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Field-related influences on polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) exposure were evaluated by employing caged deposit-feeders, Neanthes arenaceodentata, along with polyoxymethylene (POM) samplers using parallel in situ and ex situ bioassays with homogenized untreated or activated carbon (AC) amended sediment. The AC amendment achieved a remedial efficiency in reducing bioaccumulation by 90% in...

Understanding the potential effects of increased reliance on wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) effluents to meet municipal, agricultural, and environmental flow requires an understanding of the complex chemical loading characteristics of the WWTPs and the assimilative capacity of receiving waters. Stream ecosystem effects are linked to proportions of WWTP effluent under...

Nanoparticulate metal sulfides such as ZnS can influence the transport and bioavailability of pollutant metals in anaerobic environments. The aim of this work was to investigate how the composition of dissolved natural organic matter (NOM) influences the stability of zinc sulfide nanoparticles as they nucleate and aggregate in water with...

Genetic data are increasingly being used in conservation planning for declining species. We sampled both the ecological and distributional limits of the foothill yellow-legged frog, Rana boylii to characterize mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) variation in this declining, riverine amphibian. We evaluated 1525 base pairs (bp) of cytochrome b and ND2 fragments...

There have been substantial efforts recently by geochemists to determine the age of groundwater (time since water entered the system) and its uncertainty, and by hydrologists to use these data to help calibrate groundwater models. This essay discusses the calibration of models using groundwater age, with conclusions that emphasize what...

Drought is a recurring phenomenon in the American Southwest. Since the frequency and severity of hydrologic droughts and other hydroclimatic events are of critical importance to the ecology and rapidly growing human population of this region, knowledge of long-term natural hydroclimatic variability is valuable for resource managers and policy-makers. An...

Trends in pesticide concentrations for 15 streams in California, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho were determined for the organophosphate insecticides chlorpyrifos and diazinon and the herbicides atrazine, s‐ethyl diproplythiocarbamate (EPTC), metolachlor, simazine, and trifluralin. A parametric regression model was used to account for flow, seasonality, and antecedent hydrologic conditions and thereby...

NETPATH-WIN is an interactive user version of NETPATH, an inverse geochemical modeling code used to find mass-balance reaction models that are consistent with the observed chemical and isotopic composition of waters from aquatic systems. NETPATH-WIN was constructed to migrate NETPATH applications into the Microsoft WINDOWS® environment. The new version facilitates...

Mountains comprise an extensive and visually prominent portion of the landscape in the Mojave Desert, California. Landform surface properties influence the role these mountains have in geomorphic processes such as dust flux and surface hydrology across the region. The primary goal of this study was to describe and quantify land...

Few studies attempt to model the range of possible post-fire hydrologic and geomorphic hazards because of the sparseness of data and the coupled, nonlinear, spatial, and temporal relationships among landscape variables. In this study, a type of unsupervised artificial neural network, called a self-organized map (SOM), is trained using data...

Self-potentials (SP) are sensitive to water fluxes and concentration gradients in both saturated and unsaturated geological media, but quantitative interpretations of SP field data may often be hindered by the superposition of different source contributions and time-varying electrode potentials. Self-potential mapping and close to two months of SP monitoring on...

Shells of intertidal bivalve mollusks contain sub-seasonally to interannually resolved records of temperature and salinity variations in coastal settings. Such data are essential to understand changing land-sea interactions through time, specifically atmospheric (precipitation rate, glacial meltwater, river discharge) and oceanographic circulation patterns; however, independent temperature and salinity proxies are currently...

Natural wetlands often have a heterogeneous soil surface topography, or microtopography (MT), that creates microsites of variable hydrology, vegetation, and soil biogeochemistry. Created mitigation wetlands are designed to mimic natural wetlands in structure and function, and recent mitigation projects have incorporated MT as one way to attain this goal. Microtopography...

The mountainous areas of Colorado are used for tourism and recreation, and they provide water storage and supply for municipalities, industries, and agriculture. Recent studies suggest that water supply and tourist industries such as skiing are at risk from climate change. In this study, a distributed-parameter watershed model, the Precipitation-Runoff...

In many farmed areas, intensive application of agricultural chemicals and withdrawal of groundwater for irrigation have led to water quality and supply issues. Unsaturated-zone processes, including preferential flow, play a major role in these effects but are not well understood. In the Bogue Phalia basin, an intensely agricultural area in...

To better understand storage-runoff dynamics, transient groundwater responses were examined in one of the steep watersheds in British Columbia's coastal mountains. Streamflow and piezometric data were collected for 1year to determine the spatial and temporal relations between transient groundwater levels and discharge. Correlations between piezometer responses and lag-time analysis were...

Didymosphenia geminata (didymo) is a freshwater alga native to North America, including Glacier National Park, Montana. It has long been considered a cold-water species, but has recently spread to lower latitudes and warmer waters, and increasingly forms large blooms that cover streambeds. We used a comprehensive monitoring data set from...

Movement of dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) through the hydrologic cycle is an important component of global carbon budgets, but there is considerable uncertainty about the controls of DIC transmission from landscapes to streams, and through river networks to the oceans. In this study, diel measurements of DIC, d13C-DIC, dissolved oxygen...

California’s mountainous topography, exposure to occasional heavily moisture-laden storm systems, and varied communities and infrastructures in low lying areas make it highly vulnerable to floods. An important question facing the state—in terms of protecting the public and formulating water management responses to climate change—is “how might future climate changes affect...

Generally, growth rates of living organisms are considered to be at steady state, varying only under environmental forcing factors. For example, these rates may be described as a function of light for plants or organic food resources for animals and these could be regulated (or not) by temperature or other...

We conducted electrical geophysical measurements at the National Crude Oil Spill Fate and Natural Attenuation Research Site (Bemidji, MN). Borehole and surface self-potential measurements do not show evidence for the existence of a biogeobattery mechanism in response to the redox gradient resulting from biodegradation of oil. The relatively small self...

Crop coefficients were developed to determine crop water needs based on the evapotranspiration (ET) of a reference crop under a given set of meteorological conditions. Starting in the 1980s, crop coefficients developed through lysimeter studies or set by expert opinion began to be supplemented by remotely sensed vegetation indices (VI)...

A 24-h field experiment was conducted during July 2008 at a wetland on the eastern shore of Great Salt Lake (GSL) to assess the diurnal cycling of methylmercury (MeHg). Dissolved (< 0.45 μm) MeHg showed a strong diurnal variation with consistently decreasing concentrations during daylight periods and...

Groundwater provides much of the fresh drinking water to more than 1.5 billion people in the world (Clarke et al., 1996) and in the United States more that 50 percent of citizens rely on groundwater for drinking water (Solley et al., 1998). As aquifer systems are developed for water supply,...

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is a multidisciplinary agency that provides assessments of natural resources (geological, hydrological, biological), the disturbances that affect those resources, and the disturbances that affect the built environment, natural landscapes, and human society. Until now, USGS map products have been generated and distributed primarily as 2-D...