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The Citizen Potawatomi Nation Tribal Jurisdictional Area, consisting of approximately 960 square miles in parts of three counties in central Oklahoma, has an abundance of water resources, being underlain by three principal aquifers (alluvial/terrace, Central Oklahoma, and Vamoosa-Ada), bordered by two major rivers (North Canadian and Canadian), and has several...

The ever-increasing demand for water due to growth of population and socioeconomic development in the past several decades has posed a worldwide threat to water supply security and to the environmental health of rivers. This study aims to derive reservoir operating rules through establishing a multi-objective optimization model for the...

The synoptic mass balance approach is often used to evaluate constituent mass loading in streams affected by mine drainage. Spatial profiles of constituent mass load are used to identify sources of contamination and prioritize sites for remedial action. This paper presents a field scale study in which replicate synoptic...

Evaporation of soil moisture is one of the most important processes affecting water availability in semiarid ecosystems. Biological soil crusts, which are widely distributed ground cover in these ecosystems, play a recognized role on water processes. Where they roughen surfaces, water residence time and thus infiltration can be greatly enhanced,...

Movement strategies of small forage fish (<8 cm total length) between temporary and permanent wetland habitats affect their overall population growth and biomass concentrations, i.e., availability to predators. These fish are often the key energy link between primary producers and top predators, such as wading birds, which require high concentrations...

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) layers of current, and likely former, tidal wetlands in two Oregon estuaries were generated by enhancing the 2010 National Wetlands Inventory (NWI) data with expert local field knowledge, Light Detection and Ranging-derived elevations, and 2009 aerial orthophotographs. Data were generated for two purposes: First, to enhance...

Understanding the physical processes of point source (PS) and nonpoint source (NPS) pollution is critical to evaluate river water quality and identify major pollutant sources in a watershed. In this study, we used the physically-based hydrological/water quality model, Soil and Water Assessment Tool, to investigate the influence of PS and...

Hydrological models have been increasingly used by hydrologists and water resource managers to understand natural processes and human activities that affect watersheds. In this study, we use the physically based model, Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT), to investigate the hydrological processes in the East River Basin in South China,...

With the increasing knowledge about the natural processes, hydrological models such as the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) are becoming larger and more complex with increasing computation time. Additionally, other procedures such as model calibration, which may require thousands of model iterations, can increase running time and thus further...

Cheney Reservoir, located in south-central Kansas, is the primary water supply for the city of Wichita. The U.S. Geological Survey has operated a continuous real-time water-quality monitoring station since 1998 on the North Fork Ninnescah River, the main source of inflow to Cheney Reservoir. Continuously measured water-quality physical properties include...

The U.S. Geological Survey collects groundwater data and conducts studies to monitor hydrologic conditions, better define groundwater resources, and address problems related to water supply, water use, and water quality. In Georgia, water levels were monitored continuously at 186 wells during calendar year 2010 and at 181 wells during calendar...

Machine-learning regression tree models were used to extrapolate airborne electromagnetic resistivity data collected along flight lines in the Yukon Flats Ecoregion, central Alaska, for regional mapping of permafrost. This method of extrapolation (r = 0.86) used subsurface resistivity, Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) at-sensor reflectance, thermal, TM-derived spectral indices, digital elevation models and...

Beryllium-7 is a powerful and commonly used tracer for environmental processes such as watershed sediment provenance, soil erosion, fluvial and nearshore sediment cycling, and atmospheric fallout. However, few studies have quantified temporal or spatial variability of 7Be accumulation from atmospheric fallout, and parameters that would better define the uses and...

In-stream sensors are increasingly deployed as part of ambient water quality-monitoring networks. Temporally dense data from these networks can be used to better understand the transport of constituents through streams, lakes or reservoirs. Data from existing, continuously recording in-stream flow and water quality monitoring stations were coupled with the two-dimensional...

Two catalogs of episodic tremor events in northern Cascadia, one from 2006 to 2012 and the other from 1997 to 2011, reveal two systematic patterns of tremor occurrence in southern Vancouver Island: (1) most individual events tend to occur in the third quarter of the year; (2) the number of...

The Equus Beds aquifer is a primary water-supply source for Wichita, Kansas and the surrounding area because of shallow depth to water, large saturated thickness, and generally good water quality. Substantial water-level declines in the Equus Beds aquifer have resulted from pumping groundwater for agricultural and municipal needs, as well...

We present a conceptual and analytical framework for predicting the spatial distribution of floodplain sedimentation for the Laguna de Santa Rosa, Sonoma County, CA. We assess the role of the floodplain as a sink for fine-grained sediment and investigate concerns regarding the potential loss of flood storage capacity due to...

The Rhode Island Water Resources Board is considering use of groundwater resources from the Big River Management Area in central Rhode Island because increasing water demands in Rhode Island may exceed the capacity of current sources. Previous water-resources investigations in this glacially derived, valley-fill aquifer system have focused primarily on...

A talik is a layer or body of unfrozen ground that occurs in permafrost due to an anomaly in thermal, hydrological, or hydrochemical conditions. Information about talik geometry is important for understanding regional surface water and groundwater interactions as well as sublacustrine methane production in thermokarst lakes. Due to the...

The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the White Bear Lake Conservation District, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, and other State, county, municipal, and regional planning agencies, watershed organizations, and private organizations, conducted a study to characterize groundwater and surface-water interactions near White Bear...

We performed complex resistivity (CR) measurements on laboratory columns to investigate changes in electrical properties as a result of varying ethanol (EtOH) concentration (0% to 30% v/v) in a sand–clay (bentonite) matrix. We applied Debye decomposition, a phenomenological model commonly used to fit CR data, to determine model parameters (time...

Sedimentation is an ongoing maintenance problem for reservoirs, limiting reservoir storage capacity and navigation. Because Lower Granite Reservoir in Washington is the most upstream of the four U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reservoirs on the lower Snake River, it receives and retains the largest amount of sediment. In 2008, in...

Successful environmental/water quality-monitoring programs usually require a balance between analytical capabilities, the collection and preservation of representative samples, and available financial/personnel resources. Due to current economic conditions, monitoring programs are under increasing pressure to do more with less. Hence, a review of current sampling and analytical methodologies, and some of...

The ability to document the frequency, extent, and severity of fires in wetlands, as well as the dynamics of post-fire wetland land cover, informs fire and wetland science, resource management, and ecosystem protection. Available information on Everglades burn history has been based on field data collection methods that evolved through...

Travel-time capture zones and drawdown for two production well fields, used for drinking-water supply in Miami-Dade County, southeastern Florida, were delineated by the U.S Geological Survey using an unconstrained Monte Carlo analysis. The well fields, designed to supply a combined total of approximately 250 million gallons of water per day,...