Status and understanding of groundwater quality in the Tahoe-Martis, Central Sierra, and Southern Sierra study units, 2006-2007--California GAMA Priority Basin Project
Miranda S. Fram, Kenneth Belitz
2012, Scientific Investigations Report 2011-5216
Groundwater quality in the Tahoe-Martis, Central Sierra, and Southern Sierra study units was investigated as part of the Priority Basin Project of the California Groundwater Ambient Monitoring and Assessment (GAMA) Program. The three study units are located in the Sierra Nevada region of California in parts of Nevada, Placer, El...
Shifts in identity and activity of methanotrophs in arctic lake sediments in response to temperature changes
Ruo He, Matthew J. Wooller, John W. Pohlman, John Quensen, James M. Tiedje, Mary Beth Leigh
2012, Applied and Environmental Microbiology (78) 4715-4723
Methane (CH4) flux to the atmosphere is mitigated via microbial CH4 oxidation in sediments and water. As arctic temperatures increase, understanding the effects of temperature on the activity and identity of methanotrophs in arctic lake sediments is important to predicting future CH4 emissions. We used DNA-based stable-isotope probing (SIP), quantitative PCR (Q-PCR),...
Evaluation of fault-normal/fault-parallel directions rotated ground motions for response history analysis of an instrumented six-story building
Erol Kalkan, Neal S. Kwong
2012, Open-File Report 2012-1058
According to regulatory building codes in United States (for example, 2010 California Building Code), at least two horizontal ground-motion components are required for three-dimensional (3D) response history analysis (RHA) of buildings. For sites within 5 km of an active fault, these records should be rotated to fault-normal/fault-parallel (FN/FP) directions, and...
Water quality and the composition of fish and macroinvertebrate communities in the Devils and Pecos Rivers within and upstream from the Amistad National Recreation Area, Texas, 2005-7
J. Bruce Moring
2012, Scientific Investigations Report 2012-5038
To gain a better understanding of the water quality and status of fish and macroinvertebrate communities, the U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the National Park Service and Amistad National Recreation Area, completed a reconnaissance-level survey of the water quality and fish and macroinvertebrate communities in the Devils and Pecos...
Groundwater quality in the Tahoe and Martis Basins, California
Miranda S. Fram, Kenneth Belitz
2012, Fact Sheet 2011-3143
Groundwater provides more than 40 percent of California's drinking water. To protect this vital resource, the State of California created the Groundwater Ambient Monitoring and Assessment (GAMA) Program. The Priority Basin Project of the GAMA Program provides a comprehensive assessment of the State's groundwater quality and increases public access to...
Groundwater quality in the Southern Sierra Nevada, California
Miranda S. Fram, Kenneth Belitz
2012, Fact Sheet 2012-3011
Groundwater provides more than 40 percent of California's drinking water. To protect this vital resource, the State of California created the Groundwater Ambient Monitoring and Assessment (GAMA) Program. The Priority Basin Project of the GAMA Program provides a comprehensive assessment of the State's groundwater quality and increases public access to...
Groundwater quality in the Central Sierra Nevada, California
Miranda S. Fram, Kenneth Belitz
2012, Fact Sheet 2012-3010
Groundwater provides more than 40 percent of California's drinking water. To protect this vital resource, the State of California created the Groundwater Ambient Monitoring and Assessment (GAMA) Program. The Priority Basin Project of the GAMA Program provides a comprehensive assessment of the State's groundwater quality and increases public access to...
The effect of swab sample choice on the detection of avian influenza in apparently healthy wild ducks
S. Ip, Robert J. Dusek, Dennis M. Heisey
2012, Avian Diseases (56) 114-119
Historically, avian influenza viruses have been isolated from cloacal swab specimens, but recent data suggest that the highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5N1 virus can be better detected from respiratory tract specimens. To better understand how swab sample type affects the detection ability of low pathogenic avian influenza (LPAI) viruses...
