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The USGS Water-Use Data and Research Program (WUDR) is an appropriated program and is authorized under the SECURE Water Act (Sec. 9508 (c)). WUDR provides financial assistance through cooperative agreements to State water resource agencies. The WUDR Program has two main goals: • To improve the availability, quality, compatibility, and delivery of...

Landscape-level geomorphic processes influence the spatial and temporal arrangement of fish habitats in freshwater ecosystems and fishes move across riverscapes, selecting a suite of habitats to maximise fitness. Here, we explore the influence of geomorphology on stream channel attributes and assess Broad Whitefish (Coregonus nasus) spawning habitat potential in the...

The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the Ashokan Watershed Stream Management Program, investigated the feasibility of bedload monitoring in the upper Esopus Creek watershed, Ulster and Greene Counties, New York, from 2017 to 2020. Traditional bedload samples were collected at two locations: Birch Creek at Big Indian, New York...

Many large mammalian carnivores are facing population declines due to illegal killing (e.g., shooting) and habitat modification (e.g., livestock farming). Illegal killing occurs cryptically and hence is difficult to detect. However, reducing illegal killing requires a solid understanding of its magnitude and underlying drivers, while accounting for the imperfect...

The 2019 Mw 7.1 Ridgecrest California earthquake rupture passed within 4 km of the Trona Pinnacles, a large group of tufa rock pillars. Reconnaissance following the Ridgecrest mainshock documented fresh damage to several of the Pinnacles. Repeated aerial photogrammetric surveys also documented damage during subsequent aftershocks. Here,...

Poplar Island, like many other islands throughout the Chesapeake Bay, eroded from 460 hectares in 1847 to only 1.5 hectares by the 1990’s. However, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Maryland Department of Transportation, and numerous other state and federal agencies selected this site as the location of a beneficial...

A previously completed mineral resources assessment of the Texas Coastal Plain indicated the potential for the future discovery of uranium resources. Geoenvironmental assessments that include the hydrogeologic framework can be used as a tool to understand the potential effects of mining operations. The hydrogeologic framework for this study focused on...

The global decline of water quality in rivers and streams has resulted in a pressing need to design new watershed management strategies. Water quality can be affected by multiple stressors including population growth, land use change, global warming, and extreme events, with repercussions on human and ecosystem health. A scientific...

Monitoring discharge in the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal is critical for the accounting done by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers of the diversion of water from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River Basin by the State of Illinois. The primary streamgage used for this discharge monitoring, the Chicago...

In-situ recovery (ISR) has been the only technique used to extract uranium from sandstone-hosted uranium deposits in the Pliocene Goliad Sand in the Texas Coastal Plain. Water plays a crucial role throughout the ISR lifecycle of production and groundwater restoration yet neither the water use nor other environmental footprints have...

Near-term ecological forecasts provide resource managers advance notice of changes in ecosystem services, such as fisheries stocks, timber yields, or water quality. Importantly, ecological forecasts can identify where there is uncertainty in the forecasting system, which is necessary to improve forecast skill and guide interpretation of forecast results. Uncertainty partitioning...

The wildland-urban interface (WUI) is the focus of many important land management issues, such as wildfire, habitat fragmentation, invasive species, and human-wildlife conflicts. Wildfire is an especially critical issue, because housing growth in the WUI increases wildfire ignitions and the number of homes at risk. Identifying the WUI is important...

Novel approaches to quantifying density and distributions could help biologists adaptively manage wildlife populations, particularly if methods are accurate, consistent, cost-effective, rapid, and sensitive to change. Such approaches may also improve research on interactions between density and processes of interest, such as disease transmission across multiple...

BackgroundPrenatal exposure to drinking water with arsenic concentrations >50 μg/L is associated with adverse birth outcomes, with inconclusive evidence for concentrations ≤50 μg/L. In a collaborative effort...

Executive SummaryThe U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Calibration and Validation (Cal/Val) Center of Excellence (ECCOE) focuses on improving the accuracy, precision, calibration, and product quality of remote-sensing data, leveraging years of multiscale optical system geometric and radiometric calibration and characterization experience. The ECCOE Landsat Cal/Val...

Spectroscopic data are rich in information and are commonly used in planetary research. Many mission teams, research labs, and individual research scientists derive thematic products from multi- and hyperspectral data sets and apply spectroscopic analysis techniques to derive new understanding. The PyHAT is a powerful and versatile, free, and open-source Python library designed to...

From its rolling pastures to its forested Appalachian peaks, Kentucky’s scenery offers beauty along with contrast. Rivers, including the Mississippi and the Ohio, border much of the State, and more rivers and hundreds of lakes are inside its borders. Kentucky is also home to the world’s longest known cave system,...

In 2000, the U.S. Geological Survey published a distinctive map, entitled “A Tapestry of Time and Terrain,” which showed a generalized depiction of the geology in the conterminous United States, draped over shaded-relief topography. In 2003, that map concept was extended geographically, and the resulting new map was published at...

Trees are bioindicators of global climate change and regional urbanization, but available monitoring tools are ineffective for fine-scale observation of many species. Using six accelerometers mounted on two urban ash trees (Fraxinus americana), we looked at high-frequency tree vibrations, or change in periodicity of tree sway as a proxy for...

Spilled oil in inland waterways can aggregate with mineral and organic particles to form oil-particle aggregates (OPAs). OPAs can be transported in suspension or deposited to the bed. Modeling the fate and transport of OPAs can provide useful information for making mitigation decisions. A novel open-source tool, FluOil, is developed...

Submarine mass wasting events have damaged underwater structures and propagated waves that have inundated towns and affected human populations in nearby coastal areas. Susceptibility to submarine landslides can be pronounced in degrading cryospheric environments, where existing glaciers can provide high volumes of sediment, while cycles of glaciation and ice-loss can...

Vance Creek drains a 24 square mile area of the Olympic Mountains in western Washington. The lower 4 miles of the creek often go dry in discontinuous patches during the summer, limiting salmon rearing success. To better understand sediment transport dynamics in the creek and aid in potential restoration...

Understanding dispersion in rivers is critical for numerous applications, such as characterizing larval drift for endangered fish species and responding to spills of hazardous materials. Injecting a visible dye into the river can yield insight on dispersion processes, but conventional field instrumentation yields limited data on variations in dye concentration...

Invasions of native plant communities by non-native species present major challenges for ecosystem management and conservation. Invasive annual grasses such as cheatgrass, medusahead, and ventenata are pervasive and continue to expand their distributions across imperiled sagebrush-steppe communities of the western United States. These invasive grasses alter native plant communities, ecosystem...

Movement patterns of lions (Panthera leo) reveal how they hunt large herbivores in heterogeneous landscapes such as the Kruger National Park in South Africa. Large herbivores are distributed differently on the landscape and therefore have different vulnerabilities as prey for lions. For instance, blue wildebeest (Connochaetes taurinus) occupy small grazing...