Effects of earthworms on slopewash, surface runoff, and fine-litter transport on a humid-tropical forested hillslope in eastern Puerto Rico: Chapter G in Water quality and landscape processes of four watersheds in eastern Puerto Rico
Matthew C. Larsen, Zhigang Liu Liu, Xiaoming Zou
Sheila F. Murphy, Robert F. Stallard, editor(s)
2012, Professional Paper 1789-G
Rainfall, slopewash (the erosion of soil particles), surface runoff, and fine-litter transport were measured in tropical wet forest on a hillslope in the Luquillo Experimental Forest, Puerto Rico, from February 1998 until April 2000. Slopewash data were collected using Gerlach troughs at eight plots, each 2 square meters in area....
Physiography, geology, and land cover of four watersheds in eastern Puerto Rico: Chapter A in Water quality and landscape processes of four watersheds in eastern Puerto Rico
Sheila F. Murphy, Robert F. Stallard, Matthew C. Larsen, William A. Gould
Sheila F. Murphy, editor(s)
2012, Professional Paper 1789-A
Four watersheds with differing geology and land cover in eastern Puerto Rico have been studied on a long-term basis by the U.S. Geological Survey to evaluate water, energy, and biogeochemical budgets. These watersheds are typical of tropical, island-arc settings found in many parts of the world. Two watersheds are located...
Modeling the mesozoic-cenozoic structural evolution of east texas
Ofori N. Pearson, Elisabeth L. Rowan, John J. Miller
2012, Gulf Coast Assoc of Geological Societies Journal (1) 118-128
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) recently assessed the undiscovered technically recoverable oil and gas resources within Jurassic and Cretaceous strata of the onshore coastal plain and State waters of the U.S. Gulf Coast. Regional 2D seismic lines for key parts of the Gulf Coast basin were interpreted in order to...
Simulating potential structural and operational changes for Detroit Dam on the North Santiam River, Oregon, for downstream temperature management
Norman L. Buccola, Stewart A. Rounds, Annett B. Sullivan, John C. Risley
2012, Scientific Investigations Report 2012-5231
Detroit Dam was constructed in 1953 on the North Santiam River in western Oregon and resulted in the formation of Detroit Lake. With a full-pool storage volume of 455,100 acre-feet and a dam height of 463 feet, Detroit Lake is one of the largest and most important reservoirs in the...
Flood of August 11–16, 2010, in the South Skunk River Basin, central and southeast Iowa
Kimberlee K. Barnes, David A. Eash
2012, Open-File Report 2012-1202
Severe thunderstorm activity during August 8–11, 2010 in central and southeast Iowa resulted in major flooding from August 11–16, 2010, in the South Skunk River Basin. Rain gages at Ames and Story City recorded 96-hour rainfall amounts of 9.61 and 8.70 inches, respectively. The majority of the rainfall occurred during...
Land use, population dynamics, and land-cover change in eastern Puerto Rico: Chapter B in Water quality and landscape processes of four watersheds in eastern Puerto Rico
William A. Gould, Sebastián Martinuzzi, Isabel K. Pares-Ramos, Sheila F. Murphy, Robert F. Stallard
Sheila F. Murphy, Robert F. Stallard, editor(s)
2012, Professional Paper 1789-B
We assessed current and historic land use and land cover in the Luquillo Mountains and surrounding area in eastern Puerto Rico, including four small subwatersheds that are study watersheds of the U.S. Geological Survey's Water, Energy, and Biogeochemical Budgets (WEBB) program. This region occupies an area of 1,616 square kilometers,...
Weathering, landscape equilibrium, and carbon in four watersheds in eastern Puerto Rico: Chapter H in Water quality and landscape processes of four watersheds in eastern Puerto Rico
Robert F. Stallard
Sheila F. Murphy, Robert F. Stallard, editor(s)
2012, Professional Paper 1789-H
The U.S. Geological Survey's Water, Energy, and Biogeochemical Budgets (WEBB) program research in eastern Puerto Rico involves a double pair-wise comparison of four montane river basins, two on granitic bedrock and two on fine-grained volcaniclastic bedrock; for each rock type, one is forested and the other is developed. A confounding...
Regional regression models of watershed suspended-sediment discharge for the eastern United States
David C. Roman, Richard M. Vogel, Gregory E. Schwarz
2012, Journal of Hydrologic Engineering (472-4723) 53-62
Estimates of mean annual watershed sediment discharge, derived from long-term measurements of suspended-sediment concentration and streamflow, often are not available at locations of interest. The goal of this study was to develop multivariate regression models to enable prediction of mean annual suspended-sediment discharge from available basin characteristics useful for most...
