Kirk E. LaGory, Kendra Russell, Janet R. Balsom, R. Alan Butler, Coggins Jr., Katrina A. Grantz, John Hayse, Ihor Hlohowskyj, Josh Korman, James E. May, Daniel J. O’Rourke, Leslie A. Poch, James R. Prairie, Jack C. VanKuiken, Robert A. Van Lonkhuyzen, David R. Varyu, Bruce T. Verhaaren, Thomas D. Veselka, Nicholas T. Williams, Kelsey K. Wuthrich, Charles B. Yackulic, Robert P. Billerbeck, Glen W. Knowles
2015, Scientific Investigations Report 2015-5176
The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the Bureau of Reclamation, National Park Service, and Argonne National Laboratory, completed a decision analysis to use in the evaluation of alternatives in the Environmental Impact Statement concerning the long-term management of water releases from Glen Canyon Dam and associated management activities. Two...
Distributional changes in the western Burrowing Owl (Athene cunicularia hypugaea) in North America from 1967 to 2008
Alberto Macias-Duarte, Courtney J. Conway
2015, Journal of Raptor Research (49) 75-83
The quantification of shifts in bird distributions in response to climate change provides an opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of the processes that influence species persistence. We used data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) to document changes in the distributional limits of the western Burrowing Owl...
Influence of ecological factors on prevalence of meningeal worm (Parelaphostrongylus tenuis infection in South Dakota, USA
Christopher N. Jacques, Jonathan A. Jenks, Troy W. Grovenburg, Robert W. Klaver, Shelli A. Dubay
2015, Journal of Wildlife Diseases (51) 332-340
The meningeal worm (Parelaphostrongylus tenuis) is a nematode parasite that commonly infects white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus; WTD) throughout the deciduous forest biome and deciduous-coniferous ecotone of eastern and central North America; the species is not known to occur west of the grassland biome of central North America. We used county-specific...
Groundwater and surface-water interaction and effects of pumping in a complex glacial-sediment aquifer, phase 2, east-central Massachusetts
Jack R. Eggleston, Phillip J. Zarriello, Carl S. Carlson
2015, Scientific Investigations Report 2015-5174
The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the Town of Framingham, Massachusetts, has investigated the potential of proposed groundwater withdrawals at the Birch Road well site to affect nearby surface water bodies and wetlands, including Lake Cochituate, the Sudbury River, and the Great Meadows National Wildlife Refuge in east-central Massachusetts....
Science foundation Chapter 5 Appendix 5.1: Case study california ridgway's rail (Rallus obseoletus obsoletus)
Cory T. Overton, Julian Wood
2015, Report, The baylands and climate change what we can do: Baylands ecosystem habitat goals science update 2015
The clapper rail (Rallus longirostris) recently was split into two sister groups (Chesser et al. 2014) on the basis of phylogenetic analyses (Maley and Brumfield 2013). The original grouping is now represented on the East Coast of North America by the Clapper rail (Rallus crepitans) and on the West Coast...
The cost of karst subsidence and sinkhole collapse in the United States compared with other natural hazards
David J. Weary
2015, Conference Paper, 14th Sinkhole Conference
Rocks with potential for karst formation are found in all 50 states. Damage due to karst subsidence and sinkhole collapse is a natural hazard of national scope. Repair of damage to buildings, highways, and other infrastructure represents a significant national cost. Sparse and incomplete data show that the average cost...
Geologic maps of the eastern Alaska Range, Alaska (1:63,360 scale)
Warren J. Nokleberg, John N. Aleinikoff, Gerard C. Bond, Oscar J. Ferrians Jr., Paige L. Herzon, Ian M. Lange, Ronny T. Miyaoka, Donald H. Richter, Carl E. Schwab, Steven R. Silva, Thomas E. Smith, Richard E. Zehner
2015, Report
This report provides a description of map units for a suite of 44 inch-to-mile (1:63,360-scale) geologic quadrangle maps of the eastern Alaska Range. This report also contains a geologic and tectonic summary and a comprehensive list of references pertaining to geologic mapping and specialized studies of the region. In addition...
Geologic framework for the assessment of undiscovered oil and gas resources in sandstone reservoirs of the Upper Jurassic-Lower Cretaceous Cotton Valley Group, U.S. Gulf of Mexico region
Jennifer D. Eoff, Russell F. Dubiel, Ofori N. Pearson, Katherine J. Whidden
2015, Conference Paper
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is assessing the undiscovered oil and gas resources in sandstone reservoirs of the Upper Jurassic–Lower Cretaceous Cotton Valley Group in onshore areas and State waters of the U.S. Gulf of Mexico region. The assessment is based on geologic elements of a total petroleum system. Four...
Alamo impact olistoliths in Antler orogenic foreland, Warm Springs–Milk Spring area, Hot Creek Range, central Nevada
Forrest G. Poole, Charles Sandberg
2015, Book chapter, Unusual central Nevada geologic terranes produced by Late Devonian antler orogeny and Alamo impact
The 45 km2 map area is situated at the south end of the Hot Creek Range in central Nevada, ~16 km east of the buried leading edge of the Mississippian Roberts Mountains thrust. Three eastward-trending left-slip faults divide the area into four structural blocks. The southernmost block is occupied solely by...
Underpressure in Mesozoic and Paleozoic rock units in the Midcontinent of the United States
Philip H. Nelson, Nicholas J. Gianoutsos, Ronald M. Drake II
2015, AAPG Bulletin (99) 1861-1892
Potentiometric surfaces for Paleozoic strata, based on water well levels and selected drill-stem tests, reveal the control on hydraulic head exerted by outcrops in eastern Kansas and Oklahoma. From outcrop in the east, the westward climb of hydraulic head is much less than that of the land surface, with heads...
Refinements to the Graves and Pitarka (2010) Broadband Ground Motion Simulation Method
Robert Graves, Arben Pitarka
2015, Seismological Research Letters (86) 75-80
This brief article describes refinements to the Graves and Pitarka (2010) broadband ground motion simulation methodology (GP2010 hereafter) that have been implemented in version 14.3 of the SCEC Broadband Platform (BBP). The updated version of our method on the current SCEC BBP is referred to as GP14.3. Our simulation technique...
Gondolellid conodonts and depositional setting of the Phosphoria Formation
Bruce R. Wardlaw
2015, Micropaleontology (61) 335-368
The Phosphoria Formation and related rocks were deposited over an 8.9 m.y. interval beginning approximately 274.0Ma and ending approximately 265.1Ma. The Meade Peak Phosphatic Shale Member was deposited in southeastern Idaho and adjacent Wyoming over 5.4 m.y. from approximately 273.2 to 268.6 Ma. The Retort Phosphatic Shale Member was deposited...
Shaking intensity from injection-induced versus tectonic earthquakes in the central-eastern United States
Susan E. Hough
2015, The Leading Edge (34) 690-697
Although instrumental recordings of earthquakes in the central and eastern United States (CEUS) remain sparse, the U. S. Geological Survey's “Did you feel it?” (DYFI) system now provides excellent characterization of shaking intensities caused by induced and tectonic earthquakes. Seventeen CEUS events are considered between 2013 and 2015. It is...
