Physical characteristics and simulated transport of pallid sturgeon and shovelnose sturgeon eggs
Kimberly Chojnacki, Susannah O. Erwin, Amy E. George, James Candrl, Robert B. Jacobson, Aaron J. DeLonay
2020, Journal of Freshwater Ecology (35) 73-94
The imperiled pallid sturgeon (Scaphirhynchus albus) and closely related, but more common, shovelnose sturgeon (S. platorynchus) are believed to broadcast adhesive, demersal eggs in the current and over coarse substrate in turbid rivers of the North American midcontinent. It has been hypothesized that eggs settle immediately following fertilization, but field...
Pavement alters delivery of sediment and fallout radionuclides to urbanstreams
Allen C. Gellis, Christopher C. Fuller, Peter C. Van Metre, Barbara Mahler, C. Welty, Andrew Miller, Lucas A Nibert, Zachary J. Clifton, Jeremy Malen, J.T. Kemper
2020, Journal of Hydrology (588)
Sediment from urban impervious surfaces has the potential to be an important vector for contaminants, particularly where stormwater culverts and other buried channels draining large impervious areas exit from underground pipes into open channels. To better understand urban sediment sources and their relation to...
Methylmercury-Total mercury ratios in predator and primary consumer insects from Adirondack streams (New York, USA)
Karen Riva-Murray, Paul M. Bradley, Mark E. Brigham
2020, Ecotoxicology (29) 1658
Mercury (Hg) is a global pollutant that affects biota in remote settings due to atmospheric deposition of inorganic Hg, and its conversion to methylmercury (MeHg), the bioaccumulating and toxic form. Characterizing biotic MeHg is important for evaluating aquatic ecosystem responses to changes in Hg inputs. Aquatic insects possess many qualities...
Colorado River flow dwindles as warming-driven loss of reflective snow energizes evaporation
Paul C. D. Milly, Krista A. Dunne
2020, Science (367) 1252-1255
The sensitivity of river discharge to climate-system warming is highly uncertain, and the processes that govern river discharge are poorly understood, which impedes climate-change adaptation. A prominent exemplar is the Colorado River, where meteorological drought and warming are shrinking a water resource that supports more than 1 trillion dollars of...
Bathymetry of Morris Lake (Newton Reservoir), New Jersey, 2018
Elizabeth A. Nystrom, Jerilyn V. Collenburg
2020, Scientific Investigations Report 2020-5010
Morris Lake, also known as Newton Reservoir, has been the source of drinking water for the Town of Newton, New Jersey, since the early 1900s. Although Morris Lake has been used as a source of drinking water for many years, its capacity was previously uncertain. In April 2018, the U.S....
Sub-annual streamflow responses to rainfall and snowmelt inputs in snow-dominated watersheds of the western U.S.
John C. Hammond, Stephanie K. Kampf
2020, Water Resources Research (56)
Streamflow generation in mountain watersheds is strongly influenced by snow accumulation and melt, and multiple studies have found that snow loss leads to earlier snowmelt timing and declines in annual streamflow. However, hydrologic responses to snow loss are heterogeneous, and not all areas experience streamflow declines....
Organic compounds in produced waters from the Bakken Formation and Three Forks Formation in the Williston Basin, North Dakota
Matthew S. Varonka, Tanya Gallegos, Anne L. Bates, Colin A. Doolan, William H. Orem
2020, Heliyon (6)
The organic composition of produced waters (flowback and formation waters) from the middle member of the Bakken Formation and the Three Forks Formation in the Williston Basin, North Dakota were examined to aid in the remediation of surface contamination and help develop treatment methods for produced-water recycling. Twelve produced water...
Building a landslide hazard indicator with machine learning and land surface models
T. A. Stanley, D. B. Kirschbaum, Steven Sobieszczyk, M. F. Jasinski, J. S. Borak, Stephen L. Slaughter
2020, Environmental Modelling & Software (129)
The U.S. Pacific Northwest has a history of frequent and occasionally deadly landslides caused by various factors. Using a multivariate, machine-learning approach, we combined a Pacific Northwest Landslide Inventory with a 36-year gridded hydrologic dataset from the National Climate Assessment – Land Data Assimilation System to produce a landslide hazard indicator (LHI) on a...
