Debris-flow entrainment modelling under climate change: Considering antecedent moisture conditions along the flow path
Anna Konz, Jacob Hirschberg, Brian McArdell, Benjamin B. Mirus, Tjalling de Haas, Perry Bartelt, Peter Molnar
2024, Earth Surface Processes and Landforms (49) 2950-2964
Debris-flow volumes can increase along their flow path by entraining sediment stored in the channel bed and banks, thus also increasing hazard potential. Theoretical considerations, laboratory experiments and field investigations all indicate that the saturation conditions of the sediment along the flow path can...
Modeling forest snow using relative canopy structure metrics
C. David Moeser, Graham A. Sexstone, Jake Kurzweil
2024, Water (16)
Snow and watershed models typically do not account for forest structure and shading; therefore, they display substantial uncertainty when attempting to account for forest change or when comparing hydrological response between forests with varying characteristics. This study collected snow water equivalent (SWE) measurements in a snow-dominated forest in Colorado,...
Vulnerability assessment of groundwater influenced ecosystems in the Northeastern United States
Shawn D. Snyder, Cyndy Loftin, Andrew S. Reeve
2024, Water (16)
Groundwater-influenced ecosystems (GIEs) are increasingly vulnerable due to groundwater extraction, land-use practices, and climate change. These ecosystems receive groundwater inflow as a portion of their baseflow or water budget, which can maintain water levels, water temperature, and chemistry necessary to sustain the biodiversity that they support. In some systems (e.g.,...
Land-use interactions, Oil-Field infrastructure, and natural processes control hydrocarbon and arsenic concentrations in groundwater, Poso Creek Oil Field, California, USA
Peter B. McMahon, Matthew K. Landon, Michael J. Stephens, Kimberly A. Taylor, Michael Wright, Angela Hansen, Tamara E. C. Kraus, Isabelle M. Cozzarelli, David H. Shimabukuro, Theron A. Sowers, Justin T. Kulongoski, Andrew G. Hunt, Ruta Karolyte, Darren J. Hillegonds, Chris J. Ballentine
2024, Applied Geochemistry (168)
Like many hydrocarbon production areas in the U.S., the Poso Creek Oil Field in California includes and is adjacent to other land uses (agricultural and other developed lands) that affect the hydrology and geochemistry of the aquifer overlying and adjacent to oil development. We...
Streamflow depletion caused by groundwater pumping: Fundamental research priorities for management-relevant science
Samuel Zipper, Andrea E. Brookfield, Hoori Ajami, Jessica R. Ayers, Chris Beightel, Michael N. Fienen, Tom Gleeson, John C. Hammond, Mary C Hill, Anthony D Kendall, Benjamin Kerr, Dana A. Lapides, Misty Porter, S. Parimalarenganayaki, Melissa Rohde, Chloe Wardropper
2024, Water Resource Research (60)
Reductions in streamflow caused by groundwater pumping, known as “streamflow depletion,” link the hydrologic process of stream-aquifer interactions to human modifications of the water cycle. Isolating the impacts of groundwater pumping on streamflow is challenging because other climate and human activities concurrently impact streamflow, making it difficult...
Season of grazing interacts with soil texture, selecting for associations of biocrust morphogroups
Lea A. Condon, Roger Rosentreter, Kari E. Veblen, Peter S. Coates
2024, Geoderma (445)
Livestock grazing, a widespread land use in semi-arid systems, is often placed in opposition to the perpetuation of biological soil crusts (“biocrusts”: lichens, mosses, and algal crusts including cyanobacteria) that live on the soil surface and provide ecosystem functions. The composition...
Role of edaphic, hydrologic, and land cover variables in determining dissolved organic carbon in Missouri (USA) reservoirs and streams
John R. Jones, Jennifer L. Graham, Daniel V. Obrecht, James D. Harlan, Matthew F. Knowlton, Carol Pollard, Jennifer Parris, Anthony P. Thorpe
2024, Lake and Reservoir Management (40) 177-195
In Missouri, distinct geophysical gradients influence statewide patterns in water quality. Here, we quantify the spatiotemporal variability of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) in reservoirs and streams and the edaphic, hydrologic, and land cover variables that account for cross-system variation. Datasets included statewide inventories collected over decades and studies...
Special Contributing Area Loading Program user’s manual
Henry F. Doyle, Marian M. Domanski
2024, Open-File Report 2024-1021
The Special Contributing Area Loading Program (SCALP) is a hydrologic routing program that simulates reservoir routing through a linear-reservoir-in-series method. The Java version of SCALP was developed to replicate and replace the functionality of an older version of the program written in Fortran. SCALP models flow through three reservoirs in...
