Hysteretic response of solutes and turbidity at the event scale across forested tropical montane watersheds
Adam S. Wymore, Miguel C. Leon, James B. Shanley, William C. McDowell
2019, Frontiers in Earth Science (7)
Concentration-discharge relationships are a key tool for understanding the sourcing and transport of material from watersheds to fluvial networks. Storm events in particular provide insight into variability in the sources of solutes and sediment within watersheds, and the hydrologic pathways that connect hillslope to stream channel. Here we examine high-frequency...
Debris-flow monitoring and warning: Review and examples
Marcel Hurlimann, Velio Coviello, Coraline Bel, Xiaojun Guo, Matteo Berti, Christoph Graf, Johannes Hubl, Shusuke Miyata, Joel B. Smith, Hsiao-Yuan Yin
2019, Earth-Science Reviews (199)
Debris flows represent one of the most dangerous types of mass movements, because of their high velocities, large impact forces and long runout distances. This review describes the available debris-flow monitoring techniques and proposes recommendations to inform the design of future monitoring and warning/alarm systems. The selection and application of...
Ecosystem size predicts social dynamics in recreational fisheries
M. A. Kaemingk, C. J. Chizinski, Craig R. Allen, Kevin L. Pope
2019, Ecology and Society (24)
Recreational fisheries are complex adaptive systems that are inherently difficult to manage due to a heterogeneous user group (consumptive vs. non-consumptive) that utilize patchily distributed resources on the landscape (lakes, rivers, coastlines). There is a need to identify which system components can effectively predict and be used to manage...
Comparing and improving methods for reconstructing peatland water-table depth from testate amoebae
Connor Nolan, John Tipton, Robert K. Booth, Mevin Hooten, Stephen Jackson
2019, Holocene (29) 1350-1361
Proxies that use changes in the composition of ecological communities to reconstruct temporal changes in an environmental covariate are commonly used in paleoclimatology and paleolimnology. Existing methods, such as weighted averaging and modern analog technique, relate compositional data to the covariate in very simple ways, and different methods are seldom compared...
A Generalized Additive Model approach to evaluating water quality: Chesapeake Bay Case Study
Rebecca Murphy, Elgin Perry, Jon Harcum, Jennifer L. Keisman
2019, Environmental Modelling & Software (118)
Nutrient-reduction efforts have been undertaken in recent decades to mitigate the impacts of eutrophication in coastal and estuarine systems worldwide. To track progress in response to one of these efforts we use Generalized Additive Models (GAMs) to evaluate a diverse suite of water quality constituents over a 32-year period in...
Relevance of wind stress and wave-dependent ocean surface roughness on the generation of winter meteotsunamis in Northern Gulf of Mexico
Lijing Shi, Maitane Olabarrieta, Arnoldo Valle-Levinson, John C. Warner
2019, Ocean Modeling (140)
Meteotsunamis associated with passing squall lines are often observed ahead of cold fronts during winter seasons in Northern Gulf of Mexico. These types of meteotsunamis occur simultaneously with wind speed variations (~5-20 m/s) and sea-level atmospheric pressure oscillations (~1-6 hPa) with periods between 2 hours to several minutes. In order...
Identifying salt marsh shorelines from remotely sensed elevation data and imagery
Amy S. Farris, Zafer Defne, Neil K. Ganju
2019, Remote Sensing (11)
Salt marshes are valuable ecosystems that are vulnerable to lateral erosion, submergence, and internal disintegration due to sea-level rise, storms, and sediment deficits. Because many salt marshes are losing area in response to these factors, it is important to monitor their lateral extent at high resolution over multiple timescales. In...
Estimated use of water in Georgia for 2015 and water-use trends, 1985–2015
Jaime A. Painter
2019, Open-File Report 2019-1086
Water-withdrawal, water-use, and water-return information have been collected and compiled for each county in Georgia every 5 years since 1980 using data obtained from various Federal, State, and private agencies, as well as additional online sources. For 2015, water use, water withdrawal, and water returns were estimated for each county,...
Climate-driven state shifts in the Prairie Pothole Region: Assessing future impacts relevant to the management of wetland habitats critical to waterfowl
David M. Mushet, Owen P. McKenna
2019, Report
Embedded within the North American Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) are millions of small, depressional wetlands that annually support 50–80% of the continent’s waterfowl production. We recently assembled evidence that demonstrates a change towards a wetter climate that is driving a shift in the state of the region’s wetland ecosystems. This...