Landfill leachate contributes per-/poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and pharmaceuticals to municipal wastewater
Jason R. Masoner, Dana W. Kolpin, Isabelle M. Cozzarelli, Kelly L. Smalling, Stephanie Bolyard, Jennifer Field, Edward T. Furlong, James L. Gray, Duncan Lozinski, Debra Reinhart, Alix Rodowa, Paul M. Bradley
2020, Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology (6) 1300-1311
Widespread disposal of landfill leachate to municipal sewer infrastructure in the United States calls for an improved understanding of the relative organic-chemical contributions to the wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) waste stream and associated surface-water discharge to receptors in the environment. Landfill leachate, WWTP influent, and WWTP effluent samples were collected...
A post-eruption study of gases and thermal waters at Okmok Volcano, Alaska
Deborah Bergfeld, William C. Evans, Andrew G. Hunt, Taryn Lopez, Janet Schaefer
2020, Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research (396)
We report here on the first focused study of gas discharges and thermal spring waters at Okmok Volcano since the 2008 phreatomagmatic eruptions. Results include the first compositional gas data from Okmok with minimal air contamination and the first data on magmatic carbon in Okmok spring waters. Chemical and isotopic...
Small-scale water deficits after wildfires create long-lasting ecological impacts
Rory O’Connor, Matthew J. Germino, David M Barnard, Caitlin M. Andrews, John B. Bradford, David S. Pilliod, Robert S. Arkle, Robert K Shriver
2020, Environmental Research Letters (15)
Ecological droughts are deficits in soil–water availability that induce threshold-like ecosystem responses, such as causing altered or degraded plant-community conditions, which can be exceedingly difficult to reverse. However, 'ecological drought' can be difficult to define, let alone to quantify, especially at spatial and temporal scales relevant to land managers. This...
Pooling resources across organizations — Multisource water-quality data for the Delaware River Basin
Jennifer C. Murphy, Megan E. Shoda
2020, Fact Sheet 2020-3006
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) recently launched a pilot Integrated Water Availability Assessment (IWAA) in the Delaware River Basin to explore, test, and refine systems and processes for assessing water availability for human and ecological uses based on water monitoring data. Water-quality monitoring provides citizens, managers, and scientists with the...
Abundance and productivity of marbled murrelets (Brachyramphus marmoratus) off central California during the 2019 breeding season
Jonathan J. Felis, Emily C. Kelsey, Josh Adams, Cheryl Horton, Laura White
2020, Data Series 1123
Marbled murrelets (Brachyramphus marmoratus) have been listed as “endangered” by the State of California and “threatened” by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service since 1992 in California, Oregon, and Washington. Information regarding marbled murrelet abundance, distribution, population trends, and habitat associations is critical for risk assessment, effective management, evaluation of...
Groundwater quality and geochemistry of West Virginia’s southern coal fields
Mark D. Kozar, Mitchell A. McAdoo, Karl B. Haase
2020, Scientific Investigations Report 2019-5059
Coal mining has been the dominant industry and land use in West Virginia’s southern coal fields since the mid-1800s. Mortality rates for a variety of serious chronic conditions, such as diabetes, heart disease, and some forms of cancer in Appalachian coal mining regions, are higher than in areas lacking substantial...
A spatial analysis of climate gentrification in Orleans Parish, Louisiana post-Hurricane Katrina
Kyle T. Aune, Dean B. Gesch, Genee S. Smith
2020, Environmental Research (185)
BackgroundHurricane Katrina made landfall in New Orleans, Louisiana as a Category 3 storm in August 2005. Storm surges, levee failures, and the low-lying nature of New Orleans led to widespread flooding, damage to over 70% of occupied housing, and evacuation of 80–90% of city...
A comparison of groundwater sampling technologies, including passive diffusion sampling, for radionuclide contamination
Rebecca J. Frus, Thomas Imbrigiotta
2020, Conference Paper, Waste Management Symposium proceedings
Using traditional high-flow purge methods for long-term water quality monitoring of deep groundwater wells can be expensive, affect contaminant migration, and produce excessive volumes of discharge water that can be difficult to manage. The use of low-flow pumping methods and depth discrete bailers (DDBs) can reduce the cost of sampling...
Antibiotic resistance in marine microbial communities proximal to a Florida sewage outfall system
Dale W. Griffin, Kenneth Banks, Kurtis Gregg, Sarah Shedler, Brian Walker
2020, Antibiotics (9)
Water samples were collected at several wastewater treatment plants in southeast Florida, and water and sediment samples were collected along and around one outfall pipe, as well as along several transects extending both north and south of the respective outfall outlet. Two sets of samples were collected to address potential...