Bayesian shared frailty models for regional inference about wildlife survival
D.M. Heisey
2012, Animal Conservation (15) 127-128
One can joke that 'exciting statistics' is an oxymoron, but it is neither a joke nor an exaggeration to say that these are exciting times to be involved in statistical ecology. As Halstead et al.'s (2012) paper nicely exemplifies, recently developed Bayesian analyses can now be used to extract insights...
Hydrogeologic framework of the Wood River Valley aquifer system, south-central Idaho
James R. Bartolino, Candice B. Adkins
2012, Scientific Investigations Report 2012-5053
The Wood River Valley contains most of the population of Blaine County and the cities of Sun Valley, Ketchum, Hailey, and Bellevue. This mountain valley is underlain by the alluvial Wood River Valley aquifer system, which consists primarily of a single unconfined aquifer that underlies the entire valley, an underlying...
Leopardus braccatus (Carnivora: Felidae)
Anita L. Barstow, David M. Leslie Jr.
2012, Mammalian Species (44) 16-25
Leopardus braccatus (Cope, 1889) is a small felid—not much larger than a domestic house cat—commonly called the Pantanal cat. No comprehensive surveys have been conducted to determine how many L. braccatus exist in the wild. It is found in humid, warm grasslands and wooded areas of extreme northwestern Argentina, southwestern and south- and...
Real-time seismic monitoring of instrumented hospital buildings
Erol Kalkan, Jon Peter B. Fletcher, William S. Leith, William S. McCarthy, Krishna Banga
2012, Fact Sheet 2012-3028
In collaboration with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), the U.S. Geological Survey's National Strong Motion Project has recently installed sophisticated seismic monitoring systems to monitor the structural health of two hospital buildings at the Memphis VA Medical Center in Tennessee. The monitoring systems in the Bed Tower and Spinal...
DOI Climate Science Centers--Regional science to address management priorities
Robin O'Malley
2012, Fact Sheet 2012-3048
Our Nation's lands, waters, and ecosystems and the living and cultural resources they contain face myriad challenges from invasive species, the effects of changing land and water use, habitat fragmentation and degradation, and other influences. These challenges are compounded by increasing influences from a changing climate—higher temperatures, increasing droughts, floods,...
Seasonal use of shallow water habitat in the Lower Snake River reservoirs by juvenile fall Chinook salmon
Kenneth F. Tiffan, William P. Connor
2012, Report
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (COE) is preparing a long term management plan for sediments that affect the authorized project purposes of the Lower Granite, Little Goose, Lower Monumental, and Ice Harbor reservoirs (hereafter, the lower Snake River reservoirs), and the area from the mouth of the Snake River...
Water resources of the Iroquois National Wildlife Refuge, Genesee and Orleans counties, New York 2008-2010
William M. Kappel, Matthew B. Jennings
2012, Scientific Investigations Report 2012-5027
A 2-year study of the water resources of the Iroquois National Wildlife Refuge (Refuge) in western New York was carried out in 2009-2010 in cooperation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to assist the Refuge in the development of a 15-year Comprehensive Conservtion plan. The study focused on Oak...
Geospatial database for regional environmental assessment of central Colorado.
Stan E. Church, Carma A. San Juan, David L. Fey, Travis S. Schmidt, Terry L. Klein, Ed H. DeWitt, Richard B. Wanty, Philip L. Verplanck, Katharine A. Mitchell, Monique G. Adams, LaDonna M. Choate, Todor I. Todorov, Barnaby W. Rockwell, Luke McEachron, Michael W. Anthony
2012, Data Series 614
In conjunction with the future planning needs of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, the U.S. Geological Survey conducted a detailed environmental assessment of the effects of historical mining on Forest Service lands in central Colorado. Stream sediment, macroinvertebrate, and various filtered and unfiltered water quality samples were collected...
Hunting influences the diel patterns in habitat selection by northern pintails Anas acuta
Michael L. Casazza, Peter S. Coates, Michael R. Miller, Cory T. Overton, Daniel R. Yparraguirre
2012, Wildlife Biology (18) 1-13
Northern pintail Anas acuta (hereafter pintail) populations wintering within Suisun Marsh, a large estuarine managed wetland near San Francisco Bay, California,USA, have declined markedly over the last four decades. The reasons for this decline are unclear. Information on how hunting and other factors influence the selection of vegetation types and...