Competitive interactions among H, CU, and Zn ion moderate aqueous uptake of Cu and Zn by an aquatic insect
Daniel J. Cain, Marie Noele Croteau, Christopher C. Fuller
2019, Environmental Pollution (255)
The absorption of aqueous copper (Cu) and zinc (Zn) by aquatic insects, a group widely used to assess water quality, is unresolved. This study examined interactions among Cu, Zn, and protons that potentially moderate Cu and Zn uptake by the acid-tolerant stonefly Zapada sp. Saturation uptake kinetics was imposed to...
The 30 November 2018 Mw7.1 Anchorage Earthquake
Michael E. West, Adrian Bender, Matthew Gardine, Lea Gardine, Kara Gately, Peter J. Haeussler, Wael Hassan, Franz Meyer, Cole Richards, Natalia Ruppert, Carl Tape, John Thornley, Robert C. Witter
2019, Seismological Research Letters (91) 66-84
The Mw">Mw 7.1 47 km deep earthquake that occurred on 30 November 2018 had deep societal impacts across southcentral Alaska and exhibited phenomena of broad scientific interest. We document observations that point to future directions...
Vertical distribution of microplastics in the water column and surficial sediment from the Milwaukee River basin to Lake Michigan
Peter L. Lenaker, Austin K. Baldwin, Steven R. Corsi, Sherri A. Mason, Paul C. Reneau, John W Scott
2019, Environmental Science & Technology (53) 12227-12237
Microplastic contamination was studied along a freshwater continuum from inland streams to the Milwaukee River estuary to Lake Michigan, and vertically from the water surface, water subsurface and sediment. Microplastics were detected in all 96 water samples and nine sediment samples collected. Results indicated a gradient of polymer presence with...
Projected urban growth in the Southeastern USA puts small streams at risk
Peter C. Van Metre, Ian R. Waite, Sharon L. Qi, Barbara Mahler, Adam Terando, Michael Wieczorek, Michael R. Meador, Paul M. Bradley, Celeste A. Journey, Travis S. Schmidt, Daren M. Carlisle
2019, PLoS ONE (10)
Future land-use development has the potential to profoundly affect the health of aquatic ecosystems in the coming decades. We developed regression models predicting the loss of sensitive fish (R2=0.39) and macroinvertebrate (R2=0.64) taxa as a function of urban and agricultural land uses and applied them to projected urbanization of...
The effect of brine on the electrical properties of methane hydrate
Ryan Lu, Laura A. Stern, Wyatt L. Du Frane, John C. Pinkston, J. Murray Roberts, S. Constable
2019, Journal of Geophysical Research (124) 10877-10892
Gas hydrates possess lower electrical conductivity (inverse of resistivity) than either seawater or ice, but higher than clastic silts and sands, such that electromagnetic methods can be employed to help identify their natural formation in marine and permafrost environments. Controlled laboratory studies offer a means to...
Nest survival of Black-necked Stilts (Himantopus mexicanus) on the upper Texas coast, USA
Thomas V. Riecke, Warren C. Conway, David A. Haukos, Jena A. Moon, Christopher E. Comer
2019, Waterbirds (42) 261-271
The Black-necked Stilt (Himantopus mexicanus) is a migratory shorebird of temperate and tropical America. Declining wetland quality and associated declines in hydrological integrity may contribute to widespread habitat loss for stilts nesting on the upper Texas Gulf of Mexico coast of the USA, as both fresh and brackish...
A mechanistic understanding of ecological responses to land-use change in headwater streams
Richard H. Walker, Annika W. Walters
2019, Ecosphere (10)
Anthropogenic activities, such as oil and natural gas development (ONGD), have significantly altered the landscape. It is often challenging to identify the mechanistic processes underlying ecological responses to land-use change (LUC). In aquatic ecosystems, alterations to habitat and food availability and water quality associated with increased...
Plant and insect herbivore community variation across the Paleocene–Eocene boundary in the Hanna Basin, southeastern Wyoming
Lauren E Schmidt, Regan E Dunn, Jason J Mercer, Marieke Dechesne, Ellen D Currano
2019, PeerJ
Ecosystem function and stability are highly affected by internal and external stressors. Utilizing paleobotanical data gives insight into the evolutionary processes an ecosystem undergoes across long periods of time, allowing for a more complete understanding of how plant and insect herbivore communities are affected by ecosystem imbalance. To study how...