Gulls as sources of environmental contamination by colistin-resistant bacteria
Alan B. Franklin, Andrew M. Ramey, Kevin T Bentler, Nicole L Barret, Loredana M McCurdy, Christina Ahlstrom, Jonas Bonnedahl, Susan A. Shriner, Jeffrey C Chandler
2020, Scientific Reports (10)
In 2015, the mcr-1 gene was discovered in Escherichia coli in domestic swine in China that conferred resistance to colistin, an antibiotic of last resort used in treating multi-drug resistant bacterial infections in humans. Since then, mcr-1 was found in other human and animal populations, including wild gulls. Because gulls...
An enhanced hydrologic stream network based on the NHDPlus medium resolution dataset
John W. Brakebill, Gregory E. Schwarz, Michael E. Wieczorek
2020, Scientific Investigations Report 2019-5127
The National Hydrography Dataset Plus, Version 2.1 (NHDPlusV2.1) is an attribute-rich digital stream network for the conterminous United States, serving as a foundational infrastructure for reporting hydrologic information at both regional and national scales. SPAtially Referenced Regressions On Watershed attributes (SPARROW) is a process-based statistical model that relies on a...
Soil water availability shapes species richness in mid-latitude shrub steppe plant communities
Samuel E. Jordan, Kyle A. Palmquist, John B. Bradford, William K. Lauenroth
2020, Journal of Vegetation Science (31) 646-657
QuestionsEcological communities are controlled by multiple, interacting abiotic and biotic factors that influence the distribution, abundance, and diversity of species. These processes jointly determine resource availability, resource competition, and ultimately species richness. For many terrestrial ecosystems in dryland climates, soil water availability is the most frequent limiting...
Probabilistic categorical groundwater salinity mapping from airborne electromagnetic data adjacent to California’s Lost Hills and Belridge oil fields
Lyndsay B. Ball, Tracy Davis, Burke J. Minsley, Janice M. Gillespie, Matthew K. Landon
2020, Water Resources Research (56)
Growing water stress has led to emerging interest in protecting fresh and brackish groundwater as a potential supplement to water supplies and raised questions about factors that could affect the future quality of fresh and brackish aquifers. Limited well infrastructure, particularly in regions where elevated salinity has...
Dust deposited on snow cover in the San Juan Mountains, Colorado, 2011-2016: Compositional variability bearing on snow-melt effects
Richard L. Reynolds, Harland L. Goldstein, Bruce M. Moskowitz, Raymond F. Kokaly, Seth M. Munson, Peat Solheid, George N. Breit, Corey R. Lawrence, Jeff Derry
2020, Journal of Geological Research (125)
Light-absorbing particles in atmospheric dust deposited on snow cover (dust-on-snow, DOS) diminish albedo and accelerate the timing and rate of snow melt. Identification of these particles and their effects are relevant to snow-radiation modeling and thus water-resource management. Laboratory-measured reflectance of DOS samples from the San Juan Mountains (USA) were...
Post-release monitoring of a stranded and rehabilitated short-finned pilot whale (Globicephala macrorhynchus) reveals current-assisted travel
Reny B Tyson Moore, David C. Douglas, Hendrik H. Nollens, Randall S. Wells
2020, Aquatic Mammals (46) 200-214
A subadult female short-finned pilot whale (Globicephala macrorhynchus), stranded on the northeastern Gulf of Mexico coast of Florida in June 2017, was rehabilitated for 38 days and then monitored with a satellite-linked, time-depth recording tag for 32 days after being released off the West Florida Shelf. The individual, “Gale,”...
Life-history plasticity and water-use trade-offs associated with drought resistance in a clade of California jewelflowers
Ian S. Pearse, Jessica Aguilar, Sharon Strauss
2020, The American Naturalist (195) 691-704
Water limitation is a primary driver of plant geographic distributions and individual plant fitness. Drought resistance is the ability to survive and reproduce despite limited water, and numerous studies have explored its physiological basis in plants. However, it is unclear how drought resistance and trade-offs associated with drought resistance evolve...
Quantification of trace element loading in the upper Tenmile Creek drainage basin near Rimini, Montana, September 2011
Tom Cleasby, Sara L. Caldwell Eldridge
2020, Scientific Investigations Report 2019-5126
The principle sources of trace elements entering upper Tenmile Creek, Montana, during September 2011, four trace metals and the metalloid arsenic, were identified and quantified by combining and analyzing streamflow data determined from tracer injection with trace-element concentrations and related water-quality data determined from synoptic sampling. The study reach was...