Status of water quality in groundwater resources used for drinking-water supply in the southeastern San Joaquin Valley, 2013–15—California GAMA Priority Basin Project
Karen R. Burow, Jennifer L. Shelton, Miranda S. Fram
2024, Scientific Investigations Report 2024-5009
The California Groundwater Ambient Monitoring and Assessment Program Priority Basin Project (GAMA-PBP) investigated water quality of groundwater resources used for drinking-water supplies in the Madera-Chowchilla, Kings, Kaweah, Tule, and Tulare Lake groundwater subbasins of the southeastern San Joaquin Valley during 2013–15. The study focused primarily on groundwater resources used for...
Flexible migration and habitat use strategies of an endangered waterbird during hydrological drought
Aaron T. Pearse, Andrew J. Caven, David M. Baasch, Mark T. Bidwell, John A Conkin, David A. Brandt
2024, Conservation Science and Practice (6)
Wildlife species confront threats from climate and land use change, exacerbating the influence of extreme climatic events on populations and biodiversity. Migratory waterbirds are especially vulnerable to hydrological drought via reduced availability of surface water habitats. We assessed how whooping cranes (Grus americana) modified...
A hierarchical model for eDNA fate and transport dynamics accommodating low concentration samples
Ben Augustine, Patrick Ross Hutchins, Devin Nicole Jones-Slobodian, Jacob R. Williams, Eric Leinonen, Adam Sepulveda
2024, Preprint
Environmental DNA (eDNA) sampling is an increasingly important tool for answering ecological questions and informing aquatic species management; however, several factors currently limit the reliability of ecological inference from eDNA sampling. Two particular challenges are 1) determining species source location(s) and 2) accurately and precisely measuring low concentration eDNA samples...
Groundwater sustainability and land subsidence in California’s Central Valley
Claudia C. Faunt, Jonathan A. Traum, Scott E. Boyce, Whitney A. Seymour, Elizabeth Rae Jachens, Justin T. Brandt, Michelle Sneed, Sandra Bond, Marina Marcelli
2024, Water (16)
The Central Valley of California is one of the most prolific agricultural regions in the world. Agriculture is reliant on the conjunctive use of surface-water and groundwater. The lack of available surface-water and land-use changes have led to pumping-induced groundwater-level and storage declines, land subsidence, changes to streamflow and...
Evaluation of streamflow predictions from LSTM models in water- and energy-limited regions in the United States
Kul Bikram Khand, Gabriel B. Senay
2024, Machine Learning with Applications (16)
The application of Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) models for streamflow predictions has been an area of rapid development, supported by advancements in computing technology, increasing availability of spatiotemporal data, and availability of historical data that allows for training data-driven LSTM models....
Evaluating seawater intrusion forecast uncertainty under climate change in the Pajaro Valley, California
Marisa M. Earll, Wesley R. Henson, Brian Lockwood, Scott E. Boyce
2024, Journal of Hydrology (636)
Climate change and climate variability impacts such as rising sea levels have the potential to exacerbate seawater intrusion and the strain on coastal freshwater resources in already stressed groundwater basins such as those in the Pajaro Valley groundwater basin, California. Regional hydrologic models are often coupled with climate projections to...
Hydrologic study of green infrastructure in poorly drained urbanized soils at RecoveryPark, Detroit, Michigan, 2014–21
Ralph J. Haefner, Christopher J. Hoard, William Shuster
2024, Scientific Investigations Report 2024-5018
Uncontrolled stormwater runoff volume is a legacy stressor on sewer-system capacity that is further compromised by the effects of aging infrastructure. Green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) has been used in a variety of designs and configurations (for example, bioretention) with the goal of increasing evapotranspiration and infiltration in the local water...
Peak streamflow trends in Missouri and their relation to changes in climate, water years 1921–2020
Mackenzie K. Marti, David C. Heimann
2024, Scientific Investigations Report 2023-5064-F
This report characterizes changes in peak streamflow in Missouri and the relation of these changes to climatic variability, and provides a foundation for future studies that can address nonstationarity in peak-streamflow frequency analysis in Missouri. Records of annual peak and daily streamflow at streamgages and gridded monthly climatic data (observed...
Basin-scale responses of groundwater-resource quality to drought and recovery, San Joaquin Valley, California
Zeno Levy, Bryant Jurgens, Kirsten Faulkner, Jennifer S. Harkness, Miranda S. Fram
2024, Hydrological Processes (38)
Groundwater-resource quality is assumed to be less responsive to drought compared to that of surface water due to relatively long transit times of recharge to drinking-supply wells. Here, we evidence dynamic perturbations in aquifer pressure dynamics during drought and subsequent recovery periods cause dramatic...
Increasing seasonal variation in the extent of rivers and lakes from 1984 to 2022
Bjorn Nyberg, Roger Sayre, Elco Luijendijk
2024, Hydrology and Earth System Sciences (28) 1653-1663
Knowledge of the spatial and temporal distribution of surface water is important for water resource management, flood risk assessment, monitoring ecosystem health, constraining estimates of biogeochemical cycles and understanding our climate. While global-scale spatiotemporal change detection of surface water has significantly improved in recent...