Escherichia coli in the Santa Cruz River in Tumacácori National Historical Park, Arizona
Nicholas V. Paretti
2019, Fact Sheet 2019-3065
At Tumacácori National Historical Park in southern Arizona, resource managers are concerned about microbial pathogens in the Santa Cruz River that could pose a serious health risk to employees and visitors. The U.S. Geological Survey recently completed a comprehensive 3-year study of water quality in the Santa Cruz River watershed...
Spatial and temporal distribution of bacterial indicators and microbial-source tracking within Tumacácori National Historical Park and the upper Santa Cruz River, southern Arizona and northern Mexico, 2015–2016
Nicholas V. Paretti, Christopher M. Kephart, Thomas J. Porter, Edyth Hermosillo, Jay R. Cederberg, Justine P. Mayo, Bruce Gungle, Alissa L. Coes, Rachel S. Tucci, Laura M. Norman
2019, Scientific Investigations Report 2019-5108
Tumacácori National Historical Park (TUMA) in southern Arizona protects the culturally important Mission San José de Tumacácori, while also managing a part of the ecologically diverse riparian corridor of the Santa Cruz River. The quality of the water flowing through depends solely on upstream watershed activities, and among the water-quality...
Historic changes to floodplain systems in the Driftless Area
Colin S. Belby, Lindsay J Spigel, Faith A. Fitzpatrick
2019, Book chapter, The physical geography and geology of the Driftless Area: The career and contributions of James C. Knox
Floodplain systems in the Driftless Area have experienced widespread historical transformations in hydrologic and sediment characteristics as well as rates of hydrogeomorphic processes. These changes exceed natural variability experienced during the Holocene and are driven by nearly two centuries of major land-cover alterations coupled with shifting...
River water-quality concentration and flux estimation can be improved by accounting for serial correlation through an autoregressive model
Qian Zhang, Robert M. Hirsch
2019, Water Resources Research (55) 9705-9723
Accurate quantification of riverine water‐quality concentration and flux is challenging because monitoring programs typically collect concentration data at lower frequencies than discharge data. Statistical methods are often used to estimate concentration and flux on days without observations. One recently developed approach is the Weighted Regressions on Time, Discharge, and Season...
Infrasound from giant bubbles during explosive submarine eruptions
John J. Lyons, Matthew M. Haney, David Fee, Aaron Wech, Christopher F. Waythomas
2019, Nature Geoscience (12) 952-958
Shallow submarine volcanoes pose unique scientific and monitoring challenges. The interaction between water and magma can create violent explosions just below the surface, but the inaccessibility of submerged volcanoes means they are typically not instrumented. This both increases the risk to marine and aviation traffic and leaves the underlying eruption...
Calibration of the USGS National Hydrologic Model in ungauged basins using statistical at-site streamflow simulations
William Farmer, Jacob LaFontaine, Lauren Hay
2019, Journal of Hydrologic Engineering (24)
In the absence of measured streamflow, statistically simulated daily streamflow can be used to support the ability of physical models to represent hydrologic processes at ungauged locations. The objective of this study was to determine the feasibility of using statistical simulations in place of measured streamflow to calibrate physical...
Remote sensing of dryland ecosystem structure and function: Progress, challenges, and opportunities
William K. Smith, Matthew P. Dannenberg, Dong Yan, Stephanie Herrmann, Mallory L. Barnes, Greg A. Barron-Gafford, Joel A. Biederman, Scott Ferrenberg, Andrew M. Fox, Amy R. Hudson, John F. Knowles, Natasha MacBean, David J.P. Moore, Pamela L. Nagler, Sasha C. Reed, William A. Rutherford, Russell L. Scott, Xianfeng Wang, Julia Yang
2019, Remote Sensing of Environment (233)
Drylands make up roughly 40% of the Earth's land surface, and billions of people depend on services provided by these critically important ecosystems. Despite their relatively sparse vegetation, dryland ecosystems are structurally and functionally diverse, and emerging evidence suggests that these ecosystems...
A novel method for the extraction, purification and characterization of noble gases in produced fluids
Rebecca L. Tyne, Peter H Barry, D J Hillegonds, Andrew G. Hunt, Justin T. Kulongoski, Michael J. Stephens, D.J. Byrne, C. J. Ballentine
2019, Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems (20) 5588-5597
Hydrocarbon systems with declining or viscous oil production are often stimulated using enhanced oil recovery (EOR) techniques, such as the injection of water, steam and CO2, in order to increase oil and gas production. As EOR and other methods of enhancing production such as hydraulic fracturing have become more prevalent,...
