Assessing the solubility controls on vanadium in groundwater, northeastern San Joaquin Valley, CA
Michael T. Wright, Kenneth G. Stollenwerk, Kenneth Belitz
2014, Applied Geochemistry (48) 41-52
The solubility controls on vanadium (V) in groundwater were studied due to concerns over possible harmful health effects of ingesting V in drinking water. Vanadium concentrations in the northeastern San Joaquin Valley ranged from <3 μg/L to 70 μg/L with a median of 21 μg/L. Concentrations of V were highest...
Analysis of the impact of spatial resolution on land/water classifications using high-resolution aerial imagery
Nicholas M. Enwright, William R. Jones, Adrienne L. Garber, Matthew J. Keller
2014, International Journal of Remote Sensing (35) 5280-5288
Long-term monitoring efforts often use remote sensing to track trends in habitat or landscape conditions over time. To most appropriately compare observations over time, long-term monitoring efforts strive for consistency in methods. Thus, advances and changes in technology over time can present a challenge. For instance, modern camera technology has...
Geologic logs of geotechnical cores from the subsurface Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, California
Katherine L. Maier, Daniel J. Ponti, John C. Tinsley III, Emma Gatti, Mark Pagenkopp
2014, Open-File Report 2014-1127
This report presents and summarizes descriptive geologic logs of geotechnical cores collected from 2009–12 in the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta, California, by the California Department of Water Resources. Graphic logs are presented for 1,785.7 ft of retained cores from 56 borehole sites throughout the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Most core sections are...
Platinum-group elements: So many excellent properties
Michael L. Zientek, Patricia J. Loferski
2014, Fact Sheet 2014-3064
The platinum-group elements (PGE) include platinum, palladium, rhodium, ruthenium, iridium, and osmium. These metals have similar physical and chemical properties and occur together in nature. The properties of PGE, such as high melting points, corrosion resistance, and catalytic qualities, make them indispensable to many industrial applications. PGE are strategic and...
Great Apes
Jonathan M. Sleeman, Shannon Cerveny
2014, Book chapter, Zoo animal and wildlife immobilization and anesthesia
Anesthesia of great apes is often necessary to conduct diagnostic analysis, provide therapeutics, facilitate surgical procedures, and enable transport and translocation for conservation purposes. Due to the stress of remote delivery injection of anesthetic agents, recent studies have focused on oral delivery and/or transmucosal absorption of preanesthetic and anesthetic agents....
Characterization of salinity loads and selenium loads in the Smith Fork Creek region of the Lower Gunnison River Basin, western Colorado, 2008-2009
Rodney J. Richards, Joshua I. Linard, Christopher M. Hobza
2014, Scientific Investigations Report 2014-5101
The lower Gunnison River Basin of the Colorado River Basin has elevated salinity and selenium levels. The Colorado River Basin Salinity Control Act of June 24, 1974 (Public Law 93–320, amended by Public Law 98–569), authorized investigation of the Lower Gunnison Basin Unit Salinity Control Project by the U.S. Department...
Urban ecosystem services and decision making for a green Philadelphia
Dianna M. Hogan, Carl D. Shapiro, David N. Karp, Susan M. Wachter
2014, Open-File Report 2014-1155
Traditional approaches to urban development often do not account for, or recognize, the role of ecosystem services and the benefits these services provide to the health and well-being of city residents. Without such accounting, urban ecosystem services are likely to be degraded over time, with negative consequences for the sustainability...
Flood-inundation maps for the North Branch Elkhart River at Cosperville, Indiana
Moon H. Kim, Esther M. Johnson
2014, Scientific Investigations Report 2014-5128
Digital flood-inundation maps for a reach of the North Branch Elkhart River at Cosperville, Indiana (Ind.), were created by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in cooperation with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Detroit District. The inundation maps, which can be accessed through the USGS Flood Inundation Mapping Science Web...
Incorporation of inorganic mercury (Hg2+) in pelagic food webs of ultraoligotrophic and oligotrophic lakes: the role of different plankton size fractions and species assemblages
Carolina Soto Cardenas, Maria C. Dieguez, Sergio Ribeiro Guevara, Mark Marvin-DiPasquale, Claudia P. Queimalinos
2014, Science of the Total Environment (494-495) 65-73
In lake food webs, pelagic basal organisms such as bacteria and phytoplankton incorporate mercury (Hg2+) from the dissolved phase and pass the adsorbed and internalized Hg to higher trophic levels. This experimental investigation addresses the incorporation of dissolved Hg2+ by four plankton fractions (picoplankton: 0.2–2.7 μm; pico + nanoplankton: 0.2–20...