Water quality and mass transport in four watersheds in eastern Puerto Rico: Chapter E in Water quality and landscape processes of four watersheds in eastern Puerto Rico
Robert F. Stallard, Sheila F. Murphy
Sheila F. Murphy, Robert F. Stallard, editor(s)
2012, Professional Paper 1789-E
Water quality of four small watersheds in eastern Puerto Rico has been monitored since 1991 as part of the U.S. Geological Survey's Water, Energy, and Biogeochemical Budgets program. These watersheds represent a montane, humid-tropical environment and differ in geology and land cover. Two watersheds are located on granitic rocks, and...
Precision of channel catfish catch estimates using hoop nets in larger Oklahoma reservoirs
David R. Stewart, James M. Long
2012, North American Journal of Fisheries Management (32) 1108-1112
Hoop nets are rapidly becoming the preferred gear type used to sample channel catfish Ictalurus punctatus, and many managers have reported that hoop nets effectively sample channel catfish in small impoundments (<200 ha). However, the utility and precision of this approach in larger impoundments have not been tested. We sought...
Holocene diatom flora and climate history of Medicine Lake, Northern California, USA
Scott W. Starratt
2012, Nova Hedwigia, Beiheft (141) 485-504
A 226-cm-long sediment core spanning the past ~ 11,400 years was recovered from Medicine Lake, on the Modoc Plateau in northeastern California. Diatom assemblages provide a record of lake level that is driven by local and regional climate changes and changes in basin morphology due to the activity of Medicine...
Developing accurate survey methods for estimating population sizes and trends of the critically endangered Nihoa Millerbird and Nihoa Finch.
P. Marcos Gorresen, Richard J. Camp, Kevin W. Brinck, Chris Farmer
2012, Technical Report HCSU-034
This report describes the results of a comparative study of bird survey methods undertaken for the purpose of improving assessments of the conservation status for the two endemic passerines on the Island of Nihoa—Nihoa Millerbird (Sylviidae: Acrocephalus familiaris kingi) and Nihoa Finch (Fringilidae: Telespiza ultima; also referred herein as millerbird...
The hydrology of a drained topographical depression within an agricutlural field in north-central Iowa
Jason L. Roth, Paul D. Capel
2012, Transactions of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (55) 1801-1814
North-central Iowa is an agriculturally intensive area comprising the southeastern portion of the Prairie Pothole Region, a landscape containing a high density of enclosed topographical depressions. Artificial drainage practices have been implemented throughout the area to facilitate agricultural production. Vertical surface drains are utilized to drain the topographical depressions that...
Dissolved organic matter reduces algal accumulation of methylmercury
Allison C. Luengen, Nicholas S. Fisher, Brian A. Bergamaschi
2012, Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (31) 1712-1719
Dissolved organic matter (DOM) significantly decreased accumulation of methylmercury (MeHg) by the diatom Cyclotella meneghiniana in laboratory experiments. Live diatom cells accumulated two to four times more MeHg than dead cells, indicating that accumulation may be partially an energy-requiring process. Methylmercury enrichment in diatoms relative to ambient water was measured...
Predicting biological condition in southern California streams
Larry R. Brown, Jason T. May, Andrew C. Rehn, Peter R. Ode, Ian R. Waite, Jonathan G. Kennen
2012, Landscape and Urban Planning (108) 17-27
As understanding of the complex relations among environmental stressors and biological responses improves, a logical next step is predictive modeling of biological condition at unsampled sites. We developed a boosted regression tree (BRT) model of biological condition, as measured by a benthic macroinvertebrate index of biotic integrity (BIBI), for streams...
Recent advances in applying decision science to managing national forests
Bruce G. Marcot, Matthew P. Thompson, Michael C. Runge, Frank R. Thompson, Steven McNulty, David Cleaves, Monica Tomosy, Larry A. Fisher, Bliss Andrew
2012, Forest Ecology and Management (285) 123-132
Management of federal public forests to meet sustainability goals and multiple use regulations is an immense challenge. To succeed, we suggest use of formal decision science procedures and tools in the context of structured decision making (SDM). SDM entails four stages: problem structuring (framing the problem and defining objectives and...
