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Extreme precipitation events (EPEs), a key class of hydrometeorological extremes, are intensifying globally under climate change; however, their effects on water-table dynamics across varying soil textures remain poorly understood. To better understand the impacts of EPEs, we conducted one-dimensional modeling to evaluate water-table response time, displacement, recession...

Streams and rivers in urban watersheds are predicted to export more bioreactive, autochthonous dissolved organic matter (DOM) relative to forested watersheds. However, the spatial and temporal variations of DOM quality in forested urban watersheds remain uncertain, and their relationships with socioeconomic conditions, biological characteristics, and the built environment are understudied....

Grouping species into guilds can be useful to inform management decisions locally and at broader scales because guilds lack species-specificity. We investigated the response of five breeding bird guilds to riparian habitat restoration in the arid Colorado River delta, based on two decades of bird detections (2002–2021) at 230 bird...

The U.S. Geological Survey, with funding from the Idaho Department of Water Resources, developed a groundwater budget for the Mountain Home area in southern Idaho for irrigation year 2023 (November 1, 2022–October 31, 2023). This study focused on the water balance across the Cinder Cone Butte Critical Groundwater Area (CGWA),...

Intersections of drainage networks and road networks represent a critical nexus between natural waterways and human infrastructure. Managing these systems involves decisions related to management of infrastructure, hydrologic and geomorphic processes, and ecological connectivity. Interactions among these systems influence multiple values, including the intactness of transportation networks, public safety, water...

Centered on Fort Morgan, Colorado, this study is intended to build from previous work by adding a three-dimensional (3D) view of the subsurface to better understand the depositional history of Quaternary deposits. A 1:100,000 scale geologic map was made by combining previous geologic maps, regional soil maps, and recent field...

The eastern box turtle (Terrapene carolina carolina) is a long-lived terrestrial turtle species distributed throughout the eastern United States that has experienced widespread population decline. Many eastern box turtle populations are persisting as remanent populations in small, fragmented urban green spaces. We investigated the movement and resource...

Conservation in fragmented ecosystems, such as grasslands, has historically put more value on larger habitat patches but recent research suggests that small, high-quality habitat patches hold important conservation value. In many grassland systems, Athene cunicularia hypugaea (Western Burrowing Owl) relies on habitat patches created by Cynomys ludovicianus (Black-tailed Prairie Dog; hereafter prairie dog). Prairie...

Hurricanes drive diverse estuarine phytoplankton responses and can trigger cascading ecological and physicochemical impacts. Capturing these short-term dynamics requires high spatiotemporal resolution. Here, we applied a globally-applicable coastal ocean color algorithm, Variational Autoencoder (VAE), to Sentinel-2 MSI imagery for chlorophyll-a (Chl-a) estimation and validated its strong performance across the northern Gulf...

Acadia National Park has had increases in the frequency and magnitude of precipitation in recent years, leading to increased flood flows, stream erosion, and costly infrastructure damage. To improve infrastructure management in a changing climate, the U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the National Park Service, has developed multiple datasets...

Red Knots (Calidris canutus rufa) rely on Atlantic horseshoe crab (Limulus polyphemus) eggs in the Delaware Bay to refuel during northward migration. Intensive harvest of horseshoe crabs in the 1990s contributed to declines in Red Knot numbers. In 2013, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission adopted an Adaptive Resource Management...

We assembled and annotated a chromosome-level reference genome for the Western Spadefoot, Spea hammondii (Anura, Scaphiopodidae) representing one of only three amphibians included in the California Conservation Genomics Project (CCGP). Spea hammondii is a vernal pool breeding anuran native to California and northwestern Baja California which has undergone both range contractions and local...

We introduce a fully automated and scalable method for mapping surface water extents from single-acquisition Sentinel-1 synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery. This approach integrates adaptive thresholding of radiometric terrain-corrected SAR backscatter data, fuzzy-logic classification, region growing, dark land estimation, and a bimodality test to minimize false positives in...

The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the Wyoming Water Development Office, developed regional regression equations based on basin characteristics and streamflow statistics for streamgages through water year 2021 (October 1, 2020, to September 30, 2021). The regression equations allow estimates of mean annual maximum, mean annual, mean seasonal, and...

Magnitude and frequency of annual peak streamflows were computed for 813 streamgages on rural, unregulated streams with annual peak streamflow data from 1791 through the 2021 water years in and near Virginia and West Virginia. The study was done in cooperation with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the West Virginia...

The Lower Eastern Shore Tributary Summary outlines change over time according to a suite of monitored tidal water quality parameters and associated potential drivers of those trends for the period 1985 – 2023, and provides a brief description of the current state of knowledge explaining these observed changes. Water quality...

This study provides a comprehensive assessment of decadal changes in the quality of groundwater used for public drinking-water supply at 444 monitoring sites across California during 2004–2023. We assessed decadal step trends in groundwater quality for 145 water-quality constituents and geochemical indicators statewide and across geographic and land-use based network...

As fragility and risk modeling techniques and computational capabilities evolve, complemented by moving toward more routine and systematic seismic risk assessment of all buildings and critical infrastructure, the authors pose a few critical questions to investigate how the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Seismic Hazard Models (NSHMs)...

Introduction: Bigheaded carp (Hypophthalmichthys spp.) are invasive fish in the Mississippi River basin. Their rapid proliferation has raised concerns about exploitative competition with native fishes, with consequences that remain incompletely understood. We aimed to identify native species most susceptible to competition based on overlap with bigheaded carp in dietary and habitat...

Using Fourier-transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry (FT-ICR-MS), Zheng et al. (2018, Energy & Fuels 32, 10382) reported abundant iron and vanadyl porphyrins and minor amounts of gallium and nickel porphyrins in asphaltenes extracted from a single lower Eagle Ford Shale sample. This finding is most unusual as iron...

Using a geology-based assessment methodology, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated undiscovered, technically recoverable mean conventional resources of 269 million barrels of oil and 14.3 trillion cubic feet of gas in the Larsen Basin, Antarctica....

1. Rising timber demand is transforming forest structure globally, profoundly affecting biodiversity and climate resilience. Logging-driven fragmentation is potentially a major driver of biodiversity loss in production landscapes, yet its interactions with escalating climate stressors remain poorly understood.2. We combine two decades of Landsat-derived habitat metrics with 29,000 surveys of...

Red Knots(Calidris canutus rufa) rely on Atlantic horseshoe crab (Limulus polyphemus) eggs in the Delaware Bay to refuel during northward migration. Intensive harvest of horseshoe crabs in the 1990s contributed to declines in Red Knot numbers. In 2013, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission adopted an Adaptive Resource Management (ARM)...

Accurate estimation of earthquake source parameters—such as moment magnitudes, corner frequencies, and stress drops—is essential for improving seismic hazard assessments and understanding earthquake physics. In this study, moment magnitudes (MW) are calculated for 31,581 earthquakes associated with wastewater injection in the Raton Basin (located along the border...

Reproductive output can vary widely among mammalian species. There are many drivers that affect reproductive output including evolutionary, environmental, population, social, and individual traits. Although several factors, including human-caused mortality, can affect reproductive output, we generally have a poor understanding of how such factors interact to affect...