Inference for finite-sample trajectories in dynamic multi-state site-occupancy models using hidden Markov model smoothing
Ian J. Fiske, J. Andrew Royle, Kevin Gross
2014, Environmental and Ecological Statistics (21) 313-328
Ecologists and wildlife biologists increasingly use latent variable models to study patterns of species occurrence when detection is imperfect. These models have recently been generalized to accommodate both a more expansive description of state than simple presence or absence, and Markovian dynamics in the latent state over successive sampling seasons....
Detecting well casing leaks in Bangladesh using a salt spiking method
M.O. Stahl, J.B. Ong, C.F. Harvey, C. D. Johnson, A.B.M. Badruzzaman, M.H. Tarek, A. VanGeen, J.A. Anderson, J. W. Lane
2014, Ground Water (52) 195-200
We apply fluid-replacement logging in arsenic-contaminated regions of Bangladesh using a low-cost, down-well fluid conductivity logging tool to detect leaks in the cased section of wells. The fluid-conductivity tool is designed for the developing world: it is lightweight and easily transportable, operable by one person, and can be built for...
Below the disappearing marshes of an urban estuary: historic nitrogen trends and soil structure
Cathleen Wigand, Charles T. Roman, Earl Davey, Mark Stolt, Roxanne Johnson, Alana Hanson, Elizabeth B. Watson, S. Bradley Moran, Donald R. Cahoon, James C. Lynch, Patricia Rafferty
2014, Ecological Applications (24) 633-649
Marshes in the urban Jamaica Bay Estuary, New York, USA are disappearing at an average rate of 13 ha/yr, and multiple stressors (e.g., wastewater inputs, dredging activities, groundwater removal, and global warming) may be contributing to marsh losses. Among these stressors, wastewater nutrients are suspected to be an important contributing...
Integrating land cover modeling and adaptive management to conserve endangered species and reduce catastrophic fire risk
David Breininger, Brean Duncan, Mitchell J. Eaton, Fred Johnson, James Nichols
2014, Land (3) 874-897
Land cover modeling is used to inform land management, but most often via a two-step process, where science informs how management alternatives can influence resources, and then, decision makers can use this information to make decisions. A more efficient process is to directly integrate science and decision-making, where science allows...
Mobilization of selenium from the Mancos Shale and associated soils in the lower Uncompahgre River Basin, Colorado
M. Alisa Mast, Taylor J. Mills, Suzanne S. Paschke, Gabrielle Keith, Joshua I. Linard
2014, Applied Geochemistry (48) 16-27
This study investigates processes controlling mobilization of selenium in the lower part of the Uncompahgre River Basin in western Colorado. Selenium occurs naturally in the underlying Mancos Shale and is leached to groundwater and surface water by limited natural runoff, agricultural and domestic irrigation, and leakage from irrigation canals. Soil...
Field methods and quality-assurance plan for water-quality activities and water-level measurements, U.S. Geological Survey, Idaho National Laboratory, Idaho
Roy C. Bartholomay, Neil V. Maimer, Amy J. Wehnke
2014, Open-File Report 2014-1146
Water-quality activities and water-level measurements by the personnel of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Idaho National Laboratory (INL) Project Office coincide with the USGS mission of appraising the quantity and quality of the Nation’s water resources. The activities are carried out in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)...
Radar analysis of fall bird migration stopover sites in the northeastern U.S.
Jeffrey J. Buler, Deanna K. Dawson
2014, The Condor (116) 357-370
The national network of weather surveillance radars (WSR-88D) detects flying birds and is a useful remote-sensing tool for ornithological study. We used data collected during fall 2008 and 2009 by 16 WSR-88D radars in the northeastern U.S. to quantify the spatial distribution of landbirds during migratory stopover. We geo-referenced estimates...
Widespread occurrence of neonicotinoid insecticides in streams in a high corn and soybean producing region, USA
Michelle Hladik, Dana W. Kolpin, Kathryn Kuivila
2014, Environmental Pollution (193) 189-196
Neonicotinoid insecticides are of environmental concern, but little is known about their occurrence in surface water. An area of intense corn and soybean production in the Midwestern United States was chosen to study this issue because of the high agricultural use of neonicotinoids via both seed treatments and other forms...