Occurrence and potential sources of pyrethroid insecticides in stream sediments from seven U.S. metropolitan areas
Kathryn Kuivila, Michelle Hladik, Christopher G. Ingersoll, Nile E. Kemble, Patrick W. Moran, Daniel L. Calhoun, Lisa H. Nowell, Robert J. Gilliom
2012, Environmental Science & Technology (46) 4297-4303
A nationally consistent approach was used to assess the occurrence and potential sources of pyrethroid insecticides in stream bed sediments from seven metropolitan areas across the United States. One or more pyrethroids were detected in almost half of the samples, with bifenthrin detected the most frequently (41%) and in each...
Phylogeographic implications for release of critically endangered manatee calves rescued in Northeast Brazil
Fabia O. Luna, Robert K. Bonde, Fernanda L.N. Attademo, Jonathan W. Saunders, Gaia Meigs-Friend, Jose Zanon O. Passavante, Margaret E. Hunter
2012, Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems (22) 665-672
1. The Antillean manatee (Trichechus manatus manatus), a subspecies of the West Indian manatee, is a large-bodied marine mammal found in fresh, brackish, and marine habitats throughout the Caribbean Islands and Central and South America. Antillean manatees in Brazil are classified as critically endangered, with a census size of approximately...
United States Geological Survey fire science: Fire danger monitoring and forecasting
Jeff C. Eidenshink, Stephen M. Howard
2012, Fact Sheet 2012-3121
Each day, the U.S. Geological Survey produces 7-day forecasts for all Federal lands of the distributions of number of ignitions, number of fires above a given size, and conditional probabilities of fires growing larger than a specified size. The large fire probability map is an estimate of the likelihood that...
Pathology in euthermic bats with white nose syndrome suggests a natural manifestation of immune reconstitution inflammatory syndrome
Carol U. Meteyer, Daniel Barber, Judith N. Mandl
2012, Virulence (3) 583-588
White nose syndrome, caused by Geomyces destructans, has killed more than 5 million cave hibernating bats in eastern North America. During hibernation, the lack of inflammatory cell recruitment at the site of fungal infection and erosion is consistent with a temperature-induced inhibition of immune cell trafficking. This immune suppression allows...
Catalog of earthquake hypocenters at Alaskan volcanoes: January 1 through December 31, 2011
James P. Dixon, Scott D. Stihler, John A. Power, Cheryl K. Searcy
2012, Data Series 730
Between January 1 and December 31, 2011, the Alaska Volcano Observatory (AVO) located 4,364 earthquakes, of which 3,651 occurred within 20 kilometers of the 33 volcanoes with seismograph subnetworks. There was no significant seismic activity above background levels in 2011 at these instrumented volcanic centers. This catalog includes locations, magnitudes,...
Compartment-based hydrodynamics and water quality modeling of a northern Everglades wetland, Florida, USA
Hongqing Wang, Ehab A. Meselhe, Michael G. Waldon, Matthew C. Harwell, Chunfang Chen
2012, Ecological Modelling (247) 273-285
The last remaining large remnant of softwater wetlands in the US Florida Everglades lies within the Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge. However, Refuge water quality today is impacted by pumped stormwater inflows to the eutrophic and mineral-enriched 100-km canal, which circumscribes the wetland. Optimal management is a challenge...
Watershed regressions for pesticides (warp) models for predicting atrazine concentrations in Corn Belt streams
Wesley W. Stone, Robert J. Gilliom
2012, Journal of the American Water Resources Association (48) 970-986
Watershed Regressions for Pesticides (WARP) models, previously developed for atrazine at the national scale, are improved for application to the United States (U.S.) Corn Belt region by developing region-specific models that include watershed characteristics that are influential in predicting atrazine concentration statistics within the Corn Belt. WARP models for the...
Investigation of land subsidence in the Houston-Galveston region of Texas by using the Global Positioning System and interferometric synthetic aperture radar, 1993-2000
Gerald W. Bawden, Michaela R. Johnson, Mark C. Kasmarek, Justin T. Brandt, Clifton S. Middleton
2012, Scientific Investigations Report 2012-5211
Since the early 1900s, groundwater has been the primary source of municipal, industrial, and agricultural water supplies for the Houston-Galveston region, Texas. The region's combination of hydrogeology and nearly century-long use of groundwater has resulted in one of the largest areas of subsidence in the United States; by 1979, as...
Landslides in Colorado, USA--Impacts and loss estimation for 2010
Lynn M. Highland
2012, Open-File Report 2012-1204
The focus of this study is to investigate landslides and consequent losses which affected Colorado in the year 2010. By obtaining landslide reports from a variety of sources, this report will demonstrate the feasibility of creating a profile of landslides and their effects on communities. A short overview of the...
