Search Results

Villa Angela Beach, on the Lake Erie lakeshore near Cleveland, Ohio, is just west of the mouth of Euclid Creek, a small, flashy stream that drains approximately 23 square miles and is susceptible to periodic contamination from combined sewer overflows (CSOs; 190 and 189 events in 2018 and 2019, respectively)....

Titanium dioxide (TiO2) is widely used in engineered particles including engineered nanomaterial (ENM) and pigments, yet its occurrence, concentrations, temporal variability, and fate in natural environmental systems are poorly understood. For three years, we monitored TiO2 concentrations in a rural river basin (Edisto River, < 1% urban land cover) in South Carolina,...

The local climatic impacts of historical expansion of irrigation are substantial, but the distant impacts are poorly understood, and their governing mechanisms generally have not been rigorously analyzed. Our experiments with an earth-system model suggest that irrigation in the Middle East and South Asia may enhance rainfall in a large...

Wildfires in forested watersheds dramatically alter stored and labile soil organic matter (SOM) pools and the export of dissolved organic matter (DOM). Ecosystem recovery after wildfires depends on soil microbial communities and revegetation and therefore is limited by the availability of nutrients,...

Study RegionWe created a 270-m coupled model of land-use and groundwater conditions, LUCAS-W[ater], for California’s Central Coast. This groundwater-dependent region is undergoing a dramatic reorganization of groundwater management under California’s 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA).Study FocusUnderstanding land-use and...

Idaho may be popular for potatoes, but the State’s richness also lies in its scenery and natural resources. Its terrain varies from mountains, rivers, and waterfalls to forests, volcanic rock, and hot springs. A growing population gives Idaho even more reason to use the best information available to serve the...

Releases of water from Flaming Gorge Dam together with climate-related variations in runoff determine the streamflow regime of the Green River, which affects the physical characteristics of the channel and riparian ecosystem of the Green River corridor in Canyonlands National Park. The dam has decreased peak streamflows and raised base...

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) created a virtual training series for the Afghanistan Ministry of Energy and Water (MEW), now known as the National Water Affairs Regulation Authority (NWARA), to provide critical hydrological training as an alternative to an in-person training. The USGS was scheduled to provide in-person surface-water training...

Many grass-dominated ecosystems in dryland regions have experienced increasing woody plant density and abundance during the past century. In many cases, this process has led to land degradation and declines in ecosystem functions. An example is the Chihuahuan Desert in the southwestern United States, which experienced different stages of shrub...

Dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) and total alkalinity (TA) are fundamental components of carbonate systems that control pH and buffering capacity of the receiving water body. Three coastal marshes with contrasting salinities in Barataria Basin, Louisiana, USA, were sampled to understand seasonal changes in porewater carbonate chemistry and its impact on...

The freshwater opossum shrimp Mysis diluviana can undergo extensive diel vertical migration (DVM) to feed in shallow, prey rich strata at night. Bright moonlight limits their night-time migration presumably due to predator avoidance. Using a linked, foraging-bioenergetics model, we evaluated the cost of avoiding predators by simulating the effects of prey density, water temperature, and...

Landslides in Minnesota have caused loss of life, damaged infrastructure, and negatively affected Minnesota’s natural resources. Landslides increase the amount of sediment contributed to lakes and rivers, with negative consequences for water quality and aquatic habitats. Recent mapping reveals that landslide susceptible areas within Minnesota primarily occur on steep slopes...

Temperature is a key controlling variable from subcellular to ecosystem scales. Thus, climatic warming is expected to have broad impacts, especially in economically and ecologically valuable systems such as estuaries. The heavily managed upper San Francisco Estuary supplies water to millions of people and is home...

Annual bank erosion was measured at multiple cross sections along the free-flowing meandering Powder River in the western United States from 1979 through 2019. Bank erosion was separated into two components—above water and underwater erosion. Above water erosion was measured as the annual bank retreat rate (0–15.4 m y−1). Underwater erosion rate (0–47 m3 m−1 y−1) was calculated...

In 2010 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency established the Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) which is a “pollution diet” that aims to reduce the amount of nitrogen and phosphorus entering the Chesapeake Bay, the largest estuary in the United States, by 25 and 24% percent, respectively. To achieve this goal...

The Alto Guaporé gold province, southwestern Amazon craton, contains gold deposits that have been mined since the beginning of the 18th century and these deposits, together, have modern-day, pre-mining gold resources of at least 1.8 Moz. The ore is associated with quartz vein systems along the southeastern part of the...

Conservation translocations are increasingly used to help recover imperiled species. However, success of establishing populations remains low, especially for amphibians. Identifying factors associated with translocation success can help increase efficiency and efficacy of recovery efforts. Since the 1990s, several captive and semi-captive facilities have produced Chiricahua Leopard Frogs (Rana chiricahuensis) to...

This report describes the skeletal storage, compaction and subsidence (CSUB) package of MODFLOW 6. The CSUB package simulates the vertical compaction of compressible sediments and land subsidence. The package simulates groundwater storage changes and elastic compaction in coarse-grained aquifer sediments. The CSUB package also simulates groundwater storage changes and elastic...

This report documents a new Groundwater Transport (GWT) Model for MODFLOW 6. The GWT Model simulates three-dimensional transport of a single chemical species in fowing groundwater based on a generalized control-volume fnite-difference approach. Although each GWT Model is only able to represent a single chemical species, multiple GWT Models may...

Deep learning (DL) models can accurately predict many hydrologic variables including streamflow and water temperature; however, these models have typically predicted hydrologic variables independently. This study explored the benefits of modeling two interdependent variables, daily average streamflow and daily average stream water temperature, together using multi-task DL. A multi-task scaling...

The U.S. Geological Survey National Water Dashboard supplies critical information to decision makers, emergency managers, and the public during extreme hydrologic events (such as droughts and floods) and during normal hydrologic conditions. It informs decision making that can help protect lives and property before and during extreme hydrologic events. The...

The U.S. Geological Survey National Water Dashboard supplies critical information to decision makers, emergency managers, and the public during extreme hydrologic events (such as droughts and floods) and during normal hydrologic conditions. It informs decision making that can help protect lives and property before and during extreme hydrologic events. The...

Hydroclimate on ‘Uvea (Wallis et Futuna) is controlled by rainfall associated with the South Pacific Convergence Zone (SPCZ), the southern hemisphere's largest precipitation feature. To extend the short observational precipitation record, the hydrogen isotopic composition of the algal lipid biomarker dinosterol (δ2Hdinosterol) was measured in sediment...

A hydrogeologic investigation was undertaken by the U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, within the areas shown in the Macedon, Palmyra, Newark, and Lyons 7.5-minute quadrangle maps that include parts of Wayne, Ontario, and Seneca Counties in New York. The most productive...

In February 2020, we held a workshop where we sought to identify where states should reintroduce or augment brook floater to minimize the probability of extinction within a state. We focused on Massachusetts and Connecticut, two states with only a few, small populations still extant, that likely need population restoration...