Geophysical investigation of sentinel lakes in Lake, Seminole, Orange, and Volusia Counties, Florida
Christopher Reich, James Flocks, Jeffrey Davis
2012, Open-File Report 2012-1201
This study was initiated in cooperation with the St. Johns River Water Management District (SJRWMD) to investigate groundwater and surface-water interaction in designated sentinel lakes in central Florida. Sentinel lakes are a SJRWMD established set of priority water bodies (lakes) for which minimum flows and levels (MFLs) are determined. Understanding...
Structures data collection for the national map using volunteered geographic information
Barbara S. Poore, Eric B. Wolf, Erin M. Korris, Jennifer L. Walter, Greg D. Matthews
2012, Open-File Report 2012-1209
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has historically sponsored volunteered data collection projects to enhance its topographic paper and digital map products. This report describes one phase of an ongoing project to encourage volunteers to contribute data to The National Map using online editing tools. The USGS recruited students studying geographic...
Spatial and seasonal variability of base flow in the Verde Valley, central Arizona, 2007 and 2011
Bradley D. Garner, Donald J. Bills
2012, Scientific Investigations Report 2012-5192
Synoptic base-flow surveys were conducted on streams in the Verde Valley, central Arizona, in June 2007 and February 2011 by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in cooperation with the Verde River Basin Partnership, the Town of Clarkdale, and Yavapai County. These surveys, also known as seepage runs, measured streamflow under...
Spatial and temporal trends in PCBs in sediment along the lower Rhone River, France
Marc Desmet, Brice Mourier, Barbara Mahler, Peter C. Van Metre, Gwenaelle Roux, Henri Persat, Irene Lefevre, Annie Peretti, Emmanuel Chapron, Simonneau Anaelle, Cecile Miege, Marc Babut
2012, Science of the Total Environment (433) 189-197
Despite increasingly strict control of polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) releases in France since the mid-1970s, PCB contamination of fish recently has emerged as a major concern in the lower Rhone River basin. We measured PCB concentrations in Rhone sediment to evaluate the effects of PCB releases from major urban and industrial...
Modeling habitat dynamics accounting for possible misclassification
Sophie Veran, Kevin J. Kleiner, Remi Choquet, Jaime Collazo, James D. Nichols
2012, Landscape Ecology (27) 943-956
Land cover data are widely used in ecology as land cover change is a major component of changes affecting ecological systems. Landscape change estimates are characterized by classification errors. Researchers have used error matrices to adjust estimates of areal extent, but estimation of land cover change is more difficult and...
Sampling and analysis plan for the characterization of groundwater quality in two monitoring wells near Pavillion, Wyoming
Peter R. Wright, Peter B. McMahon
2012, Open-File Report 2012-1197
In June 2010, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency installed two deep monitoring wells (MW01 and MW02) near Pavillion, Wyoming to study groundwater quality. The U.S Geological Survey, in cooperation with the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality, designed a plan to collect groundwater data from these monitoring wells. This sampling and...
Groundwater-quality and quality-control data for two monitoring wells near Pavillion, Wyoming, April and May 2012
Peter R. Wright, Peter B. McMahon, David K. Mueller, Melanie L. Clark
2012, Data Series 718
In June 2010, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency installed two deep monitoring wells (MW01 and MW02) near Pavillion, Wyoming, to study groundwater quality. During April and May 2012, the U.S Geological Survey, in cooperation with the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality, collected groundwater-quality data and quality-control data from monitoring well...
Estimation of baseline daily mean streamflows for ungaged locations on Pennsylvania streams, water years 1960-2008
Marla H. Stuckey, Edward H. Koerkle, James E. Ulrich
2012, Scientific Investigations Report 2012-5142
Water-resource managers use daily mean streamflows to generate streamflow statistics and analyze streamflow conditions. An in-depth evaluation of flow regimes to promote instream ecological health often requires streamflow information obtainable only from a time series hydrograph. Historically, it has been difficult to estimate daily mean streamflow for an ungaged location....
Currents, drag, and sediment transport induced by a tsunami
Jessica R. Lacy, David M. Rubin, Daniel Buscombe
2012, Journal of Geophysical Research C: Oceans (117)
We report observations of water surface elevation, currents, and suspended sediment concentration (SSC) from a 10-m deep site on the inner shelf in northern Monterey Bay during the arrival of the 2010 Chile tsunami. Velocity profiles were measured from 3.5 m above the bed (mab) to the surface at 2...