Opportunities and challenges for precipitation forcing data in post-wildfire hydrologic modeling applications
Trevor Fuess Partridge, Zachary Johnson, Rachel Sleeter, Sharon L. Qi, Michelle A. Walvoord, Sheila F. Murphy, Cara L. Peterman-Phipps, Brian A. Ebel
2024, WIREs Water (11)
The frequency and extent of wildfires have increased in recent decades with immediate and cascading effects on water availability in many regions of the world. Precipitation is used as primary input to hydrologic models and is a critical driver of post-wildfire hydrologic hazards including debris flows, flash floods, water-quality effects,...
Eutrophication saturates surface elevation change potential in tidal mangrove forests
Jeremy R. Conrad, Ken Krauss, Brian W. Benscoter, Ilka C. Feller, Nicole Cormier, Darren Johnson
2024, Estuaries and Coasts (47) 1814-1827
Coastal mangrove forests are at risk of being submerged due to sea-level rise (SLR). However, mangroves have persisted with changing sea levels due to a variety of biotic and physical feedback mechanisms that allow them to gain and maintain relative soil surface elevation. Therefore, mangrove’s resilience...
Groundwater hydrology, groundwater and surface-water interactions, aquifer testing, and groundwater-flow simulations for the Fountain Creek alluvial aquifer, near Colorado Springs, Colorado, 2018–20
Connor P. Newman, Cory A. Russell, Zachary D. Kisfalusi, Suzanne S. Paschke
2024, Scientific Investigations Report 2023-5119
From 2018 through 2020, the U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the Air Force Civil Engineering Center, conducted an integrated study of the Fountain Creek alluvial aquifer located near Colorado Springs, Colorado. The objective of the study was to characterize hydrologic conditions for the alluvial aquifer pertinent to the potential...
Paleogene Earth perturbations in the US Atlantic Coastal Plain (PEP-US): Coring transects of hyperthermals to understand past carbon injections and ecosystem responses
Marci M. Robinson, Kenneth Miller, Tali Babila, Tim J Bralower, Jim Browning, Marlow Cramwinckel, Monika Doubrawa, Gavin L Foster, Megan Fung, Sean D. Kinney, Maria Makarova, Pete McLaughlin, Paul Pearson, Ursula Rohl, Morgan Schaller, Jean Self-Trail, Appy Sluijs, Thomas Westerhold, James R. Wright, James Zachos
2024, Scientific Drilling (33) 47-65
The release of over 4500 Gt (gigatonnes) of carbon at the Paleocene–Eocene boundary provides the closest geological analog to modern anthropogenic CO2 emissions. The cause(s) of and responses to the resulting Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) and attendant carbon isotopic excursion (CIE) remain enigmatic and intriguing...
Assessing spatial variability of nutrients, phytoplankton, and related water-quality constituents in the California Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta at the landscape scale—2018 high resolution mapping surveys
Brian A. Bergamaschi, Tamara E. C. Kraus, Bryan D. Downing, Elizabeth B. Stumpner, Katy O’Donnell, Jeffrey A. Hansen, Jeniffer Soto Perez, Emily T. Richardson, Angela M. Hansen, Alan Gelber
2024, Scientific Investigations Report 2023-5060
Executive Summary This study examined the abundance and distribution of nutrients and phytoplankton in the tidal aquatic environments of the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta (Delta) and Suisun Bay, comprising three spatial surveys conducted in May, July, and October of 2018 that used continuous underway high frequency sampling and measurements onboard a...
Triangle Area Water Supply Monitoring Project, North Carolina—Overview of hydrologic and water-quality monitoring activities and data quality assurance
J.C. Diaz, Rosemary Margaret Fanelli
2024, Open-File Report 2024-1003
Surface-water supplies are important sources of drinking water for residents in the Triangle area of North Carolina, which is located within the upper Cape Fear and Neuse River Basins. Since 1988, the U.S. Geological Survey and a consortium of local governments have participated in a cooperative effort, known as the...
Clumped isotopes record a glacial-interglacial shift in seasonality of soil carbonate accumulation in the San Luis Valley, southern Rocky Mountains, USA
Adam M. Hudson, Julia R. Kelson, James B. Paces, Chester A. Ruleman, Katharine W. Huntington, Andrew J. Schauer
2024, Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems (25)
Clumped isotope paleothermometry using pedogenic carbonates is a powerful tool for investigating past climate changes. However, location-specific seasonal patterns of precipitation and soil moisture cause systematic biases in the temperatures they record, hampering comparison of data across large areas or differing climate states. To account for biases, more systematic studies...