Short-term response of Dicamptodon tenebrosus larvae to timber management in southwestern Oregon
Niels Leuthold, M. J. Adams, John P. Hayes
2012, Journal of Wildlife Management (76) 28-37
In the Pacific Northwest, previous studies have found a negative effect of timber management on the abundance of stream amphibians, but results have been variable and region specific. These studies have generally used survey methods that did not account for differences in capture probability and focused on stands that were...
Determination of streamflow of the Arkansas River near Bentley in south-central Kansas
Charles A. Perry
2012, Scientific Investigations Report 2012-5059
The Kansas Department of Agriculture, Division of Water Resources, requires that the streamflow of the Arkansas River just upstream from Bentley in south-central Kansas be measured or calculated before groundwater can be pumped from the well field. When the daily streamflow of the Arkansas River near Bentley is less than...
Channel-pattern and cross-section changes in selected reaches of Elkhead Creek, northwestern Colorado, 1938-2009
John G. Elliott, Steven J. Char
2012, Scientific Investigations Report 2011-5201
Elkhead Creek near Craig, Colorado, is a sinuous, meandering stream whose lower 9 river miles have been regulated by Elkhead Reservoir and Dam since 1974. The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the Colorado River Water Conservation District, conducted a study from 2009 to 2010 that evaluated channel-pattern and cross-section...
Advances in the simulation and automated measurement of well-sorted granular material: 2. Direct measures of particle properties
Daniel D. Buscombe, David M. Rubin
2012, Journal of Geophysical Research F: Earth Surface (117)
1. In this, the second of a pair of papers on the structure of well-sorted natural granular material (sediment), new methods are described for automated measurements from images of sediment, of: 1) particle-size standard deviation (arithmetic sorting) with and without apparent void fraction; and 2) mean particle size in material...
Advances in the simulation and automated measurement of well-sorted granular material: 1. Simulation
Daniel Buscombe, David M. Rubin
2012, Journal of Geophysical Research F: Earth Surface (117)
1. In this, the first of a pair of papers which address the simulation and automated measurement of well-sorted natural granular material, a method is presented for simulation of two-phase (solid, void) assemblages of discrete non-cohesive particles. The purpose is to have a flexible, yet computationally and theoretically simple, suite...
Assessing time-integrated dissolved concentrations and predicting toxicity of metals during diel cycling in streams
Laurie S. Balistrieri, David A. Nimick, Christopher A. Mebane
2012, Science of the Total Environment (425) 155-168
Evaluating water quality and the health of aquatic organisms is challenging in systems with systematic diel (24 hour) or less predictable runoff-induced changes in water composition. To advance our understanding of how to evaluate environmental health in these dynamic systems, field studies of diel cycling were conducted in two...
Dispersal of larval suckers at the Williamson River Delta, Upper Klamath Lake, Oregon, 2006-09
Tamara M. Wood, Heather A. Hendrixson, Douglas F. Markle, Charles S. Erdman, Summer M. Burdick, Craig M. Ellsworth, Norman L. Buccola
2012, Scientific Investigations Report 2012-5016
An advection/diffusion modeling approach was used to simulate the transport of larval suckers from spawning areas in the Williamson River, through the newly restored Williamson River Delta, to Upper Klamath Lake. The density simulations spanned the years of phased restoration, from 2006/2007 prior to any levee breaching, to 2008 when...
Effects of native forest restoration on soil hydraulic properties, Auwahi, Maui, Hawaiian Islands
Kimberlie S. Perkins, John R. Nimmo, Arthur C. Medeiros
2012, Geophysical Research Letters (39)
Over historic time Hawai'i's dryland forests have been largely replaced by grasslands for grazing livestock. On-going efforts have been undertaken to restore dryland forests to bring back native species and reduce erosion. The reestablishment of native ecosystems on land severely degraded by long-term alternative use requires reversal of the impacts...