Projected climate-induced habitat loss for salmonids in the John Day River network, Oregon, U.S.A.
Aaron S. Ruesch, Christian E. Torgersen, Joshua J. Lawler, Julian D. Olden, Erin E. Peterson, Carol J. Volk, David J. Lawrence
2012, Conservation Biology (26) 873-882
Climate change will likely have profound effects on cold-water species of freshwater fishes. As temperatures rise, cold-water fish distributions may shift and contract in response. Predicting the effects of projected stream warming in stream networks is complicated by the generally poor correlation between water temperature and air temperature. Spatial dependencies...
Review of flow rate estimates of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill
Marcia K. McNutt, Rich Camilli, Timothy J. Crone, George D. Guthrie, Paul A. Hsieh, Thomas B. Ryerson, Omer Savas, Frank Shaffer
2012, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (109) 20260-20267
The unprecedented nature of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill required the application of research methods to estimate the rate at which oil was escaping from the well in the deep sea, its disposition after it entered the ocean, and total reservoir depletion. Here, we review what advances were made in...
The National Nonindigenous Aquatic Species Database
Matthew E. Neilson, Pamela L. Fuller
2012, Fact Sheet 2012-3100
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Nonindigenous Aquatic Species (NAS) Program maintains a database that monitors, records, and analyzes sightings of nonindigenous aquatic plant and animal species throughout the United States. The program is based at the USGS Wetland and Aquatic Research Center in Gainesville, Florida.The initiative to maintain scientific information...
Data visualization, time-series analysis, and mass-balance modeling of hydrologic and water-quality data for the McTier Creek watershed, South Carolina, 2007-2009
Stephen T. Benedict, Paul Conrads, Toby D. Feaster, Celeste A. Journey, Heather E. Golden, Christopher D. Knightes, Gary M. Davis, Paul M. Bradley
2012, Open-File Report 2011-1209
The McTier Creek watershed is located in the headwaters of the Edisto River Basin, which is in the Coastal Plain region of South Carolina. The Edisto ecosystem has some of the highest recorded fish-tissue mercury concentrations in the United States. In an effort to advance the understanding of the fate...
Neighborhood and habitat effects on vital rates: expansion of the Barred Owl in the Oregon Coast Ranges
Charles B. Yackulic, Janice Reid, Raymond Davis, James E. Hines, James D. Nichols, Eric Forsman
2012, Ecology (93) 1953-1966
In this paper, we modify dynamic occupancy models developed for detection-nondetection data to allow for the dependence of local vital rates on neighborhood occupancy, where neighborhood is defined very flexibly. Such dependence of occupancy dynamics on the status of a relevant neighborhood is pervasive, yet frequently ignored. Our framework permits...
Fluvial transport of mercury, organic carbon, suspended sediment, and selected major ions in contrasting stream basins in South Carolina and New York, October 2004 to September 2009
Celeste A. Journey, Douglas A. Burns, Karen Riva-Murray, Mark E. Brigham, Daniel T. Button, Toby D. Feaster, Matthew D. Petkewich, Paul M. Bradley
2012, Scientific Investigations Report 2012-5173
A spatially extensive assessment of the environmental controls on mercury transport and bioaccumulation in stream ecosystems in New York and South Carolina was conducted as part of the U.S. Geological Survey National Water-Quality Assessment Program and included the determination of fluvial transport of mercury and associated constituents during water years...
An Automated Cropland Classification Algorithm (ACCA) for Tajikistan by combining Landsat, MODIS, and secondary data
Prasad S. Thenkabail, Zhuoting Wu
2012, Remote Sensing (4) 2890-2918
The overarching goal of this research was to develop and demonstrate an automated Cropland Classification Algorithm (ACCA) that will rapidly, routinely, and accurately classify agricultural cropland extent, areas, and characteristics (e.g., irrigated vs. rainfed) over large areas such as a country or a region through combination of multi-sensor remote sensing and...