Flood inundation maps and water-surface profiles for tropical storm Irene and selected annual exceedance probability floods for Flint Brook and the Third Branch White River in Roxbury, Vermont
Elizabeth A. Ahearn, Pamela J. Lombard
2014, Scientific Investigations Report 2014-5118
Flint Brook, a tributary to the Third Branch White River in Roxbury, Vermont, has a history of flooding the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department’s Roxbury Fish Culture Station (the hatchery) and surrounding infrastructure. Flooding resulting from tropical storm Irene on August 28–29, 2011, caused widespread destruction in the region, including...
Application of near-surface geophysics as part of a hydrologic study of a subsurface drip irrigation system along the Powder River floodplain near Arvada, Wyoming
James I. Sams, Garret Veloski, Bruce D. Smith, Burke J. Minsley, Mark A. Engle, Brian A. Lipinski, Richard W. Hammack, John W. Zupancic
2014, International Journal of Coal Geology (126) 128-139
Rapid development of coalbed natural gas (CBNG) production in the Powder River Basin (PRB) of Wyoming has occurred since 1997. National attention related to CBNG development has focused on produced water management, which is the single largest cost for on-shore domestic producers. Low-cost treatment technologies allow operators to reduce...
COSMO-SkyMed Spotlight interometry over rural areas: the Slumgullion landslide in Colorado, USA
Pietro Milillo, Eric J. Fielding, William H. Schulz, Brent Delbridge, Roland Burgmann
2014, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing (7) 2919-2926
In the last 7 years, spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data with resolution of better than a meter acquired by satellites in spotlight mode offered an unprecedented improvement in SAR interferometry (InSAR). Most attention has been focused on monitoring urban areas and man-made infrastructure exploiting geometric accuracy, stability, and phase...
Biomass modeling of four water intensiveleading world crops using hyperspectral narrowbands in support of HyspIRI Mission
Michael T. Marshall, Prasad S. Thenkabail
2014, Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing (80) 757-772
New satellite missions are expected to record high spectral resolution information globally and consistently for the first time, so it is important to identify modeling techniques that take advantage of these new data. In this paper, we estimate biomass for four major crops using ground-based hyperspectral narrowbands. The spectra and...
Accuracy of travel time distribution (TTD) models as affected by TTD complexity, observation errors, and model and tracer selection
Christopher T. Green, Yong Zhang, Bryant C. Jurgens, J. Jeffrey Starn, Matthew K. Landon
2014, Water Resources Research (50) 6191-6213
Analytical models of the travel time distribution (TTD) from a source area to a sample location are often used to estimate groundwater ages and solute concentration trends. The accuracies of these models are not well known for geologically complex aquifers. In this study, synthetic datasets were used to quantify the...
The 3D Elevation Program: summary for North Carolina
William J. Carswell Jr.
2014, Fact Sheet 2014-3066
Elevation data are essential to a broad range of applications, including forest resources management, wildlife and habitat management, national security, and recreation. For the State of North Carolina, elevation data are critical for flood risk management, natural resources conservation, agriculture and precision farming, infrastructure and construction management, forest resources management,...
Timing of ore-related magmatism in the western Alaska Range, southwestern Alaska
Ryan D. Taylor, Garth E. Graham, Eric D. Anderson, David Selby
2014, Open-File Report 2014-1115
This report presents isotopic age data from mineralized granitic plutons in an area of the Alaska Range located approximately 200 kilometers to the west-northwest of Anchorage in southwestern Alaska. Uranium-lead isotopic data and trace element concentrations of zircons were determined for 12 samples encompassing eight plutonic bodies ranging in age...
Mesohabitats, fish assemblage composition, and mesohabitat use of the Rio Grande silvery minnow over a range of seasonal flow regimes in the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo del Norte, in and near Big Bend National Park, Texas, 2010-11
J. Bruce Moring, Christopher L. Braun, Daniel K. Pearson
2014, Scientific Investigations Report 2013-5210
In 2010–11, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in cooperation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, evaluated the physical characteristics and fish assemblage composition of mapped river mesohabitats at four sites on the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo del Norte (hereinafter Rio Grande) in and near Big Bend National Park, Texas. The...