Geologic map of the Cochetopa Park and North Pass Calderas, northeastern San Juan Mountains, Colorado
Peter W. Lipman
2012, Scientific Investigations Map 3123
The San Juan Mountains in southwestern Colorado have long been known as a site of exceptionally voluminous mid-Tertiary volcanism, including at least 22 major ignimbrite sheets (each 150-5,000 km3) and associated caldera structures active at 33-23 Ma. Recent volcanologic and petrologic studies in the San Juan region have focused mainly...
Fort Collins Science Center-Fiscal year 2011 science accomplishments
Juliette T. Wilson (compiler)
2012, Open-File Report 2012-1169
The Fort Collins Science Center (FORT) is a multi-disciplinary research and development center of the U.S. Geological Survey located in Fort Collins, Colorado. FORT research focuses on the needs of land- and water-management bureaus within the U.S. Department of the Interior, other Federal agencies, and State, Tribal, and non-government organizations....
Genetic research for wildlife and fisheries management - A primer
Rachel J. Pawlitz, Margaret E. Hunter, Nathan A. Johnson
2012, Fact Sheet 2012-3110
Scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) use a range of research approaches to investigate the genetics of native and non-native species that are being managed. This Fact Sheet outlines those approaches and explains the type of information they provide....
Subsurface gas hydrates in the northern Gulf of Mexico
Ray Boswell, Timothy S. Collett, Matthew Frye, William Shedd, Daniel R. McConnell, Dianna Shelander
2012, Marine and Petroleum Geology (34) 4-30
The northernGulf of Mexico (GoM) has long been a focus area for the study of gashydrates. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, work focused on massive gashydrates deposits that were found to form at and near the seafloor in association with hydrocarbon seeps. However, as global scientific and industrial interest in...
Approaches in highly parameterized inversion-PESTCommander, a graphical user interface for file and run management across networks
Marinko Karanovic, Christopher T. Muffels, Matthew J. Tonkin, Randall J. Hunt
2012, Techniques and Methods 7-C8
Models of environmental systems have become increasingly complex, incorporating increasingly large numbers of parameters in an effort to represent physical processes on a scale approaching that at which they occur in nature. Consequently, the inverse problem of parameter estimation (specifically, model calibration) and subsequent uncertainty analysis have become increasingly computation-intensive...
Population-level impact of white-nose syndrome on the endangered Indiana bat
Wayne E. Thogmartin, R. Andrew King, Patrick C. McKann, Jennifer A. Szymanski, Lori Pruitt
2012, Journal of Mammalogy (93) 1086-1098
Establishing status and trend for an endangered species is critical to recovery, especially when it is faced with a nascent extinction agent. We calculated, with hierarchical log-linear change-point models, hibernaculum-level population trends between 1983 and 2009 for the endangered Indiana bat (Myotis sodalis) now subjected to the fast-spreading fungal disease...
Ecological context for the North Pacific Landscape Conservation Cooperative
Andrea Woodward, Audrey Taylor, Anne Weekes
2012, Open-File Report 2012-1211
The North Pacific Landscape Conservation Cooperative (NPLCC) encompasses the temperate coastal rainforest and extends from the coastal mountains to the near-shore from the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska to Bodega Bay, California. The area spans multiple agency, state, and international boundaries over more than 22 degrees of latitude, including a wide range...
The influence of reservoirs, climate, land use and hydrologic conditions on loads and chemical quality of dissolved organic carbon in the Colorado River
Matthew P. Miller
2012, Water Resources Research (48)
Longitudinal patterns in dissolved organic carbon (DOC) loads and chemical quality were identified in the Colorado River from the headwaters in the Rocky Mountains to the United States-Mexico border from 1994 to 2011. Watershed- and reach-scale climate, land use, river discharge and hydrologic modification conditions that contribute to patterns in...
Local-area-enhanced, 2.5-meter resolution natural-color and color-infrared satellite-image mosaics of the Haji-Gak mineral district in Afghanistan: Chapter C in Local-area-enhanced, high-resolution natural-color and color-infrared satellite-image mosaics of mineral districts in Afghanistan
Philip A. Davis, Laura E. Cagney, Scott A. Arko, Michelle L. Harbin
2012, Data Series 709-C
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Defense Task Force for Business and Stability Operations, prepared databases for mineral-resource target areas in Afghanistan. The purpose of the databases is to (1) provide useful data to ground-survey crews for use in performing detailed assessments of the...
